40 Years After Roe v. Wade, Thousands March to Oppose Abortion

Drew Angerer/The New York Times

Pro-life activists made their way down Constitution Avenue toward the Supreme Court during the March for Life in Washington on Friday.

WASHINGTON — Three days after the 40th anniversary of the decision in Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, tens of thousands of abortion opponents from around the country came to the National Mall on Friday for the annual March for Life rally, which culminated in a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court building.

On a gray morning when the temperature was well below freezing, the crowd pressed in close against the stage to hear more than a dozen speakers, who included Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council; Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, who recently introduced legislation to withhold financing from Planned Parenthood, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky; Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley of Boston; and Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania and Republican presidential candidate.

Mr. Santorum spoke of his wife’s decision not to have an abortion after they learned that their child — their daughter Bella, now 4 — had a rare genetic disorder called Trisomy 18.

“We all know that death is never better, never better,” Mr. Santorum said. “Bella is better for us, and we are better because of Bella.”

Jeanne Monahan, the president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, said that the march was both somber and hopeful.

“We’ve lost 55 million Americans to abortion,” she said. “At the same time, I think we’re starting to win. We’re winning in the court of public opinion, we’re winning in the states with legislation.”

Though the main event officially started at noon, the day began much earlier for the participants, with groups in matching scarves engaged in excited chatter on the subway and gaggles of schoolchildren wearing name tags around their necks. Arriving on the Mall, attendees were greeted with free signs (“Defund Planned Parenthood” and “Personhood for Everyone”) and a man barking into a megaphone, “Ireland is on the brink of legalizing abortion, which is not good.”

The march came two months after the 2012 campaign season, in which social issues like abortion largely took a back seat to the focus on the economy. But the issue did come up in Congressional races in which Republican candidates made controversial statements about rape or abortion. In Indiana, Richard E. Mourdock, a Republican candidate for the Senate, said in a debate that he believed that pregnancies resulting from rape were something that “God intended,” and in Illinois, Representative Joe Walsh said in a debate that abortion was never necessary to save the life of the mother because of “advances in science and technology.” Both men lost, hurt by a backlash from female voters.

Recent polls show that while a majority of Americans do not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned entirely, many favor some restrictions. In a Gallup poll released this week, 52 percent of those surveyed said that abortions should be legal only under certain circumstances, while 28 percent said they should be legal under all circumstances, and 18 percent said they should be illegal under all circumstances. In a Pew poll this month, 63 percent of respondents said they did not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned completely, and 29 percent said they did — views largely consistent with surveys taken over the past two decades.

“Most Americans want some restrictions on abortion,” Ms. Monahan said. “We see abortion as the human rights abuse of today.”

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, who spoke via a recorded video, called on the protest group, particularly the young people, to make abortion “a relic of the past.”

“Human life is not an economic or political commodity, and no government on earth has the right to treat it that way,” he said.

The crowd was dotted with large banners, many bearing the names of the attendees’ home states and churches and colleges. Gary Storey, 36, stood holding a handmade sign that read “I was adopted. Thanks Mom for my life.” Next to him stood his adoptive mother, Ellen Storey, 66, who held her own handmade sign with a picture of her six children and the words “To the mothers of our four adopted children, ‘Thank You’ for their lives.”

Mr. Storey said he was grateful for the decision by his biological mother to carry through with her pregnancy. “Beats the alternative,” he joked.

Last week, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America started a new Web site, and on Tuesday, its president, Cecile Richards, released a statement supporting abortion rights.

“Planned Parenthood understands that abortion is a deeply personal and often complex decision for a woman to consider, if and when she needs it,” she said. “A woman should have accurate information about all of her options around her pregnancy. To protect her health and the health of her family, a woman must have access to safe, legal abortion without interference from politicians, as protected by the Supreme Court for the last 40 years.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 25, 2013

A summary that appeared on the home page of NYTimes.com with an earlier version of this article misstated the day of the march. It took place on Friday, not Thursday.

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Labor Relations Board Rulings Could Be Undone

By ruling that Mr. Obama’s three recess appointments last January were illegal, the federal appeals court ruling, if upheld, would leave the board with just one member, short of the quorum needed to issue any rulings. The Obama administration could appeal the court ruling, but no announcement was made on Friday.

If the Supreme Court were to uphold Friday’s ruling, issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, it would mean that the labor board did not have a quorum since last January and that all its rulings since then should be nullified.

Many Republicans and business groups applauded Friday’s ruling. They often assert that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the board have transformed it into a tool of organized labor. But many Democrats and labor unions say Mr. Obama’s appointments restored ideological balance to the board after it was tipped in favor of business interests under President George W. Bush

Mark G. Pearce, the board’s chairman, issued a statement saying the board disagreed with the ruling and suggested that other appeals courts hearing cases about the constitutionality of Mr. Obama’s appointments could reach a different conclusion.

“In the meantime, the board has important work to do,” said Mr. Pearce, whose agency oversees enforcement of the laws governing strikes and unionization drives. “We will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.”

Unless the Senate confirms future nominees to the board — Senate Republicans have blocked several of Mr. Obama’s board nominees — Mr. Pearce will be the only member left if Friday’s ruling is upheld. The board has five seats.

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a statement that urged the recess appointees to “do the right thing and step down.” He added, “To avoid further damage to the economy, the N.L.R.B. must take the responsible course and cease issuing any further opinions until a constitutionally sound quorum can be established.”

The three disputed recess appointees included two Democrats, Sharon Block, deputy labor secretary, and Richard Griffin, general counsel to the operating engineers’ union; and one Republican, Terence Flynn, a counsel to a board member. Mr. Flynn resigned last May after being accused of leaking materials about the group’s deliberations. Another Republican member, Brian Hayes, stepped down when his term expired last month.

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Palmdale woman accused of torturing her children

Neighbors of a Palmdale woman charged with assaulting and torturing two of her children said Thursday that they never even realized she had kids.

The siblings — a boy, 8, and girl, 7 — did not play outside and were rarely seen, said Cynthia Otero, who runs a day care center at a home opposite the house in the 39000 block of Clear View Court where Ingrid Brewer is alleged to have mistreated the youngsters.

Otero said that when she recently spotted the children getting out of a car, she thought Brewer, 50, "might be baby-sitting."

So neighbors in the suburban cul-de-sac were the more shocked when word spread that Brewer was arrested on suspicion of crimes against her children, she said. Brewer is being charged with eight felony counts, including torture, assault with a deadly weapon and cruelty to a child.

According to authorities, Brewer reported the children missing Jan. 15, prompting a search by deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Palmdale Station. The youngsters were found hours later hiding under a blanket near a parked car on a street close to their home. They were without winter clothes in 20-degree weather, authorities said.

Sgt. Brian Hudson, a spokesman for the sheriff's Special Victims Bureau, said the children told investigators they ran away because Brewer deprived them of food, locked them in separate bedrooms when she went to work each day, bound their hands behind their backs with zip ties and beat them with electrical cords and a hammer. The youngsters also said that when they were locked in the bedrooms and needed to use the bathroom, they instead had to use wastebaskets, Hudson said.

They fled because "they were tired of being tied up and beaten," Hudson said.

Hudson said both children had injuries consistent with the alleged abuse, including marks on their wrists indicating they had been restrained and "numerous bruising and abrasions over their bodies." They told investigators the mistreatment had been happening since Halloween.

Neighbors interviewed by authorities said they had never noticed anything suspicious but "hardly ever saw the two children," Hudson said. Otero and another neighbor said Brewer did not make friends on the block.

Otero said Brewer was "unfriendly" and typically ignored verbal greetings and waves.

According to sheriff's officials, Brewer, a certified nursing assistant who works in Los Angeles and has adult children, adopted the young siblings about a year ago from foster care. They were home schooled.

Neil Zanville, a spokesman for the county Department of Children and Family Services, said his agency was legally prohibited from disclosing any case-specific information about past or present clients. But in a written statement, the agency's director, Philip Browning, called the report disturbing.

"While we cannot confirm or deny whether this family is under our supervision, I am personally looking into this situation to determine what role, if any, our department had in these children's lives," Browning said.

Sheriff's officials said Thursday that the children were "doing great" despite their injuries.

Otero lamented that they had been made to suffer.

"It's just so sad," said the neighbor, who has a 5-year-old daughter and 8-year-old twins. "I wish they would have knocked on my door. I would have helped them."

Brewer is in the custody of the Sheriff's Department, with bail set at $2 million. She is scheduled to appear in court Thursday, Hudson said.

ann.simmons@latimes.com

Times staff writer Kate Mather contributed to this report.

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Cellphone Chips Will Remake the Server World. <em>Period</em>.

Facebook recently ran an experiment. Inside a test lab, somewhere behind the scenes at the world’s most popular network, engineers sidled up to a computer server loaded with software that typically drives the Facebook website and started messing with the CPU.

Every processor includes something called a cache — a place to temporarily store data without sending it all the way back to a machine’s main memory — and with their test machine, these Facebook engineers started shutting down portions of the cache, just to see how their software would respond.

“The cache embedded on a CPU is actually the most expensive memory you can find,” explains Frank Frankovsky, who oversees Facebook’s hardware efforts. “So we said: ‘Let’s see what happens if we start turning off chunks of the cache. Let’s see how small of a cache we could live with.’”

First, they reduced the cache from 3 megabytes to 2. Then to one and a half. And then to one. All the while, the machine performed just as well, handling the same number of requests per second. Speed didn’t degrade until they took the cache all the way down to a half megabyte.

It was just one test — a small piece of knowledge, as Frankovsky calls it, that may help Facebook understand how its software makes use of the hardware running beneath it. But it shows why the market for server chips is about to change in a very big way.

What Frankovsky’s little tale shows is that Facebook doesn’t necessarily need everything that chip makers like AMD and Intel build into today’s server chips — and that it can save an awful lot if can somehow move to chips that are better suited to its particular breed of software. Facebook has already stripped down other parts of the server hardware that drives its massive web empire, and now, it’s looking to strip down the CPUs as well.

“We went vanity-free on the server design,” Frankovsky says. “The next place to go is to look at how to best utilize the componentry, making sure — at the component level — you’re making good use of every ounce of horsepower you’re putting on the motherboard.”

In some ways, Facebook is already doing this. It already works with Intel and other hardware vendors to in some way customize the chips that go into its servers — though the company won’t discuss the details, apparently because its hardware partners haven’t authorized it to do so. But Frankovsky makes it clear the web giant plans on taking things much further.

That Facebook cache test was run with eye on a new breed of chips that’s slowly moving into the server world. Frankovsky calls them “smartphone-class CPUs.” Others call them “wimpy cores.” Basically, they’re ultra-low-power server chips based on architectures that were originally designed for smartphones. Many hardware makers — including big names like Dell and AMD as well as upstarts like Calxeda and AppliedMicro — are working towards servers that use chips based the ARM architecture that drives your iPhone, and Intel has responded to this groundswell with servers chips based on its Atom mobile architecture.

‘Competition drives a lot of really good stuff — and there are more ARM licensees than I can count. When I’ve seen a relatively open and level playing field like that, good things are bound to happen. That level of investment is bound to yield some very cool stuff.’

— Frank Frankovsky

Some have downplayed the wimpy core idea, questioning whether these chips have the oomph to run server workloads. But the whole idea is to slim things down in the data center — to do more with less — and as Frankovsky shows with his little test, today’s web data centers could use some slimming, at least in some cases.

Certainly, the current breed of ARM chip isn’t up to the task. But a more robust breed is on the way — a 64-bit incarnation that can handle more memory than today’s 32-bit chips — and people like Frankovsky say it’s only a matter of time before these designs provide a viable alternative to chips based on Intel’s x86 architecture. “I think it’s going to shake things up sooner than you think,” Frankovsky told us almost a year ago.

As the pundits argue about the technical merits of these chips, they miss the larger picture. ARM chips are so attractive to people like Frankovsky because they provide more options. ARM is an architecture that’s licensed to a wide range of companies, and it can provide an antidote to the hegemony Intel has long enjoyed in the server world.

“Competition drives a lot of really good stuff — and there are more ARM licensees than I can count,” Frankovsky says. “When I’ve seen a relatively open and level playing field like that, good things are bound to happen…That level of investment is bound to yield some very cool stuff.”

In the end, it gives Facebook more to choose from. It may not need to buy the chip with 3 megabytes of cache. It may have the option of buying a processor with only a half megabyte. “With the number of people that are investing in that ARM ecosystem — since there are so many choices — there’s bound to be somebody that’s building something that’s just about right for you.”

In fact, many of these players are intent on offering hardware that ideally suited to Facebook and other online giants that are looking to hone their data center operations. “The new emerging players that see the shift that’s happening in this market? They’re all ears around some of the customers that they believe are leading indicators for where the CPU architecture should go.”

This was born out just last week when Calxeda and AppliedMicro — two of the companies working on ARM designs — backed Facebook’s plan to split servers into tiny pieces you can easily add and remove as you see fit. At the Silicon Valley get-together where this plan was unveiled, AppliedMicro vice president and general manager Vinay Ravuri told us the company’s 64-bit ARM chip will officially arrive later this quarter. And it will be welcomed.

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Voice of Te’o prankster? Couric plays voicemails

NEW YORK (AP) — The person Manti Te’o says was pretending to be his online girlfriend told the Notre Dame linebacker “I love you” in voicemails that were played during his interview with Katie Couric.

Taped earlier this week and broadcast Thursday, the hour-long talk show featured three voicemails that Te‘o claims were left for him last year. Te’o said they were from the person he believed to be Lennay Kekua, a woman he had fallen for online but never met face-to-face.

After the first message was played, Te’o said: “It sounds like a girl, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Couric responded.

The interview was the All-American’s first on camera since his tale of inspired play after the deaths of his grandmother and girlfriend on the same day in September unraveled as a bizarre hoax in an expose by Deadspin.com on Jan. 16.

Te’o's parents appeared with him for part of the interview and backed up his claim that he wasn’t involved in the fabrication, saying they, too, had spoken on the phone with a person they believed to be Kekua.

Couric addressed speculation that the tale was concocted by Te’o as a way to cover up his sexual orientation. Asked if he were gay, Te’o said “no” with a laugh. “Far from it. Faaaar from that.”

He also said he was “scared” and “didn’t know what to do” after receiving a call on Dec. 6 — two days before the Heisman Trophy presentation — from a person who claimed to be his “dead” girlfriend.

The first voicemail, he said, was from what was supposed to be Kekua’s first day of chemotherapy for leukemia.

“Hi, I am just letting you know I got here and I’m getting ready for my first session and, um, just want to call you to keep you posted. I miss you. I love you. Bye,” the person said.

In the second voicemail, the person was apparently upset by someone else answering Te’o's phone.

The third voicemail was left on Sept. 11, according to Te’o, the day he believed Kekua was released from the hospital and the day before she “died.”

“Hey babe, I’m just calling to say goodnight,” the person on the voicemail said. “I love you. I know that you’re probably doing homework or you’re with the boys. … But I just wanted to say I love you and goodnight and I’ll be ok tonight. I’ll do my best. Um, yeah, so get your rest and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I love you so much, hon. Sweet dreams.”

Couric suggested the person who left those messages might have been Ronaiah Tuisasosopo, a 22-year-old man from California, who Te’o said has apologized to him for pulling the hoax.

“Do you think that could have been a man on the other end of the phone?” she asked.

“Well, it didn’t sound like a man,” Te’o said. “It sounded like a woman. If he somehow made that voice, that’s incredible. That’s an incredible talent to do that. Especially every single day.”

Tuiasosopo has not spoken publicly since news of the hoax broke. The Associated Press has learned that a home in California where Te’o sent flowers to the Kekua family was once a residence of Tuiasosopo and has been in his family for decades.

Also on Thursday, the woman whose pictures were used in fake online accounts for Kekua said Tuiasosopo confessed to her in a 45-minute phone conversation as the scheme unraveled.

Diane O’Meara spoke with The Associated Press in a telephone interview. She said Tuiasosopo told her he’d been “stalking” her Facebook profile for five years and stealing photos.

O’Meara’s attorney, Jim Artiano, said they had not decided on whether to take any legal action.

The 23-year-old O’Meara, of Long Beach, Calif., said she knew Tuiasosopo from high school and he contacted her through Facebook on Dec. 16. She said that, over the next three weeks, Tuiasosopo got in touch with her several times, attempting to get photos and video of O’Meara. She said he made up a story about wanting them to help cheer up a cousin who was injured in a car crash.

O’Meara learned her identity had been stolen on Jan. 13 when she was contacted by Deadspin.com.

The next day she got in touch with Tuiasosopo.

“When I contacted Ronaiah I got a very bizarre vibe from him, he became very nervous, he wasn’t asking the questions I expected. He was asking ‘Who contacted you? What did they say?’” O’Meara said.

Later that day, he confessed, O’Meara said. She said she asked Tuiasosopo why he didn’t simply stop the hoax.

“He told me he wanted to end the relationship,” O’Meara said. “He said he wanted to stop the relationship between Lennay and Manti, but Manti didn’t want Lennay to break up with him … He said he tried to stop the game many times.”

When news of the hoax broke a few days later, O’Meara said she received a text from Tuiasosopo asking her to call him as soon as possible. O’Meara said she didn’t respond.

___

Associated Press writer Tami Abdollah contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

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The New Old Age Blog: Time to Recognize Mild Cognitive Disorder?

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published and periodically updated by the American Psychiatric Association, is one of those documents few laypeople ever read, but many of us are affected by.

It can make it easier or harder to get an insurance company or Medicare to cover treatments, for example. It factors into a variety of legal and governmental decisions.

And on a personal basis, a psychiatric diagnosis may be welcome (having a name and a treatment plan for what’s bothering us can be comforting) or not (are we really suffering from a mental disorder if we seem depressed after a family member dies?).

That last question refers to a change in the new DSM5, to be published in May, that has generated considerable controversy and that I discussed in an earlier post: the removal of the “bereavement exclusion,” once part of the diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder.

Another element of the revised DSM could also affect readers: It will include something called Mild Neurocognitive Disorder. The task force revising the manual wanted to align psychiatry with the rest of medicine, which has already begun to distinguish between levels of impairment, said its chairman, David Kupfer, a University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist.

True enough, as we have reported before. Neurologists call it Mild Cognitive Impairment, a stage where cognitive decline becomes noticeable enough to affect daily functioning, yet people can still live independently and have not progressed to dementia.

In fact, a large proportion of people with mild cognitive problems never will develop dementia — but doctors and researchers cannot yet determine who will and who won’t. Biomarkers that could identify the biological brain changes that presage dementia are still years away.

Will it be helpful, then, for health professionals using the DSM5 — most of them not psychiatrists, but primary care doctors — to begin diagnosing Mild Neurocognitive Disorder? Particularly as there is no treatment that can reverse it or reliably slow its progression, if it would progress?

Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and a member of the working group that developed the new DSM5 criteria, said he thought the newly recognized disorder would be useful. “The predementia phase is becoming increasingly important,” he told me in an interview.

Counseling could help people compensate for the memory loss and other deficits they are experiencing, for example. With a DSM-recognized diagnosis, those approaches are more likely to be covered by insurers.

Besides, “one argument against Alzheimer’s therapies is that we wait too late, when there’s too much damage to the central nervous system to repair,” Dr. Petersen said, referring to several recent disappointing drug trials. In the future, with earlier diagnoses, “you may be able to intervene, stop the process and forestall the dementia.”

But as we have seen with screening tests for other diseases, early detection does not always lead to better health or longer lives. It can, however, lead to unnecessary treatments and procedures involving risks of their own. Could that happen with Mild Neurocognitive Disorder?

“It will lead to wild overdiagnosis,” predicted Allen Frances, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Duke and the chairman of the task force that developed the previous DSM edition. Indeed, about a quarter of people initially diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment are later determined to be normal, a prominent researcher told my colleague Judy Graham last year.

“People will get unnecessary tests and start getting weird treatments that have no proven efficacy,” said Dr. Frances, who has criticized a number of DSM5 changes. “They’re going to worry like crazy about being demented.”

Dr. Petersen agreed that it was a legitimate concern, but “by and large, we’re becoming better at distinguishing between the normal cognitive effects of aging and disease.” (The American Psychiatric Association will publish a specialized DSM for primary care physicians, Dr. Kupfer pointed out, to help guide them through diagnoses.)

It is hard for patients and families to know how to react when experts disagree. But keep in mind that contemporary health care aims for what is called shared decision-making. That means patients and professionals discuss options and weigh the risks and benefits of treatments and procedures, their likely outcomes, patients’ preferences, and come to agreement on how to proceed. This essay in the New England Journal of Medicine calls shared decision-making “the pinnacle of patient-centered care.”

So when Dr. Frances refers to the DSM5 as “a guide, not a bible,” and urges skepticism about some of its diagnoses, he is advocating an approach that patients and families should probably bring to any medical decision.

Seeking further information, asking questions, assessing options — those are reasonable responses if, a few weeks after a loved one’s death, a doctor says you may have major depression. Or if she thinks your memory loss could mean Mild Neurocognitive Disorder.

“The shorter the evaluation, the less the person knows you, the less he or she can explain and justify the diagnosis, the more tests and treatments that will result, the more a person should be cautious and get a second opinion,” Dr. Frances said.

Whatever the DSM5 says, it’s hard to argue with that.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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DealBook: S.E.C. Pick Is Ex-Prosecutor, in Signal to Wall Street

9:13 p.m. | Updated

The White House delivered a strong message to Wall Street on Thursday, taking the unusual step of choosing two former prosecutors as top financial regulators.

But translating that message into action will not be easy, given the complexities of the market and Wall Street’s aggressive nature.

At a short White House ceremony, President Obama named Mary Jo White, the first female United States attorney in Manhattan, to run the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Obama also renominated Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a position he has held for the last year under a temporary recess appointment without Senate approval.

With the appointments, the president showed a renewed resolve to hold Wall Street accountable for wrongdoing, extolling his candidates’ records as prosecutors.

Ms. White spent more than a decade as a top federal prosecutor in New York City, overseeing the prosecution of the crime boss John Gotti and those responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. As an Ohio prosecutor, Mr. Cordray filed lawsuits against Bank of America and the American International Group.

“It’s not enough to change the law,” Mr. Obama said. “We also need cops on the beat to enforce the law.”

Still, Ms. White and Mr. Cordray face their own challenges.

While Ms. White, 65, is best known as an aggressive prosecutor, she also built a lucrative legal practice defending Wall Street executives, a potential concern for consumer advocates. And she lacks experience in the financial minutiae central to a regulatory role.

Mr. Cordray, 53, presents another potential problem for the White House. The Senate last year declined to confirm him in the face of Republican and Wall Street opposition to the newly created consumer bureau. Several Republicans on Thursday again voiced their concerns.

“There’s absolutely no excuse for the Senate to wait any longer to confirm him,” Mr. Obama said.

Both Midwestern natives, Ms. White and Mr. Cordray arrived in Washington as outsiders. A five-time “Jeopardy” champion from Ohio, Mr. Cordray became the consumer bureau’s enforcement chief after losing re-election for state attorney general. As Ohio’s top prosecutor, he became known as the Midwestern sheriff of Wall Street.

Ms. White, who was born in Kansas City, Mo., changed career paths after graduating with a master’s degree in psychology. She obtained a law degree from Columbia University in 1974, and a few years later, began her first stint as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

She ultimately became the United States attorney in Manhattan, earning a reputation as a tenacious prosecutor with an independent streak. Ms. White embraced the often-repeated joke that her office was the United States attorney for the “sovereign,” rather than Southern, district of New York.

In 1997, aides to Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau accused her of trying to thwart a state insider trading investigation by allowing a defendant charged by the district attorney’s office to plead guilty to federal charges. Doing so effectively ended Mr. Morgenthau’s case, but Ms. White was unapologetic. “To prosecute such crimes under only state law diminishes their seriousness,” she said at the time.

As the chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Ms. White pursued white-collar crime and Wall Street fraud. She secured a $340 million fine against Daiwa Bank for illegally covering up trading losses and other crimes.

She distinguished her career with a series of terrorism cases. She supervised the original investigation into Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and oversaw six major trials, including those stemming from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to blow up New York landmarks.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the former United States attorney in Chicago who previously worked under Ms. White, called her “a force of nature.”

She also trained a generation of federal prosecutors. Two former assistants became high-level S.E.C. officials: Robert S. Khuzami, the departing enforcement chief, and George S. Canellos, his deputy. Preet Bharara, the current United States attorney in Manhattan, whom Ms. White hired in 1999, emphasized her “legendary work ethic,” citing her 1 a.m. e-mail dispatches. Her philosophy, Mr. Bharara said, was that prosecuting wrongdoing was “not just about earning notches on your belt.”

While former employees described her as “no nonsense,” she was often spotted sipping a Bud Light at a weekly social gathering for junior prosecutors. And despite being barely 5 feet tall, she also was an exuberant point guard in a local lawyers’ basketball league, and once arrived at a tennis match on a red motorcycle, while Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” blared loudly.

With her prosecutorial victories and independent political status, Ms. White is expected to receive broad support on Capitol Hill. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York joined a chorus of Democratic enthusiasm on Thursday, declaring that Ms. White was a “tough-as-nails prosecutor.”

But she could face questions about her command of Wall Street arcana.

Regulatory chiefs are often market experts or academics. If confirmed, Ms. White will succeed Elisse B. Walter, a longtime S.E.C. official, who took over as chairwoman after Mary L. Schapiro stepped down as the agency’s leader in December. Ms. Schapiro, a seasoned policy maker and specialist in market structure, overhauled the agency after it was blamed for missing the warning signs of the financial crisis. Ms. White, in contrast, built her career on the law-and-order side of the securities industry, with just a brief stint as a director of the Nasdaq.

The gaps in her résumé could complicate Ms. White’s agenda in the face of fierce Wall Street lobbying. Under the next chairman, the agency must write dozens of rules to carry out the Dodd-Frank act, a regulatory overhaul passed in response to the crisis. The agency also must grapple with the increasingly complex markets and rapid-fire trading that dominate Wall Street.

People close to the S.E.C. note, however, that her husband, John W. White, is a veteran of the agency. From 2006 through 2008, he was head of the S.E.C.’s division of corporation finance.

Ms. Schapiro also argued that Ms. White’s outsider status could inject new life into the agency. “Nobody comes in an expert across the board,” Ms. Schapiro said. “A fresh look on some of these policy issues might be exactly what we need.”

Ms. White could face additional questions about her career, a revolving door in and out of government. In private practice, she defended some of Wall Street’s biggest names, including Kenneth D. Lewis, a former chief of Bank of America. As the head of litigation at Debevoise & Plimpton, she also represented JPMorgan Chase and the board of Morgan Stanley.

Barbara S. Jones, who retired recently from the federal bench in Manhattan and now practices law at the firm Zuckerman Spaeder, said Ms. White, a close friend, would benefit from both prosecuting and defending executives over her career. “She has been on both sides,” Ms. Jones said. “She will be tough when she has to be, but she’ll be fair.”

At the White House on Thursday, Ms. White spoke only briefly, saying she would work “to protect investors and to ensure the strength, efficiency and the transparency of our capital markets.” Mr. Obama noted that Ms. White, whose 43rd wedding anniversary fell on Thursday, was a childhood fan of “The Hardy Boys,” as he was, adding that she “built a career the Hardy boys could only dream of.” “You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo,” he said.

Peter Baker and Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/25/2013, on page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Sign to Wall St. In Obama’s Picks For Regulators.

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California unions grow, bucking U.S. trend

The latest snapshot of the U.S. working class shows that unions are in trouble, their ranks thinning amid a backlash against organized labor and a still sputtering economy.

But California and a few nearby states in the Southwest are showing a vastly different picture — labor's ranks are on an upswing. The Golden State's union organizers signed up more than 100,000 new members last year, while the nation as a whole shed 400,000, according to data released Wednesday.

The reason: Latino workers.

After working hard to get here, many Latino immigrants demand respect in the workplace and are more willing to join unions in a tough economic environment, organizers say.

"There's an appetite among these low-wage workers to try and get a collective voice to give themselves opportunity and a middle-class lifestyle," said Steve Smith, a spokesman for the California Labor Federation.

Just 12.5% of the workforce was represented by unions nationwide in 2012, down from 13% the year before. But 18.4% of California's workforce was represented by a union last year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The nation is paying attention to labor's ability to gain traction in states such as California.

Strong membership in California could help unions negotiate higher wages, lobby the Legislature and fend off anti-labor attacks that have become common in the Midwest. Unions in once pro-labor states like Wisconsin and Michigan have been put on the defensive by legislation aimed at eroding the bargaining power of public-sector unions.

Labor's more optimistic proponents say that California could serve as a blueprint for unions across the country as they seek to stem membership declines. The trend comes amid forecasts that the Latino population in the U.S. is likely to double in two decades.

"This has a lot to do with the changing demographics of the workforce in these states," said Ruben Garcia, a labor law professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. "The big campaigns in the carwash industry in L.A., the janitors in Houston and the people who work on the Strip here tend to be an immigrant Latino workforce that's willing to stand up at the workplace, sometimes with great risks."

Workers fed up with years of stagnant wages may be motivated to join a union for financial reasons. Last year, union members made $943 a week, on average, while non-union members made $742, according to the BLS.

With the economy still shaky, many California workers are also looking for more job security.

Jackie McKay, 48, is one of the new crop of California union members. A nurse in the intensive-care unit at Community Hospital Long Beach, McKay said she and colleagues decided to try to organize after a new company took over the hospital and nurses weren't comfortable with the way they were being treated.

"We were sort of seeking out someone that we felt was on our side," she said. "We needed some backup."

The Long Beach nurses voted 94 to 30 to unionize in December.

"California is doing far better than most other states and far better than the national trend" in union membership, said John Logan, a professor of labor and employment at San Francisco State University. "Unions have had both dynamic organizing efforts and very effective political influence."

Employees are often hesitant to do anything risky at work when the economy is bad and jobs are scarce. Organizers say they were successful because they harnessed frustration with growing nationwide inequality to engage members during the recession.

"To be successful in organizing unions in the United States in 2013, it's not enough just to appeal to workers on the basis of their own individual problems," said David Johnson, organizing director of the California Nurses Assn., which added five new hospitals last year. "There has to be a broader vision set forth so that people see unions and the labor movement as an answer to the corporate domination and the Wall Street greed that has devastated our country."

Still, the labor movement faces significant challenges in applying moderate successes in California to the rest of the country.

Michigan and Indiana both became "right to work" states last year, meaning unions can't collect dues as a condition of employment. Legislators in Wisconsin and Ohio recently supported bills restricting the bargaining rights of public-sector unions, though the law in Ohio was reversed by referendum.

Those actions were reflected in the numbers put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The percentage of people represented by unions last year in Wisconsin fell to 12%, from 14.1% in 2011, while Indiana experienced a significant drop in union membership, to 10% of the workforce, from 12.4% the previous year.

Union membership fell fairly consistently in Rust Belt states as manufacturing jobs, once a labor stronghold, were sent overseas. The decline in unionized manufacturing isn't likely to shift as companies make efforts to return manufacturing to the United States. Auto companies, for instance, have built new plants in the South, an area traditionally resistant to unionization.

Unions don't have the same appeal to workers who change jobs frequently and think of themselves as independent workers, said Michael Lotito, a partner at the labor law firm Littler Mendelson.

"Unions are really struggling to find a message that resonates with individuals such as it did with my father's generation," he said.

But demographic shifts can be only positive for unions in the next few years, said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at UC Berkeley. Labor has built new alliances and is going into a new, proactive phase, he said.

"Reports of labor's death have been greatly exaggerated," he said.

alana.semuels@latimes.com

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Lookin' Hot in the Cold: Technical Outerwear for Winter

Winter outerwear has come a long way from the clammy straight-jackets your mom would wrap around you every time you wanted to go outside.

Every year, we see jackets, shells, bibs and pants that are more breathable, lighter, stretchier, and just plain better-looking than last year's crop.

We sifted through the countless options on the racks and selected a dozen or so favorite items, then took the whole pile of gear with us to Squaw Valley in California's Lake Tahoe region. We worked them over on the slopes for three days, then took the lot deeper into to the Sierras for another week. We also tried to pick something for everyone -- from Gore-Tex jeans (pre-distressed!) to a snow shell that costs as much as a mortgage payment, and even a down jacket hand-stuffed by followers of a 16th-century pacifist. It's going to be a weird, Wired winter.

The Phenomenon jacket from Spyder is pretty much what would happen if you said, "Screw the cost, let's make a jacket with the best materials we can find." The list of what went into the $1,200 garment looks like the textile version of the Robb Report.

The waterproof membrane is made of Schoeller c-change, which opens its pores to vent heat and moisture when the interior warms up. Custom-embossed stretch polyester lines the interior. Primaloft One insulation lines the body and sleeves. And the outer shell is composed of DWR-treated stretch polyester material with wool accents. Premium!

It was warm, waterproof and comfortable on the slopes, with no movement restricted, plenty of waterproof zip pockets and ventilation, and so many features, I actually lost track of everything that was special about it while I was showing it off to people. To top it all off, the jacket looks like money -- the slim cut and wool accents made it fit right in over a suit and tie on the way to office Christmas parties. -- Billy Brown

WIRED Fantastic material choices all around. Tough waterproof outer with great stretch. Removable hood and snow skirt. Gusseted cuffs are adjustable. Plays dress-up better than Eliza Doolittle.

TIRED I've owned cheaper cars.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Photos by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

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Country singer Gary Allan’s new album gets label’s early push

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) – The release of country music singer Gary Allan’s new album “Set You Free,” this week, his first since undergoing vocal surgery in 2010, was not meant to happen so soon.

But when his record label, MCA Nashville, saw his new song “Every Storm (Runs out of Rain),” race up the charts in September, the label pushed the album’s release up two months from March.

“I’ve been doing this forever and it usually goes the other way,” Allan told Reuters. “It’s super exciting for me.”

Now in its 20th week on Billboard’s country chart, “Every Storm (Runs out of Rain),” peaked last week at No. 4 and has been downloaded some 685,000 times, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Allan, 45, who has scored three country chart toppers in his 17-year career, said his latest hit was the right song at the right time for a country politically divided and seemingly down on its luck.

“It’s a song about hope,” he said. “Sometimes a song really resonates with people and the public because of the timing of its release. This is a time when our country needs hope and I think that’s why it’s doing so well.”

Allan’s voice is stronger on the album and he credits surgery he underwent in 2010 to remove a polyp from his vocal cords, which made it difficult for him to sing high notes.

“I don’t think I realized it really, but there were a few years where I couldn’t hit the falsetto notes on songs like ‘Smoke Rings in the Dark.’ After the surgery, it was like I was 18 again,” he said.

Allan, a California native who often plays down-home American rodeos and state fairs, is best known as a brooding troubadour who likes to pack an emotional punch.

TEAM OF RIVALS

“I don’t want to hear songs about how sunshiny things are,” he said. “I don’t like songs that feel like radio candy … I like the ones that make you think, laugh or cry – they pull some kind of emotion out of you.”

Allan for the first time played a part in writing every song on “Set You Free” to achieve that sentiment. He also used a team of rivals to freshen up his sound on his ninth studio album.

“I think you need to do something new to keep reinventing yourself,” he said. “I used three different producers and we were all a little competitive with each other to see who could get the best songs,” he said.

“The result was we got better quality in the songs and the recording. It’s my favorite album I’ve ever done.”

Among his favorite songs on the album is “One More Time,” a song about the death of his father in 2008, written with Hillary Lindsey and Matt Warren – co-writers on “Every Storm.”

“We just wanted to write an introspective song,” Allan said. “We kept thinking ‘What would you say when you got to the pearly gates?’, and what I would say is ‘I want one more time, I’m not ready to be there.’”

Another song, “Pieces,” describes Allan’s life philosophy.

“No matter who you meet in life, you take something from them, positive or negative,” Allan said. “That’s what the song is about, pieces of what I’ve been through and of the people I’ve met.”

MCA Nashville is part of Universal Music Group, a subsidiary of France’s Vivendi SA.

(Reporting by Vernell Hackett, editing by Eric Kelsey, desking by G Crosse)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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