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Len Bias

Leonard Kevin Bias (November 18, 1963 –June 19, 1986) was an American college basketball player for the Maryland Terrapins. In the last of his four years playing for Maryland, he was named a consensus first-team All-American. Two days after being selected by the Boston Celtics with the second overall pick in the 1986 NBA draft, Bias died from cardiac arrhythmia induced by a cocaine overdose. In 2021, Bias was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame.

Early life
Bias was born and raised in the Prince George’s County area in Maryland, just outside of the Washington, D.C. area. He was one of four children born to James Bias Jr. and Dr. Lonise Bias. He had a sister, Michelle, and two brothers, Eric and James III (James III was known as Jay).

Bias graduated from Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, Maryland.

College career
Bias attended the University of Maryland. As a freshman for the Terrapins, he was viewed as "raw and undisciplined." Bias ultimately developed into an All-American player. He led the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in scoring in his junior year and was named the ACC Player of the Year. His senior season was highlighted by his performance in an overtime victory against top-ranked North Carolina, in which he scored 35 points, including seven in the last three minutes of regulation and four in overtime. Bias collected his second ACC Player of the Year award at the end of the year and was named to two All-America teams.

Bias impressed basketball fans with his amazing leaping ability, physical stature and ability to create plays, and he was considered one of the most dynamic players in the nation. By his senior year, scouts from various National Basketball Association teams viewed Bias as the most complete forward in the class of 1986. Celtics scout Ed Badger called Bias an "explosive and exciting kind of player" and compared him to Michael Jordan.

NBA draft, drug overdose, and death
On June 17, 1986, Bias was selected by the Boston Celtics as the second overall pick in the 1986 NBA draft, which was held in New York City at Madison Square Garden. Red Auerbach, the Celtics' president and general manager, had dealt guard Gerald Henderson and cash to the Seattle SuperSonics for the pick in 1984. After the draft, Bias and his family returned to their suburban Maryland home. On June 18, Bias and his father flew to Boston for an NBA club draft acceptance and product endorsement signing ceremony with the Celtics' coaches and management. Bias had discussions with Reebok's sports marketing division regarding a five-year endorsement package worth $1.6 million.

After returning home, Bias returned to the campus of the University of Maryland. He left campus at approximately 2 a.m. on Thursday, June 19, drove to an off-campus gathering and returned to his dormitory between 2:30 and 3 a.m. For the next three to four hours, Bias, with longtime friend Brian Tribble and several teammates, snorted cocaine in the dormitory suite shared by Bias and his teammates. Bias suffered a seizure and collapsed while talking with teammate Terry Long. At 6:32 a.m., when Tribble called 911, Bias was unconscious and not breathing. All attempts by the emergency medical team to restart his heart and breathing were unsuccessful. After additional attempts to revive him at Leland Memorial Hospital in Riverdale, Maryland, Bias was pronounced dead at 8:55 a.m. of a cardiac arrhythmia related to usage of cocaine. It was reported that there were no other drugs or alcohol found in his system.

More than 11,000 people attended a June 23 memorial service at the Cole Field House, the university recreation and student center where Bias played for the Terrapins. Those speaking at the service included Auerbach, who said that he had planned to draft Bias for three years. On June 30, 1986, the Celtics honored Bias with a memorial service in which his unused #30 Celtics jersey was given to his mother Lonise.

Bias was interred at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland, Maryland.

Criminal charges
On July 25, 1986, a grand jury returned indictments against Brian Tribble for possession of cocaine and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. Bias's Maryland teammates Terry Long and David Gregg were charged with possession of cocaine and obstruction of justice. Long and Gregg were suspended from the team on July 31. All three defendants entered not guilty pleas in August.

On October 20, 1986, prosecutors dropped all charges against Long and Gregg in exchange for their testimony against Tribble. On October 30, the grand jury added three more indictments against Tribble—one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice and two counts of obstruction of justice.

Also on October 30, Kenneth Mark Fobbs, Tribble's roommate, was charged with perjury for allegedly lying to the grand jury about the last time that he had seen Tribble. The state dropped the perjury charges against Fobbs on March 24, 1987 and a jury acquitted Tribble of all charges related to the Bias case on June 3, 1987.

In October 1990, Tribble pleaded guilty to a drug charge following a two-year undercover sting operation. He cooperated with the government and was sentenced to ten years and one month in prison.

Family
On December 5, 1990, Bias's younger brother Jay was murdered in a drive-by shooting at age 20. The killing followed a dispute in the parking lot of Prince George's Plaza, a Hyattsville shopping mall just a few miles from the University of Maryland. He was pronounced dead at the same hospital where his brother Len had died and was buried next to him at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery.

Following their sons' deaths, James and Lonise Bias assumed vocal advocacy roles. Lonise Bias became an anti-drug lecturer, while James Bias became an advocate for gun control. Lonise Bias, in the memory of her children, opened the Len and Jay Bias Foundation, which serves to encourage better examples for youth.

Len Bias Law
A few weeks after Bias's death, committees in the United States House of Representatives began writing anti-drug legislation. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 was signed by President Ronald Reagan on October 27, 1986. The law provides a mandatory minimum prison term of 20 years and a maximum life sentence, along with a fine of up to $2 million, for cases of drug distribution that lead to the death or serious injury of a person. It is also known as the "Len Bias Law."

University of Maryland investigation
The circumstances surrounding Bias's death threw the University of Maryland and its athletics program into turmoil. An investigation revealed that Bias was 21 credits short of the graduation requirement despite having attended the university for four full years; in his final semester, he earned no academic credits, failing three courses and withdrawing from two others. On August 26, 1986, state attorney Arthur A. Marshall Jr. stated that in the hours after Bias's death, Maryland head basketball coach Lefty Driesell told players to remove drugs from Bias's dorm room. Two days later, Bias's father James accused the university and Driesell of neglecting their athletes' academic status.

The controversy prompted athletic director Dick Dull to resign on October 7, 1986, with Driesell following suit on October 29 after 17 years as coach. The grand jury presiding over the Bias case issued a final report on February 26, 1987, criticizing the University of Maryland's athletic department, admissions office and campus police.

College
Source:

Film and media
A documentary film about Bias's life titled Without Bias, directed by Kirk Fraser, was promoted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and released June 19, 2009. The film premiered on ESPN on November 3, 2009 as part of the network's 30 for 30 documentary series.

In Season 6 of TV series NCIS, Bias's manner of death was discussed. Bias’s death was depicted in the Season 5 episode titled “Comets” of the television series Snowfall. A segment in the documentary Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy discusses the impact of Bias's death on the public's perception of the crack epidemic. Bias was also mentioned during a Saved by the Bell episode on drug abuse.

title: Len Bias


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User talk:Thirdbane

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Chuck Grassley

Charles Ernest Grassley (born September 17, 1933) is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from Iowa, having held the seat since 1981. Grassley was first elected to the Senate in 1980 and has been reelected seven times. He is the longest-serving Republican in Congressional history and the sixth-longest-serving U.S. senator in history.

Before becoming a senator, Grassley served eight terms in the Iowa House of Representatives (1959–1975) and three in the United States House of Representatives (1975–1981). He has served three stints as Senate Finance Committee chairman during periods of Republican Senate majority. Upon the retirement of Orrin Hatch on January 3, 2019, Grassley became the Senate's most senior Republican and its president pro tempore. Upon Patrick Leahy's retirement in January 2023, Grassley became the most senior member of the Senate. At 24 years, 6 months, 5 days of age, Grassley is the oldest sitting United States senator. He is the president pro tempore emeritus of the United States Senate.

During his four decades in the Senate, Grassley has chaired the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate Narcotics Caucus, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Senate Aging Committee.

Early life and education
On September 17, 1933, Charles Ernest Grassley was born in New Hartford, Iowa. He is the son of Ruth (née Corwin) and Louis Arthur Grassley. Grassley was raised on a farm; his childhood home did not have electricity or indoor plumbing. He graduated from New Hartford Community High School in 1951. At Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa), he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1955 and a Master of Arts in political science in 1956. He pursued a Ph.D. in political science at the University of Iowa, but did not complete the degree. During his time as a student, Grassley joined the social-professional Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity.

Early career
In the 1950s, Grassley farmed and worked in factories in Iowa, first as a sheet metal shearer and then as an assembly line worker. From 1967 to 1968, he taught at Charles City College.

Grassley represented parts of Butler County in the Iowa House of Representatives from 1959 to 1975. He then served in the United States House of Representatives from 1975 to 1981.

1980
Grassley was first elected to the Senate in 1980, defeating Democratic incumbent John Culver.

1986
Grassley was reelected in 1986, defeating the Democratic nominee, attorney John P. Roehrick, in a landslide.

1992
Grassley was reelected in 1992, defeating Democratic State Senator Jean Hall Lloyd-Jones.

1998
Grassley was reelected in 1998, defeating former State Representative David Osterberg, who won the Democratic nomination unopposed.

2004
Grassley was reelected in 2004, defeating former State Senator Arthur A. Small.

2010
Grassley sought a sixth term in the 2010 election. He was challenged by Democrat Roxanne Conlin, a former United States attorney, and Libertarian John Heiderscheit, an attorney.

Grassley was unopposed in the Republican primary, although conservative Iowans such as Bill Salier and Craig Robinson said he had drifted "too far to the left".

Grassley was reelected with 718,215 votes to Conlin's 371,686. Heiderscheit received 25,290 votes. Grassley is only the second Iowan to serve six terms in the Senate, the other being Iowa's then-longest-serving senator, William B. Allison.

2016
Grassley sought a seventh term in the 2016 election. He was expected to face a strong challenge from former Democratic lieutenant governor Patty Judge, but won his seventh term with over 60% of the vote as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump won Iowa with over 51% of the vote.

2022
In May 2021, Grassley said that he would not decide whether to run for reelection in 2022 until between eight and 12 months before the election. Given Iowa's swing nature and Grassley's strong results in past elections, many believed that an open seat in Iowa would benefit the Democrats as they could convince many Grassley supporters to vote for their nominee. In July 2021, former U.S. Representative Abby Finkenauer announced that she would run for the seat regardless of Grassley's decision and criticized him and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell for being "obsessed with power" and not taking a strong stance against those who breached the Capitol in the January 6 United States Capitol attack.

In September 2021, Grassley announced his intention to run for an eighth term. His announcement was viewed as advantageous to Republicans seeking to hold Grassley's seat and to retake the Senate majority in 2022. He won the general election, defeating Democratic nominee Michael Franken on November 8, 2022.

1980–1989

In November 1981, Grassley was one of 32 senators to sign a letter to President Reagan supporting Director of the Office of Management and Budget David Stockman. In August 1982, while the Reagan administration tried persuading senators to approve legislation authorizing the creation of a radio station for broadcasting to Cuba, Grassley joined fellow Iowa senator Roger Jepsen and Edward Zorinsky in seeking an amendment to the bill barring the Reagan administration from operating Radio Marti on that frequency or other commercial AM frequencies.

In October 1983, Grassley voted against establishing a legal holiday to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. In 2015, an aide to Grassley said that he voted against the holiday due to an "economic decision both in the cost to the broader economy in lost productivity, and the cost to the taxpayers with the federal government closed". In 2004, Grassley co-sponsored legislation giving King a posthumous award, which became law on October 25 that year.

On November 1, 1984, Grassley signed a one-page citation of contempt of Congress against Attorney General William French Smith due to Smith's not turning over files on an investigation into Navy shipbuilding. Assistant Attorney General Stephen S. Trott called the citation "out of place" since Grassley was not acting at a session of the Judiciary panel he led.

In May 1987, the Senate Appropriations Committee defeated an attempt by Grassley to hasten payments of corn and other feed grain subsidies ahead of the scheduled payment taking place after October 1. Grassley's measure was also designed to unravel an accounting device lawmakers had used to make it appear that they were reducing spending for the incoming fiscal year.

In October 1987, during a press briefing, Grassley accused Reagan of being "asleep at the switch" and botching the handling of Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination, adding that Bork's nomination had convinced him that the Reagan administration "has been terribly lucky for the last seven years" in other matters, including the economy and foreign policy. Later that month, Grassley likened the groups lobbying against Bork's nomination to the McCarthyism of the 1950s: "The big lie is standard operating procedure for some of these groups. All you have to do is repeat the same outrageous charges, and repeat them so often that people believe they are true." In November, as party leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee met on the Supreme Court nomination of Douglas H. Ginsburg, Grassley released the text of a letter he intended to send to the American Bar Association suggesting the association was dragging its feet in reviewing Ginsburg's record. After Ginsburg admitted having smoked marijuana, Grassley said, "You like to think people who are appointed to the Supreme Court respect the law." Grassley joined Jesse Helms in resisting the nomination of Anthony Kennedy, Reagan's next choice for the Supreme Court; he indicated that he would have preferred that Reagan instead nominate Judge Pasco Bowman II or Judge John Clifford Wallace. Grassley expressed distaste for "the people who are committed to changing the judiciary" and taking "the path of least resistance".

In January 1989, as the Senate voted to schedule a vote within a month on a pay increase, Grassley asked how senators would decline federal program increases "come March and April if the first thing out of the box is a pay raise". In February, he was one of six senators to testify against the 50% pay increase scheduled to take effect the next week. In October, he was one of nine senators to vote against legislation intended to outlaw flag burning and other forms of flag defacement and joined Bob Dole and Orrin Hatch, the other two Republicans to vote against the bill, in voicing a preference for a constitutional amendment.

1990–1999
In January 1991, Grassley was one of only two Republican senators to vote against joining the international coalition to force Iraq out of Kuwait, the other being Mark Hatfield of Oregon. In August 1991, he became one of six Republicans on the Select Senate Committee on POW-MIA Affairs that would investigate the number of Americans still missing in the aftermath of the Vietnam War following renewed interest. In July 1998, President Bill Clinton listed Grassley among the members of Congress who had made it possible "for me to sign into law today the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act". On February 12, 1999, Grassley was one of 50 senators to vote to convict and remove Bill Clinton from office.

2000–2009
In May 2001, Grassley met with Democratic senator Max Baucus over the allocation of finances in tax cuts and both reported they were making progress in reaching a bipartisan deal, Grassley adding that the bill would contain all four of the main elements proposed by the Bush administration and the Senate Finance Committee would modify the components of the Bush proposal.

In August 2002, Grassley sent a letter to president and chief executive of the United Way of America Brian Gallagher requesting a detailed explanation on the overseeing of both finances and management of the organization's affiliates. Grassley also wrote to chief executive of the United Way of the National Capital Area Norman O. Taylor in regards to allegations of affiliates misappropriating money as well as withholding information the board needed to allow its conducting of oversight.

As a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, Grassley has spearheaded many probes into alleged misuse and lack of accountability of federal money. In July 2007, a Grassley-commissioned report was released claiming that more than US$1 billion in farm subsidies were sent to deceased individuals. Grassley was called a "Taxpayer Super Hero" in 2014 by the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste. He received a 100 percent rating from the group that year and has a lifetime rating of 78 percent. Grassley was ranked the 5th most bipartisan Senator of the 114th United States Congress and the 7th most bipartisan Senator in the first session of the 115th Congress by the Bipartisan Index, a metric created by the Lugar Center for the Lugar Center and Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy to rank members of the United States Congress by their degree of bipartisanship.

In February 2004, Grassley released an internal report composed by the FBI in 2000 that examined 107 instances of either serious or criminal misconduct by its agents over a 16-year period. In a letter to the FBI, Grassley called the report "a laundry list of horrors with examples of agents who committed rape, sexual crimes against children, other sexual deviance and misconduct, attempted murder of a spouse, and narcotics violations, among many others" and added that the report's findings raised questions about whether the FBI handled agents "soon enough and rigorously enough".

On June 28, 2006, Grassley proposed legislation intended to curb sex trafficking and sexual slavery in the United States by means of strict enforcement of tax laws, for example by requiring a W-2 form be filed for each prostitute managed by a pimp or other employer.

Since 1976, Grassley has repeatedly introduced measures that increase the level of taxation on American citizens living abroad, including retroactive tax hikes. Grassley was eventually able to attach an amendment to a piece of legislation that went into effect in 2006, which increased taxes on Americans abroad by targeting housing and living incentives paid by foreign employers and held them accountable for federal taxes, even though they did not currently reside in the United States. Critics of the amendment felt that the move hurt Americans competing for jobs abroad by putting an unnecessary tax burden on foreign employers. Others felt that the move was only to offset the revenue deficit caused by domestic tax cuts of the Bush Administration.

In March 2009, amid a scandal that involved AIG executives receiving large salary bonuses from the taxpayer-funded bailout of AIG, Grassley suggested that those AIG employees receiving large bonuses should follow the so-called 'Japanese example', resign immediately or commit suicide. After some criticism, he dismissed the comments as rhetoric.

In May 2009, Grassley cosponsored a resolution to amend the US Constitution to prohibit flag burning.

When President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party proposed a health reform bill featuring mandated health insurance, Grassley opposed the health insurance mandate, saying that it was a deal breaker. In response to an audience question at an August 12, 2009, meeting in Iowa, about the end-of-life counseling provisions in the House health care bill,, Grassley said people were right to fear that the government would "pull the plug on grandma". Grassley had previously supported covering end-of-life counseling, having voted for the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, which stated: "The covered services are: evaluating the beneficiary's need for pain and symptom management, including the individual's need for hospice care; counseling the beneficiary with respect to end-of-life issues and care options, and advising the beneficiary regarding advanced care planning." In December 2009, he voted against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly called Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act). It was later reported that Grassley had notified Obama that he would vote against the Affordable Care Act even had the bill been modified to include all of the proposed modifications Grassley had proposed.

2010–2020
In January 2010, Grassley was one of seven Senate Republicans to sign a letter warning the White House about their serious reservations with Director of the Transportation Security Administration nominee Erroll Southers due to conflicting accounts Southers gave the Senate about his previous tapping of databases for information about his ex-wife's boyfriend in the late 1980s.

In December 2010, Grassley was one of 26 senators who voted against the ratification of New START, a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russian Federation obliging both countries to have no more than 1,550 strategic warheads as well as 700 launchers deployed during the next seven years along with providing a continuation of on-site inspections that halted when START I expired the previous year. It was the first arms treaty with Russia in eight years.

In April 2013, Grassley opposed a gun control amendment authored by Senators Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey, and instead proposed alternative legislation to increase prosecutions of gun violence and increase reporting of mental health data in background checks.

On March 9, 2015, Grassley was one of 47 senators to sign a letter to Iran led by Tom Cotton to rebuke the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In June 2015, Grassley introduced legislation to help protect taxpayers from alleged abuses by the Internal Revenue Service. The legislation was proposed in response to recent events involving alleged inappropriate conduct by employees at the IRS but was opposed by Democrats.

Since first taking office in 1981, Grassley has held public meetings in all of Iowa's 99 counties each year, even after losing honorarium payments for them in 1994. This has led to the coinage of the term "full Grassley" to describe a presidential candidate visiting all 99 counties of Iowa before the Iowa caucuses.

In 2018, Grassley suggested that no women were serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee because of the heavy workload. The following week, Grassley added that he would "welcome more women" to serve on the Committee "because women as a whole are smarter than most male senators. And they work real hard, too".

In July 2018, after President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Grassley lauded Kavanaugh as "one of the most qualified Supreme Court nominees to come before the Senate", and said that critics of Kavanaugh should lessen their confidence in how he would vote given past surprises in voting by members of the Court.

In 2016, Senate Republicans refused to consider Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. At the time, Grassley said that the "American people shouldn't be denied a voice" in the nomination, which was "too important to get bogged down in politics". In 2020, after a Supreme Court vacancy arose due to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, Grassley supported a prompt vote on Trump's nominee, backing the decision of "the current chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Senate Majority Leader".

2021–present
Grassley was participating in the certification of the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count when Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol. He was removed from the Senate chamber and taken to a secure location when rioters entered the building. In the wake of the attack, Grassley said that Trump "displayed poor leadership in his words and actions, and he must take responsibility". He said efforts to impeach Trump would risk "further disunity" and that "the country must take steps to tone down political rhetoric and mend divisions". In response, The Gazette editorial board wrote that Grassley and other Iowa Republicans "must reckon with why they did the wrong thing for so long".

Senate record for consecutive votes
As of November 2015, Grassley had cast 12,000 votes, and as of July 2012, he had missed only 35 votes in his Senate career. In January 2016, he set a record for the most times without a missed roll-call vote, having not missed one since July 1993, when he was touring Iowa with President Bill Clinton to survey flood damage. In November 2020, this streak came to an end after over 27 years and 8,927 votes when he quarantined after being exposed to COVID-19. Grassley broke Senator William Proxmire's record for most time without a missed vote, but Proxmire holds the record for most consecutive roll-call votes, with 10,252.

Committee assignments
Grassley's committee assignments for the 118th Congress are as follows:
 * Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
 * Subcommittee on Commodities, Markets and Trade
 * Subcommittee on Rural Development and Energy
 * Committee on Finance
 * Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth (Ranking Member)
 * Subcommittee on Health Care
 * Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight
 * Committee on the Budget (Ranking Member)
 * Committee on the Judiciary
 * Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights
 * Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism
 * Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights
 * Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Safety
 * Joint Committee on Taxation
 * United States Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control (Co-Chair)

Caucus membership

 * Senate Republican Conference

Abortion
Grassley has said that he considers himself pro-life and has expressed concern about the potential for abortions to be paid for with federal funds. In December 1981, he voted for a proposed constitutional amendment by Orrin Hatch that would allow both Congress and the states to ban or regulate abortion. In 2019, he co-sponsored reintroducing the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. Grassley approved of the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, saying it empowered people through their elected representatives to make "commonsense policy decisions".

Agriculture
In April 2019, Grassley was one of seven senators to sign a letter led by Debbie Stabenow and Joni Ernst to United States secretary of agriculture Sonny Perdue urging the Agriculture Department to implement conservation measures in the 2018 Farm Bill "through a department-wide National Water Quality Initiative, which would build off the existing initiative housed at the Natural Resource Conservation Service".

Antitrust
In October 2021, Grassley and Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S.2992). The legislation aims to prevent Big Tech companies from engaging in anti-competitive behavior by "self-preferencing" their products. Grassley voted to confirm Jonathan Kanter as Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice Antitrust Division.

Energy and environment
Grassley has expressed concern about the impact of regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency on farming. He said the EPA has a "public relations problem" with "the ethanol industry, corn farmers and [himself]", and that the EPA has "screwed" farmers with 31 biofuel exemptions. On December 19, 2019, after the EPA withdrew a new Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) rule, Grassley criticized the EPA for "playing games and not helping President Trump with farmers".

In 1992, Grassley authored EPACT 1992, which created the federal wind energy tax credit.

In 2005, Grassley authored the tax title of EPACT 2005 when he was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. On June 28, 2005, he voted for the bill. On June 19, 2007, Grassley helped expand tax incentives that produces energy from alternative sources including ethanol, wind, biomass, and biodiesel. On June 21, 2007, Grassley voted for the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which expanded other energy tax incentives through 2013.

In September 2015, Grassley received the Dr. Harold D. Prior "Friend of Iowa Wind Energy" award from the Iowa Wind Energy Association for his commitment to supporting wind energy development in Iowa.

In 2017, the Environmental Working Group stated that Grassley received $367,763 in grain commodity subsidies over 21 years.

Grassley supports federal ethanol subsidies.

In 2017, of the Paris Agreement, Grassley said, "unequal terms put the U.S. economy at a significant disadvantage while letting large economies like China’s and India’s off the hook". He also said he didn't like that the Senate had not voted on the agreement.

Estate taxes
Grassley is in favor of repealing the estate tax, which is a tax on inherited assets above $5.5 million for individuals and $11 million for couples. He has argued that the estate tax is potentially ruinous for farmers and small business owners. According to the Des Moines Register, Grassley's argument does not "match the reality found in federal tax data – particularly for Iowa. The estate tax applies to around 5,000 taxpayers across the entire country each year, and very few of them come from Iowa. Of the Iowans subject to the tax, only a fraction are actually farmers, and a vanishingly small number of them face a tax bill requiring them to sell off farmland or other assets... The number of small businesses impacted by the estate tax is similarly small."

Gun law
In 2010, Grassley had an "A" rating from the NRA Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF), rising to "A+" ratings and endorsements in 2016 and 2022. According to a source from Splinter News, Grassley received $9,900 from the NRA during his 2016 election.

Grassley is a staunch believer that gun laws will not prevent gun deaths or gun-related violence without improved mental health care. Grassley opposed the Manchin-Toomey gun control amendment, and instead proposed alternative legislation to increase prosecutions of gun violence and increase reporting of mental health data in background checks.

In 2016, one month after the Orlando nightclub shooting, Grassley proposed legislation to expand state-to-state access to background check data and to make it illegal for government officials to sell criminals guns as part of sting operations. Both proposals were rejected by the Senate. Additionally, he voted against the Democrats' Feinstein Amendment, which would make it illegal to sell guns to individuals on the terror watchlist and a Republican-sponsored bill that expanded funding for background checks.

In early 2017, Grassley sponsored legislation that expanded access to firearms by mentally disabled individuals, claiming that the previous ban against mentally ill individuals purchasing guns "mistreats disabled Americans". In response to the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, he said it was unlikely that gun laws would change in the wake of the shooting due to Congress being Republican-dominated. A day after the Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, Grassley said the government had not done enough to prevent individuals with a mental illness from obtaining firearms.

Health care
Grassley opposes the Affordable Care Act and has voted to repeal it. Before its passage, he had supported the individual mandate in health care reform. Grassley engaged in lengthy negotiations with the Obama administration, as it sought health care reform with support from Republican members of Congress. These negotiations produced nothing that Grassley would support, leading Democrats to characterize Grassley's efforts as intended to delay or scupper health care reform rather than produce compromise legislation. In Obama's memoir, he describes an exchange between him and Grassley in the Oval Office as he sought to reach a compromise with Grassley. Obama asked, "If Max [Baucus] took every one of your latest suggestions, could you support the bill?... Are there any changes—any at all—that would get us your vote?", to which Grassley responded, "I guess not, Mr. President."

In July 2017, Grassley said that Senate Republicans should be ashamed of not having repealed the ACA, and that this could result in a loss of their majority in the 2018 elections.

In August 2018, Grassley was one of ten Republican senators to cosponsor legislation intended to protect ACA provisions for people with preexisting conditions. Health experts said the bill did not prevent insurers from excluding coverage for people with preexisting conditions.

Marijuana legalization
In 2015, Grassley voiced his opposition to a bipartisan senate bill, the Compassionate Access, Research Expansion, and Respect States Act, that would move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule II. This bill would allow states with medical cannabis laws to legally prescribe it and allow for more research into its medical efficacy. In 2019, along with Democratic U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Brian Schatz, Grassley introduced the Cannabidiol and Marijuana Research Expansion Act, which would expand research into medical marijuana.

Military
Grassley has voiced objections to the Special Immigrant Visa program, which resettles translators and their family members who face risks to their lives due to their work with the U.S. Military.

Israel Anti-Boycott Act
In April 2017, Grassley co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (s. 720), which would make it a federal crime for Americans to encourage or participate in boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements in the West Bank if protesting actions by the Israeli government. In 2019, Grassley was one of 14 Republican senators to sign a letter from Marco Rubio that involved condemning the BDS movement.

LGBT rights
In 2015, after the Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional in Obergefell v. Hodges, Grassley released a statement saying he believed marriage was between one man and a woman and criticized the court for not leaving the issue up to the states. But in 2022, he said in a statement that he supports same-sex marriage. Despite this, Grassley voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, citing religious liberty concerns and calling the legislation unnecessary.

Retirement planning
In 2019, Grassley was one of the lead Senate co-sponsors of the SECURE Act of 2019. This bill, which became law as part of the fiscal year 2020 federal appropriations law signed in late December 2019, was intended to incentivize retirement planning, diversify the options available to savers, and increase access to tax-advantaged savings programs including 529 plans.

Russian interference in 2016 elections
In February 2017, Grassley said that while Russian interference in U.S. elections was "bothersome", the United States did not have clean hands and had, for instance, interfered with the 1948 Italian election. In May 2017 after Trump fired FBI director James Comey, Grassley advised people suspicious of the Trump administration to "Suck it up and move on." On October 31, 2017, while a group of Republicans were facing questions from reporters concerning recent indictments, Grassley ignored the questions and left the room.

In January 2018, and in the first known congressional criminal referral in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Grassley, along with Lindsey Graham, recommended charges against Christopher Steele, one of the people who sought to expose Russian interference. Grassley and Graham said that they had reason to believe that Steele had lied to federal authorities. According to The New York Times, "It was not clear why, if a crime is apparent in the F.B.I. reports that were reviewed by the Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department had not moved to charge Mr. Steele already. The circumstances under which Mr. Steele is alleged to have lied were unclear, as much of the referral was classified."

In January 2018, when Grassley and Judiciary Committee Republicans were refusing to release the full transcript of an August 2017 ten-hour interview that the Judiciary Committee had conducted with Glenn Simpson, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the full transcript unilaterally. Simpson is the co-founder of the political opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which produced the so-called Steele Dossier on alleged connections between Trump and Russia. Grassley condemned Feinstein, saying that her decision was "confounding" and that it deterred future witnesses in the Russia 2016 investigation. Simpson himself had requested that the full transcript of his interview be released, saying that Republicans had selectively leaked portions of the testimony to conservative media outlets in order to portray Simpson in a negative light and discredit the Steele dossier.

Trade
In January 2018, Grassley was one of 36 Republican senators to sign a letter to President Trump requesting he preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement by modernizing it for the economy of the 21st century.

Whistleblowers
The author of the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, Grassley has campaigned to increase protection and provide support for "whistleblowers". He has supported a number of FBI whistleblowers, including Coleen Rowley, Sibel Edmonds, and Jane Turner, although not supporting Department of Defense whistleblower Noel Koch.

Grassley received a lifetime achievement award on May 17, 2007, from the National Whistleblower Center. In April 2014, Grassley announced plans to create a caucus in the Senate dedicated to strengthening whistleblower protections.

Grassley defended the whistleblower in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, breaking with his party line, when he declared on October 1, 2019, that the whistleblower "appears to have followed the whistleblower protection laws and ought to be heard out and protected".

After whistleblowers Colonel Alexander Vindman and Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified against Donald Trump and were subsequently fired, Grassley defended Trump's firing of both whistleblowers on the grounds that their firing was not retaliatory.

Donald Trump
On May 28, 2021, Grassley voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the January 6 United States Capitol attack. Later that year, Grassley campaigned with Donald Trump.

Religious organizations
On November 5, 2007, Grassley announced an investigation into the tax-exempt status of six ministries under the leadership of Benny Hinn, Paula White, Eddie L. Long, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, and Kenneth Copeland by the United States Senate Committee on Finance. In letters to each ministry, Grassley asked for the ministries to divulge specific financial information to the committee to determine whether or not funds collected by each organization were inappropriately utilized by ministry heads. By the December 6, 2007 deadline, only three of the ministries had shown compliance with the Finance Committee's request. On March 11, 2008, Grassley and Finance chairman Max Baucus sent follow-up letters to Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar and Eddie Long, explaining that the Senate reserved the right to investigate the finances of their organizations under federal tax laws.

Medical research
Grassley also began an investigation about unreported payments to physicians by pharmaceutical companies. He led a 2008 Congressional investigation that found that well-known university psychiatrists, who had promoted psychoactive drugs, had violated federal and university regulations by secretly receiving large sums of money from the pharmaceutical companies that made the drugs. The New York Times reported that Joseph Biederman of Harvard University had failed to report over $1 million of income he had received from pharmaceutical companies. Weeks later, Grassley alleged that Alan Schatzberg, chair of psychiatry at Stanford University, had underreported his investments in Corcept Therapeutics, a company he founded. Schatzberg had reported only $100,000 investments in Corcept, but Grassley said his investments actually totaled over $6 million. Schatzberg later stepped down from his grant, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Similarly, Charles Nemeroff resigned as chair of the psychiatry department at Emory University after failing to report a third of the $2.8 million in consulting fees he received from GlaxoSmithKline. At the time he received these fees, Nemeroff had been principal investigator of a $3.9 million NIH grant evaluating five medications for depression manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline.

In 2008, for the first time, Grassley asked the American Psychiatric Association to disclose how much of its annual budget came from drug industry funds. The APA said that industry contributed 28% of its budget ($14 million at that time), mainly through paid advertising in APA journals and funds for continuing medical education.

Fundraising
According to the nonpartisan OpenSecrets, in 2010, the industries that have been the largest contributors to Grassley during his political career are health professionals ($1 million in contributions), insurance industry ($997,674), lawyers/law firms ($625,543) and pharmaceuticals/health products ($538,680). His largest corporate donors have been Blue Cross Blue Shield (insurance), Amgen (biotech company) and Wells Fargo (bank).

Electoral history
1978 Iowa 3rd District United States Congressional Election

1976 Iowa 3rd District United States Congressional Election

1974 Iowa 3rd District United States Congressional Election

1974 Iowa 3rd District United States Congressional Republican Primary Election 1972 Iowa House of Representatives 37th District Election 1970 Iowa House of Representatives 10th District Election

1966 Iowa House of Representatives Butler District Election

1964 Iowa House of Representatives Butler District Election

1962 Iowa House of Representatives Butler District Election

1960 Iowa House of Representatives Butler District Election

1958 Iowa House of Representatives Butler District Election

Personal life
Grassley and Barbara Ann Speicher married on August 22, 1954. They have five children: Lee, Wendy, Robin, Michele, and Jay. Grassley is a member of the Family, the organization that organizes the National Prayer Breakfast. His grandson, Pat Grassley, is a member of the Iowa House of Representatives. Grassley is also known for his widely reported, long-running "feud" with the History channel; he has consistently accused the network of featuring little actual history programming.

According to OpenSecrets, Grassley's net worth was more than $7.5 million as of 2018.

Awards
In 2003, Grassley's alma mater, the University of Northern Iowa, selected him for honoris causa membership in Omicron Delta Kappa, the National Leadership Honor Society. In 2009, the National Center for Health Research gave Grassley the Health Policy Hero award for his 2004 oversight of legislative reforms and accountability of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In 2010, The Hill named Grassley and Max Baucus the hardest-working members of Congress.

title: Chuck Grassley


text:
Dispute

Dispute may refer to:
 * an act of physical violence; combat
 * Controversy
 * Lawsuit
 * Dispute resolution
 * Dispute (credit card)
 * La Dispute, a 1744 prose comedy by Pierre de Marivaux
 * La Dispute (band), an American post-hardcore band
 * The endless dispute, a question of arthropod morphology

title: Dispute


text:
Little, Big

Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament is a contemporary fantasy novel by John Crowley, published in 1981. It won the World Fantasy Award in 1982.

Plot
Turn-of-the-century American architect John Drinkwater begins to suspect that within this world there lies another (and within that, another and another ad infinitum, each larger than the world that contains it). Towards the center is the realm of the fairies, which his wife, the Englishwoman Violet Bramble, can see and talk with. Drinkwater gathers his thoughts into an ever-evolving book entitled The Architecture of Country Houses. Drinkwater designs and builds a house called Edgewood north of New York City. It is a composite of many styles, each built over and across the others, supposedly as a ″sampler″ for customers thinking about employing Drinkwater's firm. It has the effect of disorienting visitors and somehow protecting the family, and it proves to be a door leading to the outer realm of Faerie.

At the beginning of the story, well after the deaths of Drinkwater and his wife, their great-granddaughter Daily Alice falls in love with and marries a stranger, ″Smoky″ Barnable, who she meets at the home of her City cousin George Mouse. Smoky gradually realizes that Alice and her sister Sophie claimed to have seen fairies when they were younger and that they and their family see their history as ″the Tale″.

In a flashback, it is revealed that many of the residents of the area surrounding Edgewood are descended from John and Violet's son August, who struck a bargain with the fairies that granted him a power over women's hearts matched by their own power over his.

Alice and Smoky have three daughters, Tacey, Lily and Lucy, and a son, Auberon. After an affair with Smoky, Sophie gives birth to a daughter, Lilac. She says Smoky is Lilac's father, but it is actually George Mouse. Lilac is stolen by the fairies and replaced with a changeling.

Alice and Sophie's great-aunt Nora Cloud regularly consults an ancient set of tarot cards to find out about such mundane matters as the weather or how soon a visitor will be arriving at the house. Smoky's instructions for his journey to Edgewood to marry Alice were based on one of Nora's card readings. Sophie learns how to use them from Aunt Cloud.

The story moves forward to Auberon as a young man venturing to ″the City″ (Manhattan), where he stays in George Mouse's gigantic ruinous compound of Old Law tenements, which Mouse has converted into a farmstead. The City is near collapse and rife with crime and poverty. Auberon falls in love with a striking and vivacious young Puerto Rican woman named Sylvie. They live together until Sylvie is lured away into Faerie. Inconsolable at her departure, Auberon takes to drink.

At this juncture, Russell Eigenblick, a charismatic and secretive politician, rises in popularity and becomes the President of the United States. He advocates civil war, but against what or who is unclear. He is opposed by a covert group of wealthy businessmen and politicians called the Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club. They are working with the mage Ariel Hawksquill, a distant relation of the Drinkwater family. Hawksquill divines that Eigenblick is the re-awakened Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and that he has been called from sleep to protect Faerie. Although he has not realized it, his enemy is humanity, which has unknowingly driven the fairies deeper and deeper into hiding. She announces this to the Club, but the members have decided to proceed without her. She becomes Eigenblick's adviser.

Hawksquill meets Auberon and teaches him architecture-based techniques of the art of memory. She recognizes that the cards he mentions are the pack that Eigenblick seeks, as they were made to foretell his return, and she induces him to tell her how to get to Edgewood. In return she gives him her key to a private park (designed by his great-great-grandfather), where he practices the art of memory on his time with Sylvie.

He sinks further into alcoholism. After a drunken sexual encounter with Sylvie’s brother Bruno, which Auberon considers a degradation, he lives on the streets. Eventually Lilac appears to him and persuades him to begin a recovery. He moves back into George Mouse’s farm and becomes the writer for a soap opera, taking much of his material from his grandfather ″Doc″ Drinkwater’s animal stories for children and his mother’s letters with stories of her extended family.

Hawksquill goes to Edgewood, where she steals Sophie’s tarot cards, recognizing that they are somehow the map describing the route into Faerie. She returns to the City and tries to stop Eigenblick, but it is too late and Eigenblick has her killed. He then disappears and the country falls into a low-key civil war.

The fairies, who can see the future but remember little of the past, understand the peril they are in but forget why, and they prepare to go deeper into the realms of Faerie; however, this cannot happen unless the extended family of the Drinkwaters comes to the mysterious ″Fairies’ Parliament″. Lilac visits Sophie and Daily Alice, and Auberon and George, summoning them to that event.

Alice leaves first to find or create the way to Faerie. On Midsummer’s Day, the rest of the family assembles at Edgewood including Auberon and George. At the last minute, Smoky – who never really believed in Faerie – chooses not to go, instead devoting himself to finishing the repair of Edgewood′s old orrery, which drew energy from the stars to power the home. He succeeds, and is persuaded by Sophie to accompany the family, but he dies of a heart attack before he leaves the borders of Edgewood. The remaining family members walk into the new realm and take the fairies’ place, Smoky’s funeral turns into Auberon and Sylvie’s wedding, and thus the Tale is finally completed.

The book ends with a description of the empty Edgewood as it decays and returns to nature. The house becomes a legend, because it continues to have lights shining even though electricity is scarce in the rest of the country.

Characters

 * Evan S. "Smoky" Barnable – One of the novel's protagonists, whose marriage to the Drinkwater family is prophesied long before it occurs. He succeeds the first Auberon (below) as a schoolteacher.
 * Alice Dale Drinkwater, known as Daily Alice – Smoky’s wife, Sophie’s sister and Auberon's mother. She is likewise assured of her destiny from a young age by Nora Cloud.
 * Auberon Barnable (the second Auberon) – Smoky’s son, and the second protagonist, who eventually leaves for the city to seek a destiny distinct from Edgewood and the interconnected Drinkwater clan.
 * Sylvie – A Stateside Puerto Rican worker at George Mouse’s farm. She was George’s lover but breaks up with him just as Auberon arrives. She can see the brownie who works at the farm and thinks of her as his queen. Her and her brother’s stories carry extended references to Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno.
 * Sophie Drinkwater – Alice’s sister. After Alice's departure, she leads the walk to Faerie.
 * Lilac (surname not used) – Sophie’s daughter, ostensibly by Smoky but actually by George Mouse. After being stolen by the fairies, she occasionally appears to Auberon, but no one else sees her till near the end of the story.
 * Violet Bramble – Ancestor of the Drinkwater clan. As a young unmarried woman in England, she is found to be pregnant by an unknown partner shortly after her father becomes active in the Theosophical Society. At one of their meetings she meets the first John Drinkwater. She later moves to America and marries him. Violet frequently goes to meet the fairies both from her father’s home in England and from Edgewood. She is the first to use the magical tarot cards to see the future.
 * John Drinkwater (the first John Drinkwater), architect and later author of The Architecture of Country Houses. He is fascinated by what his wife tells him about the fairies she sees.
 * Doctor John Storm ″Doc″ Drinkwater (the second John Drinkwater) – August Drinkwater's son with Amy Meadows; Alice and Sophie's father. He can understand the speech of animals and writes children's books that are a fictional version of the stories of Thornton Burgess.
 * August Drinkwater – Violet Bramble′s son, who enters into a pact with fairies, giving him power to make women fall in love with him, in exchange for his theft of Violet Bramble′s cards, which he returns to the fairies. His power over each girl he seduces is based on his love for her, which drives him to desperation, and he attempts to drown himself in a pond, but is transformed into a trout trapped in the pond. As "Grandfather Trout" he can speak and serves as a conduit for the Drinkwaters to communicate with Faerie. After his transformation, the tarot cards are returned to the Drinkwaters, but subtly altered. Many of the later residents of the five nearby small towns are his illegitimate descendants. At the very end of the Tale the leader of the fairies tells him he will be restored to human form when one of his loves, Amy Meadows, now elderly, comes to his pond and speaks to him.
 * Auberon Drinkwater (the first Auberon) – Alice’s eccentric great-uncle, the son (by Oliver Hawksquill) who Violet was pregnant with when she met John Drinkwater. He cannot see or communicate with fairies, but attempts to record them, with variable success, by photographing them with his nieces Alice and Sophie as ″mediums″ of a sort, reminiscent of the Cottingley Fairies and of photos of children taken by Lewis Carroll. He is the teacher of the school for the children of the Edgewood area and spends his life in pursuit of concrete evidence of fairies, and in analysis of his findings.
 * George Mouse – Smoky’s friend who introduces Smoky to his cousins, the Drinkwater family.
 * Ariel Hawksquill – A powerful magician who studies the rise of Russell Eigenblick. Granddaughter of Violet Bramble’s first lover, Oliver Hawksquill.
 * Russell Eigenblick – The despotic president of the United States, late in the history of the family. He is revealed to be the former Holy Roman Emperor, awakened from 800 years' sleep.
 * Aunt Nora Cloud – Widow of Henry Cloud, expert card reader and one of the family′s chief oracles.

Literary significance
Harold Bloom included this work in his book The Western Canon, calling it "A neglected masterpiece. The closest achievement we have to the Alice stories of Lewis Carroll." Bloom also recorded that, based on their correspondence, poet James Merrill "loved the book."

Thomas M. Disch described Little, Big as "the best fantasy novel ever. Period." Ursula K. Le Guin wrote that Little, Big is "a book that all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy." In Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels, David Pringle described the book as "a work of architectonic sublimity" and wrote that "the author plays with masterly skill on the emotional nerves of awe, rapture, mystery and enchantment." Paul Di Filippo said, "It is hard to imagine a more satisfying work, both on an artistic and an emotional level".

Praise for the book has not been unanimous, however. Reviewing the novel for The Boston Phoenix, John Domini termed it "a betrayal of nearly all its promises. The book may declaim continually, in reference to Fairy Land, that 'the farther in you go, the bigger it gets,' but this flabby tale gets less and less muscular as we peel back page after unnecessary page. Its failure, regrettably and oddly, is at heart one of imagination."

A number of readers and critics have described Little, Big as magical realism, perhaps in an attempt to defend it from being categorized as a work belonging to the sometimes maligned field of genre fiction. However, the novel fits the classic description of low fantasy. Some list it among the early works of urban fantasy or at least as a "classic" part of the movement that developed into it.

Awards and nominations

 * Winner of the World Fantasy Award, 1982
 * Nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel, 1981
 * Nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1982
 * Nominated for the British Science Fiction Association Award, 1982
 * Nominated for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, 1982

Release details

 * 1981, USA, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-01266-5, Pub date Sep 1981, trade paperback (black). Simultaneously published in Canada.
 * 1982, UK, Victor Gollancz, ISBN 0-575-03065-8, Pub date May 1982, hardcover (white dust jacket).
 * 1982, UK, Victor Gollancz, ISBN 0-575-03123-9, Pub date May 1982, trade paperback (white).
 * 1983, UK, Methuen, ISBN 0-413-51350-5, Pub date 1983, mass market paperback.
 * 1983, USA, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-23337-8, Pub date Oct 1983, mass market paperback. Yvonne Gilbert (front cover illustrator).
 * 1986, UK, Methuen, ISBN 0-413-51350-5, Pub date Nov 1986, mass market paperback.
 * 1987, USA, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-26586-5, Pub date Apr 1987, mass market paperback.
 * 1990, USA, Bantam Books, ISBN 0-553-26586-5, Pub date Nov 1990, mass market paperback. Tom Canty (front cover illustrator).
 * 1994, USA, Bantam, ISBN 0-553-37397-8, Pub date Sep 1994, hardcover. Gary A. Lippincott (illustrator).
 * 1997, USA, Easton Press Masterpieces of Fantasy, hardcover.
 * 1997, USA, Bantam /Science Fiction Book Club, ISBN 1-56865-429-4, Pub date Aug 1997, hardcover. Gary A. Lippincott (illustrator).
 * 2000, UK, Orion Books, ISBN 1-85798-711-X, Pub date May 2000, trade paperback, volume 5 of the Fantasy Masterworks series.
 * 2002, USA, Harper Perennial, ISBN 0-06-093793-9, pub. date Mar 2002, trade paperback.
 * 2006, USA, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, ISBN 0-06-112005-7, Pub date Oct 2006, trade paperback.
 * 2011, USA, Blackstone Audio, ISBN 978-1-4417-3392-4 (CD) and ISBN 978-1-4417-3395-5 (MP3-CD), pub. date 15 Dec 2011, audiobook. Read by the author, from the "Author's Preferred Text" created for the Incunabula edition.
 * 2022, USA, Incunabula, ISBN 978-0-9633-6375-6 (trade edition), ISBN 978-0-9633-6376-3 (numbered edition), ISBN 978-0-9633-6377-0 (lettered edition). Hardcover, nominally the 25th-anniversary edition with an afterword by Harold Bloom. Illustrations by Peter Milton.

title: Little, Big


text:
Tom Harkin

Thomas Richard Harkin (born November 19, 1939) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as a United States senator from Iowa from 1985 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously was the U.S. representative for Iowa's 5th congressional district from 1975 to 1985. He is the longest-serving senator to spend the entire tenure as a state's junior senator.

Born in Cumming, Iowa, Harkin graduated from Iowa State University and The Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law. He served in the United States Navy as an active-duty jet pilot (1962–1967). After serving as a congressional aide for several years, he made two runs for the U.S. House of Representatives, losing in 1972 but winning in 1974. He went on to serve five terms in the House.

Harkin won a race for U.S. Senate in 1984 by a wide margin. He was an early frontrunner for his party's presidential nomination in 1992, but he dropped out in support of eventual winner Bill Clinton. He served five Senate terms and at the end of his time in the Senate served as chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. He authored the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and was its chief sponsor in the Senate. Harkin delivered part of his introduction speech in sign language, saying it was so his deaf brother could understand.

On January 26, 2013, Harkin announced that he would not seek reelection in 2014.

Early life, education, and early political career
Harkin was born in Cumming, Iowa. His father, Patrick Francis Harkin, an Irish American, was a coal miner, and his mother, Franciska Frances Valentine (née Berčič), was a Slovene immigrant who died when he was ten. Harkin has three half-siblings on his mother's side from her first marriage in Iowa to fellow Slovenian Valentine Brelih. Frances was born in Suha, Slovenia to Jakob and Marija (born Jugovec). He still maintains his childhood house, where he and his five siblings were raised without hot running water or a furnace. He attended Dowling Catholic High School which is currently located in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Harkin attended Iowa State University on a Navy ROTC scholarship and became a member of Delta Sigma Phi fraternity. He graduated with a degree in government and economics in 1962, and served in the United States Navy as an active-duty jet pilot from 1962 to 1967. Harkin was stationed at Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan, where he ferried aircraft to and from the airbase that had been damaged in the Vietnam War and in operational and training accidents. He was also stationed for a time at Guantanamo Bay, where he flew missions in support of U-2 planes reconnoitering Cuba. After leaving active duty in 1967, he spent three years in the Ready Reserves, and transitioned into the Naval Reserves in 1970. He retired in 1989 with the rank of commander.

In 1969, Harkin moved to Washington, D.C., and began work as an aide to Democratic U.S. Congressman Neal Smith. During his work for Smith, he accompanied a congressional delegation that went to South Vietnam in 1970. Harkin published photographs he took during the trip and a detailed account of the "Tiger cages" at Côn Đảo Prison in Life Magazine on July 17, 1970. The account exposed shocking, inhumane conditions and treatment to which prisoners were subjected. He received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from The Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law in 1972.

U.S. House of Representatives
In 1972, the same year that he graduated from law school, Harkin returned to Iowa and immediately ran against an incumbent Republican Congressman, William J. Scherle. Scherle represented the southwestern portion of Iowa, which (with one brief exception) had not elected a Democrat to Congress since the end of the Great Depression. While winning a higher percentage of votes than any of Scherle's previous opponents, Harkin nevertheless lost the race. After his 1972 defeat, Harkin practiced law in Ames before seeking a rematch against Scherle in 1974. In what was generally a bad year for Republicans due to the Watergate scandal, Harkin defeated Scherle by only 3,500 votes. He was re-elected four more times from Iowa's 5th congressional district without serious difficulty.

Elections
In 1984, Harkin won the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate and defeated freshman Republican Roger Jepsen by an 11.8-point margin. He was re-elected in 1990, 1996, 2002, and 2008.

Tenure
Harkin served in the Senate longer than any Democrat in Iowa's history. In 2009, he passed Neal Edward Smith as the longest-serving Democrat in either chamber from Iowa. Notably, he spent his entire tenure as Iowa's junior Senator, due to his colleague Chuck Grassley having served in the chamber since 1981. He and Grassley had a fairly good relationship, despite their often sharp ideological differences, and their seniority made Iowa influential in national politics. Indeed, during his tribute to Harkin shortly before his departure, Grassley got notably choked up as Harkin entered the chamber.

Harkin and Barbara Boxer were the only Senate Democrats to support Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's 2006 resolution to censure President George W. Bush.

Harkin (in addition to U.S. Senators Dick Lugar, Tim Johnson, Byron Dorgan, Joe Biden and Norm Coleman), introduced the BioFuels Security Act (S. 2817/109th) on March 16, 2006.

Harkin came out in favor of the Fairness Doctrine during an interview with Bill Press. (February 11, 2009)

Harkin has been influential in increasing research funding for alternative medicine. He was instrumental in the creation of the U.S. Office of Alternative Medicine in 1992, which later became the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. His efforts and the center's results, however, have been criticized.

On July 16, 2013, Harkin introduced the Cooperative and Small Employer Charity Pension Flexibility Act (S. 1302; 113th Congress) into the Senate. The bill would make changes to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to alter the funding requirements of certain private pension plans that are maintained by more than one employer where the employers are either cooperatives or charities. The bill would make permanent an existing exemption from the Pension Protection Act of 2006 for a few small groups.

On November 19, 2013, Harkin introduced the Minimum Wage Fairness Act (S. 1737; 113th Congress). The bill would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) to increase the federal minimum wage for employees to $10.10 per hour over the course of a two-year period. The bill was strongly supported by President Barack Obama and many of the Democratic Senators, but strongly opposed by Republicans in the Senate and House.

Social policy
Harkin introduced the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into the Senate. Harkin delivered part of a speech in sign language so his deaf brother could understand.

Harkin has taken issue with the Supreme Court's handling of a number of cases related to ADA, concerned that the judgments severely limited the scope of the legislation's effectiveness:

"Together, these cases, as handled by the nation's highest court, have created a supreme absurdity: The more successful a person is at coping with a disability, the more likely it is for a court to find that he or she is no longer sufficiently disabled to be protected by the ADA. If that is the ruling, then these individuals may find that their requests for reasonable accommodations at work can be denied. Or that they can be fired—without recourse."

In order to address these issues Harkin proposed the ADA Amendments Act, which in his words "will restore the proper balance and application of the ADA by clarifying and broadening the definition of disability, while increasing eligibility for ADA protections."

Harkin has also been a vocal critic of what he describes as the biased nature of the Medicaid program: "The current Medicaid system is unacceptably biased in favor of institutional care. Two-thirds of Medicaid long-term care dollars are spent on institutional services, with only one-third going to community-based care. It's time to rebalance the system."

During his political career, Harkin has generally supported the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, which decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion. He has opposed most efforts to place legal restrictions on Roe v. Wade, including voting against a ban on late-term abortion, while supporting contraception and education to reduce teen pregnancy. , Harkin received a 100 percent rating from NARAL, the pro-choice advocacy organization. He was very critical of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which places limits on taxpayer-funded abortions in the context of the November 2009 Affordable Health Care for America Act. Harkin has come out in favor of embryonic stem cell research. In July 2006, Harkin made a speech from the Senate floor in response to George W. Bush's veto of the embryonic stem cell research federal funding bill.

In May 2009, Harkin announced he opposed any effort to overturn an Iowa Supreme Court decision in April 2009 that legalized same-sex marriage in Iowa. "We all grow as we get older; we learn things, we become more sensitive to people and people's lives," said Harkin. "The more I've looked at that, I've grown to think differently about how we should live. I guess I've got to the point of live and let live."

On December 18, 2010, Harkin voted in favor of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010.

In September 2014, Harkin was one of 69 members of the US House and Senate to sign a letter to then-FDA commissioner Sylvia Burwell requesting that the FDA revise its policy banning donation of corneas and other tissues by men who have had sex with another man in the preceding 5 years.

Harkin has also been active in combating the worst forms of child labor. The Trade Development Act of 2000 "contains important child labor protections authored by Senator Harkin." After reports of child trafficking and child slavery associated with cocoa plantations in West Africa surfaced in the media, Harkin, along with U.S. Representative Eliot Engel and with the support of U.S. Senator Herbert Kohl, sponsored a voluntary agreement by major players in the cocoa and chocolate industry signed in 2001 and often referred to as the Harkin–Engel Protocol. The purpose of this "Protocol for the growing and processing of cocoa beans and their derivative products" was to bring practices in West Africa into line with Convention 182 of the International Labour Organization concerning the prohibition and immediate action for the elimination of the worst forms of child labor. (Some difficulties in meeting the deadlines set in this Protocol have been encountered. ) Harkin has worked in other ways to combat the import of child labor-made products.

Harkin believes America faces a retirement crisis, saying "Pensions have gone by the wayside. Savings are down as people are just scraping by, so the only thing left is Social Security."

Harkin supported President Barack Obama's health reform legislation; he voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in December 2009, and he voted for the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. PolitiFact rated Harkin's 2009 claim regarding the number of Americans losing health insurance coverage "false."

However, in 2014 Harkin expressed some second thoughts. He criticized health reform as being too complex and convoluted. "All the prevention stuff is good but it's just really complicated. It doesn't have to be that complicated," he said of the Affordable Care Act. He also believes the new legislation rewards the insurance industry. He said important reforms such as preventing insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions and keeping young adults on their parents' health insurance plans until age 26 were laudable, but he believed that Democrats should not have settled for a solution he believed was inferior to government-provided health insurance. In retrospect he believes the Democratic-controlled Senate and House should have enacted a single-payer healthcare system or a public option to give the uninsured access to government-run health plans that compete with private insurance companies.

His comments about Cuban healthcare have been criticized as misrepresenting the availability of quality care.

Israel
Harkin has been a staunch supporter of Israel as a member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, which appropriates about $2 billion annually for military financing for Israel. he was the third-largest career recipient of pro-Israel Political Action Committee contributions in the Senate.

Immigration
In May 2006 Harkin voted in favor of Senate Bill 2611, also known as the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act. Among the bill's many provisions, it would increase the number of H1B visas, increase security along the southern United States border with Mexico, allow long-time illegal immigrants to gain citizenship with some restrictions, and increase the number of guest workers over and above those already present in the U.S. through a new "blue card" visa program. The bill ultimately failed to pass.

Committee assignments

 * Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
 * Subcommittee on Hunger, Nutrition, and Family Farms
 * Subcommittee on Production, Income Protection and Price Support
 * Subcommittee on Rural Revitalization, Conservation, Forestry and Credit
 * Committee on Appropriations
 * Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies
 * Subcommittee on Defense
 * Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development
 * Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Chairman)
 * Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs
 * Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies
 * Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (Chairman)
 * As Chair of the full committee, Harkin may serve as an ex officio member of all subcommittees.
 * Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

Primary campaign
Harkin ran for President in 1992 as a populist with labor union support. He criticized George H. W. Bush for being out of touch with working-class Americans. Harkin was an early favorite in a small field of five candidates. Harkin won the Iowa caucus and those in Idaho and Minnesota (with help from Senator Paul Wellstone), but he ran poorly in New Hampshire and other primaries and ultimately lost the Democratic Party nomination to Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas. Harkin was the first Democratic primary contender to drop out and throw his support behind Clinton — a favor that led to a close relationship throughout the Clinton presidency.

 * Endorsements
 * Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota)
 * Commissioner of Agriculture Jim Hightower (D-Texas)
 * Representative Lane Evans (D-Illinois)

Considered as running mate
Harkin figured in running mate searches multiple times after his 1992 presidential campaign. Clinton considered Harkin in 1992 because of his ties to labor and strong support for Clinton after withdrawing from the presidential race. In 2000, Harkin was considered by Al Gore before Gore selected Joe Lieberman. In 2004, presidential nominee John Kerry considered Harkin as a running mate, though Harkin worked to promote the candidacy of then-Governor Tom Vilsack. In 2008, Barack Obama considered Harkin for vice president because of his senior statesman status within the party and his personal closeness to both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. Harkin endorsed Obama's choice of Joe Biden for the nomination, and campaigned for the Obama-Biden ticket.

Electoral history
Iowa's 5th congressional district, 1972
 * William J. Scherle (R) (inc.) – 108,596 (55.26%)
 * Tom Harkin (D) – 87,937 (44.74%)

Iowa's 5th congressional district, 1974
 * Tom Harkin (D) – 81,146 (51.09%)
 * William J. Scherle (R) (inc.) – 77,683 (48.91%)

Iowa's 5th congressional district, 1976
 * Tom Harkin (D) (inc.) – 135,600 (64.86%)
 * Kenneth R. Fulk (R) – 71,377 (34.14%)
 * Verlyn Leroy Hayes (American Independent) – 2,075 (0.99%)

Iowa's 5th congressional district, 1978
 * Tom Harkin (D) (inc.) – 82,333 (58.93%)
 * Julian B. Garrett (R) – 57,377 (41.07%)

Iowa's 5th congressional district, 1980
 * Tom Harkin (D) (inc.) – 127,895 (60.22%)
 * Cal Hultman (R) – 84,472 (39.78%)

'''Iowa's 5th congressional district, 1982
 * Tom Harkin (D) (inc.) – 93,333 (58.86%)
 * Arlyn E. Danker (R) – 65,200 (41.12%)

United States Senate election in Iowa, 1984
 * Tom Harkin (D) – 716,883 (55.46%)
 * Roger Jepsen (R) (inc.) – 564,381 (43.66%)
 * Garry De Young (Independence) – 11,014 (0.85%)

United States Senate election in Iowa, 1990
 * Tom Harkin (D) (inc.) – 535,975 (54.47%)
 * Thomas J. Tauke (R) – 446,869 (45.42%)

Democratic Iowa caucuses, 1992
 * Tom Harkin – 764 (76.55%)
 * Uncommitted – 119 (11.92%)
 * Paul Tsongas – 41 (4.11%)
 * Bill Clinton – 28 (2.81%)
 * Bob Kerrey – 24 (2.41%)
 * Jerry Brown – 16 (1.60%)
 * Others – 6 (0.60%)

'''1992 United States presidential election (Democratic primaries)
 * Bill Clinton – 10,482,411 (52.01%)
 * Jerry Brown – 4,071,232 (20.20%)
 * Paul Tsongas – 3,656,010 (18.14%)
 * Unpledged – 750,873 (3.73%)
 * Bob Kerrey – 318,457 (1.58%)
 * Tom Harkin – 280,304 (1.39%)
 * Lyndon LaRouche – 154,599 (0.77%)
 * Eugene McCarthy – 108,678 (0.54%)
 * Charles Woods – 88,948 (0.44%)
 * Larry Agran – 58,611 (0.29%)
 * Ross Perot – 54,755 (0.27%)
 * Ralph Nader – 35,935 (0.18%)
 * Louis Stokes – 29,983 (0.15%)
 * Angus Wheeler McDonald – 9,900 (0.05%)
 * J. Louis McAlpine – 7,911 (0.04%)
 * George W. Benns – 7,887 (0.04%)
 * Rufus T. Higginbotham – 7,705 (0.04%)
 * Tom Howard Hawks – 7,434 (0.04%)
 * Stephen Bruke – 5,261 (0.03%)
 * Tom Laughin – 5,202 (0.03%)
 * Tom Shiekman – 4,965 (0.03%)
 * Jeffrey F. Marsh – 2,445 (0.01%)
 * George Ballard – 2,067 (0.01%)
 * Ray Rollinson – 1,206 (0.01%)
 * Leonora Fulani – 402 (0.00%)
 * Douglas Wilder – 240 (0.00%)

Iowa United States Senate election, 1996 (Democratic primary)
 * Tom Harkin (inc.) – 98,737 (99.19%)
 * Others – 810 (0.81%)

United States Senate election in Iowa, 1996
 * Tom Harkin (D) (inc.) – 634,166 (51.81%)
 * Jim Ross Lightfoot (R) – 571,807 (46.71%)
 * Sue Atkinson (I) – 9,768 (0.80%)
 * Fred Gratzon (Natural Law) – 4,248 (0.35%)
 * Joe Sulentic (I) – 1,941 (0.16%)
 * Shirley E. Pena (Socialist Workers) – 1,844 (0.15%)

Iowa United States Senate election, 2002 (Democratic primary)
 * Tom Harkin (inc.) – 83,505 (99.34%)
 * Write-ins – 555 (0.66%)

United States Senate election in Iowa, 2002
 * Tom Harkin (D) (inc.) – 554,278 (54.18%)
 * Greg Ganske (R) – 447,892 (43.78%)
 * Tim Harthan (Green) – 11,340 (1.11%)
 * Richard J. Moore (Libertarian) – 8,864 (0.87%)

United States Senate election in Iowa, 2008
 * Tom Harkin (D) (inc.) – 925,630 62.52%
 * Christopher Reed (R) – 553,995 37.42%

Personal life

On July 6, 1968, Harkin, then aged 28, married the former Ruth Raduenz, who was 23. The couple has two children: Amy (born 1976), and Jenny (born 1981). Ruth Harkin is an attorney and was one of the first women in the United States to be elected as a prosecutor when, in 1972, she was elected to the office of county attorney of Story County, Iowa. She served as a deputy counsel for the U.S. Department of Agriculture before joining the Washington law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in 1983. In 1993, President Bill Clinton named her chairman and chief executive officer of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). Ruth Harkin left the government and became United Technologies' senior vice president for international affairs and government relations in April 1997, leading their Washington DC office. In 2002, Mrs. Harkin became a director of ConocoPhillips. Mrs. Harkin sat on the Iowa Board of Regents, the body responsible for overseeing the state's public universities.

Senator Harkin made a brief cameo appearance as himself in the political satire Dave (1993), as did his fellow senators Christopher Dodd, Howard Metzenbaum, Paul Simon and Alan K. Simpson.

The Harkins' daughter Amy appeared on the NBC daytime reality series Starting Over from 2003 to 2004, and his voice was heard in several episodes when his daughter spoke to him on the phone. She is a 2004 graduate of Princeton University, and received her master of business administration degree from the UCLA Anderson School of Management in 2007.

In 2015 New York City held its first Disability Pride Parade, and Tom Harkin was its grand marshal. He was also the grand marshal for the Chicago Disability Pride Parade that same year.

Published works

 * Harkin, Tom and Thomas, C. E. Five Minutes to Midnight: Why the Nuclear Threat Is Growing Faster Than Ever, Carol Publishing Corporation, 1990. ISBN 1-55972-042-5

title: Tom Harkin


text:
User talk:Gp25anna

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia! Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

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Noldoaran 05:31, Nov 22, 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:Gp25anna


text:
Dialer

A dialer (American English) or dialler (British English) is an electronic device that is connected to a telephone line to monitor the dialed numbers and alter them to seamlessly provide services that otherwise require lengthy National or International access codes to be dialed. A dialer automatically inserts and modifies the numbers depending on the time of day, country or area code dialed, allowing the user to subscribe to the service providers who offer the best rates. For example, a dialer could be programmed to use one service provider for international calls and another for cellular calls. This process is known as prefix insertion or least cost routing. A line powered dialer does not need any external power but instead takes the power it needs from the telephone line.

Another type of dialer is a computer program which creates a connection to the Internet or another computer network over the analog telephone or Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN). Many operating systems already contain such a program for connections through the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP), such as WvDial.

Many internet service providers offer installation CDs to simplify the process of setting up a proper Internet connection. They either create an entry in the OS's dialer or install a separate dialer (as the AOL software does).

In recent years, the term "dialer" often refers specifically to dialers that connect without the user's full knowledge as to cost, with the creator of the dialer intending to commit fraud.

auto-diallers
call centres use various forms of automatic dialler to place outbound calls to people on contact lists.

Fraudulent dialer
Dialers are necessary to connect to the internet (at least for non-broadband connections), but some dialers are designed to connect to premium-rate numbers. The providers of such dialers often search for security holes in the operating system installed on the user's computer and use them to set the computer up to dial up through their number, so as to make money from the calls. Alternatively, some dialers inform the user what it is that they are doing, with the promise of special content, accessible only via the special number. Examples of this content include software for download, (usually illegal) trojans posing as MP3s, trojans posing as pornography, or 'underground' programs such as cracks and keygens.

The cost of setting up such a service is relatively low, amounting to a few thousand dollars for telecommunications equipment, whereupon the unscrupulous operator will typically take 90% of the cost of a premium rate call, with very few overheads of their own.

Users with DSLs (or similar broadband connections) are usually not affected. A dialer can be downloaded and installed, but dialing in is not possible as there are no regular phone numbers in the DSL network and users will not typically have their dial-up modem, if any, connected to a phone line. However, if an ISDN adapter or additional analog modem is installed, the dialer might still be able to get a connection.

Malicious dialers can be identified by the following characteristics:
 * A download popup opens when opening a website.
 * On the website there is only a small hint, if any, about the price.
 * The download starts even if the cancel button has been clicked.
 * The dialer installs as default connection without any notice.
 * The dialer creates unwanted connections by itself and without user interaction.
 * The dialer does not show any notice about the price (only few do) before dialing in.
 * The high price of the connection is not being shown while connected
 * The dialer cannot be uninstalled, or only with serious effort.

Installation routes
Computers running Microsoft Windows without anti-virus software or proper updates could be vulnerable to Visual Basic-scripts which install a trojan horse which changes values in the Windows Registry and sets Internet Explorer security settings in a way that ActiveX controls can be downloaded from the Internet without warning. After this change is made, when a user accesses a malicious page or email message, it can start installing the dialer. The script also disables the modem speaker and messages that normally come up while dialing into a network. Users of Microsoft Office Outlook, Outlook Express and Internet Explorer are especially affected if running ActiveX controls and JavaScript is allowed and the latest security patches from Microsoft have not been installed. In March 2004, there were malicious dialers that could be installed through fake anti-virus software. E-mail spam from a so-called "AntiVirus Team" for example, contained download links to programs named "downloadtool.exe" or "antivirus.exe", which are malicious dialers. Other ways of transmission include electronic greeting cards that link to pages that tricks the user to install ActiveX controls, which in turn install dialers in the background.

Therefore, links in spam emails should never be opened, automatically started downloads should be canceled as soon as discovered, and one should check on each dial-up to the Internet to see whether the displayed phone number is unchanged. Another way to protect oneself is to disable premium numbers through one's phone services, but of course this disables all such services.

One should never run foreign code in a privileged environment unless the source is trustworthy. It is also advisable to protect oneself with anti-malware programs.

German regulatory law
On 15 August 2003, a new law came into effect in Germany called "Gesetz zur Bekämpfung des Missbrauchs von (0)190er/(0)900er Mehrwertdiensterufnummern" ("Law for the combat of misuse of (0)190/(0)900 value added service numbers").

The law contains the following regulations:
 * Forced price notices for service providers.
 * Maximum price limits, legitimacy checks and automatic disconnects.
 * Registration of dialers.
 * Blocking of dialers.
 * Right of information for consumers from the RegTP.

On 4 March 2004 the German Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe decided that fees for the usage of dialers do not have to be paid if it was used without the user's knowledge.

title: Dialer


text:
Colorimetry

Colorimetry is "the science and technology used to quantify and describe physically the human color perception". It is similar to spectrophotometry, but is distinguished by its interest in reducing spectra to the physical correlates of color perception, most often the CIE 1931 XYZ color space tristimulus values and related quantities.

History
The Duboscq colorimeter was invented by Jules Duboscq in 1870.

Instruments
Colorimetric equipment is similar to that used in spectrophotometry. Some related equipment is also mentioned for completeness.

 * A tristimulus colorimeter measures the tristimulus values of a color.
 * A spectroradiometer measures the absolute spectral radiance (intensity) or irradiance of a light source.
 * A spectrophotometer measures the spectral reflectance, transmittance, or relative irradiance of a color sample.
 * A spectrocolorimeter is a spectrophotometer that can calculate tristimulus values.
 * A densitometer measures the degree of light passing through or reflected by a subject.
 * A color temperature meter measures the color temperature of an incident illuminant.

Tristimulus colorimeter
In digital imaging, colorimeters are tristimulus devices used for color calibration. Accurate color profiles ensure consistency throughout the imaging workflow, from acquisition to output.

Spectroradiometer, spectrophotometer, spectrocolorimeter
The absolute spectral power distribution of a light source can be measured with a spectroradiometer, which works by optically collecting the light, then passing it through a monochromator before reading it in narrow bands of wavelength.

Reflected color can be measured using a spectrophotometer (also called spectroreflectometer or reflectometer), which takes measurements in the visible region (and a little beyond) of a given color sample. If the custom of taking readings at 10 nanometer increments is followed, the visible light range of 400–700 nm will yield 31 readings. These readings are typically used to draw the sample's spectral reflectance curve (how much it reflects, as a function of wavelength)—the most accurate data that can be provided regarding its characteristics.

The readings by themselves are typically not as useful as their tristimulus values, which can be converted into chromaticity co-ordinates and manipulated through color space transformations. For this purpose, a spectrocolorimeter may be used. A spectrocolorimeter is simply a spectrophotometer that can estimate tristimulus values by numerical integration (of the color matching functions' inner product with the illuminant's spectral power distribution). One benefit of spectrocolorimeters over tristimulus colorimeters is that they do not have optical filters, which are subject to manufacturing variance, and have a fixed spectral transmittance curve—until they age. On the other hand, tristimulus colorimeters are purpose-built, cheaper, and easier to use.

The CIE (International Commission on Illumination) recommends using measurement intervals under 5 nm, even for smooth spectra. Sparser measurements fail to accurately characterize spiky emission spectra, such as that of the red phosphor of a CRT display, depicted aside.

Color temperature meter
Photographers and cinematographers use information provided by these meters to decide what color balancing should be done to make different light sources appear to have the same color temperature. If the user enters the reference color temperature, the meter can calculate the mired difference between the measurement and the reference, enabling the user to choose a corrective color gel or photographic filter with the closest mired factor.

Internally the meter is typically a silicon photodiode tristimulus colorimeter. The correlated color temperature can be calculated from the tristimulus values by first calculating the chromaticity co-ordinates in the CIE 1960 color space, then finding the closest point on the Planckian locus.

title: Colorimetry