Pravda Anyone?

So, how badly are things going in Iraq? Well... how about this badly?

U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press

By Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi
November 30, 2005

WASHINGTON — As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism," since the effort began this year.

The operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group's Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.

The military's effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place even as U.S. officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political transparency and freedom of speech in a country emerging from decades of dictatorship and corruption.

So let me get this straight, while we are busy supposedly setting an example how a free society functions, we are using Arabic Armstrong Williams and Judy Millers to show your average guy how great things are? Pretty classy if you can get away with it.

Look at some of the headlines from around the US and the world on it:

From the Guardian In Britain: Pentagon pays Iraqi papers to print its 'good news' stories

From Xinhua in China: US troops pay Iraqi newspapers for image burnishing coverage

From Iran: U.S. paying Iraqi press to run favorable stories

From Seattle: U.S. military secretly pays Iraqi newspapers for running stories trumpeting U.S. mission

So much that "winning the hearts and minds" trick. Somehow I don't think today's glossy plan will put much of a dent in this story.

The sad thing is, I understand that disinformation activities are as old as war itself and that doesn't bother me too much. What does bother me is how poorly we are doing it and how hypocritical it is. Look, if you are going to do something like this, fine. But don't do such a poor job that we hear things like:

One senior military official who spent this year in Iraq said it was the strong pro-U.S. message in some news stories in Baghdad that first made him suspect that the American military was planting articles.

"Stuff would show up in the Iraqi press, and I would ask, 'Where the hell did that come from?' It was clearly not something that indigenous Iraqi press would have conceived of on their own," the official said.

Anyways, who do you think we've found to handle our good news?

Some of the newspapers, such as Al Mutamar, a Baghdad-based daily run by associates of Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, ran the articles as news stories, indistinguishable from other news reports. Before the war, Chalabi was the Iraqi exile favored by senior Pentagon officials to lead post-Hussein Iraq.

Just what is that crook not involved with in Iraq? More importantly, has he done anything right for anyone except himself?

The Long Silence

Yes, I was gone a long time today. Sorry about that. But I was constructing a new career with someone I met at the Flu conference in San Fran a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure yet that this thing will fly, but we put some pretty nice feathers into the wings of the bird that will, hopefully, take flight after the first of the new year. Melanie is working on a new career and paycheck and it looks like this one will work out. After the last five years, you'll excuse me if I hedge my bet.

I can't tell you much about it yet, but, as we prepare for rollout, I'll have some interesting links for you into a rich network of open source web resources for disaster planning and recovery (Katrina could happen anywhere on the East Coast and tornados are becoming more numerous in the Midwest.) I'll have more to say as we move through December. I'm really excited about this possibility and all of the meetings have been very positive so far. I have a lot of experience with the way that things can fall apart at the last minute, so I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket, but this is the most interesting basket I've run into so far.

Ice storms are a virtual certainty in my part of the world this winter (in the Northern Hemisphere.) Disaster planning in this part of the world can mean weeks of power out with no heat or stove. Plan accordingly.

That said, I'm four feet over my blogging chair in the air, hoping that I've found my perfect job. There is celebration going on at Harmony Hall. And exhaustion, I'm early for bed tonight.

No food posts tonight, I think. Your blogger is going to kick off her heels (ugh) and hang up her power suit and head for bed. Today's meeting was at the very staid Cosmos Club, one of the avenues of power in DC and I'm a tad short of breath from hanging out in such august company. The air up there is really thin. And I need to take off this power suit and turn back into the blogger in her jammies that I was before. That will need a night of sleep. This blouse needs a trip to the dry cleaners before it can be worn again, I sweated through the pits, and the suit could probably use a cleaning. I can't remember the last time I could afford a dry cleaner.

Things are looking both up and out,

Melanie

Start the Shredder; Save Alito

Alito called in 1985 for Justice Department to mitigate 'Roe'

11/30/2005

WASHINGTON (AP) — As a Reagan administration lawyer in 1985, Samuel Alito made clear his hope that the Supreme Court would one day overturn a landmark ruling that established abortion rights.
But Alito, now a Supreme Court nominee, argued against an all-out assault on the Roe v. Wade ruling, fearing such an assault would fail. Instead, he recommended a policy of "mitigating its effects" by trying to persuade justices to accept state regulations on abortions.

While working as an assistant to the solicitor general, Alito called for the office, which represents the federal government before the Supreme Court, to help defend provisions of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act. Some of the act's provisions had been overturned by a panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the case American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists v. Thornburgh.

Alito wrote in the memo, released by the National Archives on Wednesday, that "no one seriously believes that the court is about to overrule Roe v. Wade."

But, he said, "By taking these cases, the court may be signaling an inclination to cut back. What can be made of this opportunity to advance the goals of bringing about the eventual overruling of Roe v. Wade and, in the meantime, of mitigating its effects?"

....

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the memo "stunning."

"These latest revelations cast serious doubt on whether Judge Alito can be at all objective on the right to privacy and a woman's right to choose," Schumer said.

White House spokesman Steve Schmidt called Schumer's criticism "unfair."

"Judge Alito should be evaluated on his 15 years of jurisprudence as a federal judge where he has authored hundreds of opinions," Schmidt said. "On some of those cases, he has upheld abortion rights. In other cases he has not. To leap to conclusions and try to infer future decisions from 20-year-old memos borders on the silly."

It's silly only if it contradicts that carefully crafted image of moderation you are trying to sell. How many more "smoking guns" do we need before the Dems and anyone interested in protecting a right to privacy/choose stand up against this guy?

OK, here's the plan...

Bush Again Rejects Calls for a Withdrawal Timetable in Iraq

By CHRISTINE HAUSER

President Bush today laid out what he called a strategy for victory in Iraq, saying that American troops will not be withdrawn in response to "artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington" but will remain deployed there until Iraqi forces can effectively take over.

Mr. Bush's address at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., broadly repeated the aims of the Iraq war as set out in 2003. But in the speech, the first of four he plans to give before the Dec. 15 elections in Iraq, he appeared to be refashioning the scenarios for the role of American troops as they hand over more responsibility to Iraqis in the war against the insurgency. The ability of Iraqi forces to take over their own security has become a key issue in recent debate in Washington over the length of the American mission.

Mr. Bush said that Iraqi troop training was a central pillar of his administration's strategy, and that now was the time for the American public to be aware of its goals. During his speech, Mr. Bush referred to a document that had been released earlier this morning on the White House Web site called the "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq."

The 35-page document emphasizes that the Iraq war will not be won on a timetable, and it also notes the broader consequences of a failed effort in Iraq. Tribal and sectarian chaos would result and Middle East reformers would no longer trust American assurances of support for democracy and human rights, according to the document. The White House had said that the strategy to be outlined today by Mr. Bush was not new, but that it had never been assembled into a single unclassified document like the one issued today.

And as it has many times in the past, the administration cast the war in Iraq as part of the frontline of the war on terror and on terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to the document's overview of the American strategy.

Mr. Bush's speech today was meant to rally the troops and the American public as the war in Iraq approaches its third anniversary, in March. More than 2,000 American troops have been killed since the hostilities started.

Mr. Bush said he would settle for nothing less than complete victory, while trying to define what that would mean in a country where the insurgency has sowed mayhem with suicide attackers, roadside and car bombs, and assassinations.

While acknowledging that the American public at this time wanted troops to both win in Iraq and to return home as soon as possible. Mr. Bush stressed that victory would not be defined in the conventional way, as with the surrender of Japan in World War Two.

"In Iraq there will not be a signing ceremony on the deck of a battleship," Mr. Bush said. "Victory will come when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy. When the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens. And when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks on our nation."Mr. Bush said that the American military was training Iraqi forces to increasingly take over responsibility for their own security, that more military bases were being handed over to the Iraqis, and that there was an Iraqi navy force at the port in Basra.

But there did seem, at least from one of his remarks, to be the possibility that some form of dependence on the American military would remain. While the strategy was intended to prepare Iraqis to take the lead in the fight, they would be doing so without "major" foreign assistance, he said.

As more cities were delivered to Iraqi control, Mr. Bush said, American forces would concentrate on training the Iraqis and "hunting down" what he called high value targets, a reference to the Al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"When our mission of defeating the terrorists in Iraq is complete, our troops will return home to a proud nation," he said. "This is a goal our Iraqi allies share. We will stay as long as necessary to complete the mission."

Nothing much new here as far as I can tell.

Open Thread

I'll be away in meetings the rest of the day. Guest posters, you have carte blanche.

What's on YOUR minds today?

The No Plan Plan

.A Shot at Justice

By DIRK OLIN
Published: November 30, 2005

PRESIDENT Bush's recently proposed $7.1 billion plan for pandemic flu protection is admirably ambitious. It is also remarkably self-defeating in two vital areas: manufacturer liability and victim compensation.

Announcing his proposal at the National Institutes of Health on Nov. 1, the president invoked one of his favorite political demons: "In the past three decades," he said, "the number of vaccine manufacturers in America has plummeted, as the industry has been flooded with lawsuits." So the president's proposal contemplates a ban on lawsuits against vaccine makers, unless plaintiffs can prove willful misconduct. It also provides scant means of redress for the few patients who will inevitably be injured by adverse reactions. And it places legal oversight in the hands of two cabinet secretaries.

But lawsuits are not the reason so few vaccine makers are in business today. Moreover, the existing system for adjudicating vaccine claims is actually working pretty well.

To be sure, vaccine production has a checkered legal history. In 1955, one of the companies that made Jonas Salk's new polio vaccine failed to completely inactivate the embedded virus. A couple of hundred children were permanently paralyzed by inoculation side effects, and a handful died. A jury subsequently found the manufacturer not negligent, but financially liable, thereby casting a pall of uncertainty over vaccine production.

Congress made things worse during the swine flu scare in the mid-1970's. Responding to liability concerns among manufacturers, it declared that any suits would have to be brought against the federal government. When thousands of vaccine recipients suffered nerve and muscle damage, they were able to prevail against the government under a fairly simple liability standard. As a result, pharmaceutical companies feared future exposure to lawsuits under the lower threshold.

But Congress dissipated the legal fog in the 1980's after a wave of claims alleged injury from diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccinations. The 1986 Vaccine Injury Compensation Act created a no-fault system that provides relatively generous payments to victims of specific inoculations recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Special masters at the Court of Federal Claims constitute a vaccine court. The system provides both relief for victims and greater certainty for pharmaceutical companies. (Although claimants are supposed to be able to opt out and bring a suit in state court, such cases face high hurdles - witness the lack of success to date by one group of plaintiffs who claim that inoculations have caused autism.)

Last year, Congress extended the compensation program to include flu shots. But even before that, influenza inoculations did not constitute a trial lawyer boondoggle. A study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in October found a total of 10 reported cases of flu vaccine litigation during the past 20 years. One case resulted in a $1.9 million award for damages, while the rest were settled for much smaller amounts.

The president is correct that vaccine production in America is anemic. But the main cause is a low profit margin born of high fixed costs and an undependable market, not legal exposure.

Big PHarma's profits are obscene. The want to make Viagra, not vaccines.

The Road to Nowhere

Bush releases Iraq 'victory strategy'

By MARTIN WALKER
UPI Editor
November 30, 2005

Victory in Iraq is a vital U.S. interest, says a new policy document, "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," published Wednesday by the White House.

But while it rejects proposals for a timetable for withdrawal, it holds out the prospect of early U.S. troop reductions, even while the United States remains committed to the stabilization and democratization of Iraq in the longer term.

"With resolve, victory will be achieved, although not by a date certain," the document says. "No war has ever been won on a timetable and neither will this one.

"But lack of a timetable does not mean our posture in Iraq (both military and civilian) will remain static over time. As conditions change, our posture will change," it says. "We expect, but cannot guarantee, that our force posture will change over the next year, as the political process advances and Iraqi security forces grow and gain experience.

"While our military presence may become less visible, it will remain lethal and decisive, able to confront the enemy wherever it may organize," the document says. "Our mission in Iraq is to win the war. Our troops will return home when that mission is complete."

Victory in Iraq is defined in three stages. In the short term, the document claims, "Iraq is making steady progress in fighting terrorists, meeting political milestones, building democratic institutions, and standing up security forces."

In the medium term, "Iraq is in the lead defeating terrorists and providing its own security, with a fully constitutional government in place, and on its way to achieving its economic potential."

In the longer term, the strategy aims at building an Iraq that is "peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism."

If anyone here has sat through "focus groups" or "strategic planning seminars" at work, then this document should look very familiar. It's got a lot of platitudes and statements that sound great, but lack any concrete ideas as to how to get there.

Quite frankly, the entire thing is insulting. This is the list you come up with before you destroy a nation, not some 3 years afterwards when you political bacon has hit the fire. Absolutely pathetic. Here's one point the summarizes what a disaster this plan is:

The economic track involves setting the foundation for a sound and self-sustaining economy by helping the Iraqi government to restore Iraq's infrastructure to meet increasing demand and the needs of a growing economy and to reform Iraq's economy, which in the past has been shaped by war, dictatorship, and sanctions, so that it can be self-sustaining in the future. This means building the capacity of Iraqi institutions to maintain infrastructure, rejoin the international economic community, and improve the general welfare of all Iraqis.

Excuse me but isn't that what the #$@$%! have we been doing with the $300 gazillion spent over there so far? Oh wait, it's unpatriotic to wonder where my tax dollars are going if it's the military. God forbid that another Truman would stand up and hold hearing on corrpution and kickbacks during a time of war (though you'd think if we could do it in the 1940's and still defeat the Axis, we could do it now).

Yet, the media can still find people on the street, and in the blogsphere, who wonder why anyone would dare call Iraq a disaster.

Retro

A Princeton alum,hilzoy at Obsidian Wings has some thoughtful commentary on Judge Alito and the Concerned Alumni of Princeton:

The fact that Samuel Alito was a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and cited that fact on his 1985 job application, has been in the news recently; and it occurred to me that since I was a Princeton undergraduate (class of '81) while CAP was active, I might be able to provide some useful background on this one.

CAP is generally described as 'a conservative group'. But this is as misleading as calling the John Birch Society a 'conservative group' would be. There are lots of conservatives who are thoughtful and intelligent, and who have real intellectual integrity. Conservatives like this did not tend to join CAP. CAP was dedicated to finding outrages that it took to be caused by the horrible fact that women and minorities were being admitted to Princeton. The need to find outrages generally came first; any encounter with facts came later. For this reason, CAP tended to attract not conservatives per se, but the sort of conservative who is forever getting deeply hysterical about some perceived threat to a supposed previous golden age, who sees such threats everywhere, and who is willing to completely distort the truth in order to feed his (and it generally was 'his') obsessions.

(I mean: just ask yourself: what sort of person would devote time and energy to a group focussed entirely on combatting trends at his undergraduate institution, trends that the actual undergraduates of the time had no problem with? We used to wonder: don't these people have lives?)

CAP did a number of things to combat Princeton's slide into mediocrity and decadence, otherwise known as its decision to admit women and more than a token number of minorities. It published a magazine, Prospect, devoted to lurid stories about all that decadence and mediocrity and outraged editorials calling for a return to the halcyon days of the 1950s. These stories had the same relation to reality as the views of those fundamentalists who imagine that a life without Christ is necessarily composed of mindless and sordid sexual episodes, punctuated by periods in which one drugs oneself into a stupor, carried out in an attempt to avoid having to recognize one's own appalling inner emptiness: they were just plain false, and reveal more about the person who believes them than anything else. We used to read stories in Prospect aloud to one another for laughs. (CAP was very well funded, and copies of Prospect were everywhere.)

Attention Senate Judiciary Committee: you might have some interesting questions for the nominee.

The Other Pandemic

This article is in this morning's Benton County (AR) Daily Record. Tomorrow is World AIDS Day and I could find nothing in the national papers.

Avian influenza has killed fewer than 70 people so far. AIDS has already killed millions.

Local HIV clinic struggles to treat patients in three counties

By Eleanor Evans Staff Writer [email protected]

Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

FAYETTEVILLE — While some will gather Thursday to commemorate the 18 th annual World AIDS Day, many more will go through the day without paying a second thought to the life-threatening disease.

The Washington County HIV Clinic, however, will continue to provide care and support to 522 individuals living with HIV and AIDS in Benton, Washington and Madison counties.

Of those 522 individuals, © live in Benton County and there may be more who haven’t been diagnosed, said clinic nurse Debi Zimmerman. "People aren’t getting tested anymore," Zimmerman said. "They don’t know they have it. They end up in a hospital on a ventilator, almost dead because they have AIDS and sometimes (HIV-related) hepatitis."

Zimmerman said the awareness of HIV/AIDS has dramatically decreased over the years "because everybody thinks that it’s cured."

Although dramatic strides have been taken in controlling the disease and the current forms of combination drug therapy used to prevent HIV from developing into AIDS, also known as "the cocktail," have proven successful in decreasing the mortality rates of HIV and AIDS patients, it is not a cure. "Everybody thinks that it’s cured," Zimmerman said. "People are doing a lot better, and living a lot longer if they take the cocktail."

But the cocktail isn’t the ultimate solution because the medications used to suppress the HIV virus have toxicities that cause new medical problems and patients can still have low counts of T-cells necessary for a healthy immune system. "Just because their viral load is low or undetectable doesn’t mean their T-cells are high," Zimmerman said. "If they take (the cocktail) right, usually the viral load will be undetectable in three months. T-cells don’t go up that fast."

According to September 2004 statistics from the clinic, 80 percent of its patients were male, and 91 percent of patients were caucasian or Native American, with four percent hispanic and three percent African American. Over the past five years, the clinic has averaged 31 new patients each year.

Zimmerman said the disease is not specific to a person of any gender, race or sexual orientation. "We have pregnant women showing up positive," Zimmerman said. Fortunately, with early treatment, the virus may be prevented from passing on to the child.

The Washington County HIV Clinic was opened in 1992 upon the creation of a Health Advisory Panel organized to study the problem of HIV in Washington County. At the time, the clinic was funded by a number of community sources, including Northwest Medical Center, Ozark Guidance and Washington Regional Medical Center.

But now, the clinic only receives funds from Washington County, Washington Regional Medical Center and Northwest Medical Center. As a result, the clinic’s initial aim to provide education on HIV and AIDS to the community has dwindled. "We had an educator and a social worker" when the clinic opened, Zimmerman said. "Now we have neither."

The clinic has presented proposals to a number of local and global organizations and has sought federal funds. However, the clinic has been informed by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration that a federal grant may not be possible because of the area’s population, and a general lack of funds.

New Media

Abortion case tests parental notice requirements
Ruling to determine if law can be challenged before it takes effect

By MICHAEL DOYLE
BEE WASHINGTON BUREAU
Last Updated: November 29, 2005, 04:19:34 AM PST

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court returns to the abortion debate for the first time in five years on Wednesday, and the timing couldn't be more apt.

On Capitol Hill and across carefully targeted airwaves, abortion rights and anti-abortion forces are battling over a precious court vacancy. Even without that political fight, today's constitutional dispute would rivet attention on the future of parental notification requirements.

But with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's seat in the balance, the stakes in the case known as Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of New England seem immeasurably higher.

"This is an important case regardless," American Civil Liberties Union spokeswoman Lorraine Kenny said Monday. "The questions have very large ramifications."

The hour-long oral arguments Wednesday morning also will put fledgling Chief Justice John Roberts on stage. Like federal appellate judge Samuel Alito, nominated to replace O'Connor, Roberts deeply worries abortion-rights supporters. Roberts' questions, in tone and substance, could end up revealing more than the cautious responses he offered to abortion-related questions during his Senate confirmation hearing in September.

In a sign of the case's unusually high visibility, the court has agreed to let C-SPAN radio carry a delayed transmission of the oral arguments. The station's Web site, www.c-span.org, will have more information.

Ayotte will not directly call into question the abortion right first identified in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Instead, it will shape what kind of restrictions states can place on that right. It also could shape whether future abortion laws can be challenged before, or only after, they have taken effect.

The Best Press Money Can Buy

U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press
# Troops write articles presented as news reports. Some officers object to the practice.

By Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism," since the effort began this year.

The operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group's Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.

The military's effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place even as U.S. officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political transparency and freedom of speech in a country emerging from decades of dictatorship and corruption.

It comes as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism skills and Western media ethics, including one workshop titled "The Role of Press in a Democratic Society." Standards vary widely at Iraqi newspapers, many of which are shoestring operations.

Underscoring the importance U.S. officials place on development of a Western-style media, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday cited the proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one of the country's great successes since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein. The hundreds of newspapers, television stations and other "free media" offer a "relief valve" for the Iraqi public to debate the issues of their burgeoning democracy, Rumsfeld said.

The military's information operations campaign has sparked a backlash among some senior military officers in Iraq and at the Pentagon who argue that attempts to subvert the news media could destroy the U.S. military's credibility in other nations and with the American public.

"Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it," said a senior Pentagon official who opposes the practice of planting stories in the Iraqi media.

The arrangement with Lincoln Group is evidence of how far the Pentagon has moved to blur the traditional boundaries between military public affairs — the dissemination of factual information to the media — and psychological and information operations, which use propaganda and sometimes misleading information to advance the objectives of a military campaign.

If the admin will buy reporters here, I imagine there work is fairly unfettered in Iraq.

An Eye For What?

U.S. Debate on Pullout Resonates As Troops Engage Sunnis in Talks

By Ellen Knickmeyer, Jonathan Finer and Omar Fekeiki
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 30, 2005; Page A01

RAMADI, Iraq, Nov. 29 -- Outside Ramadi's city auditorium, the mortar rounds fell, two, then three, each rattling the concrete walls slightly. Inside, locked in an intense debate about what it would take for American troops in Iraq to withdraw, none of the camouflaged Marines or robed Sunni Arab tribal leaders even flinched.

"We all want the withdrawal," Nasir Abdul Karim, leader of Anbar province's Albu Rahad tribe, told scores of the armed Marines and Sunni sheiks, clerical leaders and other elders at the gathering Monday in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad. "We all believe it is an illegitimate occupation, and it is a legitimate resistance."

"We're committed to withdrawing," responded Brig. Gen. James L. Williams of the 2nd Marine Division, "as soon as we have strong units" in the Iraqi army to replace U.S.-led forces. "I understand the resistance," Williams added, commenting later that he was referring to the peaceful opposition to the U.S. presence in Iraq. "But you must understand we're military people. People who are shot at will shoot back.

As I understand it, we, um, shot at them first.

The NYT somehow manages to avoid noticing that. So did the Wapo and the LAT.

Funny, they get all kinky now about the Geneva conventions, which we've been managing to avoid for a few years and our newspapers have been managing to avoid all together.

Bubble, Bubble, Pop

I was wondering about this topic a few mornings ago while driving to work... when was the last time that the President spoke to a crowd of regular people? Granted, I'm not to most conscious person at 5:45 AM (just ask my wife), but as NPR goes down the list of events, it struck me as odd that he's always at some sort of military function or base.

Now, disregarding the blatant symbolism or overcompensation, am I the only person troubled by this? Last time I checked, Bush received more than just military votes even though most of his campaign trips were so tightly scripted that no one could hiccup out of cue. Likewise, when he did his big Social Security tour, he had people with or posing as Secret Service agents kicking out anyone who might disagree with him on any policy issue or could cause a disruption.

Luckily, I'm not the only one who has noticed this. In fact, Dan Froomkin goes into much more detail on it than I could have. For instance:

Tomorrow, Bush gives a speech on the war on terror -- at the United States Naval Academy. Then he attends a reception for Republican party donors.

Today, he visits a U.S. Border Patrol office, then attends a Republican fundraising lunch.

Yesterday, he spoke at an Air Force base and a Republican fundraiser.

Before leaving the country on his recent trip to Asia, Bush made one last speech -- at an Air Force base in Alaska. A few days before that, he spoke at an Army depot in Pennsylvania. When he delivered a speech on Nov. 1 about bird flu, it was to an audience of National Institutes of Health employees.

The best chance ordinary citizens have had in ages to be anywhere near the president comes Thursday at 5 p.m., when the Bushes participate in the Pageant of Peace tree lighting ceremony on the Ellipse. But it won't exactly be a policy speech -- and anyway, tickets to that event were distributed three weeks ago.

There is a lot more to chew on in there, especially given the polarizing nature of this Presidency and its determination to hide everything it can from the public. I hope that as people get more and more ticked off at what's going on in DC, that we can expect some more accountability from the White House and for them to deal with regular people more.

Yes, I know there are security concerns, but doesn't it seem like the terrorism boggeyman gets trotted out everytime the citizens demand to know what's going on? Even Reagan and Clinton Administrations during their lowest periods never gave the impression that they had to go to such lengths to protect their boss. And that, more than anything else, is a sign of weakness.

This is very good

STEAK DIANNE

Serves 4

1 lb. breakfast steaks or beef tenderloin, cut into 8 thin slices
2 tbsp. butter

Cook thin steaks in 2 tablespoons butter in skillet over medium heat to desired doneness, turning once. These cook quickly, they may be done in an electric skillet or chafing dish at the table.

SAUCE:

1/4 c. butter
1/2 c. fresh mushrooms, thinly sliced
2 tbsp. green onions, minced
1 clove garlic, pressed
1/4 tsp. thyme
1/4 tsp. freshly ground pepper
1 tbsp. lime juice
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp. minced fresh parsley

Cook and stir together all ingredients, except parsley, until mushrooms are tender. Add parsley. Set aside. Reheat and pour over steaks just before serving. Serves 4.

Stick with History

Steak au Poivre

This dish is a classic in France and always wonderful with a frisée salad, french fries, and a bottle of red wine. For sear-roasting steak, a cast-iron pan works best.

click to enlarge

Serves four.

4 New York strip or sirloin steaks (6 to 8 oz. each), 3/4 inch thick, patted dry

Salt

3 Tbs. coarsely ground black peppercorns

Olive oil for the pan

1 cup red wine (Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir)

4 to 6 Tbs. butter, sliced

Heat the oven to 500°F. Sprinkle the steaks with salt on both sides, and then press the ground peppercorns into the steaks on both sides. Set a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat and add just enough olive oil to make a light film. When the oil is very hot, add the steaks, cooking until nicely browned on one side, about 3 min. (If the pan is small, work in batches.) Flip the meat over and put the skillet in the oven. For medium-rare steaks, roast for 3 min. for 6-oz. steaks; 4 min. for 8-oz. steaks. Check for doneness with the tip of a knife or by pressing with your fingertips, keeping in mind that the steaks will cook a bit more as they sit. Transfer the steaks to a warm plate and tent with foil.

With a spoon, remove any fat from the skillet. Put the skillet back on the burner and heat to medium high. Add the wine and cook until it's reduced to 1/4 cup, about 7 min., scraping up the browned bits with a wooden spoon. Whisk in the butter a slice at a time, whisking until completely melted. Taste and adjust the seasonings, drizzle the sauce over the steaks, and serve immediately with more sauce on the side.

This is a wonderful treatment for the classic steak. Crushed multicolor peppercorns work nicely, as well.

War is Peace

Rice defends prisoner tactics

By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY
11/29/2005 6:57 AM

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday defended the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects as part of an unprecedented war to prevent massive attacks on civilians.

In an interview with USA TODAY, Rice neither confirmed nor disavowed the existence of secret CIA prisons abroad that The Washington Post reported this month. She said the Bush administration's policy of making arrests before crimes are committed benefits other nations as well as the United States.

"We have never fought a war like this before where ... you can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them," she said. "Because if they commit the crime, thousands of innocent people die."

The European Union is investigating the prisons. Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattino said Monday that any EU member that operated one of the prisons could be ousted from the 25-member organization.

Ok, I realize that Condi and company assume that most Americans spent their civics classes more concerned about the cute blonde on the front row than their rights, but lets remind them about one or two nagging details from the Constitution.

Article 1 Section 9:

Clause 3: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

Now I realize that this Article deals with Congress and not the Executive Branch, but the same rules hold true for Executive Orders and actions despite what Dick, Rummy, and the rest of the Fun Bunch think.

In other words, you can't change a person for a crime they haven't done nor can you keep them in jail forever. Period.

And here's the kicker... they know it, otherwise would they have finally charged Padilla with a crime if they thought the SCOTUS would back them up?

What will we tell our kids?

Where the Wild Things Are

I'm moving into recipe mode after a very heavy day at the blogoffice. There is a lot going on behind the scenes, including a possible job for yours truly, the meeting is tomorrow. The good duds are out and pressed.

While all of that is going on, the blog continues to function and tonight I'm moving to one of my favorite foods, Minnesota Wild Rice. This is good.

Wild Rice & Mushroom Soup
Cook 1 cup wild rice according to package directions. Set aside.

In a soup pot, over medium-high heat, melt 3 Tablespoons butter. Add 1 celery stalk, cleaned and finely chopped, 1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped, 1/3 pound porcini mushrooms, chopped and 1/3 pound button mushrooms, finely chopped. Saut�, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes, until the vegetables are very soft.

Add the cooked rice, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, 4 cups vegetable broth, 2 Tablespoons flat-leaf parsley, chopped and freshly ground black pepper. Reduce the heat to medium, and cook for 20 � 30 minutes.

Add 1/2 cup heavy cream, and taste for additional seasoning.

Preparation Time:15 minutes / Cooking Time: 45 - 55 minutes
Serves: 6
recipe found at the fabulous (but very light on soup recipes) Break Eggs where they recommend using sliced shiitake mushrooms. The Soup Lady prefers chopped porcinis in this soup.

Melanie uses your standard button mushrooms from the grocery, and they work very well.

A Brush with Sanity

This is breaking and there isn't any detail yet.

Governor Grants Clemency to Man Set to Become 1,000th Prisoner Executed

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 29, 2005

Filed at 4:55 p.m. ET

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Gov. Mark R. Warner granted clemency Tuesday to a convicted killer who would have been the 1,000th person executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Robin Lovitt's sentence was commuted to life in prison.

Lovitt was set to be executed by injection Wednesday night for stabbing a man to death with a pair of scissors during a pool-hall robbery in 1998.

This is a huge deal. Virginia has always looked like the rest of the south with regard to its support for the death penalty. Warner is widely regarded to have presidential aspirations (we could do worse, he's a technocrat and policy wonk not unlike the Big Dog.) and the country, as a whole, still favors the death penalty. This is taking a principaled stand.

For the record, I oppose the death penalty, always have. It is the one sanction that can't be undone if wrongly decided.

UPDATE: Here is the governor's rational:

RICHMOND, Nov. 29 -- Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) issued his first-ever grant of clemency in a death-penalty case Tuesday to convicted murderer Robin Lovitt, sparing his life a day before his scheduled execution.

In a statement issued Tuesday evening, Warner said the destruction by an Arlington clerk of DNA evidence that might have cleared Lovitt on appeal convinced him that Lovitt should spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole, rather than be executed. Lovitt would have been the 1,000th person executed in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

"In this case, the actions of an agent of the Commonwealth, in a manner contrary to the express direction of the law, comes at the expense of a defendant facing society's most severe and final sanction," Warner said in the statement. "The Commonwealth must ensure that every time this ultimate sanction is carried out, it is done fairly."

Lovitt, 41, was convicted and sentenced to death in the November 1998 stabbing of Clayton Dicks, 45, during a robbery at Champion Billiards Sports Cafe, a 24-hour pool hall in Arlington.

During a 1999 trial, prosecutors said that Lovitt, who had worked at pool hall as a cook, went there to steal money. They said that Lovitt was confronted by Dicks and that he grabbed a pair of scissors from the bar and stabbed Dicks six times.

Lovitt has maintained his innocence. He admits he was at the pool hall the night of the killing but says he was in the bathroom while Dicks fought with another man. He said he emerged to find that Dicks had been stabbed, grabbed the cash box and fled

His lawyers have argued that DNA tests using the latest technology -- now impossible because evidence, including the scissors, were discarded -- might have exonerated their client. Early forensic tests involving DNA were inconclusive.

Screw the Poor

As the Winter Looms

Published: November 29, 2005

Members of Congress left Washington before Thanksgiving and don't plan to return until mid-December. They took off without approving any money to help poor Americans pay their heating bills this winter. They failed to pass the bill that included $2 billion in home heating subsidies that they had agreed to allocate as long ago as last spring. They also failed to come up with the additional $3 billion that is needed to cover the big price jumps in various fuels since Hurricane Katrina.

On four separate occasions, a majority of senators voted in favor of more money for heating subsidies, but under the budget rules, passage required a supermajority, which could not be mustered. The House managed to ignore the issue almost entirely, except to "add" an extra billion dollars for heating subsidies to one bill by cutting a billion from other programs that help the poor. The intended recipients of federal heating subsidies include millions of low-income Americans who are old and disabled, as well as poor families with children. It is widely known that people who cannot afford heat often make trade-offs that risk their health or safety: deciding between heating or eating, between heat or medicine, between turning on the heat or resorting to oven flames or dangerous kerosene heaters.

President Bush punted on his opportunity to emphasize the need for more heating subsidies when he neglected to ask for the money in his latest hurricane-related emergency spending request. Congressional leaders have also failed to stress the issue, even as they have vowed to move heaven and earth to pass more tax cuts for investors - at a cost that far exceeds the cost of adequate heating aid.

This is the height of cruelty.

Finding a Clue

President was detached during Iraq postwar planning, Wilkerson says

Tuesday, November 29, 2005; Posted: 11:57 a.m. EST (16:57 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff says President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of post-war planning, allowing underlings to exploit Bush's detachment and make bad decisions.

In an Associated Press interview Monday, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides who argued that "the president of the United States is all-powerful," and that the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant.

Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. Wilkerson said that Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard."

Wilkerson suggested his former boss may agree with him that Bush was too hands-off about Iraq.

"What he seems to be saying to me now is the president failed to discipline the process the way he should have and that the president is ultimately responsible for this whole mess," Wilkerson said.

He said Powell now generally believes it was a good idea to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but may not agree with either the timing or execution of the war. Wilkerson said Powell may have had doubts about the extent of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein but was convinced by then-CIA Director George Tenet and others that the intelligence girding the push toward war was sound.

Powell was widely regarded as a dove to Cheney's and Rumsfeld's hawks, but he made a forceful case for war before the United Nations Security Council in February, 2003, a month before the invasion. At one point, he said Saddam possessed mobile labs to make weapons of mass destruction that were never found.
Cheney may have deliberately ignored contrary intelligence

Wilkerson criticized the CIA and other agencies for allowing mishandled and bogus information to underpin that speech and the whole administration case for war.

He said he has almost, but not quite, concluded that Cheney and others in the administration deliberately ignored evidence of bad intelligence and looked only at what supported their case for war.

Mr. Wilkerson, the rest of us have read the Project for a New American Century, haven't you?

Suffering

Howie, you might want to ask your news department why this story has fallen off the A section of the WaPo. FEMA is utterly incompetent, as is the SBA and why isn't anyone raising hell about it?

Slow-Motion Disaster

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 29, 2005; 8:21 AM

For once, I don't think I can blame the media.

Journalists keep writing stories about how awful things are in New Orleans. Time did a cover story last week: "It's Worse Than You Think." And yet three months after Katrina struck, the administration hasn't done much, Congress seems distracted by other issues, and there seems to be no sense of national urgency about the slow destruction of a major American city.

Is this inevitable, given today's MTV attention spans? What about all the lofty rhetoric, the presidential visits, the media hand-wringing amid the devastation of the hurricane and flooding? People are no longer drowning, but what remains of the city is slowly being strangled. Isn't that as big a story as when the levees broke?

Here is some of what I've been reading: Some 250,000 devastated businesses have applied to SBA loans; only a couple hundred have been approved. Isn't that as lackadaisical a response as FEMA's? If these businesses can't get short-term loans, they're going to close up, and there go the jobs that might enable more folks to return.

Some 284,000 homes were destroyed by the hurricane. Some people got flood-insurance payments, while others in the same neighborhood were denied. Major portions of the area have no power, and the local electric utility is bankrupt. The health care system has been crippled, with only two hospitals partially reopened. The first regular public school reopened only yesterday. Some banks can't decide whether to rebuild. Companies like UPS and Burger King have jobs available, but few takers because there is no housing. Much of the $62 billion okayed by Congress remains unspent.

Meanwhile, FEMA's brilliant plan was to kick out most of the 150,000 evacuees still living in hotel rooms, as of this week. After a huge uproar in the affected states, the deadline was pushed back to Jan. 7. But what happens then? FEMA has even tried to block cities like Houston from signing apartment leases for the displaced.

Donna Brazile, a Nawlins native, says in Time she's worried about "Katrina Fatigue."

As I say, many journalists have remained on the case. But the disaster's aftermath is hardly getting the kind of constant coverage that Tom DeLay's indictment or Harriet Miers' nomination or the Valerie Plame investigation commanded. The hurricane hit in late August, but hundreds of thousands are still suffering, and it's entirely possible that much of the city will never be rebuilt and many of its residents will never come home. Isn't that as important as anything else going on in this country right now?

Enough, Already

Tropical Storm Epsilon caps a record breaking hurricane season.

Didn't I say something just the other day about more and stronger hurricanes?

Throw Him Back

Alito's memos favor authorities
1986-87 records of advice to IRS, FBI

By David G. Savage
Published November 29, 2005

WASHINGTON // As a lawyer in the Reagan administration, Samuel A. Alito Jr. advised the FBI that it had broad power to investigate government employees as security threats, even if they had no involvement in national security matters.

In another memo, he told the Internal Revenue Service that its lawyers may secretly record conversations with taxpayers, despite an American Bar Association opinion barring lawyers from secretly recording any conversation.

In both instances, Alito - now an appellate court judge and a Supreme Court nominee - interpreted the law in a way that gave more leeway to federal authorities.

The memos were among 470 pages of files released yesterday from Alito's service as a deputy attorney general at the Justice Department in 1986 and 1987. He provided legal advice to the attorney general's office, the White House and other federal agencies.

An FBI lawyer sought Alito's advice after lower courts had ruled in two cases that the government had violated the free-speech rights of workers by investigating them. The first case involved two lawyers at the Education Department, the second a librarian who had joined the Young Socialist Alliance.

Alito discounted both lower-court decisions. "We do not believe that the FBI is required to alter its practices based on what we regard as ... the erroneous interpretation of the applicable legal authorities," he wrote in a 29-page memo on Sept. 9, 1986.

He cited a 1947 order issued by President Harry S. Truman that gave the government broad power to check on the loyalty of its employees and to root out communists and subversives. "The plain language of that order clearly states that all federal employees fall within its ambit," Alito wrote.

While Truman's order focused on threats to national security, officials could get around that limitation by focusing on the "critically sensitive" duties of federal employees, he wrote.

"We conclude, therefore, that under the executive order ... a position may be related to the 'national security' even if it does not involve the protection of the United States from internal subversion or foreign aggression," he wrote.

The more I find out about this character, the scarier he seems. This news, combined with learning about his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton point to a judge with really retro views of the direction society should be taking. He's not leadership material.

Suspicion

Go Ahead, Call In Sick -- It Prevents 'Presenteeism'
By Molly Selvin, Times Staff Writer

Employers have long worried about workers who call in sick so they can surf or watch TV. Now some experts say companies should pay attention to the flip side of that problem: employees who show up feverish and sneezing.

They even have a word for this behavior, which can hurt productivity just as absenteeism does: "presenteeism."

Though the worry isn't new, it has gained momentum with fears of a bird-flu pandemic. Should the disease mutate into a strain that passes from person to person, public health officials say, it could thrive in offices.

"I wish employers would make it possible for sick employees to stay home," said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, public health director for Los Angeles County. "Certainly from a public health standpoint that makes sense."

Yeah, right, many workers say. In the real world, calling in sick is often not an option.

"We're in an environment where they just need the bodies to keep things going," said Candace Greene, 35, who oversees substitute teachers for the Los Angeles Unified School District. And if you do take a sick day, "you pay for it in attitude when you come back the next day."

Even highly paid employees may not get any slack, precisely because they are highly paid, said Dana Cephas, a Los Angeles labor and employment lawyer.

"A partner can't call a client and say, 'I can't get what you want today, because my key attorney is sick,' " he said. "Employers say, 'We're paying you $100,000 or $200,000 — you don't get sick.' "

But many workers cannot afford to call in sick. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 42% of all workers in private industry are not entitled to sick time.

Even if they do have paid leave, low-wage workers may not want to take it. Cephas said his father, a janitor, never took a sick day — because he was paid for his unused leave at the end of the year and "we needed the money."

Recent surveys suggest many employees feel the same. Ninety percent of workers polled last year by LifeCare, a Connecticut firm that provides counseling and information services to employees, said they had come to work sick.

Most said they showed up because they felt it was "too risky to be absent" or worried they would fall behind in their job, according to the study.

Another recent survey found that employers are increasingly aware of the problem. CCH Inc., the Illinois-based human resources information firm that conducted the poll, said 48% of employers last summer said presenteeism was a problem in their companies — up from 39% in 2004.

But some employers fear that workers will slack off if it's too easy to stay home.

"We don't want you to come to work when you're sick," said Carol Dyer, human resources director of West Los Angeles-based Public Communications Services, an 80-person company that installs and maintains telephones in prisons.

"But, on the other hand, we expect you to come to work. If it's a mild cold — well, it's like, tough it out."

Employers may be encouraging presenteeism by cutting back on sick pay.

Although exact figures are unavailable, some human resources experts believe companies are reducing the number of sick days they provide, with five a year becoming more common. Moreover, a growing number of employers block workers from accumulating unused sick days from one year to the next.

This may explain rising presenteeism rates because a bad cold combined with a child's bout of bronchitis can quickly drain an employee's sick-leave account, said CCH analyst Tulay Turan.

"If you have five days of sick leave and on the sixth day disciplinary action is taken, people don't want to take that chance," she said.

But many employers are beginning to recognize that they must find ways to make sure workers not only come to work when they're well but also stay home when they're sick.

"There are two different kinds of employees — some people take advantage every time they're sick. There are others who come in and infect the whole place," said Marilyn Sherman, human resources director for Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.

"We encourage people to get the flu shot — and to stay home if they get it," she said.

It's a funny thing, the way our society offers "benefits" on the job. There is a cultural bias in favor of seeing every worker as a slacker who is looking for a way to rip the employer off.

In the event of a pandemic, our cultural biases are going to work against us.

Council of War

Ex-Powell Aide Criticizes Bush on Iraq

By ANNE GEARAN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 29, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff says President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of post-war planning, allowing underlings to exploit Bush's detachment and make bad decisions.

In an Associated Press interview Monday, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides who argued that "the president of the United States is all-powerful," and that the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant.

Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. Wilkerson said that Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard."

....

On the question of detainees picked up in Afghanistan and other fronts on the war on terror, Wilkerson said Bush heard two sides of an impassioned argument within his administration. Abuse of prisoners, and even the deaths of some who had been interrogated in Afghanistan and elsewhere, have bruised the U.S. image abroad and undermined fragile support for the Iraq war that followed.

Cheney's office, Rumsfeld aides and others argued "that the president of the United States is all-powerful, that as commander in chief the president of the United States can do anything he damn well pleases," Wilkerson said.

On the other side were Powell, others at the State Department and top military brass, and occasionally then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Wilkerson said.

Powell raised frequent and loud objections, his former aide said, once yelling into a telephone at Rumsfeld: "Donald, don't you understand what you are doing to our image?"

The entire thing is quiote damming. This is coming from a very well respected Washington insider and it feels like he's softened his true opinions about what took place.

The sad thing is that in many ways it confirms many of our worst case fears about how this administration deals with problems. Apparently, they've mistaken this nation for a monarchy or dictatorship than a republic. Of course, considering how they came to power, is that any shock?

Pulling Back from Oz

What's the Plan?

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, November 28, 2005; 4:39 PM

President Bush does have a plan for withdrawing troops in Iraq -- and pretty much everyone agrees with it, the White House insisted yesterday.

It's just that they won't say exactly what that plan is.

The White House's latest positioning on this issue came in response to an op-ed in The Washington Post on Saturday by Sen. Joseph R. Biden , the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, headlined "Time for An Iraq Timetable."

Biden wrote: "The president must set a schedule for getting Iraqi forces trained to the point that they can act on their own or take the lead with U.S. help."

His proposal: "Over the next six months, we must forge a sustainable political compromise between Iraqi factions, strengthen the Iraqi government and bolster reconstruction efforts, and accelerate the training of Iraqi forces."

And he concluded: "If the administration shows it has a blueprint for protecting our fundamental security interests in Iraq, Americans will support it."

The White House's new rapid-response team quickly fired out a press release in which Scott McClellan asserted that "There is a strong consensus building in Washington in favor of President Bush's strategy for victory in Iraq."

In fact, McClellan insisted that Biden had just "described a plan remarkably similar to the Administration's plan to fight and win the war on terror."

But the White House press release neglected to even address Biden's central point about timetables and provided no new details, not to mention a blueprint. Up until now, the president hasn't done much more than repeat: " As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down ."

Um, Dan, he doesn't really know why he got us into Iraq in the first place and he doesn't have a clue about how he is going to get us out. We are going to hear nothing new on Wednesday, count on that. This administration is so shuttered to reality that you can't really expect much beyond "Gee, Toto, I guess we aren't in Kansas anymore."

Missing the Point

Sunnis Accuse Iraqi Military of Kidnappings and Slayings

By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: November 29, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 28 - As the American military pushes the largely Shiite Iraqi security services into a larger role in combating the insurgency, evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods.

Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation.

Some Sunni men have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills. Many have simply vanished.

Some of the young men have turned up alive in prison. In a secret bunker discovered earlier this month in an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad, American and Iraqi officials acknowledged that some of the mostly Sunni inmates appeared to have been tortured.

Bayan Jabr, the interior minister, and other government officials denied any government involvement, saying the killings were carried out by men driving stolen police cars and wearing police and army uniforms purchased at local markets. "Impossible! Impossible!" Mr. Jabr said. "That is totally wrong; it's only rumors; it is nonsense."

Many of the claims of killings and abductions have been substantiated by at least one human rights organization working here - which asked not to be identified because of safety concerns - and documented by Sunni leaders working in their communities.

American officials, who are overseeing the training of the Iraqi Army and the police, acknowledge that police officers and Iraqi soldiers, and the militias with which they are associated, may indeed be carrying out killings and abductions in Sunni communities, without direct American knowledge.

But they also say it is difficult, in an already murky guerrilla war, to determine exactly who is responsible. The American officials insisted on anonymity because they were working closely with the Iraqi government and did not want to criticize it publicly.

The widespread conviction among Sunnis that the Shiite-led government is bent on waging a campaign of terror against them is sending waves of fear through the community, just as Iraqi and American officials are trying to coax the Sunnis to take part in nationwide elections on Dec. 15.

Sunnis believe that the security forces are carrying out sectarian reprisals, in part to combat the insurgency, but also in revenge for years of repression at the hands of Saddam Hussein's government.

Ayad Allawi, a prominent Iraqi politician who is close to the Sunni community, charged in an interview published Sunday in The London Observer that the Iraqi government - and the Ministry of Interior in particular - was condoning torture and running death squads.

The allegations raise the possibility of the war being fought here by a set of far messier rules, as the Americans push more responsibility for fighting it onto the Iraqis. One worry, expressed repeatedly by Americans and Iraqis here, is that an abrupt pullout of American troops could clear the way for a sectarian war.

Memo to Dexter Filkins: can you say "civil war?" No, I thought you couldn't, nor can you see what is going on under your own nose.

American reporters in Iraq are so beholden to the interpreters and factions in their Green Zone hotels that they don't have a clue about what is really going on. The also have no background in the history and culture of the country so they can't see what is clear to someone like a scholar of the area who would know and they are too stupid to ask.

"Too stupid to ask" characterizes this entire misadventure.

The Place in History

Here is the Sy Hersh's New Yorker piece which made such a splash over the weekend. I didn't go after it sooner because I don't think it moves the ball forward. But what Sy does do is predict that we are going to hear nothing new in Bush's Annapolis speech tomorrow and I think that's correct. With the Bushies, don't listen to what they say, watch what they do. Bush is going to start moving out of Iraq before the 2006 mid-term election. The rhetoric won't matter. Stay the course and all of that crap won't matter a bit if his ass is burning up.

The lame duck presidency is going to show us how much W cares about the party, the GOP, and whether he intends to move that ball down the road or if only his narrow, personal interests matter. I'm guessing that the party is going to run away from him and his narcissism, but I've been wrong before.

I can't see any congresscritter campaigning with him next year. He's unpopular.

Some of us voters figured out that he was an idiot back in 2000. Glad to see the rest of you figure it out.

A Trip to the Countryside

This is one of those hug-yourself-it's-so-good dishes that's easy-simple-last-minute good for company if you already have some gnocchi in the house. The recipe:

Great gnocchi are light and tender, and creating the best gnocchi in this recipe can be accomplished by draining the spinach well to remove excess liquid. The Gorgonzola sauce is delicious but rich, so a little goes a long way.

:Serves 4

Since Gorgonzola cheese is salty, be careful when adding salt to the sauce.

Gnocchi:
1 1/2 Pounds Baking Potatoes
1/2 Pound Fresh Spinach
1 Large egg
Salt
1 Cup All-purpose Flour (Plus A Little More For Shaping)

Gorgonzola Sauce:
6 oz. Gorgonzola Cheese
1 Cup (8 oz) Whole Milk
Salt & Pepper
Freshly Grated Parmesan Cheese To Serve

To prepare the gnocchi, bake the potatoes in an oven at 350 degrees F. until fork tender. Cool to room temperature, then peel, and pass through a potato ricer or food mill. Wash and dry the spinach, and remove any thick stems. Steam, or microwave until tender. Finely chop, or pulse in a food processor. Place the spinach in a sieve over a bowl in the sink, and let sit 30 minute to remove excess liquid. In a large bowl, or on a clean counter or bread board, mound the potatoes and spinach, and mix. Make a little depression in the center, and then add the egg, seasonings and cup of flour. Mix together well. On a lightly floured surface, take a large handfull of the dough, and roll into a 1 1/2 inch roll with your hands. Cut the roll into 1 inch pieces, and place on a lightly floured baking sheet. Continue shaping the dough in this manner, and then refrigerate for up to 6 hours before using. It's traditional to dimple each gnocchi on the sides with your thumb and forefinger before you set them out to rest.

To prepare the sauce, heat the milk over low heat until simmering. Cut the gorgonzola cheese into 1 inch pieces, and add to the hot milk. Continue to cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until the cheese has melted, and the sauce is thick. Season with salt and pepper. I add a couple tablespoons of butter to the mix, just to add to the calorie and cholesterol and flavor count. This isn't something you are going to eat everyday. I live on raw foods in between my occasional bouts of these special days menus.

To cook the gnocchi, drop into lightly salted water and remove as soon as they float to the top, about 3 to 4 minutes. Drain them all and return to the now empty pot. Add the sauce, and stir carefully to coat well. Serve, topped with the parmesan cheese. Finely chopped parsley sprinkled over the top and around the edge of each plating makes a nice impression.

Good gnocchi require a knack and they take practice to keep as airy and light as possible. Hint: you need enough flour to bind them so they won't break up on cooking, but too much flour makes them heavy. This takes a little practice.

If you are desiring to serve this for dinner and don't have a lot of time, you can make the gnocchi the day before and refrigerate them in zip-lock bags. They will be a little drier and tougher than if you'd made them right before cooking, but they'll still be better than anything you'll find at the supermarket or most restaurants. Once you've made them a couple of times, you'll be a whiz at knocking them out when the baked potatoes have cooled enough to handle. Here is a baked potato secret: pierce the potatoes and start them in the microwave on high. Two russets will need about 15 minutes, and then finish them in a preheated oven or toaster oven for another 15. This cuts the cooking time in half and will give you a floury finished potato rather than the kind of steamed product you get if you try to cook them in the microwave alone. If, like me, you love a big, stuffed baked potato as a main course for dinner, this is the fastest way to get there.

For this recipe, rather than waiting for the potatoes to cool enough to peel them, hold the hot potato in a towel or hot pad, halve them and scoop out the interior into a bowl. The potatoes will cool faster in a bowl than they will in the jacket.

It's real important to get all of the moisture out of the spinach after it has been steamed: use a salad spinner to speed up the process.

The gorgonzola sauce loves nuts if you want to sprinkle finely chopped walnuts or pine nuts over the dish before you serve it.

For a lovely presentation, sprinkle finely chopped parsley (very fine) over the top of the plate and in a circle around the edge of the plate.

Serve this with a salad of wild Italian field greens tossed with fresh pear slices, rosemary and lemon vinaigrette and serve with a cherry tomato bruschetta.

The down side of this menu is that everyone will be so busy eating that they won't talk. I'm a cook who likes to entertain and I recognize the moment when the meal is being appreciated. Talking ceases and all you can hear is the sound of silver against the tablewear. It is actually a satisfying moment. When silence happens in the middle of a meal, it means that it is either awful or wonderful, so there is a caution.

For New Year's Day Dinner

I've been a little heavy in the carnivore department lately, so here is something scrumptious for the ovo-lacto vegetarians (and everybody else who loves comfort food, which this is.)

Pasta al Forno Bianco

This serves 4-6.

3 Cups Béchamel Sauce

6 Tablespoons Of Butter
2/3 Cup All-Purpose Flour
3 Cups Milk
Salt
White Pepper
Nutmeg

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan over low heat. Once it is completely melted and bubbling, add the flour and mix well with a wooden spoon. Cook for a minute or two until the flour just begins to take on some color. Slowly start adding the milk, whisking continuously to prevent lumps from forming.

Continue to simmer until the sauce begins to thicken, stirring often. Season with a pinch of salt, white pepper and nutmeg.

Set aside until you are ready to use, by pouring the sauce into a glass bowl and covering with a buttered sheet of plastic wrap.

1 Pound Rigatoni or Penne Pasta
1 Small Head Of Broccoli, Washed, And Floret's Cut Into Bite Sized pieces
1 Cup Grated Swiss Cheese
1 Cup Grated Gruyere Cheese (Or Other Tasty Cheese Of Choice)

Topping:

3 oz. Parmesan, Freshly Grated
1/2 Cup Seasoned Bread Crumbs
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil

Blanch the broccoli until tender crisp. Drain well. Heat the béchamel over low heat, and add the swiss and gruyere cheeses. Stir until the cheeses have completely melted. Cook the pasta for three minutes less than the package recommendations. Drain the pasta, and add to the sauce, mixing well. Fold in the diced ham, and broccoli, and place in an ovenproof dish large enough to hold the pasta mixture. Mix the breadcrumbs with the parmesan and the oil, and sprinkle it over the pasta. Bake in a preheated 400 degree F. oven until bubbly. Let sit 5 minutes and serve.

Carnivores who can't forego the meat: add a 1/4 pound of thinly juilliened pancetta or prosciutto just before topping with the breadcrumbs, parmesan and oil.

I love serving hearty, simply foods like this for New Years Day dinner. I'd like a pinot grigio with this, along with Tuscan bread, and a traditional bagna cauda as a first course.

Real Italian granitas are hard to find in this country outside of New York, Boston or San Francisco, but a light Italian ice would conclude this meal on a light note.

Something Different

Beef sate is one of the lightest, tastiest appetizers you can pass with drinks or place at the heart of an appetizer spread. I've been known to make a meal of it with a big bowl of tom kha gai, some jasmine rice and a bowl of cucumber salad. Sate takes a little work to make, but the results are extremely rewarding. In fact, you could make a nice thai buffet with those ingredients if you add a pad thai with shrimp! If you want to go that route, make sure you can supply the appropriate thai condiments, chili sauces, fish sauce and the like.

Thais typically eat with western table implements, so don't feel like you have to supply chopsticks.

Part 1 - Peanut Sauce

Ingredients

5 to 6 dried Thai chiles
3 shallots finely chopped
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
4 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 tablespoons peanut oil
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
3/4 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons light brown sugar or to taste
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon fish sauce (nam pla) or soy sauce or to taste (there is no substitute for nam pla)
2/3 cup chunky peanut butter

Instructions

1. Remove the stems and seeds from the chiles and discard. Finely grind the chiles in a spice grinder.
2. Add the shallots, ginger, and garlic to a mortar. Grind with the pestle until smooth. (A mini food processor can be used but be careful not to over process or the mixture will become watery.)
3. Add 2 tablespoons of the peanut oil to a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the shallot mixture and sauté, stirring occasionally, until softened and starting to color, about 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium and add the cumin and coriander and ground chile. Sauté until aromatic, 3 to 4 minutes, adding more oil if necessary.
4. Reduce the heat to low and add the coconut milk, broth, brown sugar, lime juice, and fish sauce. Stir well to mix with seasonings. Stir in the peanut butter. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 10 minutes. Taste and add more sugar or fish sauce if needed.

Part 2 - The Beef Saté

Ingredients

Peanut Sauce (see above)
2 pounds beef flank steak, pork loin, or boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (I prefer top sirloin for the beef version)

Marinade

3 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin, toasted
6cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
1/4 cup minced onion
1 tablespoon tamarind paste or lime juice
1 teaspoon ground coriander
3 tablespoons peanut oil

Instructions

Prepare the Peanut Sauce one or two days ahead and refrigerate. Slice the beef across the grain into about 1/8-inch-thick strips.

Prepare the marinade: Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and whisk well to dissolve the sugar.

Submerge the beef in the marinade and stir well to coat. Let the meat marinate for 1 to 2 hours in the refrigerator.

Meanwhile, soak the bamboo skewers in water for at least 30 minutes (this will keep them from burning during cooking).

Prepare the skewers: Thread 1 or more pieces of beef, depending on the size of the piece, on each skewer. Lay them flat on a tray and pour any remaining marinade over them.

Preheat the broiler or grill to medium. Grill skewers 1 to 2 minutes per side until cooked through. Serve immediately with warmed peanut sauce for dipping.

Serve these on torn lettuce, garnished with fresh cilantro and sliced limes. Offer toast points on the side to soak up additional peanut sauce and to make little cucumber sandwiches with the cucumber salad and peanut sauce.

The "New New Thing" in Professional Crime

This little gem was just referenced on Slashdot.

I think you folks may take this as a benchmark. And as an independent confirmation of what the Information Security people have been warning about for the last couple of years now.

To wit: The "old school" recreational blackhats and the "joyrider" virus writers and the compulsive teenagers are not the major threat anymore. They are yesterday's headlines. We can look back to those days with the sort of wistful nostalgia that people are apt to feel for a simpler and less hazardous time.

Professional crime is on the Internet, and it's there to stay. And it's not in the game for chump change. This is now, according to some sources, bigger than the drugs trade.

The story is from Reuters.

Cybercrime yields more cash than drugs: expert

By Souhail Karam
RIYADH (Reuters) - Global cybercrime generated a higher turnover than drug trafficking in 2004 and is set to grow even further with the wider use of technology in developing countries, a top expert said on Monday.

No country is immune from cybercrime, which includes corporate espionage, child pornography, stock manipulation, extortion and piracy, said Valerie McNiven, who advises the U.S. Treasury on cybercrime.

"Last year was the first year that proceeds from cybercrime were greater than proceeds from the sale of illegal drugs, and that was, I believe, over $105 billion," McNiven told Reuters.

"Cybercrime is moving at such a high speed that law enforcement cannot catch up with it."

For example, Web sites used by fraudsters for "phishing" -- the practice of tricking computer users into revealing their bank details and other personal data -- only stayed on the Internet for a maximum of 48 hours, she said.

Asked if there was evidence of links between the funding of terrorism and cybercrime, McNiven said: "There is evidence of links between them. But what's more important is our refusal or failure to create secure systems, we can do it but it's an issue of costs."

McNiven, a former e-finance and e-security specialist for the World Bank, was speaking in Riyadh on the sidelines of a conference on information security in the banking sector.

Developing countries which lack the virtual financial systems available elsewhere are easier prey for cybercrime perpetrators, who are often idle youths looking for quick gain.

"When you have identity thefts or corruption and manipulation of information there (developing countries), it becomes almost more important because ... their systems start getting compromised from the get-go," she said.

"Another area that begins to expand is human trafficking and pornography because both of these become so much available once you have a communication ability," McNiven said.

On a happier note - that business about phishing websites only being up for a maximum of 48 hours also has something to do with the attitude that banks have towards them - one of naked loathing and detestation. I have personally seen the CISO of the bank I work for get as angry as I have ever seen a bank officer get, speaking about phishing fraud. It is quite easy for banks to get these sites shut down extremely quickly, and some of them make a point of doing so in as close to an automated fashion as possible.

In a properly set up operation, reports come in from potential victims to "[email protected]", and this account feeds directly into either a specialized services vendor the bank has contracted with, or to a team within the bank itself. Either way, the ISP who owns the IP address used by the phishing website is quickly contacted, and a complaint lodged.

The ISP only needs to do the quickest of investigations - merely to load the suspect URL into a web browser. Given a damning verdict, they close down the offending account with a light laugh. They have much to gain by such an action, and very little to lose. Once the offending site is gone, so is any potential problem with the complaining bank. And the crooks running the phishing site are in a poor position to complain, themselves, that they were wrongly done by.

These crooks may be in a high-gains business. But they have very, very few friends right now.

The Coming Mine Field

Bush Is Urged to Explain War Plan
# Republican senators say Congress and the public should be kept abreast of his Iraq strategy, while Democrats call for a withdrawal timetable.

By Alan C. Miller, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Amid declining public support for the war in Iraq, two prominent Republican senators urged President Bush on Sunday to be more forthcoming about the increasingly costly and uncertain effort to defeat the insurgency and establish a self-sufficient democracy.

"We want to hear from the administration," said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. "We want more co-option of the Congress by the administration so that we're on the same wavelength."

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Bush should provide a detailed status report to the American public.

"It would bring him closer to the people, dispel some of this concern that understandably our people have about the loss of life and limb, the enormous cost of this war to the American public" and emphasize that "we've got to stay firm for the next six months," Warner said.

The lawmakers made their comments on television talk shows almost two weeks after the Senate overwhelmingly passed a Republican-sponsored resolution calling upon the Bush administration to turn over more control of Iraq to the Iraqis and to provide quarterly reports to Congress on the progress that was being made toward withdrawing U.S. forces.

Bush is scheduled to make a major speech Wednesday during which he is expected to trumpet the readiness of Iraqi troops to assume greater responsibility for the country's security. He will do so as a consensus appears to be emerging in Washington about the need to gradually pull out large numbers of U.S. forces over the next two years.

Democratic senators, meanwhile, said the administration's mishandling of the war made it imperative that it commit to a specific timetable for troop withdrawals or risk leaving behind chaos.

"We have a six-month window here to get it right," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, referring to the way the war was being conducted. "But I have to admit that I think its chances are not a lot better than 50-50, and it requires a real change in course" by Bush.

Biden appeared with Warner on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who joined Lugar on "Fox News Sunday," said if the Iraqis thought the U.S. was there "as long as we're needed, that is such an open-ended statement on our part that it takes pressure off them to make the compromises that are necessary to make those changes in the [Iraqi] constitution. That's what we need to do: Put some pressure on them to make the political decisions that are so essential to becoming a nation."

Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), the first senator to call for a scheduled pullout, said on ABC's "This Week" that "we should have a public timetable to show the Iraqi people, the American people and the world that we're not trying to have a permanent occupation of Iraq."

Let me tell you what you are going to hear out of Bush on Wednesday at his Naval Academy speech:

As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down. But we'll stay the course.

Bush is too damn stubborn to begin withdrawing troops anytime soon; that would be admitting he's wrong, but, politically, he has to. He's wrecked this country militarily for a decade. So, we're going to be getting a lot of rhetoric out of the White House in the coming months about how successful the Iraqis are as cover for the fact that he will be rotating troops out. He's partially correct, the Iraqi insurgency is ever more successful as they learn how inept our strategy (non-existent) and tactics (stupid) are. And the Iraq civil war we are probably precipitating will probably successful, too. Why is it again that the Repubs are seen as good on national security?

Public Conversation

The University of Toronto's Joint Centre on Bioethics released an important report on bioethics and pandemic influenza yesterday and I quoted and linked to The Toronto Star story about it this morning. Helen Branswell, The Canadian Press's redoubtable med-sci reporter, has a much more thorough (and pretty long) story today and I want to quote a bit and give you the link to the whole thing. I think this is a very important discussion that we all need to have. An outbreak of pandemic flu in the next few years would occur in an environment where medical resources to meet it would be scarce. Hard choices would have to be made if the flu were severe. Read Branswell and think and talk about it.

Public debate needed on pandemic ethics
By HELEN BRANSWELL

TORONTO (CP) - It's time to engage the public in open and frank debate over the excruciating choices a flu pandemic could force governments and health-care delivery systems the world over to have to make, a new report suggests.

Governments need to throw open discussions already well underway to determine who gets first crack at eventual vaccine and who won't get limited antiviral drugs, so the public can be assured those decisions are being based on an ethical foundation that reflects shared values, the authors suggest.

Such deliberations should address what societies can reasonably ask of health-care workers, who could be risking their own lives during a pandemic, and what protections societies are willing to offer them in return, notes the report, written by ethicists from the University of Toronto's Joint Centre for Bioethics.

"The time to figure out what roles, responsibilities and expectations are going to be is now. Not when the emergency rooms are starting to fill up. Not when we're trying to deal with intense numbers of very sick individuals," one of the authors, Dr. Ross Upshur, said in an interview.

But one of Canada's leading infectious diseases experts warned it is easier to call for such deliberations than to actually have them.

Planners in the health-care arena shudder at the thought of having to decide what to do when they've run out of life-saving mechanical ventilators and a gravely ill 15-year-old comes through the emergency department door, Dr. Allison McGeer admitted.

Do they take the oldest person on a ventilator in the hospital off it? Do they call around to other hospitals to see if someone older still can be removed from a ventilator across town?

"I think, at least among health-care workers, to even have the discussion somehow creates a sense of playing God," she said.

That last quote is the reason we need to begin this discussion. In a sense, our society has given itself the ability to play God by the way we allow health care to be apportioned (and insurance offered.) But that happens more or less behind the scenes. If severe pandemic flu arrives, these decisions are going to be big and ugly and made in doctors' offices, hospital rooms and in hospital ethics committees.

No Protection of Privacy

This is simply insane! You would think, in an industry that depends on trust that your personal information is protected, the credit card companies would be going out of their way to support stronger bills.

Identity-Theft Bills Stall in Congress

By CHRISTOPHER CONKEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 26, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Despite a rash of highly publicized security lapses this year that had consumer advocates and business lobbyists clamoring for legislation, Congress is finding it difficult to agree on ways reduce identity theft and to protect the privacy of consumers.

Consumer groups are pushing for credit protections that financial institutions oppose. Small banks are arguing with larger ones about who picks up the "reissuing costs" when credit or debit cards must be replaced. And everyone with a stake in the issue is debating the "notification trigger," specifying what breaches require alerting customers.

The discord has derailed the prospect of legislation this year, and without some consensus, the outlook remains dim for next year as well.

This new reality is far removed from how things looked in February, when data broker ChoicePoint Inc. disclosed it had mistakenly sold sensitive information on 145,000 people to criminals posing as legitimate businessmen. The disclosure, required by a 2003 California law, set off a wave of corporate confessions. Embattled chief executive officers were called to testify before irate lawmakers in a series of televised hearings that thrust identity theft -- a crime that affects more than 4% of the adult population every year and costs businesses nearly $50 billion annually -- into the national consciousness.

A flurry of bills was introduced, and six different committees seized on proposed solutions. Among them were the Senate Banking and House Energy and Commerce committees, run by influential Republicans who co-founded the bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus.

Then, in June, word came that hackers had "infiltrated" payments processor CardSystems Solutions Inc., compromising the security of 40 million credit-card accounts. The enormity of the breach sent shock waves through the financial industry and seemed to ensure a quick federal response. Speaking later that month, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, declared: "We're not really dealing with a highly controversial subject where there are going to be significant differences of opinion."

But while everyone agreed that consumers need to know when a security breach puts them at risk for identity theft, writing the new law has proven difficult.

Many privacy advocates, casting a suspicious eye on companies that fail to secure personal information, want legislative language in federal legislation similar to the seminal California law that requires disclosure of security lapses regardless of the potential for harm. Businesses say that poses too big a cost burden for them and say notification should be limited to breaches that threaten a "significant risk" of identity theft.

Companies say notification is expensive -- and so is replacing debit and credit cards. America's Community Bankers, a trade association representing community banks, told a House panel this month that legislation should require those responsible for a data breach to pick up the tab for notifying customers and reissuing cards. It figured that reissuing debit or credit cards can cost as much as $15 each.

The best part? Since the government has allowed the major credit cards to continue to merge together and your information to be bought and sold by almost anyone, your private infomration is more unsafe than ever.

I would think that $15 a card and some extra computer security would be a small price to pay for peace of mind.

Granting Cert

Pride Goeth Before the Court

By Al Kamen
Monday, November 28, 2005; A19

Liberals went into high whine mode when the Supreme Court agreed to hear Republican George W. Bush 's appeal in the 2000 Florida vote dispute. They said the high court lacked grounds to agree to hear the case.

But, as it turns out, it had ample grounds, more grounds than anyone knew. Traditionally, the Supreme Court agrees to hear a case to resolve different lower court rulings, if it is of great importance or if there's an important constitutional question involved.

However, as the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist noted, granting certiorari is really a "subjective decision," or as the late Justice John Marshall Harlan said, "a matter of feel."

Justice Antonin Scalia cited a heretofore unknown but important criterion: national pride.

Scalia unveiled the new criterion at a supposedly off-the-record chat last week at Time Warner headquarters with Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine and Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons and numerous journalists.

On the 5 to 4 ruling in Bush v. Gore that made Bush president, New York Daily News columnist Lloyd Grove reports that Scalia said: "What did you expect us to do? Turn the case down because it wasn't important enough? Or give the Florida Supreme Court another couple of weeks in which the United States could look ridiculous?"

Ah, yes, the old appearance-of-ridiculousness standard.

The Color of the Lie

The masking of a true conservative
Alito will have no shame exhuming his `buried' ideology

Derrick Z. Jackson, New York Times News Service
Published November 28, 2005

Pride must go before he falls. This is why Samuel Alito Jr. hopped to liberal burrows on Capitol Hill to proclaim the burial of his conservative ideology. In his 1985 application to a senior post in the Reagan administration, Alito wrote:

"I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government argued that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

"I am and always have been a conservative and an adherent to the same philosophical views that I believe are central to this administration." He said, "I believe very strongly in limited government" and "the legitimacy of a government role in protecting traditional values."

"In college, I developed a deep interest in constitutional law, motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions."

The Warren Court of 1953-69 happened to be the one that expanded civil rights protections for millions of Americans frozen out of the Constitution until the 20th Century. The revelation of the memo forced Alito bizarrely to ask liberal senators not to interpret strictly his strict interpretations.

Recently, Alito visited the pro-choice senator from California, Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein said Alito told her, "I'm not an advocate; I don't give heed to my personal views." The whipping boy of the right, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), said Alito told him that the 1985 memo is just an old job application and that the nominee said he is "wiser" and has "a better grasp of understanding constitutional rights and liberties."

This genuflection seemed to dampen outright outrage.

Feinstein, the only woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said after her meeting that she thought Alito's response was "very sincere" and "absolutely truthful." Moderate pro-choice Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine said after her meeting with Alito that the nominee claimed "an enormous respect for precedent," the buzz phrase for the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision upholding abortion rights nationwide.

But Snowe also said she had not made up her mind because Alito "didn't repudiate what he said" in 1985.

And the right wing is still cheering. "This man is a conservative. He's been a conservative all his life," Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia said after his meeting with Alito.

It is instructive to note that in 1998, when Chambliss was a member of the House, he voted to eliminate affirmative action in college admissions. In November of 2002, Chambliss, then the chairman of a House anti-terrorism panel, said the best way to combat terrorism was to have a Georgia sheriff "arrest every Muslim that comes across the state line."

Chambliss said he was only joking, but the crowd he spoke to laughed with him. His support of Alito makes that 1985 memo all the more serious for the nomination hearings. Alito's pride in trying to turn back the clock fit right in with the Reagan White House, which boasted even louder about it.

Mainstream? Maybe in 1963.

Preparation, Not Panic

Disconnect the panic button
# A little fear can be a useful thing, but the way we constantly hype our trepidations is just plain scary.

By Mick Farren, MICK FARREN is a Los Angeles writer, musician and playwright. His latest novel is "Kindling" (Tor Books, 2004).

FEAR IS the great tool of mass manipulation. It sells everything from insurance to deodorant and builds audience ratings for cable news. Historically it was used to promote a catalog of wars and ideologies, and it has been responsible for witch burnings and a spectrum of racism.

In 20th century America, orchestrated fear fueled McCarthyism, underpinned the Cold War and created the apocalyptic balancing act of Mutually Assured Destruction. In the 21st century, it has come close to defining us. The millennium was ushered in by the panic of Y2K. With 9/11, it advanced to color-coded terror, and it is now bedeviled by seemingly escalating climatic disasters, maybe because of a damaged global weather system.

In the last month or so we have seen a terror alert on the New York City subway and the president delivering a call to arms (or at least to federal spending) to save us from avian flu. Soothsaying security specialists on cable news decided that the hotel bombings in Jordan could be part of a pattern that would culminate in an attack on LAX. The Army Corps of Engineers may not have the Louisiana levees ready for next year's hurricane season. And Pat Robertson, in a much-replayed TV sermon, warned Dover, Pa., that it may be smitten by God for voting out an anti-evolution school board.

Does this overview demonstrate that maybe the panic button has been pushed a tad too frequently of late? As the debate comes to a boil over whether the White House cried nuclear-wolf over WMD in Iraq, it must at least invite consideration that recklessly generated alarms not only come back to bite the alarmist, but they help to create a population that, for its own protection, ignores all warnings until too late.

We all remember the first of the famous lines from Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1933 inaugural address — "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" — but the qualifier, in which he defined mass fear as — "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance" — is rarely recalled.

I'm in a field called "risk communication." The job of a good risk communicator is to clearly articulate all of the possibilities that a given risk may generate and weight them according to the best information on probability we have. The job of the press is to sell advertising. You get more eyeballs in front of your newsreaders' bobbleheads if you hype the story.

As I have been telling you for over a year, my job is to help you assess the risks of pandemic influenza and make good decisions about how to prepare, rather than to panic. I note that the US news media aren't telling you anything about preparation, nor are they giving you complete information on the risks of pandemic flu. The upshot is that those of your friends and relations who have heard about panflu have thrown up their hands, decided that it is all hype and are in complete denial.

How do you help them get past their denial and fear of "radical discontinuity?" By calmly sharing with them the full range of possibilities and well informed opinion on the subject by responsible scientists and teachers. The Flu Wiki can be very helpful to you in this regard. Many of the contributors are scientists and practitioners who know what they are talking about. Dr. Grattan Woodson has contributed a very fine two-page summary about pandemic influenza that you can print out and hand to those in your circle who are Internet averse. He has also written an exhaustive 37 page overview (with David Jodrey) for those who thirst for more information.

Every time I go to the Wiki, I am literally stunned by the generosity of those who have contributed and spent a great deal of their valuable time to craft worthwhile articles, as well as those who are formatting geniuses in PHP and go over the contributions to clean them up. It's a remarkable community.

That Strapping Economy, Take III

Merck, Under Pressure, Will Cut Jobs and Close Plants

By ALEX BERENSON and VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: November 28, 2005

Merck, under pressure from investors and analysts to reduce costs, said today it would cut 7,000 jobs in the next three years and close five manufacturing plants. The company also hinted at further restructuring.

In a much anticipated announcement, Richard T. Clark, who became Merck's chief executive in May and promised investors big changes, said the company would streamline its operations, particularly how it makes and distributes its drugs and vaccines. Mr. Clark also said the company was looking at changes to its research and development and marketing and sales activities and would discuss them in more detail at Merck's annual meeting with analysts on Dec. 15.

The company says the actions it announced today, which include an 11 percent reduction in its global staff of 62,000 by the end of 2008, would save it $3.5 billion to $4 billion before taxes in the next five years. In addition to closing five of its 31 drug-making plants, Merck, which is based in Whitehouse, N.J., will also shut down a basic research site and two pre-clinical development sites.

All told, the restructuring itself will cost the company $1.8 billion to $2.2 billion by the end of 2008. Merck projected that its earnings would range between $1.98 a share and $2.12 a share in 2006, compared to $2.04 a share to $2.10 a share this year.

Mr. Clark, who has spent his career at Merck and is known as a cost cutter, had already been quietly trimming the company's work force. In the third quarter, the company said it spent $80 million on "ongoing global position eliminations."

I wonder if this will have a reduction in the cost and an improvement in the quality of their drugs... or does Wall Street and the investor class really care about little details like that?

Career Track

Gimme an Rx! Cheerleaders Pep Up Drug Sales

By STEPHANIE SAUL
Published: November 28, 2005

As an ambitious college student, Cassie Napier had all the right moves - flips, tumbles, an ever-flashing America's sweetheart smile - to prepare for her job after graduation. She became a drug saleswoman.

At game time, Onya cheers on the Washington Redskins. But she saves some of her energy for her job in pharmaceutical sales. Drug companies have found that former cheerleaders like Penny Otwell are good at persuading doctors.

Ms. Napier, 26, was a star cheerleader on the national-champion University of Kentucky squad, which has been a springboard for many careers in pharmaceutical sales. She now plies doctors' offices selling the antacid Prevacid for TAP Pharmaceutical Products.

Ms. Napier says the skills she honed performing for thousands of fans helped land her job. "I would think, essentially, that cheerleaders make good sales people," she said.

Anyone who has seen the parade of sales representatives through a doctor's waiting room has probably noticed that they are frequently female and invariably good looking. Less recognized is the fact that a good many are recruited from the cheerleading ranks.

Known for their athleticism, postage-stamp skirts and persuasive enthusiasm, cheerleaders have many qualities the drug industry looks for in its sales force. Some keep their pompoms active, like Onya, a sculptured former college cheerleader. On Sundays she works the sidelines for the Washington Redskins. But weekdays find her urging gynecologists to prescribe a treatment for vaginal yeast infection.

Some industry critics view wholesomely sexy drug representatives as a variation on the seductive inducements like dinners, golf outings and speaking fees that pharmaceutical companies have dangled to sway doctors to their brands.

But now that federal crackdowns and the industry's self-policing have curtailed those gifts, simple one-on-one human rapport, with all its potentially uncomfortable consequences, has become more important. And in a crowded field of 90,000 drug representatives, where individual clients wield vast prescription-writing influence over patients' medication, who better than cheerleaders to sway the hearts of the nation's doctors, still mostly men.

"There's a saying that you'll never meet an ugly drug rep," said Dr. Thomas Carli of the University of Michigan. He led efforts to limit access to the representatives who once trolled hospital hallways. But Dr. Carli, who notes that even male drug representatives are athletic and handsome, predicts that the drug industry, whose image has suffered from safety problems and aggressive marketing tactics, will soon come to realize that "the days of this sexual marketing are really quite limited."

But many cheerleaders, and their proponents, say they bring attributes besides good looks to the job - so much so that their success has led to a recruiting pipeline that fuels the country's pharmaceutical sales force. T. Lynn Williamson, Ms. Napier's cheering adviser at Kentucky, says he regularly gets calls from recruiters looking for talent, mainly from pharmaceutical companies. "They watch to see who's graduating," he said.

"They don't ask what the major is," Mr. Williamson said. Proven cheerleading skills suffice. "Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm - they learn those things, and they can get people to do what they want."

Approximately two dozen Kentucky cheerleaders, mostly women but a few men, have become drug reps in recent years.

There are so many different threads of commentary that I could type here that I hardly know where to start. Instead, I'll just let you start your own in comments.

The Morality of Pandemic Flu

Thanks to reader Sal for sending this important article.

The flu as ethical dilemma

Nov. 28, 2005. 06:35 AM

As you read the latest news about sick and dying chickens or ducks around the globe, you might ask yourself questions like these:

In the event a bird-flu pandemic hits the human population, should we force doctors and nurses to stand on the front lines and fight the disease, or let them seek safer ground?

Who should we treat with available medicines and who should do without?

Who should we quarantine, ban, turn away or jail?

Who should we save and who let die?

A global flu outbreak — avian or otherwise — would not only stretch the world's health-care apparatus past all normal limits, most experts concede, but it would test our ethical frameworks to their very core.

And yet as the word pandemic becomes part of our daily discourse, we are watching, waiting and worrying in a near ethical vacuum, says a group of medical ethicists from the University of Toronto.

Even as we feverishly prepare medical and public health strategies to combat an outbreak, ethical questions that could help structure optimal responses, and create a public willingness to accept them, have yet to be discussed, let alone answered, says a report from U of T's Joint Centre for Bioethics.

That might begin to change with last week's release of the group's 26-page "Ethical Considerations in Preparedness Planning for Pandemic Influenza," which is meant to inform discussions on such outbreaks both here and around the world.

"It's not going to be the individual ... technical (public health) decisions that are going to hold our society together in the face of an immense struggle with an influenza pandemic," says Dr. Peter Singer, a U of T bioethicist and one of the report's key authors.

"It's going to be a shared set of values, a shared ethical framework that's going to be the glue that will hold together societies struggling with enormously difficult choices."

Singer points to Toronto's harrowing experience with severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003 as an example of where the lack of ethical underpinnings to the overall response lead to the greatest public and professional dissatisfaction.

"In the first week or so, everything was technical, people were making decisions about masks and drugs and stuff like that," he says. These technical concerns, however, soon gave way to pressing ethical worries.

"By week two of SARS, it started to have more and more to do with ethics," he says. "Should that public official have identified that person on the train who may have had SARS was just one ... example."

With its SARS experience, Singer says, Ontario has taken a global lead in formulating ethical plans and responses to pandemics — something the World Health Organization just this month directed all countries and jurisdictions to consider.

The report generally refrains from offering hard and fast answers to inevitable pandemic dilemmas, preferring instead to provide a broad set of guidelines with which governments, public health officials, medical associations and citizens might formulate ethical rules.

But it does identify four key ethical issues that must be addressed in any pandemic planning exercise and lays out some of the major arguments likely to arise under each category.

The key categories include:

#
The duty of health workers to provide care in the face of a lethal infectious disease.

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The extent to which normal rights and liberties of a population can be suspended.

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The allocation of scarce medical supplies and hospital space.

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The global implications of such things as international travel advisories.

In each of these instances, the report's main goal is to guide serious conversations among stakeholder groups.

"On the duty to care issue, for example, we're recommending that organizations like nurses associations, medical associations and hospitals get absolutely clear on what the minimum expectations are," says report author Dr. Ross Upshur, director of primary care research at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre.

"But we have neither the authority nor the capacity to make strict normative recommendations for what individual health-care providers should do. We're trying to promote discussion."

I'm trying to promote that discussion. If pandemic happens, it will present us with public ethical dilemmas on a level we have rarely seen before.

Multiculteralism at the Table

Here is Tyler Cowen's DC DC ethnic dining guide. I'm posting this for the locals but also for economists who have a take on his theories of globalization. This overview is terrific, by the way, though I'm a critic of Tyler's economic take on globalization.

A note for economists: opening a restaurant, in any culture, is about the most minimal economic entrepreneurial activity a person can do. With the exception of the big, fine dining places, restaurants make a couple of percent, at best, over costs. Costs can be cut by employing a lot of family at below prevailing wages, but this is a marginal economic business for more than 90% of the people who open a restaurant. Most will close in the first year, few will survive for ten years. Anybody who knows restaurants knows this. Thought you'd want to know.

Grilling Away

Who knew that the Weber kettle people had a chain of restaurants around Chicago? I'll add this to my foody list of places to visit.

Here is the menu home page. If you live in Chicagoland or will be there soon, I'd appreciate a review.

Finger Food for Hanukah

I love the cheese versions of these:

Sambusak Sephardic Pastries - dairy, meat

"Sambusak are the most popular Syrian-Sephardic pastries, and are eaten
throughout the year. Cheese is the traditional filling for Hanukkah,
meat for the Sabbath. This recipe makes a lot of pastries, but they
freeze perfectly, so you can enjoy sambusak at any time.

"If you are making cheese sambusak, use butter in the filling because
these pastries will be eaten at a dairy meal. If you make meat sambusak,
you must make the pastry with margarine, according to dietary laws."
Lyn Stallworth and Rod Kennedy, Jr.

Dough

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter or margarine, at room temperature
1/2 cup cold water
½ cup sesame seeds

Cheese Filling

1-1/2 pounds Muenster cheese, grated
3 lightly beaten eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups sesame seeds

Meat Filling

1 cup finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound chopped kosher shoulder beef
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup pine nuts

To make the pastry, first combine the flour and salt. Using an electric
mixer, cream the butter or margarine and gradually blend in the flour
mixture. Add the water. Knead until a ball forms. Let the dough rest as
you prepare one of the fillings.

To make the cheese filling, mix all ingredients together well.

To make the meat filling, saute the onion in oil until soft and
translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the chopped meat and brown it,
breaking it up with a wooden spoon, about 20 minutes. Let meat cool,
then add the spices and pine nuts. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Spread the 1/2 cup of sesame seeds on a large plate. Break off walnut
size pieces of dough. Shape each into a ball and dip it lightly on one
side into the sesame seeds, then roll it, seed side down, into a 3-inch
round.

Place a teaspoon of filling in the center of the round. Fold it over to
make a half-moon and crimp the edges together tightly so that filling
will not burst through. (Sambusak can be frozen at this point. Place
them in a single layer on a tray lined with wax paper and freeze them.
Place frozen sambusak in double plastic bags and return them to the
freezer.

To bake frozen pastries, place them on ungreased baking sheets and bake
for 20 minutes in a 400 degree F. oven, or until golden.) Place pastries
on ungreased baking sheets and bake them for 15 to 20 minutes, or until
golden.

Yield: about 60 pastries

Festival of Lights

I'm mindful of the fact that Christmas isn't the only winter holiday in the offing. I love Hanukah, too, and have been experimenting with potato pancake recipes this year (I eat them all year long...) I found this recipe, it's a little different, but it's pareve (for those of you who need to think about kashrut) and very tasty. It means you can have some turkey bacon or chicken sausage with it

Yes, I keep a lit menorah on my mantel over Hanukah. It's worth remembering, once in a while, that the way I frame the human longing for the transcendent is not the only way it is done. And the Hanukah story is a compelling human story. The link will take you there and to other links to a number of Hanukah traditions popular in the west. Hanukah coincides with Christmas this year, so remember your Jewish friends by sending a Hanukah card with your other holiday cards.

I've been doing some messing around with Sephardic Hanukah recipes this year, so some of them might show up here, as well, as we approach the holidays. The Moroccan Jews have some really interesting food ideas, but some of the ingredients are a little hard to find.

Latkes: Famous Funky Electric "Oy Vey, These Are Good!" - pareve

1 medium to large-sized sweet potato, scrubbed
1 small white baking potato, peeled, or two red russet potatoes
(prefered), scrubbed as well
1-2 green onions
1/2 cup grated apple, red (make sure the skins were still on when you
grated them)
1 large egg
whatever else on the spice rack looks good
Pecans, chopped (optional)

Coarsely grate all the potatoes using a cheese grater. Make the white
potato slightly finer than the sweet potato. Finely chop the green onions, using only the dark green part at the top. Remember you're using apple and sweet potatoes, so less is probably more when it comes to the onions. These are basically just for color.

Now, mix up the apple, onion, and potatoes and spread on a clean cloth . Fold the cloth up and twist it so the water comes out. (Do all of this quickly because the white potato and the apple will turn brown after about 15 minutes.)

Mix, mix, mix. Using a really big bowl, mix the ingredients with the egg and maybe some flour or Matzoh meal . We chose cornmeal. Using a big spoon, drop Tbsps of latke batter onto a skillet of oil over medium heat. Use the back of the spoon to press lightly on the latke to flatten it. (Some people prefer their latkes to be perfectly round. We prefer them to be free-form and unique.) You may want to coat the spoon in flour before you do this.

Cook the latke for about 4 minutes, turn it, cook for another 2 minutes or so.
This is really important because you want the latke to be soft and sweet
inside but a little crunchy on the outside. When it looks as though it might be in danger of being burned, that's when you take it out. Drain it on a paper towel and serve with apple butter and sour cream.
They're actually really good with softened cream cheese as well.

This recipe was adapted from a recipe for salmon patties, so if you
substitute salmon for the sweet potato and add more onion, you've
got Funky Electric Salmon Patties,

Hanukah is all about the cooking oil, so buy a good quality Extra Virgin Olive oil that's pressed to be a saute oil, rather than a salad oil. If you prefer something lighter, canola is a good choice.

Christmas Dinner

I went through a period of many years where making sauerbraten with roesti potatoes and red cabbage was the Christmas day dinner of choice. I remember spending Christmas afternoon one year on the search for the onion I'd forgotten to buy the day before (learning experience: 7-11 doesn't carry produce.) My ex and I ended up at a Iranian kabob place in the next suburb over from us. He went in and tried to buy an onion. The host laughed when he heard the situation. He gave my ex the onion and extracted a promise that he'd bring me back to eat dinner. We did go for dinner in January.

As you surely know by now, I do love ethnic food. Probably the first foreign cuisine (outside of take-out Chinese) I experienced was German. I studied German in high school and belonged to the German Club, which took an excursion each year where we hosted the Spanish Club at the one German restaurant in Minneapolis (now long gone, sadly.) Spurred by the food I fell in love with, I've been experimenting with German cuisine ever since.

Sauerbraten

Approximately 4 pounds rump or boneless bottom round roast
2 onions, sliced
8 peppercorns
4 whole cloves
1 bay leaf
1 cup white distilled vinegar
1 cup water
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup water, boiling
10 gingersnap cookies, crushed
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1. Place a boneless rump roast in a deep ceramic or glass bowl. Add thinly sliced onions, peppercorns, whole cloves, and bay leaf. Pour vinegar, water, and cider vinegar over the meat; chill, covered, for 4 days. Turn the meat twice each day.
2. Remove the meat from the marinade, pat dry, and strain the marinade into a bowl. Reserve the onions and 1 cup of the marinade.
3. In a kettle over medium-high heat, brown the roast on all sides in oil. Sprinkle with salt and pour boiling water around the meat. Sprinkle in crushed gingersnap cookies, and simmer covered for 1-1/2 hours. Turn often.
4. Add the reserved marinade and cook the roast for 2 hours, or until tender. Remove the meat; keep warm. Strain the cooking juices into a large saucepan.
5. In a small bowl, mix sour cream with flour. Stir into the cooking juices and cook, stirring, until sauce is thickened and smooth. Slice the meat and add to the hot gravy.

Makes 8 servings.

ROSTI (SWISS FRIED POTATOES)

2 lbs. potatoes
3 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. milk

It is important that the potatoes be cooked at least 1 day before hand. They must be pressed together in the pan like a round loaf and covered with a soup bowl or a tightly fitting lid. Rosti must not be stirred, otherwise they will not form a crust. Boil the unpeeled potatoes until semi-tender the day before preparation. Peel and grate.

Heat butter in skillet. Add potatoes and sprinkle with salt. Using a spatula, press into a round loaf. Sprinkle with milk and cover tightly. Reduce heat as soon as potatoes begin to sizzle. Fry very slowly for another 30 minutes. During this time, a brown crust will form. Cover pan with a hot platter and flip the Rosti onto it.

Rotkohl mit Apfel und Speck (Red Cabbage with apples and bacon)

Can be made day before and reheated. 1/2 c. red wine vinegar 1 tbsp. sugar Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste 1/4 lb. lean bacon, thickly sliced 3 med. cooking apple 1 lg. onion, thinly sliced 1/2 c. dry red wine 1/4 c. chopped fresh parsley

Cut the cabbage into quarters; remove the core from each piece and cut the cabbage on a vegetable slicing machine or with a large chef's knife into the tiniest possible shred. Pile them into a bowl.

Heat the vinegar and when it is hot, pour it over the cabbage and toss the cabbage lightly - it will barely coat it. Add the sugar, salt, and pepper and toss again. Set the cabbage aside for 15 minutes.

Set the oven at 350 degrees. Cut the bacon into 1-inch pieces. In a large skillet render the bacon until it is golden brown, then transfer bacon to paper toweling to drain. Add a few spoonfuls of the bacon fat to a 3-4 quart casserole (large enough to hold the cabbage and apples). Swirl the dish all around so the bottom and sides are coated with fat.

Peel, core and thickly slice the apples. Add the cabbage to the dish, layering it with the apples, onion and bacon pieces. Pour the red wine in at the top, cover the casserole with a tight fitting lid and transfer it to the oven.

Let the cabbage cook, stirring occasionally, for 1/1 4 to 1 1/2 hours or until it is quite tender but still has some crunch. Add more salt and pepper if necessary; stir in the parsley and transfer the cabbage to a warm covered dish. Serve at once. Serves 8.

This sauerbraten recipe is also excellent in the crock pot, and that is my preferred way of cooking it, although I've reproduced the classic recipe here. You are going to need to taste as you go to make sure that the sauce has the right combination of wine/vinegar/ginger for you.

The King of Beef Roast Sides

Growing up, a standing rib roast of beef was a rare treat, but one of the most treasured. My mother had cultivated a couple of superb butchers who knew how to trim it just the way she wanted it and loosen the ribs and chine so that she could remove them herself after cooking without needing a cleaver. Mom always served the beef (medium rare) with traditional yorkshire puddings. Once you've had them, you'll never want a beef roast without them.

This recipe serves them stuffed with thinly sliced roast, but the Brits eat them as a side covered with winey au jus (the way I prefer) or even with jam as a sweet.

Mini roast beef and Yorkshire puddings

Makes 24 puddings

Preparation time less than 30 mins

Cooking time 10 to 30 mins

ngredients
joint of beef, roasted to taste
6 cup muffin tray
beef fat
6 eggs
1 egg white
450g/½lb self-raising flour
290ml/½ pint of milk

Method
1. Preheat beef fat in the muffin trays, at 220C/425F/Gas7 until piping hot.
2. In a bowl whisk together the flour, egg yolks and milk
3. When mixed, add the egg white (adding the egg white when mixed will guarantee that your Yorkshire puddings will always be extra light and fluffy)
4. Cook in oven at 200C/400F/Gas6 for about 10 minutes, or until the Yorkshire puddings are risen and golden brown.
5. Thinly slice the beef (cooked to taste) and fold into the centre of the Yorkshire puddings.
6. Add a dollop of fresh, creamed horseradish. Finish off with drizzle of red wine jus and a sprig of continental fresh parsley.

NB - the red wine jus is simply made by mixing a little red wine with the seasoned juices from the beef.

You'll need enough rendered beef fat from the roast to line each muffic cup to a depth of an eigth inch. These will cook while the beef is resting before you are ready to carve it. The serving suggestion, while not the way I ate it growing up, is delicious. The puddings should come out of the oven just as the beef is ready to slice and plate. They need to be served immediately. Traditionally, the Brits serve fresh, shelled boiled green peas with this combination.

In some places in the UK, the pudding is served as a first course, but most places serve as a side dish to the beef, and as a sop for the beef juices on your plate.

If the scary price of a standing rib roast and fear of ruining that expensive meat keep you from trying to cook one, be not afraid. It isn't hard to make a great one. To make it really easy, use my favorite, the roemertopf which will guarantee you a juicy, flavorfull roast.

Monday and Tuesday school lunches (we carried ours) after a Sunday rib roast dinner were something to look forward to. I was always dieting in high school (yes, mom still made our lunches in high school) so, rather than sandwiches, mom would thread strips of medium rare roast onto toothpicks and put them into (the then brand new) Ziplock bags. With an orange and some Jello (I still love lime) that was a pretty nice lunch.

You might find this difficult to believe, but I rarely eat meat anymore, as much as I love beef. Advancing age means I have to keep an eye on my cholesterol. But when I do eat meat, I make a production out of it.

If you live alone or are just two, you can ask the butcher to cut you a two or three rib roast. That'll give you enough for dinner plus a little bit of leftovers (2 days of lunch), just make sure it is from the loin end.

I grew up within sniffing distance of the stockyards in South St. Paul and the local beef was among the best in the US. The supermarket beef I can find around here can't hold a candle to it.

Making things worse

The income gap grows

The spread between the rich and the rest has been growing for decades. Current policies will only make it worse.
By Robert H. Frank
Posted on Sun, Nov. 27, 2005

Although income inequality has increased sharply in recent decades, it has always been greater here than in other industrial democracies. Can a case be made for it? Many have described inequality as the price we must pay to achieve high rates of economic growth.

The evidence, however, suggests otherwise. As economists Alberto Alesina and Dani Rodrik have found, for example, growth rates across countries are negatively related to the share of national income going to top earners.

Others have portrayed inequality as a necessary condition for socioeconomic mobility, arguing that people who are willing to work hard and play by the rules face a better chance of making it to the top here than in any other country. But here, too, the evidence suggests otherwise. Even as economic inequality has been rising, social mobility has been declining. According to sociologist David Wright, the probability that a child born to parents in the third quartile of the income distribution would move up into the top quartile was only half as large in 1998 as in 1973. Economist Thomas Hertz has found that children whose parents are in the bottom fifth of the income distribution have only a 7.3 percent chance of making it into the top fifth. In contrast, children born in the top fifth have a 42.3 percent chance of remaining there. Contrary to popular impressions, socioeconomic mobility is now lower in the United Stated than in most other industrialized countries.

Although the market forces that have been producing higher inequality show no signs of abating, Republicans in Congress are now calling for an additional $70 billion in tax cuts aimed largely at high-income families, arguing that because the most prosperous Americans have worked hard, they are entitled to keep a greater portion of their pretax incomes. But tens of millions of less prosperous Americans have worked hard, too. And in winner-take-all markets, examples abound in which some earn thousands of times more than others just as talented and hardworking.

The economist Herbert Stein once said, if something cannot go on forever, it won't. History has repeatedly demonstrated that societies can tolerate income inequality only up to a point, beyond which they rapidly disintegrate. Numerous governments in Latin America have been overthrown largely because of social unrest rooted in income inequality. And in a survey of more than a quarter of a million randomly selected individuals worldwide, economist Robert MacCulloch found that people in countries with high income inequality were much more likely to voice support for violent revolution.

Major social upheavals are sometimes preceded by years or even decades of rising levels of social unrest. If such unrest is currently building in the United States, it remains well-hidden. But as recent experience has made clear, social upheavals often occur with virtually no warning. Almost no one predicted the fall of the Eastern European governments in 1989. Because revolutions almost always entail important elements of social contagion, even small changes can launch political prairie fires once a tipping point is reached.

Who says the economy is doing well? They conveniently only measure those items that show the rich getting richer...at our expense.

Disintegration

Abuse worse than under Saddam, says Iraqi leader

· Allawi in damning indictment of new regime
· Bush prepares way for US troop pull-out

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday November 27, 2005

Observer

Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country's first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam's regime.

'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.'

In a damning and wide-ranging indictment of Iraq's escalating human rights catastrophe, Allawi accused fellow Shias in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres. The brutality of elements in the new security forces rivals that of Saddam's secret police, he said.

Allawi, who was a strong ally of the US-led coalition forces and was prime minister until this April, made his remarks as further hints emerged yesterday that President George Bush is planning to withdraw up to 40,000 US troops from the country next year, when Iraqi forces will be capable of taking over.

Allawi's bleak assessment is likely to undermine any attempt to suggest that conditions in Iraq are markedly improving.

'We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,' he added. 'A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.'

He said that immediate action was needed to dismantle militias that continue to operate with impunity. If nothing is done, 'the disease infecting [the Ministry of the Interior] will become contagious and spread to all ministries and structures of Iraq's government', he said.

In a chilling warning to the West over the danger of leaving behind a disintegrating Iraq, Allawi added: 'Iraq is the centrepiece of this region. If things go wrong, neither Europe nor the US will be safe.'

His uncompromising comments came on the eve of Saddam's latest court appearance on charges of crimes against humanity. They seem certain to fuel the growing sense of crisis over Iraq, both in the country itself and in the US, where political support for the occupation continues to plummet.

Some of us knew this was going to be a disaster well before we began bombing.

What was not a lie?

Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ...

By Frank Rich
The New York Times
Sunday 27 November 2005

The more we learn about the road to Iraq, the more we realize that it's a losing game to ask what lies the White House told along the way. A simpler question might be: What was not a lie? The situation recalls Mary McCarthy's explanation to Dick Cavett about why she thought Lillian Hellman was a dishonest writer: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.' "

If Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney believe they were truthful in the run-up to the war, it's easy for them to make their case. Instead of falsely claiming that they've been exonerated by two commissions that looked into prewar intelligence - neither of which addressed possible White House misuse and mischaracterization of that intelligence - they should just release the rest of the President's Daily Briefs and other prewar documents that are now trickling out. Instead, incriminatingly enough, they are fighting the release of any such information, including unclassified documents found in post-invasion Iraq requested from the Pentagon by the pro-war, neocon Weekly Standard. As Scott Shane reported in The New York Times last month, Vietnam documents are now off limits, too: the National Security Agency won't make public a 2001 historical report on how American officials distorted intelligence in 1964 about the Gulf of Tonkin incident for fear it might "prompt uncomfortable comparisons" between the games White Houses played then and now to gin up wars.

Sooner or later - probably sooner, given the accelerating pace of recent revelations - this embarrassing information will leak out anyway. But the administration's deliberate efforts to suppress or ignore intelligence that contradicted its Iraq crusade are only part of the prewar story. There were other shadowy stations on the disinformation assembly line. Among them were the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, a two-man Pentagon operation specifically created to cherry-pick intelligence for Mr. Cheney's apocalyptic Iraqi scenarios, and the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), in which Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and the Cheney hands Lewis Libby and Mary Matalin, among others, plotted to mainline this propaganda into the veins of the press and public. These murky aspects of the narrative - like the role played by a private P.R. contractor, the Rendon Group, examined by James Bamford in the current Rolling Stone - have yet to be recounted in full.

No debate about the past, of course, can undo the mess that the administration made in Iraq. But the past remains important because it is a road map to both the present and the future. Leaders who dissembled then are still doing so. Indeed, they do so even in the same speeches in which they vehemently deny having misled us then - witness Mr. Bush's false claims about what prewar intelligence was seen by Congress and Mr. Cheney's effort last Monday to again conflate the terrorists of 9/11 with those "making a stand in Iraq." (Maj. Gen. Douglas Lute, director of operations for Centcom, says the Iraqi insurgency is 90 percent homegrown.) These days Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney routinely exaggerate the readiness of Iraqi troops, much as they once inflated Saddam's W.M.D.'s.

The bigger they lie the harder they fall.

And They're Off!

Weekend's Sales Rush Largely Bypasses Smaller Stores

By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: November 27, 2005

As the nation's retail executives began poring over - and in some cases, despairing over - sales receipts from the holiday weekend, one pattern was hard to miss: consumers mobbed discount chains, with their $487 laptops and 5 a.m. openings, but largely shopped right past smaller stores at the mall.

The figures, analysts said, could indicate a tough season ahead for specialty clothing retailers like the Gap and Aeropostale and even deeper discounts for shoppers as the chains scramble to build momentum in the crucial period leading up to Christmas.

"The specialty guys just got outgunned this time around," said John D. Morris, a retail analyst at Harris Nesbitt.

ShopperTrak, which measures purchases at 45,000 mall-based merchants, found that sales for the day after Thanksgiving fell 0.9 percent from last year, to $8.01 billion.

The drop contrasted sharply with rosy reports from discount chains with locations outside the malls. Wal-Mart reported that a record 10 million shoppers had walked through its doors before noon Friday. In a prerecorded phone call over the weekend, the discount giant said that Friday sales had "exceeded plans" and that consumers continued to shop after deep discounts ended at noon.

One possible explanation for the in-the-mall, outside-the-mall disparity: discount chains, led by Wal-Mart, blitzed consumers with advertising before Thanksgiving, opened their stores earlier than last year and offered the most buzzed-about discounts, like a $188 dollar 15-inch flat-panel television set (at Circuit City) and a $77 digital camera (at Staples.)

I haven't checked in with the family to see how their opening weekend went. I'll make that call later today. I never go shopping during this weekend, I'm a practitioner of "buy nothing" weekend.

Coarsening the Culture

This article is a mess and I'm surprised that it got by the minimal levels demanded by NYT editors, but there is some mother wit in it if you can stand to read through the initial disaster.

Kids Gone Wild

By JUDITH WARNER

Parenting today is also largely about training children to compete - in school and on the soccer field - and the kinds of attributes they need to be competitive are precisely those that help break down society's civility.

Parents who want their children to succeed more than anything, Dr. Kindlon said, teach them to value and prioritize achievement above all else - including other people.

"We're insane about achievement," he said. "Schoolwork is up 50 percent since 1981, and we're so obsessed with our kids getting into the right school, getting the right grades, we let a lot of things slide. Kids don't do chores at home anymore because there isn't time."

And other adults, even those who should have authority, are afraid to get involved. "Nobody feels entitled to discipline other people's kids anymore," Dr. Kindlon said. "They don't feel they have the right if they see a kid doing something wrong to step in."

Educators feel helpless, too: Nearly 8 in 10 teachers, according to the 2004 Public Agenda report, said their students were quick to remind them that they had rights or that their parents could sue if they were too harshly disciplined. More than half said they ended up being soft on discipline "because they can't count on parents or schools to support them."

And that, Dr. Rosenfeld said, strikes at the heart of the problem. "Parents are out of control," he said. "We always want to blame the kids, but if there's something wrong with their incivility, it's the way their parents model for them."

There's also the chance, said Wendy Mogel, a clinical psychologist whose 2001 book, "The Blessing of a Skinned Knee," has earned her a cult following, that when children are rude, obnoxious and outrageously behaved, they're trying to tell parents something - something they've got to shout in order for them to hear.

"These kids are so extremely stressed from the academic load they're carrying and how cloistered they are and how they have to live under the watchful eye of their parents," Dr. Mogel said. "They have no kid space."

Paradoxically, she said, parental over-involvement in their children's lives today often hides a very basic kind of indifference to their children's real need, simply to be kids. "There are all these blurry boundaries," she said. "They need to do fifth-grade-level math in third grade and have every pleasure and indulgence of adulthood in childhood and they act like kids and we get mad."

If stress and strain, self-centeredness and competition are the pathogens underlying the rash of rudeness perceived to be endemic among children in America today, then the cure, some experts said, has to be systemic and not topical. Stop blaming the children, they said. Stop focusing on the surface level of behavior and start curing instead the social, educational and parental ills that feed it.

This may mean less "quality" time with children and more time getting them to do things they don't want to do, like sitting for meals, making polite conversation and - Madonna was right - picking their clothes up off the floor.

This is the reason I got out of teaching.

Domestic Spying

Pentagon Expanding Its Domestic Surveillance Activity
Fears of Post-9/11 Terrorism Spur Proposals for New Powers

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 27, 2005; Page A06

The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world.

The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts -- including protecting military facilities from attack -- to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage.

The Pentagon has pushed legislation on Capitol Hill that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information gathered about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies, as long as the data is deemed to be related to foreign intelligence. Backers say the measure is needed to strengthen investigations into terrorism or weapons of mass destruction.

The proposals, and other Pentagon steps aimed at improving its ability to analyze counterterrorism intelligence collected inside the United States, have drawn complaints from civil liberties advocates and a few members of Congress, who say the Defense Department's push into domestic collection is proceeding with little scrutiny by the Congress or the public.

"We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without even a [congressional] hearing," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a recent interview.

Wyden has since persuaded lawmakers to change the legislation, attached to the fiscal 2006 intelligence authorization bill, to address some of his concerns, but he still believes hearings should be held. Among the changes was the elimination of a provision to let Defense Intelligence Agency officers hide the fact that they work for the government when they approach people who are possible sources of intelligence in the United States.

If this doesn't scare the crap out of you, you aren't paying attention.

Global Roiling

While the scientific jury is still out, there is much to consider here, given the numbers of lives and value of property involved.

The Gathering Winds
A Rise in Deadly Storms Since '95 Has Researchers Worried About the Future

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 27, 2005; A16

Until recently, a rough consensus in the small world of tropical cyclone specialists had held that there was no evidence of unnatural hurricane trends over the 20th century. Hurricane activity over the Atlantic has fluctuated naturally over decades going back as far as 1900, and it was unlikely that global warming could be having a significant impact, many researchers said.

But a pair of scientific papers published this year detected an unexpected spike in storm intensity over the past several decades, suggesting that global warming might already be having an effect. The research set off a passionate and sometimes personal debate in the small community of storm scientists.

"In the sense of the history of scientific ideas, we're either in the middle of a paradigm shift or a false paradigm shift," said Hugh Willoughby, the former director of hurricane research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "The situation would be deliciously ambiguous if there were not thousands of lives and billions of dollars on the table."

Besides adding weight to the argument that global warming could be having catastrophic effects, the findings spell more trouble for U.S. coastal areas vulnerable to fierce storms, where the population is rising fast. The risks are being borne by all U.S. taxpayers. Already, the federal government has been asked repeatedly for hurricane relief money.

"We have to decide as a society whether that's a problem," Pielke said. "Obviously, the benefits of living near the coast outweigh the costs because people are doing it. The question is: In the face of inevitable property damage and loss of life, how well do we prepare?

"Either way," he noted, "we are going to see many more years of intense hurricanes. Scientists on both sides agree on that."

The difference between the two scientific views is whether hurricane activity will simply fluctuate over time, as it apparently has done in the past, or whether global warming will inexorably ramp up the damage.

The opening skirmish in the debate began when Kerry Emanuel, a well-known researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, changed his mind. In July, he withdrew from a paper reflecting the consensus view that there was little evidence of a significant connection in the historical record. In an e-mail, he wrote to a co-author that "the problem for me is that I cannot sign on to a paper which makes statements I no longer believe are true."

"I see a large global warming signal in hurricanes," he wrote.

The next month, he published a paper in Nature considering 50 years of storm data and stating that indeed, hurricanes in the Atlantic and North Pacific were becoming more powerful. By a special measure of hurricane power he had defined for other research, they had roughly doubled in power over 30 years. Significantly, the increase tracked with the rise in sea surface temperatures.

There was more to come. In September, a group of scientists led by Peter Webster at Georgia Tech found that, worldwide, the number of the strongest hurricanes -- categories 4 and 5 -- has nearly doubled over the past 35 years. The authors aligned the finding with global warming and a rise in sea surface temperatures.

"Our work is consistent with the concept that there is a relationship between increasing sea surface temperature and hurricane intensity," Webster said at the time.

But he also noted that the findings did not perfectly fit with global warming. "It's difficult to explain," he said, why, when sea surface temperatures were rising the most in the past decade, the number of hurricanes and their longevity decreased.

Even with such cautions, however, reaction to the papers was immediate and powerful.

Honor, Duty, Country

Fair Use means that I can't quote this entire story, but you should read the whole thing. I find it interesting that only the LAT picked this up today.

A Journey That Ended in Anguish
# Col. Ted Westhusing, a military ethicist who volunteered to go to Iraq, was upset by what he saw. His apparent suicide raises questions.

By T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a single gunshot wound to the head.

The Army would conclude that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq.

The Army closed its case. But the questions surrounding Westhusing's death continue.

Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before he died, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an investigation.

In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.

His death stunned all who knew him. Colleagues and commanders wondered whether they had missed signs of depression. He had been losing weight and not sleeping well. But only a day before his death, Westhusing won praise from a senior officer for his progress in training Iraqi police.

His friends and family struggle with the idea that Westhusing could have killed himself. He was a loving father and husband and a devout Catholic. He was an extraordinary intellect and had mastered ancient Greek and Italian. He had less than a month before his return home. It seemed impossible that anything could crush the spirit of a man with such a powerful sense of right and wrong.

On the Internet and in conversations with one another, Westhusing's family and friends have questioned the military investigation.

A note found in his trailer seemed to offer clues. Written in what the Army determined was his handwriting, the colonel appeared to be struggling with a final question.

How is honor possible in a war like the one in Iraq?

How is honor possible in war which violates the Geneva conventions?

Bill of Rights on the Trash Heap

In Terror Cases, Administration Sets Own Rules

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: November 27, 2005

When Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced last week that Jose Padilla would be transferred to the federal justice system from military detention, he said almost nothing about the standards the administration used in deciding whether to charge terrorism suspects like Mr. Padilla with crimes or to hold them in military facilities as enemy combatants. Skip to next paragraph Multimedia Graphic Six High-Profile Terrorism Cases Six High-Profile Terrorism Cases

"We take each individual, each case, case by case," Mr. Gonzales said.

The upshot of that approach, underscored by the decision in Mr. Padilla's case, is that no one outside the administration knows just how the determination is made whether to handle a terror suspect as an enemy combatant or as a common criminal, to hold him indefinitely without charges in a military facility or to charge him in court.

Indeed, citing the need to combat terrorism, the administration has argued, with varying degrees of success, that judges should have essentially no role in reviewing its decisions. The change in Mr. Padilla's status, just days before the government's legal papers were due in his appeal to the Supreme Court, suggested to many legal observers that the administration wanted to keep the court out of the case.

"The position of the executive branch," said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University who has consulted with lawyers for several detainees, "is that it can be judge, jury and executioner."

The government says a secret and unilateral decision-making process is necessary because of the nature of the evidence it deals with. Officials described the approach as a practical one that weighs a mix of often-sensitive factors.

"Much thought goes into how and why various tools are used in these often complicated cases," Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said on Friday. "The important thing is for someone not to come away thinking this whole process is arbitrary, which it is not."

Among the factors the government considers, Ms. Scolinos said, are "national security interests, the need to gather intelligence and the best and quickest way to obtain it, the concern about protecting intelligence sources and methods and ongoing information gathering, the ability to use information as evidence in a criminal proceeding, the circumstances of the manner in which the individual was detained, the applicable criminal charges, and classified-evidence issues."

Lawyers for people in terrorism investigations say a list of factors to be considered cannot substitute for bright-line standards announced in advance.

The courts have given the executive branch substantial but not total deference, often holding that the president has the authority to designate enemy combatants but allowing those detained to challenge the factual basis for the administration's determinations. Some courts have suggested that a detainee's citizenship, the place he was captured and whether he was fighting American troops should play a role in how aggressively the courts review enemy-combatant designations.

The current administration thinks our constitution isn't robust enough to try such people under ordinary circumstances and want for itself truly regal powers. These people scare the crap out of me. Nixon was never able to arrogate such power to himself.

Real Food

Any native Norleanean will tell you that you need quatre epices with this, but the rest of the recipe is pretty accurate, according to the lady who taught me to cook Nawrleans.

Boudin Blanc"

Boudin blanc (or "white boudin") is a Cajun sausage stuffed
with pork and rice. It's one of those food products that originated in
frugality; the rice was meant to stretch the meat. Now, it's a unique
and delicious treat all its own.

3 pounds boneless pork butt or shoulder, in large chunks
1 pound pork liver
3 cups raw long grain rice
4 medium yellow onions, quartered
2 bunches green onions, chopped
1 tablespoon garlic, finely minced
4 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons white pepper

Place the pork and pork liver in separate saucepans, cover with water,
then bring to a boil. Reduce heat, skim and simmer until tender, about 1
hour. Cook the rice.

Remove the cooked pork and liver and let cool. Discard the liver stock.
Reserve 1 pint of the pork stock and discard the rest. Put the pork,
liver and onions through a meat grinder with a medium disc, or grind it
coarse in a food processor. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and mix
in the green onions, garlic, parsley, salt, peppers and cooked rice.
Adjust seasonings.

For traditional boudin, stuff into sausage casings. Boudin links are
generally about a foot long. You can also serve it out of the casing as
a rice dressing.

To heat and serve boudin, place in a 350 oven for 10-15 minutes, until
the boudin is heated through and the skin is crackly. Serve hot, with
crackers and beer.

Here's a version without the liver:

1-1/2 yards small sausage casing
1 pound lean, fresh pork
1 pound fresh pork fat
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup finely chopped onion
5 tablespoons finely minced fresh parsley
1 tablespoon finely minced garlic
1/3 cup thinly sliced green onion tops
1/3 cup water (approximately)
1 pound white poultry meat (leftover is fine)
3 cups cooked, long grain white rice
1/2 teaspoon sage
4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon ground thyme
1/8 teaspoon mace
Tiny pinch (1/16 teaspoon) allspice
1/4 cup water, more if necessary


Cut the pork and fat into small pieces and put them into a heavy, 5-6
quart saucepan along with the cream, onion, parsley, garlic, green onion
tops and seasonings. Add about 1/3 cup water. Cook over high heat until
the mixture begins to boil. Quickly reduce the heat to low, and cook for
about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat.

Cut up the poultry meat and add it to the contents of the saucepan, along
with the cooked rice. Mix thoroughly, drain in a colander and let cool
for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, cut the sausage casings into 20-inch
lengths, then stuff using the coarse blade of a meat grinder.

To cook, place the boudin in a medium heavy skillet or sauté pan.
Curl it around to fit. Turn the heat to low, add about 1/4 cup water
and cook very slowly over low heat for about 20 minutes, until piping
hot. Turn the boudin over several times and stir frequently, scraping
the bottom of the skillet to prevent sticking.

Add a few tablespoons of water, if necessary. As the casing breaks open,
move the torn pieces to the side of the pan. To serve, spoon the
semi-liquid mixture onto heated plates. Allow about 1/2 pound boudin per
person.

Eat cheap and eat well, I always say. Serve this with dirty rice and a salad of wild field greens dressed with spicy cilantro vinagraitte. Pass some goat cheese and thinly slice baguette before dinner with a grind of fresh pepper on each round. Your guests will think that you are some kind of genius. For a slighly less formal dinner when you and the guests are all in the kitchen, knocking backsides and trying to stay out of each other's cooking pot, just put out a plate of goat cheese and Triskets. They will stay in the kitchen until the meal is well and truly finished. All the chefs I know can't turn away goat cheese and triskets. Yes, corporate american intrudes into our America, but it tastes pretty damn good. And that is the snare.

Posted by Melanie at 11:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Other White Pasta

Risotto is the king of starches in Northern Italy, and prepared correctly, it deserves the crown. Thankfully, you can buy good arborio rice in even small town these days. Here is how to prepare it correctly and serve it proudly. This is not your mother's Uncle Ben's.

Risotto RulesRisotto Rules
Rice is the Key

I don't think you can say you've really experienced great Italian food until you've had the chance to set your sights on, and touch your tongue to, a great risotto.

Make no bones about it. I'm a single-minded, dedicated, devoted, follower, maker and eater of risotto. Among the rice dishes in my repertoire, risotto rules. Gumbo's great, and I've had some perfectly delicious paellas. And obviously there's an entire encyclopedia about the rice cooking of Asia which is really a whole 'nother rice world. But in my book, the height of rice cooking is risotto.

What's Risotto Anyways?

Risotto is the rice dish of northern Italy. In the north of Italy, up around the Piedmont, Milan, Lombardy, and the area of Venice, rice rules the day.

Rice came to Italy sometime in the 10th century, probably brought to Sicily by Arab conquerors. The north of Italy took to rice farming four to five hundred years later, in an era when plague and famine were making simple survival difficult. The area has remained the premier rice growing and rice eating areas of Italy to this day. In the same way that people in the rest of Italy put plates of piping hot pasta on the table at every main meal, so too do northerners resort to rice.

And more often than not, rice in northern Italy means risotto.

Premise: Risotto is to rice what pasta is to wheat.

An incredibly delicious, relatively simple way to take the natural goodness of the grain to truly great heights by making it the vehicle for all sorts of exceptional ingredients. The result is a dish with a rare combination of grandeur and down to earth goodness that few others can match.

Like pasta, risotto can be made from start to finish in under thirty minutes. Both pasta and risotto are well suited to all sorts of occasions, from fancy meal to simply cleaning out whatever happens to be left over in the refrigerator. Like pasta, risotto is great comfort food. A hot, creamy bowl of risotto is a great way to get through a cold winter night. Like pasta, it can be made with or without meat. They're both great with cheese. And like pasta, risotto seems right to be eaten often. Once you get going on it, you may not get to eat it often enough. I know I don't.

In the north of Italy, up around the Piedmont, Milan, Lombardy, and the area of Venice, rice rules the day.
I would be remiss though, if I didn't set the record straight up front and tell you that making risotto is a little more difficult than making pasta. Not too difficult. But not quite as simple as spaghetti with bottled sauce. Still, once you learn the basic technique for making risotto, you can use it to make dozens of different risottos.

Making great risotto requires attention to both process and content. To help you get at the glories of great risotto, I tried to put down my version of the rules of great risotto making. Like Dorothy on her way to Oz, if you follow the yellow brick road of Risotto Rules, you'll find a healthy ration of risotto recipes that will lead you to a wealth of really optimal eating experiences.

Preview: Risotto Making at a Glance

The process for making all risottos (I ought really to say "risotti," which would be the accurate Italian plural, and would make my Daniela Gobetti my Italian teacher smile)...so the process for making all risotti is essentially the same. Ready?

Here's an overview of a basic risotto recipe just to set the table in your mind:

Start by setting your broth on the burner to heat up. While it's warming, start sautéing a bit of chopped onion and/or garlic (you choose) in a little butter and/or olive oil(again you can decide). When the onion is soft, add the rice. Start stirring. sauté for a few minutes til the rice is well coated with the oil/butter.

Now you're ready to start adding liquid. Many people choose to begin with a glass of wine (in the pot, not in the hand), after which comes the broth. The key to adding the broth is to add a little at a time. And to keep stirring while the rice absorbs it. When it's absorbed, add a little more. Stir. Stir. Add a little more. Stir, stop, stir. Add a little more. Stir, stop, stir. The dish is done about eighteen or so minutes later when the rice is al dente (cooked through, but still a bit firm in the middle). Quickly add your cheese or other ingredients. Stir well. Serve. Eat it while it's hot.

If you're in a hurry, that's enough info to get you going. If you're up for a more in depth look into the pot of risotto making, read on.

Rule #1: Use Italian Rice!!!!

The rice is the key. Simple and straight, if you want to make a great - or even just a good - risotto - you've got to get the right rice. There's no way around it. It's critical. And it's got to be Italian.

I'm not being ethnocentric here. It's just that contrary to the faulty advice you come across in the occasional odd food column, other rices won't make risotto. If you make risotto with non-Italian rice, it may taste good but it won't be risotto. To quote Corby Kummer, writing in The Atlantic, "If you try to make risotto with long-grain rice you will get pilaf, even if you keep stirring and add the broth only as it is absorbed."

You don't need to be an agronomist to tell that Italian rice is different from what you're used to. Italian rice is unlike any other rice I've ever seen or eaten. Pour a little into the palm of your hand; pleasantly plump, oval shaped, white grains. Much fatter than the thin long-grained rice which is what most of us grew up on.

If you look closely, you'll find the biggest part of each grain is nearly transparent, almost opalescent, with that same kind of polished, smooth surface that I remember from when I was a kid, playing with tiny well worn grains of sand on the beach. Inside each grain, you can see a spot of white, la perla ("the pearl"). The pearl at the center is actually less developed starch. The translucent outer part of the grain is the hard, dense starch which bonds so creamily with the broth while the risotto is cooking. The high level of starch (amylopectin) in the grain is what gives Italian rice it's amazing ability to absorb a lot of liquid, yet at the same time retain its integrity - each grain stays independent, yet clings closely, creamily, to its neighbor. No other rice I know of is able to pull off this seemingly contradictory feat. (Spanish rice from Valencia is the closest, but still, it doesn't cook up quite the same.)

Risotto Still Life

Paint a picture of the finished dish:

Round glass bowl with a mound of steaming, stunning , softly gilded, richly creamy, savory rice; each grain still distinct, yet each consciously clinging to its neighbor. The hot risotto is graced with a handful of freshly grated parmesan cheese and a generous twist of coarsely ground black pepper. To the left, green salad dressed with great olive oil and aged red wine vinegar. To the right, a good loaf of Farm Bread (preferably warmed to fight the winter chill). So, eat already! When you bite into a forkful of risotto you'll find a complimentary contrast between the overall creaminess of the dish and the al dente firmness that remains in the heart of each grain of rice. I don't know if I'm quite making my feelings clear here. There is nothing like eating a great risotto for dinner! I love this dish!

Rule # 2: Buy - or Make - Better Broth

It's the broth which is going to be the main liquid you add to the pot. And because the broth is what the rice is "drinking" it only makes sense to feed your rice a healthy, flavorful diet. Better in, better out. So start with a good broth. Homemade is great if you've got the time. If you don't, we'll sell you our homemade chicken broth, or ham stock. And Monahan's in Kerrytown has excellent fish stock for sale.

In all you'll need roughly about three times as much broth by volume as you use dry rice. I find that a quart and a quarter to a quart and a half is about right for a half pound of rice, making two very generous main dish portions, or four to six first course servings.

Shopping for Other Ingredients

There's really three key ingredients to making a great risotto: the rice, the broth, and, much more often than not, cheese.
There's really three key ingredients to making a great risotto: the rice, the broth, and, much more often than not, cheese. And all risotto starts with some onion and either butter or olive oil. Beyond that there's not much to limit what else you can put in. I've yet to find anything reasonable that couldn't be added to a good risotto. Vegetables of any sort, most any cheese, olives, meat, fish, chicken. Vegetables, meat, fish, cheese, cream, herbs, nuts, olives, seafood, saffron, spices.

From my experience though, additional risotto ingredients seem to work well in pairs, threesomes at best. More than four is a crowd that fogs up the flavor of the finished dish. So buy the best, but don't try to fit everything you ever liked to eat into a single potful. (Just make another risotto.)

I ought to mention the wine here. After the rice has been sautéed, most risotto recipes call for the first addition to the pan to be a half a glass of white wine. The wine adds a bit of depth, a touch of extra character, to the finished dish. But I've certainly made perfectly delicious risotto without the wine, so I'll leave the call to you. As always, the better the wine, the better the risotto. Usually though, you'll find yourself using a glass of the open bottle in the refrigerator, or a bit of whatever you're drinking before dinner.

If I had to pick just one recipe, I think my favorite risotto would be one with wild mushrooms and Fontina val D'Aosta cheese. Others on my top ten would be gorgonzola and walnuts; goat cheese and arugula; salmon and saffron; roasted red peppers and pine nuts. Last month I made a great risotto with cape scallops, radicchio and a bit of Olio Agrumato (an incredible oil of lemons and olives.)

Once you've done your shopping you're ready to start preparing the dish.

Impregnate the Rice/Start the Cooking

Start with a wide, heavy pot. You want the rice to have room to roam while the risotto is cooking. Non-stick pots can help keep your rice from sticking, though you'll still have a lot of stirring to do.

Heat a little olive oil and/or butter in the pot. You can use either or both - each has its advocates. I usually use olive oil, but many believe that butter makes better risotto; others advocate using a little of each.

When the oil is hot, sauté a little chopped onion. sauté til it's soft and golden. Add the rice. Don't rinse the rice. Just pour it right out of the bag. A hefty handful, per person, which translates into about 4 ounces (by weight) per person for a generous main dish serving, about 2 ounces per person for a first course. Me, I always like to have a little leftover, so I add an extra shake from the rice bag to the pot.

Stir to coat the rice with oil and sauté it for a couple of minutes. Look into the pot and you'll see a melange of soft golden onion pieces and hard white rice grains. In a couple of minutes, the rice should be hot, glistening with a thin coat of oil or butter. This stage of the cooking - the tostatura - is an important part of what makes risotto so different from most rice cooking we're used to. It serves a pair of purposes. First it seals the rice's high natural starch content into the grain. Secondly it introduces the flavor of the oil and onion into the rice.

In her classic cookbook, "Italian Food," Elizabeth David says to stir the rice in the oil and butter til "it is well impregnated." I love that line! "Impregnate" the rice, and eighteen or so stirring minutes later it's given birth to a creamy, comforting bowl of finished risotto.

Rule #3: Add the Broth Slowly (and keep it hot)

After the rice has been "impregnated," it's time to start adding the broth. You want the broth to be hotter than the rice, so that when you add it to the pot it doesn't cool down the rice, (which would detract from the quality of your risotto) so be sure to bring it to a boil.

Now, before you start adding broth, repeat after me. "Add the broth slowly." "I will not dump all the broth into the pot at one time." You may want to. But you won't. I'm sure it will cross your mind, as it used to do mine, to just dump the liquid in the pot in one fell swoop, and get it over with. But fight the temptation. Your risotto won't be the same.

Now, before you start adding broth, repeat after me. "Add the broth slowly." "I will not dump all the broth into the pot at one time."
So, remember, add the broth slowly. Let's say a two ounce ladelful at a time. Enough so that the rice stays wet, surrounded by small rivulets of boiling broth, but never so much that it runs the risk of drowning. You don't want to see "large bodies of water" in the pot. Just small rivers running 'round the rice as it simmers. When the rice has absorbed all the liquid from the last ladelful, add another one. Keep stirring. Keep going.

Rule # 4: Keep the Rice Pot Hot.

How hot is hot enough? When you add the first bit of liquid it should literally go up in smoke. Well, let's say steam. When the liquid hits the pan you want to hear a swish, a swoosh. A puff of steam ought to go up from the pan. No puff? Then the pan isn't hot enough. (If you're doing all this for the first time, then test the heat by dropping a spoonful of broth in the pot first to "test the waters." Not hot enough, increase your heat a bit, then try again in a minute.)

When you add the liquid you'll see the rice grains start juking and jumping; like little Mexican jumping beans in the broth. If the rice isn't jitterbugging, then you need more heat.

On the other hand, having your pot too hot isn't any good either. If the rice is sticking almost instantly to the bottom of the pot no matter how much you stir, it's too hot. Turn it down.

Rule # 5: Stir, stir, stir/Stir it Up

So, as you've gathered by now, there is a fair amount of stirring involved in making a good risotto. Once you get the hang of this thing, you don't really don't have to stir every single second that the pot is on the stove. How much do you stir? Enough so that the rice doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan and that the liquid and rice stay evenly distributed. In my experience there's plenty of time between stirs to insert a bit of simple salad making; tear the lettuce, stir, slice some cucumber, stir, toss on a few olives, stir. You get the idea.

What do you stir with? I stir with a wooden spoon. (Elizabeth David recommends using a wooden fork as an even gentler implement.) Stir gently. You don't want to pound your rice down to puree. So go easy on it - you're not beating egg whites here. Just soft, leisurely, steady stirring.

For some reason, my mind keeps coming back to the stirring. There's something about it, something, subtly, well, stirring.

Partly, the stirring kind of strikes me as un-American - I guess it's because it seemingly defies the myth of progress. There's no way to "stir better," or "faster," and certainly no way to effectively eliminate it. Well, I take that back. You can eliminate the stirring. This is a free country. Like I keep telling the staff at the Deli, "you can do whatever you want. There's just consequences." And in this case, the consequences are that you'll be eating inferior risotto.

Maybe what we need in this country is more stirring; more people stirring the pot of life smoothly and gently and steadily onward, stopping long enough to appreciate the aromas rising from the pot, rather than heaving the whole thing up against the proverbial wall in fits of blame and frustration. You can't rush a good risotto, nor can you rush life. You just keep stirring. After a while, good things happen.

Rule # 6: Adding the Other Ingredients

As a general rule, ingredients from which you are mainly looking for a contribution of flavor - as opposed to appearance - can be added early on. Chopped fennel, celery, shallots or carrots might go in in the initial sautéing with the onion. Other ingredients can be added to (or, blanched in) the broth as it heats, to add their flavor there - mushrooms or asparagus for example.

On the other hand, ingredients which you want to be clearly identifiable and distinguishable when the risotto comes to the table are best added near the end, so that they aren't broken to bits by the stirring, or overcooked in the pot. Salmon, chicken, arugola come to mind as ingredients I'd add as the risotto reached the end of the cooking process. Cheese should also be added at the end of the very end of the cooking process.

Reaching the Finish

One of the things I've come to like most about making risotto is watching the grains of rice "grow up" before my eyes. It's like watching the entire growing cycle in twenty minutes. The rice starts as a few handfuls of dry, hard, white grains, then slowly begins to plump as it absorbs the broth. Like fruit ripening on the tree it gets softer, bigger and "juicier" as it moves closer and closer to the reaching the peak of perfection. You've hit the right degree of ripeness when you bite into the rice grain and you hit an ideal balance of soft creamy exterior with slightly firm, just slightly chewy center. You're looking for the same kind of "al dente" texture you want in perfectly cooked pasta.

Depending on the variety of Italian rice you use, the level of heat and the age of the rice, that could be somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes - the only way to know for sure is to start tasting a grain or two at about the fifteen minute mark. Just before the rice is done, add any final ingredients: cheese, fish, whatever. Stir well (of course.)
One of the things I've come to like most about making risotto is watching the grains of rice "grow up" before my eyes.

A Trio of Tips on Finishing Your Risotto

When the risotto seems done and ready to remove from the stove, add one last ladelful of broth. This gives the risotto something to "sip on" as it sits in the bowl for a minute or two before you eat, leaves it with a fine creamy texture, and keeps it from getting too dry.

In addition you may want to add a spoonful of butter at the last minute. This is known in Italian as the "mantecatura." As the butter melts it coats each grain of rice, yielding a richer, creamier risotto.

Finally, some folks recommend that you let the risotto rest for just a minute or two between its departure from the stove and the actual eating in order to let the flavors meld fully. But don't wait too long. This isn't a dish you can prepare in advance and then have sitting around. It's meant to be eaten right after it's cooked. Risotto rules the roost best when it's still steaming hot from the stove.

Pass the Parmigiano Reggiano

I don't think I've made more than a few risotti without grating on some Parmigiano Reggiano before I bring it to the table. (Actually we eat on the floor, not the table, but you get the idea.) There's something about the sweet, subtle nuttiness of the cheese that makes it the ideal end to risotto preparation. It's like breaking the champagne bottle on the bow of a new ship - cheers! It's ready to make the voyage to the table.

Standard Italian cooking wisdom dictates that parmesan not be added to risotto made with fish or seafood. Usually I add it anyways. But you can make that call for yourself.

(As always, I'd rather use a tiny amount of great Parmigiano than a whole handful of that green can stuff. Of course my particular preference for Parmigiano is enhanced because once I've got it out on the counter, I can sneak a sliver or two to tide me over while the risotto is cooking. If you're looking for a less costly alternative to top your risotto off with, try a bit of Swiss Sbrinz. More buttery, not quite as nutty, it's still a great grating cheese.)

Try it at Least Twice

When I'm trying to get one of my friends to try making risotto for the first time, I always ask them to promise to make it twice. The first time I figure, they don't really know what they're doing, and they're natural nervousness, combined with the fact they (like me) didn't grow up with risotto, make it not unlikely that their first effort is going to be less than memorable. I know mine was. But the second time with a bit of experience and half an idea of what the stuff is supposed to look like, I figure they're likely to start finding out what I learned a while back. That risotto is one of the great rice dishes, one of the great dishes period, that the world has yet to invent. Invent your own. Eat risotto tonight.

Cold Weather Cooking

This is the time of year I love risotto most. When it's way too cold for comfort outside. When I really, really need a bowl of something very warm and very warming and comforting and ... something to help get me through til the spring. Risotto's great to eat the rest of the year too, but there's something about knowing I'm making risotto for dinner in winter that helps get me through some otherwise dismal days. Risotto rules!

Risotto is one of Italy's great dishes but it is virtually unknown in the US. This is a sorrow. It's not hard to cook, needing less care than many of the dishes I post here and more satisfying and interesting than most of them. A lemon risotto with dirty rice would be about perfect after the excess of the last few days. Use filtered water and you'll have a clearer product. Saffron is dear in cost, but, oh, what a lovely, tasty dish to serve next to your shrimp scampi or boudin blanc.

Yum.

Which Children Left Beind?

Think CA is the only place in education trouble? When was the last time you read your state's education goals? Do you really think they don't look like this? You must have an interesting dream life:

California's going to get a shocking education
By Patrick M. Callan, PATRICK M. CALLAN is president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education based in San Jose. Website: www.highereducation.org.

IF THERE'S STILL anyone who thinks that education levels and income in California will continue their steady rise, they may be in for a shock. If current education policies continue unchanged, the California workforce of 2020 is going to be less educated than today's, according to a recent report released by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and the state's per-capita income will drop more substantially than elsewhere in the country.

The transformation will occur as baby boomers, the most highly educated generation in U.S. history, retire. Across the country they will be replaced by a growing population of young workers from the nation's least-educated minority groups. The share of the workforce that is college educated will shrink accordingly, losing the U.S. much of its advantage in the global marketplace.

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The problem is national, but in California it will be particularly severe. Consider some of our report's findings: The Latino population, by far the least educated of any of the state's large minority groups, is expanding dramatically. By 2020, Latinos will make up as large a share of the state's working-age population (people 25 to 64 years old) as whites — about 38% Latino and 39% white. This is a seismic shift; in 1990, only 22% of working-age adults were Latino and 61% were white. And the gap in education between Latinos and whites in California will turn the demographic shift into a statewide economic decline.

Just look at the numbers. Among California's current working-age population, 46% of whites have a college degree, while 12% of Latinos do, according to census data. At the other end of the education spectrum, more than half of working-age Latinos do not have even a high school diploma, compared to 8% of whites.

Yet the state is making only limited progress with its current students. Over the last decade, California has managed to raise the percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds who have high school diplomas, and the percentage of those enrolled in college. But of those who do enroll in college or post-high school certificate programs, the percentage of those actually completing the programs is very low compared to other states. And on every one of these measures, the gaps between young Latinos, on the one hand, and young whites, blacks and Asian Americans remain large.

To some extent, the problem may be one of inadequate preparation in California's schools. Among the measures we follow at the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, one is particularly telling. We track the percentage of low-income eighth-graders in each state who score at or above "proficient" on the national assessment exam in math. Among the top states, an average 23% of low-income students are this well-prepared for higher education. California is only at 9%.

But preparation is not the whole story. The expense of higher education can also be prohibitive. California provides more low-cost college options than most states and has recently increased its investment in need-based financial aid. But for the poorest 40% of California families, the cost each year of sending a child to community college still amounts to more than a third of the average family income. The cost of sending a child to a public four-year college, even after figuring in financial aid, amounts to nearly half of such a family's income.

If California does nothing more to raise the education level of its residents, and particularly of its largest, fastest-growing and least-educated minority group, it can expect to lose economic ground against the world and other states. For the sake of all, California's continuing educational disparities must be confronted and removed.

As California goes, so goes the nation. It is all there in a nutshell.

Tired of Turkey?

This is Texas chili--no beans. I learned to make this in Texas.

1/3 cup corn oil -- (approximately)
6 pounds beef chuck -- in 1/2-inch cubes
1 cup minced onion
1/3 cup minced garlic
3 cups beef broth -- (approximately)
3 cups flat beer
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup high-quality chili powder -- or to taste
6 pounds tomatoes -- (three 2 lb. cans) drained and chopped
1/3 cup tomato paste
1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh oregano
3 tablespoons cumin seed
salt -- to taste
cayenne pepper -- to taste
masa harina or cornmeal -- if needed

1. In a large heavy skillet over moderately high heat, warm 3 tablespoons
of the oil. Brown beef in batches, adding more oil as necessary and
transferring meat with a slotted spoon to a large stockpot when well browned. Do not
crowd skillet.

2. Reduce heat to moderately low. Add onion and garlic and saute until
softened (about 10 minutes). Add to stockpot along with broth, beer, the water,
chili powder, tomato, tomato paste, and oregano.

3. In a small skillet over low heat, toast cumin seed until fragrant; do
not allow to burn. Grind in an electric minichopper or with a mortar and
pestle. Add to stockpot.

4. Over high heat bring mixture to a simmer. Add salt, cayenne, and more
chili powder to taste. Reduce heat to maintain a simmer and cook, partially
covered, until beef is tender (about 1-1/2 hours). Check occasionally and add
more broth if mixture seems dry. If chili is too thin when meat is tender, stir
in up to 2 tablespoons masa harina. Cook an additional 5 minutes to thicken.
Serve chili hot.

This recipe is a shade tame for me so I add chopped dried chilis (a lot, I like my chili 5-alarm hot) or fresh scotch bonnets when I can find them. Warning: when working with chilis, wear gloves. Do not let your gloved hands get near your face. Getting significant scoville units of capsaicin into your eye or nasal or oral mucosa is real, real painful. I did this by accident when working with Thai chilis for the first time at home and brushed by my eye with an ungloved hand. I was wearing contact lenses at the time and didn't have a hand clean for removing the lens before rinsing my eye with copious amounts of saline. It was ugly and that eye stayed bright red for days.

What's Before Dinner?

This is delicious as part of a fruit, veggies and cheese appetizer spread.

BAKED BRIE WITH FRUIT

1 pkg. refrigerator crescent rolls
1 (8 oz.) Brie cheese
1 egg, beaten
1/2 c. chopped nuts

Heat oven 375 degrees.

Two rectangles of dough on an ungreased cookie sheet. Press 8x5, slam down the dough. Wrap the cheese ball in the dough. Brush with egg. Sprinkle with nuts. Bake at 375, 12-15 minutes. Let stand 2-5 minutes before serving. Serve with apple slices and pear slices.

Risky Business

Pension Officers Putting Billions Into Hedge Funds

By RIVA D. ATLAS
and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
Published: November 27, 2005

Faced with growing numbers of retirees, pension plans are pouring billions into hedge funds, the secretive and lightly regulated investment partnerships that once managed money only for wealthy investors.

The plans and other large institutions are expected to invest as much as $300 billion in hedge funds by 2008, up from just $5 billion a decade ago, according to a study by the Bank of New York and Casey, Quirk & Associates, a consulting firm. Pension funds account for roughly 40 percent of all institutional money. This month, the investment council that oversees the New Jersey state employees pension fund said it would put some of its money into hedge funds for the first time, investing $600 million over the next several months.

While most pension plans have modest stakes in hedge funds, others have invested more than 20 percent of their assets. Weyerhaeuser, the paper company, has 39 percent of its pension fund's assets in hedge funds. In Congress, there has been a push for amendments that would make it easier for hedge funds to manage even more pension money, without having to comply with the federal law that governs company pensions.

Pension officials who have been shaken by market downturns and persistent deficits are attracted by hedge funds' promise of richer, or more consistent, returns. But the trend has caused some consultants and academics to voice cautions. They question whether hedge funds, with risks that are hard to measure, are appropriate for pension funds, whose sole purpose, by law, is to pay out predetermined benefits to retired workers.

Those benefits are considered so crucial that they are guaranteed: corporate pension failures are covered by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal agency, while pension failures by state and local governments are covered by taxpayers. Given that the benefits are paid out on a set schedule, critics wonder whether it makes sense to rely on investments whose returns are hard to predict, managed by private partnerships that disclose little about their operations and charge some of the highest fees on Wall Street.

"It's very inappropriate when the company is offering a pension plan that is guaranteed by the federal government," said Zvi Bodie, a professor of finance and economics at Boston University who writes and lectures on sophisticated investment techniques and is enthusiastic about hedge funds in other contexts.

Hedge funds make large, sophisticated investments based on the premise that by swimming outside the currents of the markets, often betting against conventional wisdom, they can outperform other investments. Hedge funds became famous in the 1990's, when managers like Michael Steinhardt and George Soros made huge swashbuckling bets that sometimes produced returns of 30 percent or more.

More recently, hedge funds have made headlines when they ran into trouble: Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund whose principals included two Nobel Prize-winning economists, nearly collapsed in 1998; and this summer, Bayou Group, a $450 million hedge fund based in Connecticut, shut down after most of its money disappeared. Its two officers have pleaded guilty to fraud charges. Hedge funds are meant to be only for wealthy, sophisticated investors so regulators have not monitored them as they have stocks or mutual funds, although there have been calls for increased regulation.

The news of splashy gains and scandals may not paint an accurate picture of a business that in many ways has become more conservative as a result of the flood of pension fund money. To attract that money, many hedge fund managers emphasize stability.

Among pension fund managers, however, "the whole mentality has changed," said Jane Buchan, chief executive of Pacific Alternative Asset Management, which manages $7.5 billion in funds that invest in hedge funds, primarily for large pension funds. "They are saying, we need returns and we will be aggressive about getting them. They just don't want any downturns."

This is completely inappropriate and Congress should act to change the law so that guaranteed pension funds cannot invest in hedge funds. Hedge funds are only for those with high risk tolerance and pension funds are not among them.

They're Ba-ack

Is there are trip to New York City in your future. Bring your bug spray!

Just Try to Sleep Tight. The Bedbugs Are Back.

By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: November 27, 2005

They're the scourge of hobo encampments and hot-sheet motels. To impressionable children everywhere, they're a snippet of nursery rhyme, an abstract foe lurking beneath the covers that emerges when mommy shuts the door at night.

But bedbugs on Park Avenue? Ask the horrified matron who recently found her duplex teeming with the blood-sucking beasts. Or the tenants of a co-op on Riverside Drive who spent $200,000 earlier this month to purge their building of the pesky little thugs. The Helmsley Park Lane was sued two years ago by a welt-covered guest who blamed the hotel for harboring the critters. The suit was quietly settled last year.

And bedbugs, stealthy and fast-moving nocturnal creatures that were all but eradicated by DDT after World War II, have recently been found in hospital maternity wards, private schools and even a plastic surgeon's waiting room.

Bedbugs are back and spreading through New York City like a swarm of locusts on a lush field of wheat.

Infestations have been reported sporadically across the United States over the past few years. But in New York, bedbugs have gained a foothold all across the city.

"It's becoming an epidemic," said Jeffrey Eisenberg, the owner of Pest Away Exterminating, an Upper West Side business that receives about 125 bedbug calls a week, compared with just a handful five years ago. "People are being tortured, and so am I. I spend half my day talking to hysterical people about bedbugs."

Last year the city logged 377 bedbug violations, up from just 2 in 2002 and 16 in 2003. Since July, there have been 449. "Its definitely a fast-emerging problem," said Carol Abrams, spokeswoman for the city housing agency.

In the bedbug resurgence, entomologists and exterminators blame increased immigration from the developing world, the advent of cheap international travel and the recent banning of powerful pesticides. Other culprits include the recycled mattress industry and those thrifty New Yorkers who revel in the discovery of a free sofa on the sidewalk.

And that new mattress delivered from a reputable department store, which kindly hauled away your old one? It may have spent all day in a truck wedged against an old mattress collected from a customer with a bedbug problem.

Once introduced into a home, bedbugs can crawl into adjoining apartments or hitch a ride to another part of town in the cuff of a pant leg.

"Anyone who stays in a hotel, rich or poor, can bring them home in a suitcase," said Richard Kourbage, whose company, Kingsway Exterminating in Brooklyn, does about a dozen bedbug jobs a day. "Some of the best hotels in New York have them."

Unlike mice and roaches, which are abetted by filthy surroundings, bedbugs do just fine in a well-scrubbed home, although bedroom clutter gives them more places to hide and breed. When engorged with blood, they grow slightly plumper than the O on this page, although the nymphs, which appear almost translucent before their first meal, are not much bigger than the period at the end of this sentence.

And contrary to popular perceptions, they don't dwell just in mattresses and box springs: any wall or floor crack the thickness of a playing card can accommodate a bedbug. Although some people try to treat the problem themselves, most people hire exterminators, at a cost of $300 per room.

Sausage Making

Privatizing the American West

Published: November 26, 2005

While lawmakers are in recess, it is worth reflecting on one particular part of the mess they have left behind. Last week, a budget bill scraped through the House, 217 to 215. Democrats and moderate Republicans had already stripped a provision to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But the House bill left intact an evil trap to be sprung on the American public: Richard Pombo's plan to put a few hundred million acres of publicly owned land up for sale in the American West.

Mr. Pombo, Republican of California, is head of the House Resources Committee and has long been determined to privatize as much of the West as he can lay his hands on. His bill would allow the holders of mining claims to buy the land outright instead of leasing it - a substantial revision of the current practice. He argues that his proposal would merely adjust laws and affect only about 360,000 acres where mining claims are currently being developed or explored.

But the bill is so vaguely drawn that at least 6 million acres of public land, and possibly as much as 350 million acres, could wind up in the hands of private buyers. These buyers need to express only the intent to develop a mineral claim without any need to demonstrate commercial mining potential. Once the land is bought, it can be developed as the owners see fit. This is a blatant fraud on the American people, expressed in bland legislative legalese. The question is, Who is going to stop it?

The bill has to clear a few more hurdles before becoming the law of the land - a House-Senate conference committee and final votes in the House and the Senate. In the best of all possible worlds, the House negotiators would reject the worst aspects of the Senate bill, which authorizes drilling in the Arctic refuge, and the Senate negotiators would reject the worst aspects of the House version, including Mr. Pombo's outrageous raid on the public lands.

This is not the long shot it might have seemed as recently as a week ago. Americans have come to understand that America can't drill its way out of dependency on Middle Eastern oil, and that ravaging the Arctic is no substitute for sound energy policy. They also understand that Mr. Pombo's sleight of hand is little more than legislative robbery.

Why don't the fucking Repubs just sell off the entire damn country and get it over with?

Preznit Giv Me Turkee

Holiday turns grim in Iraq: Bombs kill 36
Suicide attack hits children receiving toys

NANCY A. YOUSSEF
KNIGHT RIDDER

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The third Thanksgiving Day since U.S. troops entered Iraq was a grim one Thursday: # Bombers killed at least 36 people in two different Iraqi cities. In one of the attacks, a suicide bomber targeted a crowd of children who were receiving toys from U.S. soldiers. # U.S. officials announced the deaths of six more U.S. troops. # No American dignitaries made surprise trips to dine with American soldiers, as they have on previous holidays. # And the Iraqi government's top spokesman said violence would only increase until the Dec. 15 elections for a new National Assembly.

The first attack came in Mahmudiyah, in an area called the "triangle of death," as U.S. civil affairs specialists were inspecting the Mahmudiyah Hospital at around 10:30 a.m. in preparation for making improvements, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman.

Civil affairs soldiers often bring toys for children when meeting with the community, Johnson said. As the soldiers stood outside the main entrance and began handing the toys out to children who had gathered around them, a suicide bomber approached the hospital and blew himself up.

At least 33 people died in that attack, including four children and two women, a military official in Mahmudiyah said. Another 23 people were injured, the official said.

It appears to me that Preznit Giv Me Turkee has lost interest in his little war. He couldn't detail one official to eat dinner with the troops? I guess that tactic got old.

Running Away

This is all political, not military. The US, with all of its superior technical resources, cannot contain the "insurgency." The locals won't be able to, either, unless the insurgency wants to melt back into the countryside. This is cut and run. The political reality is that this fucked up war is unpopular and the GOP is trying to get away from it before the midterm elections next year.

U.S. Starts Laying Groundwork for Significant Troop Pullout From Iraq
By Paul Richter and Tyler Marshall, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — Even as debate over the Iraq war continues to rage, signs are emerging of a convergence of opinion on how the Bush administration might begin to exit the conflict.

In a departure from previous statements, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week that the training of Iraqi soldiers had advanced so far that the current number of U.S. troops in the country probably would not be needed much longer.

President Bush will give a major speech Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., in which aides say he is expected to herald the improved readiness of Iraqi troops, which he has identified as the key condition for pulling out U.S. forces.

The administration's pivot on the issue comes as the White House is seeking to relieve enormous pressure by war opponents. The camp includes liberals, moderates and old-line conservatives who are uneasy with the costly and uncertain nation-building effort.

It also follows agreement this week among Iraqi politicians that the U.S. troop presence ought to decrease. Meeting in Cairo, representatives of the three major ethnic and religious groups called for a U.S. withdrawal and recognized Iraqis' "legitimate right of resistance" to foreign occupation. In private conversations, Iraqi officials discussed a possible two-year withdrawal period, analysts said.

The developments seemed to lay the groundwork for potentially large withdrawals in 2006 and 2007, consistent with scenarios outlined by Pentagon planners. The approach also tracks the thinking of some centrist Democrats, such as Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior representative of his party on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Some analysts say the emerging consensus might have less to do with conditions in Iraq than the deployment's long-term strain on the U.S. military. And major questions about the readiness of Iraq's fledgling security forces remain, posing risks for any strategy that calls for an accelerated American withdrawal.

As recently as late September, senior U.S. military commanders said during a congressional hearing that just one Iraqi battalion, about 700 soldiers, was considered capable of undertaking combat operations fully independent of U.S. support. Administration officials now dismiss that measure of readiness, saying more Iraqi units are able to conduct advanced operations each day.

A former top Pentagon official who served during Bush's first term said he believed there was a "growing consensus" on withdrawing about 40,000 troops before next year's congressional election. That would be followed by further substantial pullouts in 2007 if it became clear that Iraqi forces could contain the insurgency.

"You've got the convergence of domestic pressures, Iraqi pressures and Pentagon [withdrawal] plans that have been in the works for a while," said the former official, who requested anonymity. "This is serious."

A senior U.S. official said that in signaling hopes for a large drawdown next year, Rice was only "stating the obvious" this week.

"It looks like things are headed in the right direction to enable that to happen in 2006," said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

But he said those hopes could be derailed if there were setbacks. Among the upcoming markers is the Dec. 15 election for a permanent Iraqi government. Officials have said that violence is likely to increase before the vote. More than 100 U.S. troops have died in the month since the death toll reached 2,000.

Dawn

Even Supporters Doubt President as Issues Pile Up

By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: November 26, 2005

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 22 - Leesa Martin never considered President Bush a great leader, but she voted for him a year ago because she admired how he handled the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Selena Smith, an advertising agency director in Atlanta. "The war is more important to me now. What’s the plan? Give us something to hang our teeth on," she said.
Kevin Fitzsimons for The New York Times

"I don’t know if it’s any one thing as much as it is everything. It’s kind of snowballed," said Leesa Martin, a market researcher in Columbus, Ohio.

Then came the past summer, when the death toll from the war in Iraq hit this state particularly hard: 16 marines from the same battalion killed in one week. She thought the federal government should have acted faster to help after Hurricane Katrina. She was baffled by the president's nomination of Harriet E. Miers, a woman she considered unqualified for the Supreme Court, and disappointed when he did not nominate another woman after Ms. Miers withdrew.

And she remains unsettled by questions about whether the White House leaked the name of a C.I.A. agent whose husband had accused the president of misleading the country about the intelligence that led to the war.

"I don't know if it's any one thing as much as it is everything," said Ms. Martin, 49, eating lunch at the North Market, on the edge of downtown Columbus. "It's kind of snowballed."

Her concerns were echoed in more than 75 interviews here and across the country this week, helping to explain the slide in the president's approval and trustworthiness ratings in recent polls.

Many people who voted for Mr. Bush a year ago had trouble pinning their current discontent on any one thing. Many mentioned the hurricane and the indictment of a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, which some said raised doubts about the president's candor and his judgment. But there was a sense that something had veered off course in the last few months, and the war was the one constant. Over and over, even some of Mr. Bush's supporters raised comparisons with Vietnam.

"We keep hearing about suicide bombers and casualties and never hear about any progress being made," said Dave Panici, 45, a railroad conductor from Bradley, Ill. "I don't see an end to it; it just seems relentless. I feel like our country is just staying afloat, just treading water instead of swimming toward somewhere."

Mr. Panici voted for President Bush in 2004, calling it "a vote for security." "Now that a year has passed, I haven't seen any improvement in Iraq," he said. "I don't feel that the world is a safer place."

A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll in mid-November found that 37 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Bush, the lowest approval rating the poll had recorded in his presidency. That was down from 55 percent a year ago and from a high of 90 percent shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.

An Associated Press/Ipsos poll earlier in the month found the same 37 percent approval rating and recorded the president's lowest levels regarding integrity and honesty: 42 percent of Americans found him honest, compared with 53 percent at the beginning of this year.

Several of those interviewed said that in the last year they had come to believe that Mr. Bush had not been fully honest about the intelligence that led to the war, which he said showed solid evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

"I think people put their faith in Bush, hoping he would do the right thing," said Stacey Rosen, 38, a stay-at-home mother in Boca Raton, Fla., who said she voted for Mr. Bush but was "totally disappointed" in him now. "Everybody cannot believe that there hasn't been one shred of evidence of W.M.D. I think it goes to show how they tell us what they want to tell us."

Watching people wake up isn't all that pleasant.

Screwing Up

Same Insurance Claims, Different Results in La. Town

By Dean Starkman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 26, 2005; Page A01

Silvia I. Cosenza, who lived in Gretna, La., until Hurricane Katrina roared through, says she's been caught in an insurance nightmare: Her flood claim denied because an insurance adjuster ruled that her neighborhood was not flooded.

That came as a surprise to Melmary Matheny, who lives across the street and has already received partial payment on her flood claim and has been told to expect another check soon.

What's the difference? Beyond the fact that different insurance companies handled the claims, neither knows.

"For sure, she flooded as much as we did," Matheny said. "Our whole entire neighborhood flooded."

As the insurance industry grapples with its largest-ever loss and a record number of individual claims -- 1.6 million from Katrina, another 1 million from hurricanes Rita and Wilma -- policyholders are learning that the opportunity to get their lives back in order often depends on which company is processing the claim. In many cases, homeowners living in areas that were equally flooded have had drastically different experiences.

Particularly puzzling to some homeowners is that all flood claims are ultimately paid by the federal government's National Flood Insurance Program, which is operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Insurance companies merely administer the program as contractors, selling flood policies and processing claims for a fee. The government -- which hired 95 firms as flood program contractors -- sets the rules and is responsible for paying the claims.

"It's the same money," said Andreas Anderson, who owns two houses in New Orleans's Lakeview neighborhood and is still waiting for an answer from Allstate Corp. on whether his claim will be approved. He said the water in the neighborhood got so high a car floated into one of his houses.

Blaine Lecesne, a law professor who lives in Lake Terrace, an adjoining neighborhood that was also severely flooded, said representatives of State Farm Insurance Co. investigated his claim in a 30-minute telephone interview and sent a $250,000 check to his temporary home in Houston two days later, on Oct. 3.

The widely disparate treatment encountered by those and other Louisiana homeowners is a reminder of the secrecy that shrouds claim-handling in the $1.3 trillion insurance industry. Insurance companies, which are regulated by the states, are not required to disclose their claims practices, including how quickly claims are processed, how many are denied and for what reasons.

To speed the processing of hurricane-related flood claims, FEMA in late September relaxed its reporting guidelines and authorized contractors to perform investigations over the phone for claims in heavily flooded areas. The agency is using aerial photography and its own data on water depths to determine whether damage is so extensive that on-site visits can be waived. FEMA has also suspended its requirement that policyholders submit sworn "proof of loss" statements; instead, where the policyholder agrees, the agency will rely on an adjuster's report.

The private insurers aren't doing a whole lot better job than FEMA. No one seems to have their disaster planning/recovery chops together.

Go to War, Young Man, and Come Home a Basket Case

Report yourself to the Army with mental distress and your Army career just went up in smoke. Look at my last quoted graph of this important NYT story carefully.

The Struggle to Gauge a War's Psychological Cost

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: November 26, 2005

It was hardly a traditional therapist's office. The mortar fire was relentless, head-splitting, so close that it raised layers of rubble high off the floor of the bombed-out room. Since returning home to Madison, Wis., after a tour in Iraq, Abbie Pickett has struggled with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Abbie Pickett, of the Wisconsin National Guard, served as a medic. Stationed near Tikrit, Iraq, she treated heavy combat casualties in October 2003.

Capt. William Nash, a Navy psychiatrist, sat on an overturned box of ready-made meals for the troops. He was in Iraq to try to short-circuit combat stress on the spot, before it became disabling, as part of the military's most determined effort yet to bring therapy to the front lines.

His clients, about a dozen young men desperate for help after weeks of living and fighting in Falluja, sat opposite him and told their stories.

One had been spattered with his best friend's blood and blamed himself for the death.

Another was also filled with guilt. He had hesitated while scouting an alley and had seen the man in front of him shot to death.

"They were so young," Captain Nash recalled.

At first, when they talked, he simply listened. Then he did his job, telling them that soldiers always blame themselves when someone is killed, in any war, always.

Grief, he told them, can make us forget how random war is, how much we have done to protect those we are fighting with.

"You try to help them tell a coherent story about what is happening, to make sense of it, so they feel less guilt and shame over protecting others, which is so common," said Captain Nash, who counseled the marines last November as part of the military's increased efforts to defuse psychological troubles.

He added, "You have to help them reconstruct the things they used to believe in that don't make sense anymore, like the basic goodness of humanity."

Military psychiatry has always been close to a contradiction in terms. Psychiatry aims to keep people sane; service in wartime makes demands that seem insane.

This war in particular presents profound mental stresses: unknown and often unseen enemies, suicide bombers, a hostile land with virtually no safe zone, no real front or rear. A 360-degree war, some call it, an asymmetrical battle space that threatens to injure troops' minds as well as their bodies.

But just how deep those mental wounds are, and how many will be disabled by them, are matters of controversy. Some experts suspect that the legacy of Iraq could echo that of Vietnam, when almost a third of returning military personnel reported significant, often chronic, psychological problems.

Others say the mental casualties will be much lower, given the resilience of today's troops and the sophistication of the military's psychological corps, which place therapists like Captain Nash into combat zones.

The numbers so far tell a mixed story. The suicide rate among soldiers was high in 2003 but fell significantly in 2004, according to two Army surveys among more than 2,000 soldiers and mental health support providers in Iraq. Morale rose in the same period, but 54 percent of the troops say morale is low or very low, the report found.

A continuing study of combat units that served in Iraq has found that about 17 percent of the personnel have shown serious symptoms of depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder - characterized by intrusive thoughts, sleep loss and hyper-alertness, among other symptoms - in the first few months after returning from Iraq, a higher rate than in Afghanistan but thought to be lower than after Vietnam.

In interviews, many members of the armed services and psychologists who had completed extended tours in Iraq said they had battled feelings of profound grief, anger and moral ambiguity about the effect of their presence on Iraqi civilians.

And at bases back home, there have been violent outbursts among those who have completed tours. A marine from Camp Pendleton, Calif., has been convicted of murdering his girlfriend. And three members of a special forces unit based at Fort Carson, in Colorado Springs, have committed suicide.

Yet for returning service members, experts say, the question of whether their difficulties are ultimately diagnosed as mental illness may depend not only on the mental health services available, but also on the politics of military psychiatry itself, the definition of what a normal reaction to combat is and the story the nation tells itself about the purpose and value of soldiers' service.

War is going to make fucked up human beings. That is its nature. If we are surprised by this, we don't understand the nature of either war or human beings. Killing people is an unnatural act, which is why we prosecute it when people do it on our soil. Expecting people to be trained to kill violates every principle of our brain chemistry. I fully accept that there may be times when it is necessary (and I don't believe that Iraq was one of those times) but don't expect the soldiers to come back undamaged. War creates monsters and one should never wage a war if we aren't willing to live with the creation of monsters. That's the nature of war.

Read the whole article and then set with it a bit because there is a lot of subtext in the story which will only come out when you've let it live in you a bit.

Ask yourself some questions: could I be that, could I do that? What would I become if I did?

Those are worthwhile questions.

The US needs to be asking itself the question "who do we want to be?" Right now, I'm not liking the answers I'm hearing.

Minnesota Oddment

Tom and Jerry batter is sold in the grocery stores around Christmas in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and the Dakotas. It's a potent drink, a hot one, which I Iove on cold nights decorating the house for the holidays (but don't be surprised if it looks a little cock-eyed in the morning if you have more than one.) I'm including the entire comments thread from DrinkStreet, because it does sound gross if you've never had it before. In reality, a Tom and Jerry is a drink for the cold climes of the upper midwest and still the one I favor when the weather is damp and cold. Make the batter in a blender, separating the egg and beating the eggwhites first.

To assemble the drink in a mug, start with the hot water, add the liquor and put the batter on top. Then stir, just a little.

1/2 ounce Dark Rum
1 dash Brandy
1 whole Egg White
1 whole Egg Yolk
1 teaspoon Sugar
Beat the sugar into the egg yolk, add the rum and incorporate the egg white. Transfer into a coffee mug and fill with boiling water. Add the brandy and garnish with grated nutmeg.

When I lived in Minnesota, Tom and Jerry parties around the holidays were common in my neighborhoods during the holidays (I lived all over the state and around the Twin Cities.) I don't know if that custom still prevails.

Panda News

Since there are never enough panda stories on a Friday evening.

Births of Pandas in Captivity Hit Record Number in China

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 25, 2005; Page A23

CHENGDU, China -- Chinese scientists have logged a record number of giant panda births in captivity this year through improved artificial insemination techniques and better understanding of how the reclusive but universally appealing creature lives and mates.

The result of hard science by no-nonsense researchers, the increased birthrate is good news for the many children and soft-hearted adults around the world who delight in the sight of pandas, with their distinctive black and white fur, sitting back and tranquilly munching on bamboo leaves.

The pandas slouching about their compound here at the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Base in central China's Sichuan province did not seem particularly moved by their species' accomplishment. But at least 19 pandas were born -- and have survived -- this season in a pair of Chinese research facilities, officials said, the highest number since scientists here and abroad began trying to foster reproduction of the endangered animal through artificial insemination about 40 years ago.

Several more were born in research centers and zoos in other countries, including twin cubs born Aug. 23 in the Adventure World Park Zoo in western Japan's Wakayama prefecture, of which only the female lived, and Tai Shan, a male cub who was born at Washington's National Zoo on July 9 and is reported to be thriving. In all, up to 25 giant pandas were born and survived in captivity around the world during this summer's birthing season, according to the State Forestry Administration and Chinese specialists.

A survey last year by the State Forestry Administration showed that the number of giant pandas living in the wild has also risen, to an estimated 1,590, up from 1,110 in the 1980s. Most roam the isolated hills of China's Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, eating bamboo and staying as far as they can from human beings. The population has grown over the last several years, scientists said, because the government has turned large parts of the panda's habitat into reserves where logging and farming are forbidden.

This marks a turnaround from the years when China's ever-expanding human population intruded on the hillsides where giant pandas live and breed, turning them into an endangered species. The panda, whose markings and chubby contours seem to invite cuddling, in fact is easily distressed by contact with human beings, research has shown, and it seems to thrive best when left alone among the bamboo stands of central China's misty mountains.

It's nice to see science used in a positive manner. I am always amazed at all of the good things humans can do if we put our mind and talents to it. If you had predicted this type of improvement 20 years ago, you might have been laughed at. It's good to see the experts wrong in a positive way.

Now I just can't wait until my kids are old enough to see them live in Washington instead of on web-cam.

Lighten Up

Through the years, I've done a lot of kitchen messing around to try to find ways to cut the fat in the foods I love. I don't remember how I came up with this, but it works nicely as a replacement for whipped cream on pies or strawberry shortcakes and the like. This makes enough to cover two desserts if you are generous, four if you are being more restrained.

I have an old Melitta filter holder that I use for this, but anything which will hold up a coffee filter will work.

Turn one 8 oz. cup of plain, non-fat yoghurt into a coffee filter in some sort of holder that will keep it from flattening out. Place the vent of the holder over a jar or bottle, cover the yoghurt holder with plastic wrap and put the works into the fridge over night. In the morning, in the bottom of the filter you will have a much sweeter, denser cream which nicely takes the place of whipped cream on pies or shortcakes. Add about a 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract or the scrapings from the interior of one vanilla pod and mix well before serving. That's it and it gives you a fat-free but delicious replacement for whipped cream. After eating this replacement for 20 years, whipped cream now tastes unbearably oleagenous to me.

Add the shed liquid from the yoghurt to your morning protein shake or save it for the stock pot, it is protein rich.

Health Care Northways

Canada struggles with health care
Prime minister faces no-confidence vote

By Paul Webster Special for
USA TODAY

TORONTO — Maria DiDanieli says her 2-year-old daughter Emily's left eye was swollen to the size of a golf ball after six hours of waiting to see an emergency-room physician at Oakville-Trafalgar Hospital near Toronto last June.

DiDanieli says she warned the receptionist at the emergency desk that one of Emily's playmates with similar symptoms had mysteriously died two days earlier. Even that didn't seem to speed things up.

Speaking at a meeting this week of Toronto-area physicians who claim emergency patients are dying because of cuts to Canada's government-funded national health system, DiDanieli said she was at her wits' end by the time a specialist arrived. She had waited a total of seven hours. “Emily finally got antibiotics, and she got better in a few days,” she said. “But I haven't forgotten the agony of waiting.”

Prime Minister Paul Martin and his Liberal Party face a no-confidence vote Monday, in part because of the health care issue. If Martin's government falls, there will be a new election this winter.

A national opinion poll released last week by Ipsos Public Affairs Research indicates Canadians consider the government-funded health care system their No. 1 concern. In addition, Canada's three opposition parties say Martin no longer has the moral authority to lead the nation because of a corruption scandal. An initial investigative report absolved Martin of wrongdoing but accused senior Liberal members of taking kickbacks and misspending tens of millions of dollars in public funds under a previous Liberal government.

Martin's government survived a no-confidence vote in June with the support of the New Democratic Party. That support waned when the Liberals refused last week to cooperate with the New Democratic Party's demand for a ban on private health care.

The private system is forbidden by Canadian law but increasingly popular among the wealthy. The public health care system is struggling after a decade of cost-cutting under Martin, the Liberals' finance minister until shortly before he became prime minister a year ago.

Last year, Martin's Liberals launched a plan to pump an additional $35 billion over the next decade into the public health system, which costs $22 billion annually.

Despite this commitment, there has been little progress, according to the Wait Times Alliance, a coalition of Canadian physicians. The coalition says the lack of funding has resulted in too few doctors and hospital beds — the source of the long waits.

Conservative Party leaders including Steven Fletcher, the party's official health critic, say medical wait times have doubled since the Liberals took power in 1993. “This government and this prime minister have done nothing to fix the wait-time crisis they've caused,” Fletcher says.

Before we allow conservatives to frame this as a critique of the Canadian system down here below the 49th parallel, let me ask this: what have your wait times looked like with your "private physician?" I have to wait three months for a physical, my orthopod takes six weeks to see, and I book the ob-gyn six months in advance. Oh, right, the Canadian system is SO fucked up. And it costs about a third of ours.

This is Martin's second no confidence vote in less than a year. I'd say there are some issues here, not the least of which is the soiled reputation of the Liberal party becaue of the Gomery scandal, Canadians prefer that their corruption be a little better hidden than we do down here. They are really nicer people.

Respect for the dead and the dying

Stifling Criticism Does Nothing to Help Soldiers

By Michael Kinsley

We are now very close to that point of general agreement in the Iraq war. Do you believe that if Misters Bush, Cheney and company could turn back the clock, they would do this again? And now, thanks to Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, it is permissible to say, or at least to ask, "Why not just get out now?"

There are arguments against this - some good, some bad - but the worst is the one delivered by Mr. Cheney and others with their withering scorn. It is the argument that it is wrong to tell American soldiers risking their lives in a foreign desert that they are fighting for a mistake.

One strength of this argument is that it doesn't require defending the war itself. The logic applies equally whether the war is justified or not. Another strength is that the argument is true, in a way; it is a terrible thing to tell someone he or she is risking death in a mistaken cause. But it is more terrible actually to die in that mistaken cause.

The longer the war goes on, the more Americans and "allies" and Iraqis will die. That is not a slam-dunk argument for ending this foreign entanglement. But it is worth keeping in mind while you try to decide whether American credibility or Iraqi prosperity or Middle East stability can justify the cost in blood and treasure. And don't forget to factor in the likelihood that the war will actually produce these fine things.

The last man or woman to die in any war almost surely dies in vain: The outcome has been determined, if not certified. And he or she might die happier thinking that death came in a noble cause that will not be abandoned. But if it is not a noble cause, he or she might prefer not to die at all. Stifling criticism that might shorten the war is no favor to American soldiers. They can live without that kind of "respect."

OK, it's Kinsley. But he makes some good points.

The Cracks Begin to Show

War's strain wearing on Army troops, tools
Recruitment is down; equipment taking a beating

By Dave Moniz, Matt Kelley and Steven Komarow
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Drawing lessons from his own career, Col. Mat Moten tells his students at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., they could one day have a duty just as important as fighting terrorism: helping rebuild an Army fractured and exhausted by a long and unpopular war.

For Moten, it's a familiar story, one he first heard as a West Point cadet in 1978. Then, the all-volunteer Army was struggling after Vietnam. “It's not a cheery message,” Moten says.

It's a message also echoed last week by Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and 37-year veteran of the Marine Corps, as he called for troops to start leaving Iraq immediately.

“The future of our military is at risk,” Murtha said. “Our military and their families are stretched thin. Many say that the Army is broken. Some of our troops are on their third deployment. Recruitment is down, even as our military has lowered its standards.”

Although there's no agreed-upon standard to determine the war's overall effect on the military, even those who disagree with Murtha about an immediate withdrawal, including senators such as Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John McCain, R-Ariz., agree that the strains on a force fighting two wars at once are obvious.

A series of Pentagon and congressional reports show the bill for worn-out equipment is climbing, recruiting is suffering and stress has become a serious occupational hazard for U.S. troops.

Despite the problems, the Army isn't about to break, says retired general John Keane, the Army's vice chief of staff during the Iraq invasion. Morale remains high, and the part-time forces in the National Guard and Army Reserve have a “remarkable” commitment.

The war in Iraq is taking the biggest toll on military equipment since the Vietnam War, after which the Pentagon retooled its arsenal during the massive military buildup of the 1980s.

Fixing and replacing Army equipment alone could run from $60 billion to $100 billion, according to retired general Paul Kern, a senior consultant to the Cohen Group and the just-retired head of Army Materiel Command. The total cost for wear-and-tear on U.S. equipment is unclear because it is not known how long American troops will be needed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The part-time military has its own equipment problems caused by missions in Iraq and commitments at home. A recent Government Accountability Office report said more than 101,000 pieces of National Guard equipment, including items such as trucks, radios and night vision devices, have been sent overseas, mostly for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's left the Guard short of equipment it needs to respond more quickly to natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

The Guard's top general, Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, told USA TODAY in September that a shortage of communications gear hampered the hurricane recovery effort.

“We were underequipped,” Blum said. “We don't need tanks and attack helicopters and artillery, but we must have state-of-the-art radios.”
....
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said last week that the United States went into Iraq with too few troops and doesn't have sufficient forces to maintain current levels.

“We are grinding down our force structure to the point where we have no force structure,” Hagel said.

The Army is keeping most of its soldiers from retiring or leaving for civilian jobs. It has had to increase its bonuses to keep some highly skilled soldiers — truck drivers, military police, bomb disposal troops — from leaving. The war has made special operations troops so attractive to private contractors that the Pentagon is offering unprecedented bonuses of up to $150,000 to keep some enlisted commandos in the ranks.

“We're holding our breath in hopes we can steer through this,” says Col. Lance Betros, head of West Point's history department.

A crucial question is the commitment of units anticipating their third tours in Iraq. That, Betros says, is when the Vietnam-era Army began to fall apart.

The wars are taking a toll on military families, too: According to Army figures, divorce among officers jumped by 78% in 2004, though the numbers fell back in fiscal 2005. Divorces among enlisted soldiers increased by 28% in 2004 and have stayed at about the same level this year.

Army units are failing to meet Pentagon guidelines to spend two years at home for every year overseas. When the Army's 101st Airborne Division returned to Iraq this year, it was after an 18-month rest. The 3rd Infantry Division, which is also on its second tour, had a 15-month break.

Recruiting is at a crisis level for the Army. The active-duty Army and the part-time Army National Guard and Army Reserve all missed their 2005 recruiting goals by 8% to 20%. The three fell short by a combined 24,000 enlistees.

The Army met its recruiting goals in October, the first month of the 2006 fiscal year, but 12% of its recruits scored in the lowest category on military entrance tests on science, math and word knowledge, The Sun of Baltimore reported this month. That was triple the number — 4% — that the Army expects in 2006.

Why is CNN going wall to wall with this this local drowning story in Wisconsin.? There IS other news to report.

Eating the Seed Corn

Replant the American Dream

By David Ignatius

Friday, November 25, 2005; Page A37

When I began traveling as a foreign correspondent 25 years ago, I thought I understood what the face of evil looked like. There were governments that used torture against their enemies; they might call it "enhanced interrogation" or some other euphemism, but it was torture, and you just hoped, as an American, that you were never unlucky enough to be their prisoner. There were governments that "disappeared" people -- snatched them off the street and put them without charges in secret prisons where nobody could find them. There were countries that threatened journalists with physical harm.

As an American in those days, I felt that I traveled with a kind of white flag. We were different. The world knew it. We might have allies in the Middle East or Latin America who used such horrifying methods. But these were techniques that Americans would never, ever use -- or even joke about. That was our seed corn -- the fact that we were different.

The United States must begin to replenish this stock of support for America in the world. I would love to see the Bush administration take the lead, but its officials seem not to understand the problem. Even if they turned course, much of the world wouldn't believe them. Sadly, when President Bush eloquently evokes our values, the world seems to tune out. So this task falls instead to the American public. It's a job that involves traveling, sharing, living our values, encouraging our children to learn foreign languages and work and study abroad. In short, it means giving something back to the world.

We must stop behaving as if we are in a permanent state of war, in which any practice is justified by the exigencies of the moment. That's my biggest problem with Vice President Cheney's anything-goes jeremiads against terrorism. They suggest we will always be at war, and so it doesn't matter what the world thinks of our behavior. That's a dangerously mistaken view. We are in a long war but not an endless one, and we need to begin rebuilding the bridges to normal life.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving each year, the Wall Street Journal republishes twin editorials that evoke America's special gifts: "The Desolate Wilderness" and "And the Fair Land." They describe the pilgrims' fears as they departed Europe in 1620, and the measureless bounty they and their descendants found in the new land. The spirit we celebrate on Thanksgiving Day is our most powerful national asset. We need to put America's riches back on the table and share them with the world, humbly and gratefully.

This is nothing new, Dave. The Ugly American wasn't invented by the Bush administration, but it might have been perfected by them.

...the wider tale

A New Orleans Bank Faces Mold, Ruins and Tough Choices

By GARY RIVLIN
Published: November 25, 2005

The visit was in part a field trip to inspect the moldy, stinking remains of bank branches hit hardest by flooding and looting. But mainly Mr. McDonald was on a scouting expedition. Here, in the predominantly black, eastern half of New Orleans, he was searching for signs of activity that might justify the reopening of some of Liberty's six closed New Orleans branches. The bank is operating only two of its eight New Orleans branches, both located in the western half of the city.

Mr. McDonald found little cause for optimism.

Nearly three months after the storm, reconstruction of the New Orleans economy is turning out to be slower and more complex than many people first thought. Basic services like electricity, water and sewer are still lacking in large swaths of the city, including the New Orleans East neighborhood, home to four of Liberty's eight New Orleans branches.

The New Orleans school district optimistically said it would open a small number of its schools by the start of November, but that deadline has passed without any action. Residents from low-lying areas await word on the city's plans for their neighborhoods. Meanwhile, toxic mold clings to everything it touches and permeates the air, sickening even occasional visitors.

Looted buildings have yet to be cleaned up and wrecked structures yet to be leveled because there are not enough workers to haul away the debris. And some businesses, including Liberty, are trapped in limbo as they try to negotiate settlements with insurance companies.

"Depending on the settlement, I'll clean up or I'll tear it down," Mr. McDonald said.

Liberty's slow progress returning to New Orleans, despite Mr. McDonald's best efforts, is the wider tale of the Crescent City. And just as Liberty is dependent on the local economy's rebirth, the city needs Liberty to write commercial loans and home mortgages to start the painstaking rebuilding progress. Mr. McDonald, who is chairman of the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce and serves on the commission the mayor appointed to devise a rebuilding plan for the city, is never quite sure if he is helping his bank or his city, in large part because they are often one and the same.

"Anything we do to get people back in town helps my bank," he said. "Anything we can do to help New Orleans get back on its feet helps me." As Mr. McDonald drove the streets of the 7th Ward, a working-class community of bungalows where he grew up, he found only scant traces of life. There were almost no people on the streets for blocks on end, and virtually no cars traversed thoroughfares that would normally be crowded at midday. So instead he pointed at skeletons - businesses Liberty had helped to underwrite and that, since Katrina, have been boarded up, and homes the bank financed that are now sitting unoccupied.

"This here was my customer base, and it's just gone," he said. He shook his head, and his normally sleepy eyes bulged in disbelief. It is a phrase and look he would repeat a half-dozen times during a three-hour excursion, as if still trying to bend his brain around the immensity of it all.

Who will rebuild New Orleans for the working class?

Gulf Coast Crisis

I believe it was Faulkner who once claimed that the South, in this case we are talking about the Deep South, was the place the "time forgot." Sadly for the victims of Katrina, as Melanie pointed out earlier, everyone else has forgotten too.

In Miss., Time Now Stands Still
Recovery Is Stagnant In Post-Katrina Towns

By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 25, 2005; Page A01

PASS CHRISTIAN, Miss. -- Three months ago, Katrina all but scoured this old beach town of 8,000 off the face of the Earth. To walk its streets today is to see acres of wreckage almost as untouched as the day the hurricane passed.

No new houses are framed out. No lots cleared. There is just devastation and a lingering stench and a tent city in which hundreds of residents huddle against the first chill of winter and wonder where they'll find the money to rebuild their lives.

Billy McDonald, the white-haired mayor whose house was reduced to a concrete slab by 55-foot-high waves, works out of a trailer. He doesn't expect the word "recovery" to roll off his lips for many months.

"Lots of folks don't have flood insurance; lots of folks don't have jobs; lots of folks don't have hope," McDonald said. "We're a hurting place."

This is the other land laid low by Katrina's fury. Like New Orleans to the west, hundreds of square miles of Mississippi coastland look little better than they did in early September, and many people here harbor anger that the federal government has fallen short and that the nation's attention has turned away. At least 200,000 Mississippians remain displaced, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is short at least 13,000 trailers to house them.

Fifty thousand homeowners lack federal flood insurance and cannot rebuild. The casinos, which employed 17,000 people, won't begin to reopen until next year, and the unemployment rate has quadrupled, now topping 23 percent in the coastal counties.

Half a dozen towns, Pass Christian among them, are borrowing millions of dollars to pay bills, and some officials are talking about surrendering charters and becoming wards of the state.

Remember that as all of this is happening to citizens that have no connections or help, Brownie has a new job that I promise pays more than you or I make. This is a great piece on what is going on right now and how one of the poorest states in the nation is trying to cope.

So are there any brave Democrats that want to tie together a Marshall Plan for the Gulf Coast (with transparent contracts) with a repeal of the Bush Tax Cuts? I think you could find a few good men to run on that in '06. Let's face it, this is what you get when you have a state government with no safety net, an incompetent group of hacks at the federal level, and the perfect storm.

A Peek into the Future

New Orleans Health Care Another Katrina Casualty
Loss of Hospitals And Professionals Slows Rebuilding

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 25, 2005; Page A03

NEW ORLEANS -- Campaigning here in 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Sister Stanislaus, the revered nurse-administrator of Charity Hospital. Painting a dire portrait of a 1,800-bed facility teeming with 2,700 patients, the nun begged Roosevelt for money for a new public hospital. Three years later, thanks to $3.6 million from the federal government, Sister Stanislaus opened a new 20-story hospital, the most modern of its day.

It became one of the Unites States' most storied health care institutions, a place where Michael E. DeBakey -- pioneer of the first artificial heart -- trained, military surgeons learned how to treat gunshot wounds amid urban crime, and Mayor C. Ray Nagin, hip-hop star Master P and Democratic consultant Donna Brazile were born. But today, Charity is padlocked, another victim of Hurricane Katrina.

Some suggest the Charity complex -- including the main "Big Charity" hospital, its sister University Hospital, research labs and offices -- should be razed. Others demand it be rebuilt. And because any public hospital here -- new or old -- would be built with federal dollars, every U.S. taxpayer has financial a stake in the fight.

But the debate over Charity, once the linchpin in this city's health care system, has come to symbolize much more than a battle over a cherished relic. Providing medical care is one of the most daunting challenges for New Orleans as it rebuilds, and the choices made now will determine whether one of the nation's poorest cities can adequately care for its legions of uninsured.

Katrina damaged more than a dozen hospitals and uprooted thousands of private physicians. Now, nearly three months later, health care remains scarce. The last military medical unit in the city is gone, leaving only Touro and Children's hospitals partially reopened.

At the emergency room at Oschner Clinic Foundation in neighboring Jefferson Parish, visits are up 35 percent over this time a year ago, the number of uninsured patients has tripled and some wait as long as 10 hours for care, emergency chief Joseph Guarisco said.

But for most of the 25,000 clean-up workers -- many of them uninsured -- and an estimated 75,000 residents, health care is delivered in military tents that recently moved from a parking lot to the concrete floor of the convention center.

"Now my fear is the entire country will think it's appropriate to care for our patients in a tent," said Peter DeBlieux, director of resident training at Charity. "I don't think the rest of the country appreciates we are seeing people in a tent."

This portrait of healthcare in the Big Easy is a proxy for the rest of the recovery effort. It is also a stand-in for might happen in the event of a flu pandemic.

The hospital emergency departments will be lucky to have tents for triage in such an event.

Metrics

Iraq conflict still in early stages, report says

By Fiona Symon
Published: November 23 2005 10:50 | Last updated: November 23 2005 10:50

The war in Iraq is still in its early stages and US and British troops are likely to be bogged down in the conflict for decades, a report by the Oxford Research Group said on Wednesday.

The independent think tank’s report will make unwelcome reading for the British and US governments, both of which have indicated that they hope to begin reducing the number of troops in Iraq after the next Iraqi parliamentary elections in December.

Under growing pressure from domestic opponents of the war, both governments have suggested that the improved capabilities of the Iraqi security forces - now numbering 200,000 - may allow them to reduce their military commitment in Iraq next year.

Neither have not put forward any timetable for withdrawal, however, despite repeated calls for them to do so.

Condoleeza Rice, US secretary of state said this week she suspected US forces were “not going to be needed” in the same numbers “for all that much longer”.

But Tony Bair, UK prime minister, told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that it was vital not to “back away” from Iraq before ensuring that the country’s democratic institutions were properly established.

“The terrorists and insurgents would take over unless the multinational force was there to safeguard the democratic process,’’ said Mr Blair.

Ensuring a friendly government in Baghdad is an essential part of US security policy, even if this requires a permanent US military presence, because long-term access to oil from the region is essential to the US, given its increasing dependence on imported oil, says the report.

If Iraq can no longer be controlled, and if Iran guards its independence, then the US risks finding its access to Gulf oil diminishing at precisely the same time as China seeks to make gains in the region.

The report by Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University provides a detailed month-by-month assessment of the developing insurgency for a year between May 2004 and April this year.

It points to the growing numbers of civilian casualties, as well as the failure to control the insurgency, even with the use of overwhelming firepower, as with the assault on Fallujah last November, and concludes that the war in Iraq has been a ‘gift’ for al-Qaeda.

And "mission accomplished" would be what, exactly?

Turning Tide

Debate over Iraq withdrawal could be key 2006 election issue

By Deirdre Shesgreen
POST-DISPATCH WASHINGTON BUREAU
11/24/2005

The passion that Murtha's proposal stoked is unlikely to cool soon. In fact, Murtha's proposal was just one in a series aimed at shifting direction in Iraq.

Among the others:

Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton of Lebanon, Mo., put forward a new formula in October for the drawdown of U.S. forces. Under his plan, for every three Iraqi security force brigades rated "fully capable," one American brigade would be redeployed.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., laid out a plan this month for bringing 20,000 soldiers home after next month's elections in Iraq. It sets out benchmarks for further reductions and a transfer of power to Iraqis.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has urged a move in the other direction, calling for more soldiers in Iraq to stabilize that nation. McCain said in a speech this month, "Instead of drawing down, we should be ramping up, with more civil-military soldiers, translators and counterinsurgency operations teams."

This proposal got little attention when McCain made it. But it may well get a fuller airing now that Murtha has focused public attention on the issue. "He re-ignited the discussion," said Democratic Rep. Jerry Costello of Illinois.

In a speech Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., also called for a reduction in U.S. strength soon.

But he said, "At the same time, sufficient numbers of U.S. troops should be left in place to prevent Iraq from exploding into civil war, ethnic cleansing and a haven for terrorism. We must find the right balance."

Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., said, "The war is obviously going to continue being a priority, maybe the top priority."

No wonder. Constituents are clamoring for an exit plan, several lawmakers said. "What I am asked more than anything is, 'Is there a plan to withdraw?'" Costello said.

Maryland-based pollster Del Ali is conducting surveys in the politically important states of Iowa and New Hampshire. He said most voters want soldiers out of Iraq within a year.

"You're getting a stronger majority of people saying they want out within a year, and fewer and fewer saying, 'Stay until the job's done,'" he said.

Risk Communication

Let me make a few things plain: the experts I consult are deeply divided on the probability of a pandemic flu, but none of them think that the probability is zero. Some think it is highly likely in the next ten years, others think the possibility is remote. I think that the recent outbreaks of avian influenza in Southeast Asia deserve very careful monitoring, which they likely won't get. The surveillance networks in those countries are simply too weak.

SARS came out of the same part of th world and for the same reason.

If easily transmissable H2H flu breaks into the human population (and this will take a fairly substantial recombination/re-assortment of the current genome) we don't have a clue about what it will do. It is highly pathogenic in birds right now, causing a great deal of sickness and death in that population. Will it do the same in humans, as we think it has done in Asia? We don't know. The news media like to tout a 50% death rate in humans in Asia, but that's not good data. Chances are there are humans with asymptomatic (sub-clinical=no symptoms) cases in Asia, but we don't know about them because they aren't sick. We do know there are affected birds who also have no symptoms.

What is H5N1 going to do? We know that it is a highly pathogenetic strain (easy for birds to catch and it kills a lot of them) but what would this mean for a human to human transmissible form of this flu? We don't know.

What is prudent to do when we don't know? Be vigilant. By the time a pathogenic strain of human flu is detected and the news media get the word, it will be too late to protect yourself unless you have already done some preparation. Read the avian flu blogs, including but not limited to this one and Flu Wiki, but you won't miss much if you read those. Start building a disaster plan for your family. You should have done this already in the case of a household fire, but add to it, that thing you should have already written. We get hurricanes here, you in the west have earthquakes. How are you going to keep from getting separated from your kids? Have a plan, matches and candles.

Begin now building a stockpile of food and water that will keep you from having to do much commerce with the rest of the world (which might be shut down) for 6-8 weeks. In my part of the world, having a ten-day hurricane pantry is part of living. When Isabel went through two years ago, my power was up in 24 hours, but my near neighbors struggled for three weeks.

The words that went around the flu conference were "social distancing." If you don't want to be in the grocery with your neighbors and they don't want to see you there, what are you going to do? Have a plan or a supply of sugical garb. Have a stash of food and water, in case the supply line goes down. (If 30% of the electrical line workers are sick, how reliable do you think your power is going to be in a storm? A propane stove is cheap insurance, but only use it outside, the fumes are toxic. The propane is cheap, just don't store it in the house.)

Talk to the Mormons and the Seventh Day Adventists about storing food at home, they are pros at this and more than willing to come and talk to you about it. You might could get them to come and talk to your congregations!

How serious do I think this is? I defer to the experts who talk in statistics rather than the arithematic numbers most of us know. I've asked our resident mathematician to address the difference. The scientists range between batshit worried to utterly unconcerned. Me, I'm not stockpiling yet, but admit that it's a possibility. In the days to come, I'll bring you some of the scientist's voices and you are going to have to make up your own mind.

That is what is called "risk communication." I can bring you the range of possibilities, but you are going to have to decide what you are going to do.

Trusted Recipes

The Tried and True Classic

Turkey Mornay on Broccoli

Ingredients
1 package (10 ounce) frozen broccoli spears
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
1 cup poultry broth
1/2 cup half and half (milk and cream)
1/2 cup dry white wine
Salt and pepper to taste
1/8 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 cups chopped or sliced turkey
1 cup chopped or sliced ham
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup ground nut meats

Instructions
Cook broccoli until barely tender; drain. Place in 1-1/2 quart baking dish; cover with turkey and ham.

To make mornay sauce, melt butter and stir in flour in saucepan; add broth and half and half and cook until thick and smooth, stirring constantly. Stir in wine, salt and pepper and Worcestershire. Pour over turkey and ham.

Mix Parmesan cheese, crumbs and ground nut meats and sprinkle over the top; bake in 350-degree F. oven until mixture bubbles. This Turkey Mornay is nice baked and served in individual baking dishes, as well.

If you were smart, you made poultry broth base from the giblets while the bird was cooking today, so you've got a couple of pastic containers of it in the freezer. This recipe is a classic for a reason: it is very good. Serve your turkey mornay with white rice and the leftover veggies from today. Drizzle a little lemon-butter sauce over the reheated asparagus, carrots or broccoli. Use an herb seasoning like Spike in place of salt, it will perk them right up. For the non-garlic crowd, a splash of balsamic vinaigar in the lemon butter is a nice hit of flavor. A "splash" in a sauce this small is about a quarter teaspoon, for those of you who measure.

Blegging

If you knew how many hours a day I spent deleting porn and trackback spam you'd be shocked. You'd probably also be shocked at how much money it costs me to do this: we'll be moving to a new platform soon and that costs money, but it will eliminate the spammers, at least for a while. The hosting service I use demands a payment from me before I can make Bump a live website. I can't make demands of you for reading it however.

Duncan Black makes a ton of money on a blogger website which costs him nothing. I'm not situated that way. I spend 12-20 hours a day, blogging for you, and I wonder if you could give something back. I'm one of the lunatics who has taken up blogging for a full-time profession. It seemed to me you wanted it.

Can you help a little this holiday season? If you can, the Paypal link up at the top right takes both checks and credit cards. My ads pay my hosting fees but not my groceries or my rent. I can really use whatever you can send. I haven't seen a doctor in more than five years (no insurance) and, at my age, that gets a little spooky. I realize that there are many demands on your resources at this time of the year, and that I can't offer you a deduction on your taxes (yet, I'm working on a 501(c)3 application right now under one of my other websites) right now. That will be repaired in coming months. Whatever you can do to make sure the lights stay turned on here this holiday season will be much appreciated.

The grant which has been paying my ISP charges runs out next month and I'd hate to have to go back to dial-up, with the volume of work I do, it would slow me down enormously.

Thanks for all you do and for your help.

Melanie

Giving Thanks

I've just returned from an incredible spread provided by my brother and his wife. Leigh knocked himself this year; his "big deal" holiday dinners are always excellent, but this was another level. I came home with a big bag of leftovers, and turkey and dressing and gravy are all better on the second day. I have a busy one tomorrow, so it is nice to have a fridge full of food that's ready to eat. I'm real glad the other guests cancelled. Leigh had a 19.5 pound turkey expecting a full house. Now, a lot of that is in my fridge and he's going to have some very lovely turkey and rice soup for his hardworking staff at their store as they begin the holiday shopping season, where everyone on staff will be knocking themselves out. If Leigh can get the holiday pictures we took today up on their site, I'll give him a link. You can meet Leigh and Anne and their hardworking staff here. I'll be meeting some of them the next time I'm in the store and at Thanksgiving dinner next year. If you live in the Baltimore-Washington region, take an excursion to Pasadena, Maryland, which you can easily combine with a lunch or dinner trip to Annapolis (which has some very interesting restaurants) just to take a look at the holiday windows of their store. Your children will love them (go after dark, when the lights are on.) Even if you aren't at all interested in the things they sell, go in and take a look at the displays, themed to different aspects of the winter holidays. They are great fun to see, and you can give whichever dog is on duty a friendly pat on the head. Sadie and Darby are both nutso golden retrievers and two of the most outgoing dogs I've ever met (and that's saying something about goldens, if you know the breed.) Hide your kleenex, the dogs will steal it.

We played with the very silly dogs, the even sillier new cat, Willy, and ate and ate and ate. It was a very cold, windy day here in the Mid-atlantic, so Anne and I eschewed a post-dinner walk with the dogs.

I've learned to avoid that miserable drive up I-95, which is a royal pain in the a** everywhere it exists on the East Coast by taking Amtrak. Leigh and Anne live near the station at BWI airport and the trip from DC to BWI takes less time than the cab ride to Union Station. The upshot is that I arrive at their house unfrazzled from a frightening drive, and arrive back home with warm feelings from the day rather than nightmares from the trip home, dodging the 18-wheelers going 90 miles an hour (that is not an exaggeration.) The traffic is now so bad in the region (and getting worse) that I use public transit everywhere it is available.

The Washington Beltway was a parking lot for much of the day yesterday because of a large truck fire. These kinds of things happen on a regular-enough basis for traffic in the entire area to be snarled for hours. I use surface streets in preference to the interstates because the surface streets at least move. And I use public transit whenever I can. Since my commute to work in the morning is down the stairs, a tank of gas lasts me a long time.

My brother and sister-in-law said the early part of this Christmas shopping season has started well for them, after several money losing years, and both of them have big improvements with their health this year, after many years of long, chronic and debilitating problems. I'm glad to see things going so well for them, at long last. Self-employed people in the retail trade work long hours for very little financial reward and they are no exception. I'm proud of the work they do and the amount of care they put into it. They don't have an internet mail order operation yet, but they are working on it. They are one of the premiere sellers of Yankee Candles in the nation, outpacing even Yankee's own stores. I have a housefull of them, I like good stinky things in my house. "Home for the Holidays" is the candle scent for December and it is my favorite, putting me in the mood for Christmas. With a fire in the fireplace, a couple of Yankee Candles scenting the house, I'm ready to start cooking. But first I need to order more wood.

This was a very good day, but the cats are very suspicious of the dogs they smell on my hands. Very suspicious.

I hope you all had a Thanksgiving holiday which was at least as good as mine. For the first time in 5 years, I'm looking forward to Christmas. I think I'm going to go snitch a piece of that turkey....

Thanksgiving Open Thread

I'm away for the rest of the day, celebrating the holiday with my family. I hope you are doing likewise. Step away from the computer and go eat something.

The guest posters will be around a bit, in between their own dinners, family and friends. I'll be back late tonight, but tomorrow will be taken up with job and press interviews (check the National Journal and USA Today the week of December 8.) The guest posters will be helping me fill in the news during a very busy weekend.

My thoughts and thanks go out to the guest posters and to you for another incredible year in the blogosphere. You, the readers and commentors, are what makes blogging worthwhile. Your thoughts on the day, or anything else, can go in comments below. This is an open thread.

Missing the Point

The Katrina Housing Debacle

Published: November 24, 2005

The Bush administration's mishandling of the Katrina housing crisis is shaping up as an epic policy failure. Nearly three months after more than half a million people were displaced by the hurricane, most are still at loose ends in provisional housing - many in isolated trailer parks. The government has no apparent plan for getting them settled in places where they might find jobs and schools.

The federal government has meanwhile been less than helpful to cities like Houston, which has worked feverishly to find housing for the tens of thousands of survivors who landed on its doorstep. Like other cities, Houston has been whiplashed by confusing federal directives. Recently, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced that it would stop paying hotel bills on Dec. 1. Then it extended the deadline to Jan. 7 for those in the states with the highest concentrations of evacuees and to Dec. 15 for thousands of people in the other states.

The mayor of Houston, which has struggled to house about 80,000 evacuees, was rightly outraged by the first deadline. With about 19,000 people still in hotels and motels at the time of the first announcement, the city could not hope to meet the deadline. And FEMA had made the task of finding apartments all the more difficult by saying it wanted conditional leases that could be changed after three months. Landlords would understandably reject this option, given that many are already worried that they might not get paid for the evacuees they have already accepted as tenants.

No one city should have been asked to absorb so many displaced people. The administration could have easily avoided that by issuing Section 8 housing vouchers through the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The survivors would have been filtered through HUD's extensive locator system, which has a track record of directing people to decent and affordable housing all over the country.

Bushco so hates government that it can't be bothered to notice what government appropriately does well. Calling the Bushies incompetant does them too much credit.

Who Pays for Predictable Disasters?

Hurricane helper
# FEMA's insurance policies promote repeated Katrina-style disasters.

By David Helvarg, president of the Blue Frontier Campaign (bluefront.org), and author of "Blue Frontier -- Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness" and "50 Ways to Save the Ocean."

THE FEDERAL Emergency Management Agency said last week that it has run out of money to pay insurance claims from this year's hurricanes. Not counting Wilma, the claims top $22 billion. So you'd think the troubled agency would be eager to reduce future disaster damage.

Apparently not. By cavalierly shoveling taxpayer money into insurance for development in high-risk coastal areas — areas the private insurance industry has long since abandoned — the agency is assuring that future hurricanes again do the sort of damage Katrina inflicted on the Gulf Coast. Meanwhile, FEMA's willingness to insure property in places that are hurricane magnets is driving a coastal development boom that is destroying the fragile dunes, wetlands and marshes that act as the nurseries, filters and storm barriers of our living seas.

In the 1980s, 17 of the nation's 20 fastest-growing counties were coastal. Towns such as Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss., Dauphin Island and Gulfshores, Ala., and North Captiva, Fla., exploded with floating casinos, condos, stilt homes, beach mansions, marinas and shopping malls just waiting to be knocked down when hurricanes began increasing in intensity in the 1990s.

Dauphin Island, Ala., reminds me of Key West when I was a kid: a relaxed place without a lot of commercial distractions from the magic of its open sky and rainbow-streaked waters.

I first visited there five years ago to interview Dr. George Crozier, director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. Fourteen miles long by 1.5 miles at its widest, with about 2,000 winter residents and as many as 15,000 summer visitors, Dauphin Island has been repeatedly hit and reshaped by tropical hurricanes, including Frederick in 1979, Danny in 1997, George in 1998, Ivan in 2004 and Dennis, Katrina and Wilma in 2005.

From the water, the island's narrow west end looks like a forest of wooden stilts atop which several hundred houses have been temporarily secured. The storm-eroded sand has retreated under their pilings, and you could fish off the decks of many of them. After Hurricane George, FEMA spent millions of tax dollars to protect the single road to the area, but without requiring any additional public access to what's left of the beach.

In 2004, Hurricane Ivan delivered Dauphin a glancing blow, destroying 50 west-end homes and badly damaging another 100, leaving a rubble of wooden debris, grounded boats and two new ocean channels in its wake. Yet again, FEMA returned to help vacation-rental developers rebuild in harm's way.

On this visit to Dauphin, after Hurricane Katrina, there are more than 200 west-end homes destroyed (many of whose owners are collecting their FEMA insurance checks from last year), and also a new visitor to the area: the massive oil rig Ocean Warwick, grounded in the surf. Crozier and I pass through a police roadblock and hike down the beach amid an apocalyptic scene of broken and vanished stilt houses, downed power lines, flooded roads, buried cars and shallow quicksand. A $1.1-million protective sand berm built by FEMA after last year's hurricane has also vanished into the sea.

"The rush to rebuild is understandable. It's basic human sympathy," Crozier says, "but we have to build in a different way."

In 1968, FEMA, worried about the disaster risks faced by new beachfront residents, came up with a plan. If homeowners met certain basic safety standards in beachfront construction (like putting houses on stilts), they would qualify for a newly created National Flood Insurance Program. FEMA convinced Congress that this would reduce individual risk while shifting the burden of hurricane disaster relief onto policyholders. It would guarantee a large insurance pool by making the rates so inexpensive that lots of people would buy the policies.

This idea worked for a while — about as long as a historic lull in Atlantic hurricane activity persisted through the 1970s and 1980s. But since the early 1990s, this natural 25- to 30-year cycle has both intensified and — possibly — become supercharged by fossil fuel-fired climate disruption that's heated the world's oceans and raised sea levels more than a foot. As soon as hurricanes Hugo, Andrew, George, Fran, Floyd, Isabel, Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne, Dennis, Katrina and Rita started coming ashore, the program turned into a money loser and the largest financial exposure the federal government now faces. FEMA had insured more than $763 billion worth of property against flooding, with more than half of that in the Gulf region (42% in low-lying, hurricane-prone Florida).

Until the government started selling flood insurance, it was almost impossible to insure coastal floodplain property against the inevitability of storm surge. As a result, most bankers refused to issue mortgages, so beachfront homeowners had to pay cash and tended not to build bigger than they could afford to lose. But once the feds started offering insurance, real estate developers found mortgage bankers more than willing to lend them money, setting off a tsunami of new coastal construction.

Federal flood insurance covers up to $250,000 for property damage to homes and $500,000 for businesses. Storm-battered beach communities are also eligible for low-interest small-business loans; federally funded reconstruction of highways, roads and bridges (like the $32-million causeway linking Dauphin Island to the mainland) and beach replenishment courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers.

"The problem is the government won't operate like a business. It won't cancel policies or increase premiums when a house is destroyed like a real company would," complained Steve Ellis, a maritime specialist with the Washington-based Taxpayers for Common Sense. "Erosion and sea-level rise aren't even factored into their rates." Yet a report published by FEMA predicts that one out of four U.S. homes built within 500 feet of the ocean will be destroyed in the next 45 years by erosion and storm surge.

This is about risk. The folks who want to build on the beautiful Gulf coast are asking us to insure their investment. Is that right? There needs to be a national conversation about this. The same question could be asked about the barrier island developments along the entire East Coast, all of which are in the hurricane zone.

Selective Vision

Priests Citing New Problem in Gay Policy

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: November 24, 2005

A day after the disclosure of a new Vatican directive that deters most gay men from joining the priesthood, some priests say they are shocked by one easily overlooked clause. It says that spiritual directors and confessors in seminaries "have the duty to dissuade" any candidates "who show deep-seated homosexual tendencies" from joining the priesthood.

These priests said this would turn the confessional and spiritual counseling sessions, which seminarians previously regarded as private and supportive meetings, into a tool for weeding gay men out of seminaries.

"The relationship between a seminarian and his confessor or his spiritual director should not be about enforcing church documents, but to serve as spiritual guides," said the Rev. Michael Herman, a priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago who has recently publicly identified himself as gay in order to speak out against the Vatican's action.

"They've gone so far as to say your confessor's and spiritual adviser's role is to talk you out of" becoming a priest, Father Herman said.

His reaction to the document was echoed by other priests and Roman Catholic organizations, who said that the church's decree was discriminatory and hurtful to faithful chaste gay priests and would only exacerbate an already dire shortage of Catholic clergymen.

But that was only one reaction to a Vatican directive that church experts say is intentionally sprinkled with undefined terms and left open to interpretation.

Some priests and church officials welcomed the document as a corrective to what they call a gay subculture in some seminaries. Others said it merely restated an existing policy and would have far less impact than advocates of gay priests and their opponents have claimed.

"There is nothing in this document that would require a change in the current practice," said the Rev. James Bretzke, chairman of theology and religious studies at the University of San Francisco.

Father Bretzke said it had long been true that some American bishops and superiors who lead religious orders would automatically disqualify candidates for the priesthood who claimed a gay orientation, while other bishops would consider them.

"Unless you get a critical mass of bishops and religious superiors who say, Now we can't admit any gay men, I don't think it's going to have any discernible effect," Father Bretzke said. "There are lots of excellent gay priests and seminarians, and we have a priest shortage. We're not exactly in a buyer's market here. If you're not going to ordain gay men, and not going to ordain married men, and not going to ordain women, well then who's left? It's not exactly a big pool."

Estimates of the percentage of priests who are gay have varied from as low as 10 percent to as high as 60 percent. The directive applies only to seminarians, not to priests.

I want to see strong and healthy faith communities, of whatever stripe, all over our country. This isn't the way you get there. I'm a graduate of an RC seminary. I'll guess that better than half of the ordination candidates were gay. If RC wants to turn itself into a tiny denomination, this is one of the ways you get there.

One of the debates inside RC right now is about whether it should be a "big tent" church, or a smaller and purer one. It seems like the Vatican is headed in the latter direction.

While the Vatican is fixated on gay men, I don't notice it saying anything about polygamy and its priests in developing nations.

It seems to me that Rome might do better by joining with other denominations and faiths to start enquiring about what should be done about the shortage of trained, ordained parish/congregational leadership. The number of people willing to go into professional ministry shrinks every year. No denominational body has been willing to look at that. Maybe it is time.

Time for a Plan

As usual, Harold Meyerson hits the nail on the head.

Exit Strategy in Search of a Party

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, November 23, 2005; Page A19

George W. Bush has precious little to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, and nothing whatever when it comes to his adversaries. Beset at every turn, the president and his men have been pining for some patsies, some loudmouth liberals, some effete elitists whom they can demonize in the best traditions of the party of Richard Nixon.

Instead, look who's come after them in the past half-year: Cindy Sheehan, whose down-the-line dovishness is more than offset by her standing as the mother of a soldier killed in Bush's war; Patrick Fitzgerald, the straight-arrow boy prosecutor out of New York's Irish working class; and now John Murtha, the toughest and most decorated Marine in the House, who represents a Pennsylvania district straight out of "The Deer Hunter."

Not a Michael Moore in the bunch. Nothing there for the Roves and the Reeds and the Swift Boat slanderers to work with.

Not for lack of trying. For the past two weeks, with his control of Congress in jeopardy, the president has been saying that those who question his manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the war are threatening our guys on the ground in Iraq. It's a time-honored tactic that goes back to Nixon: conflate criticism of the war with contempt for our troops and our nation.

Truth be told, Nixon had a lot to work with. The war in Vietnam was so bloody and unending, and the New Left so increasingly unhinged, that demonstrations turned violent and patriotism among many of the protesters seemed in short supply. The Yippies and the Panthers were all over the news. For an accomplished demagogue such as Nixon, who'd won his first elections by labeling his anticommunist liberal opponents as "commie symps," the rest was child's play. In short order he and his vice president were mushing together the measured antiwar sentiment of congressional Democrats with the boiling rage in the streets. Indeed, Nixon didn't so much argue the merits of staying the course in Vietnam -- nobody wanted to do that -- as inflame the sentiments of his "silent majority" against war protesters and the Democrats who opposed the war, too.

As political strategy, it was a smashing success, and the mere thought of it must today evoke a wrenching nostalgia in the political boiler room we call the White House. Where are the Yippies of yesteryear? Even as the American people turn decisively against the war in Iraq, war protests are few and well-behaved. Most congressional Democrats, and all their leaders, apparently have taken a vow of silence rather than offer an alternative plan for Iraq. And when one of them finally does pipe up, it's the unassailable Jack Murtha.
....
And so, on the most urgent question confronting America today, we have reached an absurd and exquisite equipoise. The Republicans cannot credibly defend the war; the Democrats cannot quite bring themselves to call for its end. And the war goes on.

The public is against the war, why can't the clueless Dems get behind the public. They'd own the issue if they did.

Turning Back the Clock

Alito's record has feminists ready for battle

By BOB EGELKO
San Francisco Chronicle
23-NOV-05

From abortion to sex discrimination to family leave, some of Samuel Alito's most important rulings during 15 years on the federal bench have involved issues related to women, and some of the strongest opposition to his Supreme Court nomination comes from women's-rights groups.

Alito's record on these issues is not uniformly conservative. He has voted to overturn some abortion restrictions, and he wrote a groundbreaking decision in 1993 that opened the door to political asylum for women fleeing persecution in their home countries.

But his opinions have more typically reached conclusions that dismayed feminist groups _ giving states more leeway to limit abortions, making it harder for discrimination plaintiffs to get to trial, and arguing for restraints on federal regulatory power, the cornerstone of civil-rights laws.

Alito's opponents say those decisions show that the judge maintains the attitudes he expressed as a government lawyer in a newly disclosed 1985 job-application letter, in which he described himself as a committed conservative who was proud of helping the Reagan administration argue against a constitutional right to abortion.

On women's issues, Alito's critics say, his record stands in marked contrast to the record of the justice he would replace, Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman ever appointed to the court.

"Justice O'Connor was the fifth vote in many 5-4 decisions that protected women's fundamental rights and freedoms," said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the nonprofit National Women's Law Center. "In nominating Judge Alito, President Bush has chosen someone who threatens the very existence of core legal rights that Americans, especially women, have relied on for decades."

"We are dismayed by Judge Alito's hostility to women's rights," said Susan Scanlan, chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, which counts 200 feminist-oriented groups as members.

I had lunch today with someone who commented how much progress women have made in his lifetime. It seems that such progress is pretty fragile stuff with wingnuts like Alito a step away from the Supreme Court.

My Pet Goat

Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21 President's Daily Brief, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President's Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.

The September 21, 2001, briefing was prepared at the request of the president, who was eager in the days following the terrorist attacks to learn all that he could about any possible connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Much of the contents of the September 21 PDB were later incorporated, albeit in a slightly different form, into a lengthier CIA analysis examining not only Al Qaeda's contacts with Iraq, but also Iraq's support for international terrorism. Although the CIA found scant evidence of collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the agency reported that it had long since established that Iraq had previously supported the notorious Abu Nidal terrorist organization, and had provided tens of millions of dollars and logistical support to Palestinian groups, including payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

The highly classified CIA assessment was distributed to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the president's national security adviser and deputy national security adviser, the secretaries and undersecretaries of State and Defense, and various other senior Bush administration policy makers, according to government records.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.

Indeed, the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004, according to congressional sources. Both Republicans and Democrats requested then that it be turned over. The administration has refused to provide it, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.

On November 18, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said he planned to attach an amendment to the fiscal 2006 intelligence authorization bill that would require the Bush administration to give the Senate and House intelligence committees copies of PDBs for a three-year period. After Democrats and Republicans were unable to agree on language for the amendment, Kennedy said he would delay final action on the matter until Congress returns in December.

Some of us knew Bush was lying from the beginning. We're glad to have the rest of you on board now.

Leaving in Droves

Coalition Members Look for an Exit

By Al Kamen

Wednesday, November 23, 2005; Page A17

President Bush has vowed not to "cut and run" in Iraq until the mission is accomplished and the Iraqi army can stand up. No need to even discuss a large drawdown next year of the kind the weak-kneed Democrats are demanding.

But a number of countries in the 22,000-strong Coalition of the Willing appear ready to "snip-and-slide" out of Iraq in the next few months with more going by the end of next year, according to news reports from coalition member countries.

For example, European media last week were reporting that the British, with 8,500 troops in Iraq, by far the largest allied contingent, were completing exit plans for a phased withdrawal starting as early as the middle of 2006.

Prime Minister Tony Blair dutifully repeated the "job is done" mantra but said that "it's entirely reasonable to talk about the possibility of withdrawal of troops next year." (We knew Blair would drift off-message one of these days.) Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Vice President Adel Abdul Madi were in London saying a 2006 timetable sounds about right.

The South Koreans, who have the next-highest number of troops, 3,200, are clearly in drawdown mode. Bush administration officials seemed surprised last week when South Korea's defense minister announced 1,000 troops would be withdrawn soon, even though this was leaked by a "senior government official" to the Korea Times on Oct. 28. More withdrawals may come next year, the Yonhap News Agency reported Nov. 5, adding that President Roh Moo Hyun "has linked the troop contribution to Seoul's efforts to enlist Washington's help in dealing with North Korea."

The fourth-largest deployment, Italy's 3,000 troops, is starting to withdraw in groups of 300 likely in the first half of 2006, according to a Nov. 12 Associated Press report.

The Rzeczpospolita daily, citing army sources, reported that Poland, the fifth-largest coalition member, would cut its 1,500 troops by more than a third starting in February.

Ukraine's 900 troops, the sixth-largest group, could be leaving by the end of this year, according to a Nov. 10 Agence France-Presse report, though Estonia's reportedly keeping its 39-member contingent until the end of next year. Bulgaria, according to a report carried by the Bulgarian news agency BGNES, will be withdrawing about 400 to 450 troops after the Dec. 15 Iraqi elections.

Earlier this month the Australian, quoting the Yomiuri Shimbun, reported that the 500 noncombatant Japanese soldiers in southern Iraq could start leaving in May, which would clear the way for the departure of the Australian troops guarding them. The Australian reported that, with the training of two Iraqi army battalions due to be complete by May, Australia was considering a mid-2006 pullout for its 450-strong force in the Al Muthanna district.

Georgia, with about 850 troops in Iraq -- including 550 providing security for the U.N. mission in Baghdad -- is standing firm, and AFP reported Romania's 730 troops are also staying. Denmark has 530 troops near Basra under British command and, we were told yesterday, the Danes are "staying the course" through next year.

Finally, El Salvador, with 380 troops, is awaiting a decision by President Elias Antonio Saca about future deployments, La Prensa reported Nov. 18. That decision surely will have nothing to do with whether the Bush administration renews a grant of Temporary Protected Status for 250,000 Salvadorans working in this country who could otherwise be deported.

The remaining coalition members have barely more than 1,000 troops in Iraq total. So if news reports on the top dozen or so prove accurate, the 22,000 coalition forces could be reduced by 25 percent or more by the end of 2006. If the British draw down, it might be reduced by half or more.

The others seem to have figured out that "mission accomplished" is a pretty open-ended thing and they don't want to hang around to find out what it is. The US public seem to have figured that out, tool.

Do Something!

This is a follow-up to yesterday's NYT story. Larry Altman is an MD and should know better.

C.D.C. Proposes New Rules in Effort to Prevent Disease Outbreak

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: November 23, 2005

Federal officials yesterday proposed the first significant changes in quarantine rules in 25 years in an effort to broaden the definition of reportable illnesses, to centralize their reporting to the federal government and to require the airline and shipping industries to keep passenger manifests electronically for 60 days.

The proposals would also clarify the appeals process for people subjected to quarantines to allow for administrative due process and give health officials explicit authority to offer vaccination, drugs and other appropriate means of prevention on a voluntary basis to those in quarantine.

The proposals could cost the beleaguered airline industry hundreds of millions of dollars, officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The officials are inviting public comment on the proposals, which are to be published in the Federal Register on Nov. 30, they told reporters in a telephone news conference.

The proposals are part of a broader Bush administration plan to improve the response to current and potential communicable disease threats that may arise anywhere in the world.

If adopted, the new regulations "will allow the C.D.C. to move more swiftly" when it needs to control outbreaks, said Dr. Martin Cetron, who directs the agency's division of global migration and quarantine.

The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 underscored how fast a disease could spread through the world and the need to modernize and strengthen quarantine measures by pointing out gaps in health workers' ability to respond quickly and effectively, Dr. Cetron said.

As the C.D.C. joined with cooperative airlines to meet flights and later collect information about passengers who had contact with others who developed SARS, the epidemiologists had to compile and process by hand data collected from flight manifests, customs declarations and other sources.

But manifests contained only the name and seat number; customs declarations were illegible, and when readable, the names did not match those on the manifests.

"The time required to track passengers was routinely longer than the incubation period," which was two to 10 days for SARS, Dr. Cetron said.

"That was really quite shocking," Dr. Cetron said.

One proposed change would require airline and ship manifests to be kept electronically for 60 days and made available to the C.D.C. within 12 hours when ill passengers arrive on international and domestic flights. The proposed changes include provisions for maintaining confidentiality and privacy of health information.

"When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout."

This is a another panic reaction to pandemic flu (which is not here yet, and may never be.) One more time: flu sufferers are likely to be asymptomatic for 24-48 hours after infection and quarantine will never catch them or stop the spread of disease. Those who are actively sick will likely be too debilitated to do much traveling. Promulgating ridiculous regulations that don't match the facts hardly makes the government more credible.

Chavez & Oil

Venezuela gives US cheap oil deal

Officials from Venezuela and Massachusetts have signed a deal to provide cheap heating oil to low-income homes in the US state.

The fuel will be sold at about 40% below market prices to thousands of homes over the winter months.

Local congressman William Delahunt described the deal as "an expression of humanitarianism at its very best".

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is one of the Bush administration's biggest adversaries in Latin America.

He first announced his plan to provide cheap heating oil directly to lower-income Americans while visiting Cuba in August.

The deal involves shipping some 45m litres of heating oil from Venezuela to Massachusetts at a discounted rate via Citgo Petroleum, a US-based subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-owned oil company.

What does it say about a failed energy policy that we have to turn to foreign leaders to make sure that there is affordable fuel for our citizens? And what does it say about our standing in the world that an "enemy" can make such an offer?

Declaring Victory in Defeat

I don't normally go for editorials, but I think the title of this one from the Washington Post says it all.

Three Years Late

THREE AND A half years after his arrest, the government has finally brought criminal charges against Jose Padilla. It's about time. Ever since President Bush ordered Mr. Padilla yanked out of the criminal justice system, his case has represented needless and self-defeating excess in the legal war on terrorism. Restoring him from military custody to federal court, therefore, is a big step forward. Instead of holding an American citizen in a peculiar legal limbo, the government is again doing something it does every day: prosecuting an alleged bad guy for breaking the law.

The charges do not repeat the administration's initial allegation that the former Chicago gang member, who has been held since May 2002 as an enemy combatant, was an al Qaeda operative plotting a radiological "dirty bomb" attack in Washington. Nor does the government charge-- as it later alleged -- that Mr. Padilla was planning to blow up apartment buildings using natural gas. Because of Mr. Padilla's long detention and interrogation without access to his lawyers, proving any charges related to these underlying allegations -- even if they are true -- would probably require the use of evidence that any court would deem tainted. Instead, the Justice Department has charged him with supporting terrorism and more general participation in a conspiracy to kill and maim overseas -- charges that officials apparently believe that they can prove without reference to what Mr. Padilla has told his military interrogators. These charges are less spectacular, but they are still serious.

The rest of the editorial misses the boat. If the Bush Administration really believed that it had a case against Padilla, chances are they would have gone ahead with it right away. The public relations value of such a trail would have been tremendous especially if the government had a solid case against him.

Instead we have them running with their tails between their legs because SCOTUS, even as far to the right as it is, was going to hammer them on it.

More importantly, what recourse does Padilla have to get those 3 years back (remember, innocent until proven guilty)? I'm no lawyer but I would think that he has grounds for at least a lawsuit against the government but that can't make up for how he's been treated. And worse, what type of precedent is established if WE THE PEOPLE let the government get away with this action without some sort of punishment?

Plan Flu and Radical Silliness

This is desperately silly.

At Entry Points, on the Lookout for Symptoms

By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: November 22, 2005

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 21 - Expanding an old weapon in the struggle against infectious disease, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has opened 10 new quarantine stations at major ports of entry in the past 18 months and plans to add several more in the coming year.

Ellen DeMott, a public health officer, at work at the quarantine station at Kennedy Airport in New York.

The United States now has medical officers at 17 airports and at the busy border crossing in El Paso to screen people entering the country for communicable diseases. They are particularly alert for travelers showing symptoms of the deadly avian influenza virus that has spread across Asia and into Europe.

The avian flu strain, known as H5N1, has forced the slaughter of millions of chickens and other fowl and has caused 67 human deaths as of late last week, according to the World Health Organization. The virus, while affecting huge numbers of birds, is not yet efficiently transmitted among people. But medical authorities fear that the virus could mutate into a lethal human flu strain and touch off a global pandemic that could kill millions.

Dr. William R. Mac Kenzie, the medical officer at the C.D.C. quarantine station at Los Angeles International Airport, said things were quiet in his small office. He receives one or two reports a week from international airlines reporting passengers with flu-like symptoms. Those travelers are examined and asked about where they had traveled and whether they had contact with live birds.

No such cases have arisen, Dr. Mac Kenzie said, but if one did, the passenger would not be detained but referred to a local hospital. Because there are few cases of human-to-human infection, the remaining passengers on the aircraft would not be quarantined, he said.

What Dr. Mac Kenzie fails to tell the NYT is that it is likely that a H5N1 patient will be asymptomatic for the first 24-48 hours of her infection, all the while actively shedding infection. You can't quarantine people who don't look sick. This entire plan is a mistake. It'll just shed more disease rather than prevent it.

A Taxing Situation

Court rules state school finance system unconstitutional

By JANET ELLIOTT and CLAY ROBISON
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
November 22, 2005

AUSTIN — The Texas Supreme Court today struck down a key part of the state's public school funding system and gave the Legislature until June 1 to correct the problem.

The ruling, which partly upholds and partly reverses a state district court decision issued last year, means Gov. Rick Perry will have to call still another special session of the Legislature to tackle the problem.

Most likely, the session will be held after the March party primaries, when he and many lawmakers will be on the ballot in contested elections.

Lawmakers failed to agree on a new funding plan during this year's regular session and two special sessions.

The high court held 7-1 that the $1.50 per $100 valuation cap on local school maintenance taxes amounts to an unconstitutional statewide property tax because many school districts are at or near the limit.

In the majority opinion, Justice Nathan Hecht noted that the Supreme Court, in a previous school finance case, ruled that an "ad valorem (property) tax is a state tax ...when the state so completely controls the levy, assessment and disbursement of revenue, either directly or indirectly, that the authority employed (by local districts) is without meaningful discretion."

The court noted findings by state District Judge John Dietz, after a trial in Austin last year, that districts statewide are spending more than 97 percent of the revenue that would be available if every district taxed at maximum rates, up from 83 percent in 1993-94.

It also noted that only about one-third of the districts with about a fifth of the student population exceed minimum accreditation standards, a marked declined from 2001, when more than 60 percent of districts exceeded the minimum standards.

The high court's ruling was less far-reaching that Dietz's decision. Dietz also had held the school funding system inadequate and cited a widening inequality between wealthy and poor districts.

The all-Republican Supreme Court instead said the school funding system does not yet violate the constitutional requirement that it provide for a "general diffusion of knowledge."

Dietz, a Democrat declared the school funding system unconstitutional in September 2004. He set an Oct. 1, 2005 deadline for the Legislature to change the law, but that deadline was stayed by the Supreme Court's consideration of the state's appeal.

Dietz ruled that the system is inadequate to meet the high standards that lawmakers have set for students. He cited evidence of a widening gap in educational achievement between "the haves and the have nots" and said Texas faces a bleak future if it fails to spend more on public education.

"Are we prepared for a future in Texas that is dismally poor, needy and ignorant?" asked Dietz in September 2004 when he announced his ruling. "The answer, 'I think not.'"

For the sake of my wife's home state, I would hope not, but I learned a long time ago to not underestimate the power of a politican to avoid a problem if their hide is on the line. The Chronicle has an excellent timeline on the case and the main points in it.

The problem isn't just money, though that's a great deal of it. Most states get their funding for their public schools from property taxes and the more valueable the land is, the more tax revenue they receive and, generally speaking, the better the school districts are.

There are a couple of states, most noteably Ohio, which have tried to deal with the inequity caused by the use of property taxes. Simply put, the rich counties have the better schools and get the better teachers and the poorer communities.... well.... you get the picture. One suggestion is that the revenue from the wealthier communities gets spread out by the state to improve conditions in the poorer communities (this idea is currently winging its way through the North Carolina courts right now). This type of program is often known as "Robin Hood" and here is a pretty good discussion from Ohio about what these plans are like.

Now I have no clue what the Gov. of Texas is going to do because if he wants those high standards, and for the sake of arguement we'll say he does, then he's got to cough up the money from somewhere. The court seems to have ruled that the property tax in this case is illegal because the funds are being controled by the state and not the local governments, so that option is out.

As to where Texas will find the money.... who knows.... . This also illustrates the problem that many states have with giving away huge tax breaks to companies that want to move into their states. Time and time again, studies are produced that show that these deals are not cost effective in the long term, but governors have a hard time explaining why they wouldn't give away the farm to get 300 manufacturing jobs in Iredell County. I hope that Texas has some of those type of deals that they can recind... otherwise it's going to be quite a bloodbath to unearth the money to keep their schools in business.

The Centerpiece

Is the turkey your responsibility this year? Is it your first time? Are you a little scared? Don't be. Cooks.com has the complete guide to fixing the bird.

I like the heritage birds, but they are a little gamey for those who aren't used to them and they do require extra care to keep from drying out. The directions on the link will work great for your basic Butterball. It takes very little care to turn out a perfect bird.

Update: He cooks extra to send me and his other guest home with plenty of leftovers. Turkey, dressing and gravy are better the second day, but the mashed potatoes are not as nice reheated. Never mind. They will all be gratefully consumed.

This might be the ultimate turkey sandwich:

Turkey Tarragon Pitas
(Serves 4)

1/2 cup lemon yogurt (See Tip 1)
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
1/4 teaspoon dried tarragon leaves, finely crushed (See Tip 2)
2 cups fully-cooked turkey breast, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (See Tip 3)
1/2 cup green grapes, sliced in half
4 mini (or 2 6-inch) whole-wheat pitas (See Tip 4)
4 pieces leaf lettuce (See Tip 5)

In medium bowl combine yogurt, mayonnaise and tarragon. Fold in turkey and grapes; cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour. Trim tops from mini pita pockets (or cut 6-inch pitas in half). Line inside of pitas with lettuce. Carefully fill pitas with turkey mixture.

Cook's Tips:

1. A possible use for any leftover lemon yogurt is to combine it with chopped apple, diced celery, raisins and chopped walnuts or any of your other favorite waldorf salad ingredients for a new twist on an old favorite recipe.

2. Most purchased, dried crushed tarragon leaves should be fine enough "as is" without further crushing.

3. Use white meat leftovers if you've prepared a whole turkey and not just the breast portion.

4. If you'd like to try this recipe, but don't have access to pita bread, you could serve the turkey mixture atop the lettuce on a plate with some of your leftover Thanksgiving rolls placed on the side. Substitute thin slice of thin baguettes, also. This will make elegant finger sandwiches which you can mix and match with other elegant, simple sandwiches. Buy a loaf of Pepperidge farm white Sandwich Bread, cut off the crusts. Fill two pieces with your sandwich filling and a bit of lettuce, in classic finger sandwich fashion. Divide the thing into quarters, cutting the bread on the diagonal, in an "x." Load a sandwich tray with vegetarian and meat-laden finger sandwiches and amaze the half-time crowd with your elegant presentation. The Brits call this high tea, and if you can find a high tea tower, so much the better. Traditionally, the plates of the tower contain sweet and savory bits. This one is savory.

5. If you don't have large pieces of leaf lettuce but do have pre-torn bagged lettuce, you can place this on the bottom half of your pita and then fill with the turkey mixture.

This is a nice light version of a turkey salad sandwich. You can serve it for the weekend football parties so that you aren't eating junk food only. I watch maybe one football game a year (the Redskins still stink) but I like low-fat nachos even for watching golf tournements. Yes, I'm a wonk who watches golf tournements.

Garnish the plates with chopped cilantro and lemon wedges. Yum.

Fact Checking Big Time

Cheney's Challenge

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, November 22, 2005; 1:33 PM

Recognizing that the White House's trash-talking of its opponents had gotten a bit out of hand, President Bush and Vice President Cheney in the past few days have publicly acknowledged that dissent over the war is not in itself unpatriotic and that the administration's newest nemesis, Congressman John Murtha, is no Michael Moore.

But that doesn't mean that they're backing off.

Cheney yesterday took point in the massive PR blitz aimed at salvaging the administration's reputation. He lashed out at the suggestion that "brave Americans were sent into battle for a deliberate falsehood," calling it "revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety" and saying that "it has no place anywhere in American politics."

But he was a bit late: Opinion polls show that fully 55 to 57 percent of Americans believe the Bush administration was intentionally misleading in the run up to war. That kind of mistrust is why the question of the administration's integrity has become absolutely central to modern American politics.

Rather than substantively address any of the allegations against the administration, however, Cheney used a handful of straw-man arguments and dubious assertions to make his point. And he took no questions.

How all this plays with the public will go a long way toward resolving two of Washington's most suspenseful cliffhangers: Can the Bush administration somehow turn things around? And will Cheney be the hero or the goat?

Wishful thinking. This is a bell that can't be unrung.

Froomkin truth-squad's Cheney's speech:

Cheney's speech was full of the rhetorical devices that White House speechwriters are fond of.

There was the straw-man argument:

Cheney: "It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the civilized world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone."

I haven't heard any war critics make that argument.

There were rhetorical questions:

Cheney: "In light of the commitments our country has made, and given the stated intentions of the enemy, those who advocate a sudden withdrawal from Iraq should answer a few simple questions: Would the United States and other free nations be better off, or worse off, with Zarqawi, bin Laden, and Zawahiri in control of Iraq? Would we be safer, or less safe, with Iraq ruled by men intent on the destruction of our country?"

Those questions presuppose that foreign terrorists, rather than Iraqis, would take over.

Howard Kurtz writes in his washingtonpost.com blog today about the "age-old device in politics, making a personal slam sound more high-minded by attributing it to someone else."

And Kurtz notes that in his remarks in Beijing on Sunday, "Bush used a version of the same technique: 'I heard somebody say, well, maybe so-and-so is not patriotic because they disagree with my position. I totally reject that thought.' Somebody? So-and-so? Who could he be referring to?"

The vice president did the same thing yesterday:

Cheney: "One might also argue that untruthful charges against the Commander-in-Chief have an insidious effect on the war effort itself. I'm unwilling to say that, only because I know the character of the United States Armed Forces -- men and women who are fighting the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other fronts."

Prince George

I generally don't take stories from Capitol Hill Blue because they have a hazy relationship with the truth in their news stories, but this is an op-ed and the writer is someone I respect.

Prince Dubya's flaws
By BONNIE ERBE
Nov 22, 2005, 06:44

In Prince Dubya's America, in is out, black is white, left is right, backward is forward, disaster is glory and glory disaster.

Not since he ascended to the throne has the Prince's looking-glass approach to politics been in sharper focus than during the past week. On two fronts, jingoism trumped true patriotism, lies trumped truth, excuses trumped apologies, bravado and swagger trumped reality.

The first front emanates from the Vice Prince. Vice Prince Cheney, no decorated combat veteran he, questioned and smeared the patriotism of fellow politicians who dared disagree with the administration's failing Iraq war. Last week he told a conservative policy group: "The suggestion that's been made by some U.S. senators that the president or any member of this administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city." For their work, the Vice Prince labeled those senators unpatriotic.

In Pre-Prince Dubya America, we believed the Constitution protected Americans' right to question why we sent troops to fight unjust wars. The Vice Prince tells us those days are gone. In Pre-Prince America, now-retired Marine colonels who once worked their way up from drill sergeants to decorated war heroes (to wit, the hawkish Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa.) were taken more seriously than legacies who relied on connections to procure multiple service deferments and/or those who failed to complete National Guard stints. The Vice Prince tells us those days are gone.

There is, however, hope. Increasing public skepticism is forcing the Prince and his Vice Prince to reconsider. A new Gallup poll shows that the Prince's job approval rating at 37 percent and the Vice Prince's at 36 percent. In a surprising and rare show of intelligence, even this White House is beginning to face facts. The Prince took time from his jaunt through Asia to soften his attack on Iraq war critics, saying they have "every right to voice their dissent."

Then there's the second front, which emanates from the Prince's Supreme Pick. Judge Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court has run into more than a bit of trouble. That's because papers released last week show Alito boasting about his work to overturn Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion nationwide. In Prince Dubya's America, as we know, there are no litmus tests. Especially when they accurately tag a Supreme Pick on the wrong side of an issue. Still, White House handlers will stretch the truth till it screams to claim that their Supreme Court nominee has no preconceived position on abortion rights or Roe.

That explains why Alito told Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., last week that his earlier writings should be discounted to nothing. He tried to discredit his own 1985 job application for a position in the Reagan Justice Department in which he wrote he was especially proud of his work to overturn Roe. He wrote: "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion." Feinstein told reporters that Supreme Pick Alito explained away his folly because he was "an advocate seeking a job." What does that make him now?

I believe that "Orwellian" describes the Bush administration.

That Strapping Economy, Take II

Health Cost Inflation Slows for Third Straight Year

Employers are shifting more of the expense to consumers, survey finds

By Karen Pallarito
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Nov. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Health benefit costs rose just 6.1 percent in 2005, to an average of $7,089 per employee, as employers shifted more medical and dental plan expenses to their workers in the form of higher out-of-pocket costs, a new survey finds.

This year's increase, down from 7.5 percent last year, continues a three-year slowing in the annual rate of growth, according to the survey by Mercer Health & Benefits. Health inflation has cooled quite a bit since the turn of the century, when double-digit rates of increase were the norm. In 2002, health costs rose 14.7 percent.

Next year, employers expect an essentially flat rate of increase, at 6.7 percent, the survey revealed.

So how are employers taming health benefit costs? "It's a combination of aggressive cost shifting and other strategies that are starting to take hold, in particular, health management," said Blaine Bos, a Mercer consultant and one of the study's authors.

While employee contributions, as a percent of premium, were essentially unchanged, employers increased the out-of-pocket costs that consumers pay.

Eighty percent of PPO plans, for example, now require an in-network deductible, up from 73 percent last year. Among large employers -- those with 500 or more workers -- the median deductible rose to $300, from $250 in 2004. Among the largest employers -- those with 20,000 or more employees -- the use of "coinsurance" as a way of sharing the cost of a physician office visit jumped to 37 percent, up from 26 percent last year.

So not only does health care cost more, but the copay has increased too. Gee, what a shock eh? This is even true with families that work for "safe" organizations, like state governments. We had plans to celebrate the paying off of the *last* of the kids' hospital bills, but the increased copay we have this year is nibbling away at a budget that doesn't have a whole lot of fat.

So, good luck to those young families with small kids, who of course catch everything... we hope you weren't planning on squirrelling away some extra $$ for their college education or a house cause the $$ isn't there. To our elderly and people on fixed incomes.... boy socialized medicine looks attractive right now, unless you understand how the new Byzantine Medicare plan(s) work.

It's ok though. The House is considering tax cuts to relieve the burden on people who own multiple houses and Hummers. It's Morning in America (tm).

Skirts Beneath the Robes

This op-ed appears in today's issue of The Oregonian.

IN MY OPINION: THE SUPREME COURT

Tuesday, November 22, 2005
KIM UPHAM AND JENNIFER RACKSTRAW

For courts, legitimacy grows from diversity

Fifty years ago, Rosa Parks made history when she refused to give up her seat to a white man.

Today, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor should do the same.

Gender diversity matters, both on the U.S. Supreme Court and in Oregon's courts. Every day, judges and justices decide important issues that involve the application of life experience. In order for our courts to have legitimacy, and to arrive at the best decisions possible, they must reflect a variety of perspectives and backgrounds.

President Reagan's groundbreaking selection of O'Connor in 1981 reflected the gains that women were making in fields previously closed to them, including law, medicine and business. As such, O'Connor's selection was partly symbolic. But she was also an excellent jurist with exemplary credentials, having graduated second in her class at Stanford, behind William Rehnquist.

Just as we recently paused to reflect on the contribution that Rosa Parks' courageous act made in helping to bring about greater equality for African Americans, we should also reflect on O'Connor's contributions to women's equality and to the advancement of the Supreme Court.

The goal should not be tokenism -- merely having a female face in the Supreme Court photo, or an African American or Latino face, for that matter. We should expect excellence in addition to diversity. For this reason, many thought former Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers was an inadequate choice. But despite the opposition that Miers faced, the administration should not have abandoned the goal of diversity in addition to excellence. The president, who said he was "mindful that diversity is one of the strengths of the country," undoubtedly could have identified many qualified female candidates who also embrace his conservative philosophy. Instead, both Chief Justice John Roberts and the current nominee, Samuel Alito, are white, male, Ivy League-educated, Catholic judges.

In Oregon, we also face a lack of female representation in our highest courts. The seven-member Oregon Supreme Court has no women, and of the 10 judges on the Oregon Court of Appeals, only three are women. When one considers that women typically make up more than half of all law students today, it is dismaying to see that our courts remain overwhelmingly dominated by men.

I concur and think that it does matter.

Downward Mobility

Silver spoons and rusted wrenches

By Dean Bakopoulos, DEAN BAKOPOULOS' novel, "Please Don't Come Back from the Moon," about the disappearances of unemployed men in a working-class Detroit suburb, will be released in paperback by Harcourt in January.

Most citizens of the Rust Belt — that center of American manufacturing and a longtime Democratic stronghold — can thank relatives who toiled in exhausting factories for their current blessings.

But for my generation, born at the end of America's Golden Age (I was born in 1975, post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, post-energy crisis, post-labor), life in the Rust Belt has been a steady process of downward mobility. I was lucky enough to write a novel about the Rust Belt that got me out of debt and low-wage work; most of the people I write about have not been so fortunate.

In times of crisis — natural disasters, terrorist attacks, economic collapse — the federal government develops a relief plan. Now the Rust Belt is in serious crisis and needs relief.

My native state of Michigan leads the nation in unemployment and has a pitifully low tax-base; Wisconsin, my adopted home, does not fare much better. Cities ringing the Great Lakes — Buffalo, Cleveland, Gary, Milwaukee — weather not only the brutal winter but scores of plant closings and thousands of lost jobs each year. The holidays get bleaker and bleaker. This year, even our beloved Green Bay Packers — facing their worst season in memory — seem affected by the general malaise of the region.

Christmas miracles will not occur this year. The Big Three, and all the industries that grew up alongside them, will not have amazing recoveries and send out callbacks to hundreds of laid-off workers.

GM will be sick for a long time; it's silly to think otherwise. We have to quit whispering optimistically outside the dying patient's door. We have to plan for death.

We need a New Deal for the Rust Belt because the old deal has gone sour. Even the coveted auto industry pensions face imminent demise.

There are three things that only the federal government can do — must do — to restore American dreams to the heartland. Or else we will truly face, as Ronald Reagan said in 1981, "an economic calamity of epic proportions." But, with deference to old optimistic Dutch, trickle-down tax cuts aren't the answer. Tax cuts have had more than two decades to trickle down; they remain frozen at the top.

First, we must implement a system that guarantees universal healthcare. American industry — from National Steel to Starbucks — would benefit from having the burden of health insurance lifted off its back. Why else would GM be aggressively investing in nationalized-healthcare Canada while U.S. plants shut down? Without having to worry about health insurance for their families or their workers, a whole new generation of entrepreneurs just might take risks — opening small businesses and inspiring innovation across the region.

Second, we must provide concrete steps for workers seeking to retrain and acquire new job skills. When George W. Bush was campaigning in blighted Ohio in 2004, this was his mantra: Retrain, retrain, retrain. It makes no sense for debt-ridden, jobless Americans to take out more student loans on an economic wing and a prayer. The government needs to subsidize community colleges in high-poverty areas so that workers can go back to school for free.

Finally, we must reinvest in the infrastructure of crumbling cities and towns. A new public works program needs to be implemented. But the states of the Rust Belt don't have the resources to pull off such a plan. Only the federal government has the resources to put thousands of Midwesterners back to work repairing roads and bridges, demolishing vacant buildings and rehabilitating the nation's urban centers so that they have usable, developable and livable spaces.

Our current leadership in Congress and the White House will not take any concrete steps toward these kinds of remedies. Those born with silver spoons rarely come to the aid of those born with rusted wrenches. We're either going to continue the ridiculous trend of tax cuts that essentially pad the trust funds of the wealthy or we're going to reinvest in the region that helped the United States win its many wars and made us the world's sole economic superpower. Otherwise, this region will soon rust to dust and ash.

I am a child of that Rust Belt. My grandfather was a steam shovel operator in the Mesabi iron mines of northern Minnesota. I am the only member of my immediate family with a college degree, yet I do not live as well as my parents. I have multiple graduate degrees, yet my mother makes more in retirement than I do in what are supposed to be my "prime earning years." I have no idea if I will ever be able to retire; my meager 501(c)3 accounts were cannibalized early this year to keep me alive.

The entire "middle class" is being hollowed out. I know a lot of people in my situation.

Pandemic Fault

Why the Chicken Virus Crossed the Border

By ZAHIN HASAN
Published: November 22, 2005

Dhaka, Bangladesh

POOR countries are failing in their efforts to stop avian flu from spreading to humans. Yesterday, Indonesian doctors reported an eighth human death from the disease in that country; if confirmed, it would be the 68th avian flu death worldwide. In Bangladesh, we have yet to see the virus on our poultry farms. When we do, we will have to confront the same public health crisis that Indonesia and other countries face now.

The government of Bangladesh has prudently banned the import of poultry from all countries that have declared bird flu outbreaks, as well as from a few countries that are suspected of covering up outbreaks. But because the virus can also be spread by migratory birds, it seems inevitable that it will eventually reach Bangladesh. And we in the industry know that vaccinating chickens, as Indonesia has done and China now proposes to do, will not prevent human deaths.

First, flu viruses mutate frequently; a particular vaccine may match the field virus for just a few months, after which it will be less effective. And even when the vaccine does match, it is possible for an inoculated flock to include a few unprotected birds that replicate enough virus to spread the disease to farm workers and surrounding farms. This can happen because workers injecting vaccines do not always use the correct technique when they grow tired or bored; or because even correctly vaccinated chickens may not have an immune response if they are malnourished or stressed by crowding. Because the disease will kill only the few unprotected chickens, its presence on farms that have used the vaccine may go unnoticed until farm workers or neighboring households are infected. That is probably why humans are still periodically dying of bird flu in Indonesia despite the vaccinations there.

Many Indonesians raise chickens in their backyards or keep pet birds in cages. If the virus spreads among these birds, their human owners could be exposed, thus increasing the probability that a person could become simultaneously infected with bird flu and human flu. Such an infection might result in an exchange of genes between viruses, which could create the dreaded (and as yet unseen) pandemic flu virus. To prevent a pandemic, the trickle of human infections must be stopped before it becomes a flood.

The best strategy for stopping bird flu is to cull all poultry and pet birds, even healthy ones, within a wide radius of each detected outbreak. But in a country like Indonesia, where annual per capita income is only about $1,140, farmers will not kill healthy chickens without compensation. And the Indonesian government cannot afford to pay for healthy chickens to be culled. So human infections - and the threat of a pandemic - will continue.
.....
Unfortunately, denial has been the knee-jerk reaction in many Asian countries. We in the industry have credible reports of bird flu outbreaks on farms in countries that have not reported the disease. A well-financed and organized effort in cooperation with farmers is the only way to keep the number of human cases from mounting.

Bush's ridiculous pandemic flu plan appropriates a mere pittance for bird culling efforts in south east Asia, virtually guaranteeing further spread of the outbreak. When we start getting sick, it will be George Bush's fault.

Petulant Schoolboy

Thanks to reader Sal.

Memo: Bush wanted Aljazeera bombed

Tuesday 22 November 2005, 14:38 Makka Time, 11:38 GMT

The memo has been described as 'hugely damaging to Bush' US President George Bush planned to bomb Arab broadcaster Aljazeera, British newspaper the Daily Mirror has reported, citing a Downing Street memo marked top secret.

The five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveals that Blair talked Bush out of launching a military strike on the station, unnamed sources told the daily.

The transcript of the pair's talks during Blair's 16 April 2004 visit to Washington allegedly shows Bush wanted to attack the satellite channel's headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

Blair allegedly feared such a strike, in the capital of Qatar, a key Western ally in the Gulf, would spark revenge attacks.

A British civil servant has been charged under the Official Secrets Act for allegedly leaking the government memo.

Civil servant accused

Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh is accused of passing the memo to Leo O'Connor, who formerly worked for former British lawmaker Tony Clarke.

Both Keogh and O'Connor are scheduled to appear at London's Bow Street Magistrates Court next week.

Blair is said to have talked Bush
out of any attack on Aljazeera

According to the Daily Mirror, Clarke returned the memo to Blair's office. Clarke could not immediately be contacted for comment on Tuesday.

The Mirror on Tuesday quoted an unnamed British government official as saying Bush's threat was "humorous, not serious".

Aljazeera's coverage of the war in Iraq had drawn criticism from Washington after the US-led March 2003 invasion.

A source told the Mirror: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush.

"He made clear he wanted to bomb Aljazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.

"There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

Deadly serious

Another source said: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

A spokesman for Blair's Downing Street office said: "We have got nothing to say about this story. We don't comment on leaked documents."

Entirely plausible.

Abramoff & GOP *BFF*

GOP's best friend could be its nightmare

By Jeff Shields
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Lobbyist Jack Abramoff was not at the Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing two weeks ago, but he was the central topic, as Congress continued to probe what some call one of this generation's most outrageous political scandals.

It was J. Steven Griles' turn to testify Nov. 2, but it could have been any number of people.

Griles, a former Interior Department deputy, was called to address suggestions that Abramoff had improperly influenced his federal work. Griles, who denies wrongdoing, is just the latest in a line of Republican officials and conservative leaders to be linked to Abramoff, who has been accused of mocking the laws that govern money and influence in American politics.

The hearing was a sharp reminder that while White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby dominate the headlines, Abramoff remains — according to some observers — the Republican Party's most dangerous problem.

"I don't think we have had something of this scope, arrogance and sheer venality in our lifetimes," Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote recently. "It is building to an explosion, one that could create immense collateral damage within Congress and in coming elections."

Abramoff and his friends are some of the biggest players in the conservative revolution that took over Congress, the White House and the lobbying industry.

DeLay, who once called Abramoff one of his "closest and dearest friends," has requested a House ethics investigation to clear his name relating to trips he took at Abramoff's expense; DeLay has said he thought other sources paid for the trips.

Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed, anti-tax guru Grover Norquist, members of Congress, administration officials and a host of lobbyists have been drawn into Senate or Justice Department investigations of Abramoff's lobbying activities.

The Post even has a nice side bar with the major players within the Republican Party that are known of and how they are connected with him.

Remember what your mother taught you... you are judged by the people you are associated with.

The Dark Side

DU's Bernard Weiner articulates the things I've been having nightmares about.

Extreme Bush: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

November 22, 2005
By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers

I watched the newscast footage of Bush addressing an election-eve rally in Virginia a few weeks ago, and the guy looked and sounded somewhat inebriated; slurring his words, a goofy grin on his face, oversized mannerisms. I had read recent articles about Bush's inability to handle the enormous stress he's under these days and the likelihood of his being on anti-depressants and/or hitting the bottle again, but just assumed those were sensationalist bloggers spreading some dirty fictions.

But, oh my, when I watched the video clips of his sad performance at that Virginia rally, I began to wonder. It can't be easy being Bush these days, when all is collapsing around him. Consider:

* The Iraq war going so badly that even that old dependable warhawk John Murtha is urging Bush to close it down and redeploy the troops

* Libby, DeLay under indictment and the Abramoff scandal getting closer to the White House, with Frist on a legal hot seat as well

* Patrick Fitzgerald heating up the Plamegate probe after hearing from Bob Woodward, which could put Cheney, Rove, Hadley and Rice once again under the Grand Jury microscope

* Centrist Republicans causing grief for Bush's agenda

* McCain's treatment-of-prisoners amendment making headway, forcing Cheney and Bush to lobby for torture

* GOP stalwart Sen. John Warner sticking it to Bush on the lack of success in Iraq

* Establishment conservative Republicans like Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Wilkerson and Bill Buckley and others firing off the equivalent of mortar rounds into the White House over Bush's Iraq war;

* The Downing Street Memos from inside Tony Blair's headquarters verified that the Iraq war had been on the boards for at least a year before the invasion, with the job being to "fix the intelligence" around that policy decision

* Doug Feith and his Office of Special Plans being probed by the Pentagon's Inspector-General for allegedly "stovepiping" raw intel directly to Cheney/Libby in the White House

* The Taliban majorly regrouping in Afghanistan

* ANWR drilling taken off the table yet again

* Harry Reid implying the Dems might filibuster on Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court

* Bush's poll numbers plunging into the mid- and even low-30s

* the residue of the "incompetence" and "lack of trust" issues from Katrina and the Iraq disasters; the CIA leaking more and more damaging info about Bush policy

The Good News: the Bush agenda is in jeopardy and the once-tight GOP organization is in tatters, with corruption and incompetence and wrongheadedness everywhere. Imperial ambitions are running headlong into reality. All these provide room to maneuver for the GOP moderates, and openings to attack for the Democrats, who finally are beginning to wake up after years of numbness and atrophy.

The Bad News: On the other hand, Bush, Cheney, Rove and the GOP remain in power - can you imagine three more years of that cornered, weakened, flailing crew, with all the deliberate and unintended damage they can do?

What would happen, for example, if a desperate or half-deranged Bush decides on an extreme wag-the-dog action - say, if he were to order a "pre-emptive" nuclear strike on Iran or Syria or North Korea or Venezuela, or all of them together? Would there be anybody to stop him inside the Administration? Would the Joint Chiefs have the courage to - and be able to - rein him in?

Who knows? We've never been in this dark place before.

CONSTITUTIONAL CRISES, THEN AND NOW

Well, maybe we almost were once, when a heavy-drinking Nixon seemed ready to take the country and the Constitution down with him as he was heading over the political cliff known as Watergate and into the Senate's impeachment dock. But, perhaps because cooler heads prevailed, Nixon resigned instead - the first such asterisk next to a president's name in America's history.

But the damage Nixon could do was almost more personal than political or international. The carnage Bush could do to the country, and the world, is of an entirely different order of magnitude.

Domestically, Bush could, for example, force the country into a Constitutional crisis - by, say, declaring martial law as commander-in-chief during "wartime."

Yes, that's right; according to this cockamamie legal doctrine worked out by his then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez and his neo-con legal team, Bush claims to be legally home-free to ignore and violate laws whenever he acts as commander-in-chief during "wartime."

This makes him pretty much a dictator, indefinitely, since Bush & Co. continually tell us that we're in the midst of a war that will last forever. So far as I know, neither Gonzales (now Attorney General) nor Bush has ever disavowed the memos that supplied that interpretation of what a President legally can do.

You may recall that Nixon tried something similar during the Watergate scandal, claiming that any time a President took an action, it was, by virtue of him being President, ipso facto legal. The U.S. Supreme Court shot that one down quickly. But it would appear that Bush & Co. are willing to act as if that decision never had been rendered by the court, because they've come up with a different legal gimmick - the "commander-in-chief-during-wartime" ploy.

Sure, a presumptive Bush case would wend its way up to the Supreme Court, but that could take a year or more and, in the interim, all kinds of deadly mischief could be implemented and the Constitution wrecked even more. Plus, with Roberts and Alito on the court, and their affinity for strong executive preeminence in "wartime," there's no guarantee of a decision similar to the Nixon case.

I have a list of reasons why I don't like Alito. This is on the list.

End of Illusion

Dread Takes a Toll on GIs in Iraq
By Louise Roug, Times Staff Writer

FORWARD OPERATING BASE FALCON, Iraq — A handful of Delta Company soldiers leaned against a barracks wall the other night, smoking. The subject of conversation: what limb they would rather part with, if they had a choice. On the door of a portable toilet a few feet away, someone was keeping the company death toll amid a scribble of obscenities: five KIA.

"When I first got here, I felt like I could actually do some good for the Iraqi people," Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Barker said. But the last six months had hardened him, he said. "We're not going to change the Iraqis. I don't care how many halal meals we give out," he added, referring to food prepared according to Islamic dietary laws.

Of the 160,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq, some have been deployed to the country for the first time. Others are returning for their second or third tours of duty. Those returning find a country that has become even more dangerous. Since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, attacks on American troops using roadside bombs have steadily risen, as have military casualties.

In conversations with troops in the tense cities of Baghdad, Mosul and Tikrit during the last four weeks, morale seemed a fragile thing, especially among those in the line of fire, shot through with a sense of dread.

Many expressed pride in their mission, and the hope that the budding political process would eventually destroy the insurgency. But others described a seemingly never-ending fight against an invisible enemy, and the toll of seeing friends die.

"Morale is a roller coaster," said Lt. Rusten Currie, who has spent 10 months in Iraq. "We were all idealistic to begin with, wanting to find Osama bin Laden and [Abu Musab] Zarqawi, and bring them to justice — whatever that means. Now we just want to go home."

The bracelet on his slim wrist read: "Let them hate, as long as they fear."

"We've become the cliche of every war movie — the grizzled veterans," said Currie, who became embittered after losing a friend, Capt. Raymond Hill — "a big, happy-go-lucky guy," killed by a roadside bomb Oct. 29.

"It doesn't make any sense to kill Roy Hill," Currie said.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, says tensions are understandable when troops are attacked with remotely detonated explosives and there's no way to fight back.

"Soldiers can indeed get frustrated because they're not looking at an enemy who's looking back at them," Lynch said. But he added that "morale is generally good."

Barker remembers the day — it was Sept. 15, a Thursday — that changed how he felt about Iraq. Afterward, the mission no longer made sense.

"It's the most helpless feeling I have ever felt," said Barker, of the California National Guard's 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, who lost his friend and second in command, Sgt. Alfredo Silva, to a roadside bomb that day.

"We were the walking dead," he said, speaking of the days after the attack. "It was no longer a matter of making it home alive and in one piece. Just alive would be fine."

After that day, the explosions never seemed to stop. In Delta Company, morale plummeted after four men were killed in nine days, Barker said.

In the mess hall at Forward Operating Base Falcon, just south of Baghdad, soldiers on crutches precariously balanced food trays and sodas as they hobbled among the rows of tables. There were other, invisible injuries — backs and legs refusing to heal.

Many soldiers have been struck by explosives repeatedly — three or four times — since arriving at Falcon base this year. The medics call them "frequent fliers."

Delta Company soldiers have had trouble sleeping.

"One of my buddies, he's also a gunner," said Spc. Evan Bozajian, 23, from Inglewood. "In the beginning, he was really gung-ho. Not anymore. Some of the guys, they hate it. They don't want to do this anymore."

Iraq has its own culture and it is ancient. No, soldier, you aren't going to change it, and it is as clear as hell that you aren't going to learn squat from it, and this is why we have lost this stupid, unecessary war.

Minding Your Broccoli

Shortage of Immigrant Workers Alarms Growers in West
Stricter Border Control, Working Conditions Cited as Fewer Mexicans Cross for Harvest

By Sonya Geis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 22, 2005; Page A03

CALEXICO, Calif. -- Hours before dawn, Chuck Clunn stood on a street corner in this dusty border town and shook his head, dismayed at the small number of men milling in the dark. Workers usually swarm streets near the border crossing in the early morning hours, but today Clunn and other labor contractors looking for farmworkers found a crowd half the size they had been hoping for.

"This is usually just people everywhere. Last year the whole town was moving," Clunn said. Now, he said, the foremen say, "Hey, man, we have plenty of generals, but there's no Indians."

For the past year, the fertile valleys here that provide 90 percent of the nation's winter lettuce have faced a labor shortage. The construction industry is booming, luring workers with year-round jobs offering better pay. U.S. Border Patrol agents have been cracking down in nearby Arizona, leading many of those who pick the crops -- almost all of them Mexican and many, by all accounts, illegal aliens -- to avoid the lettuce-growing border counties.

With the lettuce harvest beginning, farmers in the $1 billion winter vegetable industry are panicking about getting their crops out of the ground. Vegetable growers estimate they could be 32,000 workers short of the 54,000 they need for the winter harvest, which runs until March. Last year, local farmers left hundreds of acres of lettuce in the fields because they lacked the manpower to harvest it.

Worker shortages have swept the Western agriculture industry, bringing $300 million in losses to raisin growers in California's San Joaquin Valley in September and causing consternation about this winter's harvest from the Christmas tree farms of Oregon to the melon fields of Arizona.

"Today I have approximately 290 people working in the field," Jon Vessey said recently. Vessey runs an 8,000-acre winter vegetable farm with his son, Jack, near El Centro, Calif. "I should have 400, and for the harvest I need 1,100. . . . There's a disaster coming."

The Western Growers Association, which represents 3,000 farmers, is lobbying the Bush administration to make it easier for farmers to tap the labor pool just below the border.

Labor Department statistics show that about half of the nation's 1.8 million farmworkers are in the country illegally. Tom Nassif, the association's president, said growers try to check workers' documentation but many have falsified papers.

Nassif said a better approach would be for the U.S. government to allow Mexican citizens to live here while working in the fields and return to Mexico when the work is done. His long-term goal is to see passage of the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security Act, or AgJobs. The bill, proposed by Sens. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), would allow undocumented farmworkers already in the United States to become legal permanent residents and would streamline the current guest-worker program.

"There are just some jobs people don't want to do," Nassif said. "It's the most developed nation in the world using a foreign workforce, and people need to recognize that. We need to make them legal."

Jack Vessey said he listed openings for 300 laborers at the state office of employment last week to prepare the lettuce fields for harvest. "We got one person," he said. "He showed up and said, 'I'm not going to do that.' "

Your vegetables are going to cost more this winter. The morality of using illegal, below minimum wage labor is one that we can discuss, but it is what our food costs are based on.

For The Sake Of Community

Louisiana Sees Faded Urgency in Relief Effort

by JAMES DAO
Published: November 22, 2005

BATON ROUGE, La., Nov. 18 - Less than three months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, relief legislation remains dormant in Washington and despair is growing among officials here who fear that Congress and the Bush administration are losing interest in their plight.

As evidence, the state and local officials cite an array of stalled bills and policy changes they say are crucial to rebuilding the city and persuading some of its hundreds of thousands of evacuated residents to return, including measures to finance long-term hurricane protection, revive small businesses and compensate the uninsured.

"There is a real concern that we will lose the nation's attention the longer this takes," said Representative Bobby Jindal, a Republican from Metairie, just west of New Orleans. "People are making decisions now about whether to come back. And every day that passes, it will be a little harder to get things done."

Officials from both parties say the bottlenecks have occurred in large part because of a leadership vacuum in Washington, where President Bush and Congress have been preoccupied for weeks with Iraq, deficit reduction, the C.I.A. leak investigation and the Supreme Court.

Congressional leaders have been scrambling to rein in spending, and many in Washington have grumbled that Louisiana's leaders have asked for too much, while failing to guarantee that the money will be spent efficiently and honestly.

By contrast, many say, Washington's response to the Sept. 11 attacks seemed more focused and sustained.

Now, with the holiday season days away and the 2006 midterm elections just around the bend, many Louisiana officials say they fear the sense of urgency that spurred action in September is swiftly draining away.

Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, a Democrat, said recently on CNN, "We feel like we are citizens of the United States who are nearly forgotten."

Walter Isaacson, vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, drew a parallel between the governmental dithering in the immediate aftermath of the flood and the current situation, saying a lack of action now would be devastating to New Orleans's economy.

"It's like when FEMA wasn't really that creative, and the water was rising and people were stranded," Mr. Isaacson said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "Once again, people are being stranded and businesses are starting to die."

But Donald Powell, who began work this week as President Bush's liaison for the reconstruction effort, said that while the sense of urgency might have faded somewhat, "The president is committed to rebuilding the Gulf Coast."

Few people in Congress are openly threatening to block money for reconstruction. More typical are sotto voce mumblings about whether federal money will be squandered through incompetence or graft by Louisiana officials. And some lawmakers have openly wondered whether each neighborhood in New Orleans needs to be rebuilt and protected with expensive floodwalls.

Scientists, state attack 60 Minutes report
By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer

“Rumors of New Orleans falling into the sea are greatly exaggerated.”

That’s Louisiana Recovery Authority Executive Director Andy Kopplin’s response to a segment on Sunday’s “60 Minutes” news show that quoted St. Louis University geologist Tim Kusky as saying the city would be an island surrounded by water within 90 years, and that people and businesses should move away.

Kopplin has a lot of company, including several of the scientists who Kusky, an earth sciences professor, said he relied on in reaching his controversial conclusion. Their collective response? Kusky went overboard.

But state officials are concerned Kusky’s comments on a national television show could help kill what they say is a comprehensive and effective plan for both protecting New Orleans from major hurricanes and restoring the state’s fractured coastline. Congress already is considering both levee-raising and wetlands restoration, two critical ingredients to protecting south Louisiana.

Kusky said his conclusions were based on a series of scientific reports concerning subsidence and erosion in coastal Louisiana, including preliminary estimates of damage resulting from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

“We should be thinking about a gradual pullout of New Orleans, and starting to rebuild people’s homes, businesses and industry in places that can last more than 80 years,” Kusky said in the 60 Minutes piece. “Because New Orleans is going to be 15 to 18 feet below sea level, sitting off the coast of North America surrounded by a 50- to 100-foot-tall levee system to protect the city,” he said.

Kusky came to similar conclusions in a Boston Globe op-ed piece in September. And in his 2003 book, “Geological Hazards,” Kusky went even farther, saying rainfall accompanying a major hurricane might even change the course of the Mississippi River.

In an e-mail response to people who have written him since the 60 Minutes segment ran, Kusky said he believed this is the “proper time to be asking questions about the rebuilding process.

“While I realize that this is a sensitive topic, I spoke out because of my concern for the residents of New Orleans,” Kusky said. “It is my hope that the scientific communities’ research and observations will help save lives in the future.”

Kopplin was unsuccessful in a last-minute effort Saturday to get 60 Minutes to hold the piece. He sent an e-mail to 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley urging that additional scientists familar with the state’s coastal restoration efforts be included to balance Kusky’s remarks.

Also making the request was Don Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and a former director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.

In a letter to 60 Minutes, Boesch said the op-ed piece written by Kusky for the Boston Globe in September “reads like an undergraduate paper — a little bit of truth but with a lot of important information missing and not much deep thinking. And, I wouldn’t grade it highly.

“The disaster of Katrina is sad in so many respects,” Boesch wrote. “One of those for me as a scientist is the proliferation of self-proclaimed experts who, either to seek attention or push their own agendas, have rushed to write op-eds or otherwise opine to the media on topics far from their expertise. They are affecting people’s fears and lives and confusing rational decision making on governmental policies and investments.” ?

‘An off-hand comment’

On Monday, 60 Minutes posted a response on its Public Eye Web page, in which Pelley defended the report to CBS’s ombudsman.

Pelley told the ombudsman “that ‘60 Minutes’ called the Geological Society Of America to check out Kusky’s claims. ‘60 Minutes’ was put in touch with three scientists, Pelley says, all of whom backed Kusky’s argument. One even said he was being too conservative in his estimate concerning how quickly the city would sink, he adds.”

In an interview Monday, Kusky said his projection of the city becoming an island was “based on a statement made by the director of the U.S. Geological Survey” in 2000.

But University of Texas at Austin geology Professor Charles G. Groat, who was then director of the U.S. Geological Survey, flatly disagreed with Kusky’s conclusions.

Groat said Kusky relied on “an off-hand comment that has often been repeated” that was included in a University of New Orleans magazine piece that compared New Orleans to Atlantis.

“No, no, no,” Groat said of Kusky’s island image. “You’ve got a lot of things between the city of New Orleans and the edge of the sea, and they’re not going away.”

He said that in an ultimate worst-case scenario — where global warming were to raise sea level several dozen feet — the city might be flooded, but such a scenario is not endorsed by many scientists.

Roy Dokka, a Louisiana State University geologist who developed subsidence estimates as part of efforts of the National Geodesic Survey to set height benchmarks throughout south Louisiana, said that if Kusky relied on their past estimates of subsidence to predict the future, he missed the warning in his subsidence paper that you can’t use past estimates to predict the future.

If anything, Dokka said, in the past decade the rate at which land is sinking in south Louisiana slowed considerably.

“If he’s using NOAA’s NGS data as his guide, I’m the co-author for that subsidence paper and it says explicitly in there that rates are not constant over time,” Dokka said. “The measurements we’ve made of subsidence for the last 10 years show subsidence slowed by half.

“I agree that without coastal restoration, the longterm prognosis for New Orleans — in 500 years — does not look good,” Dokka said. “However, if the powers that be come to grip with the problem as it really is, the subsidence that’s occurring in the whole region, we can develop strategies that provide us with a safe place for New Orleanians to live.”

I don't know if this is true, but I want it to be.

Past the Hype

I watched Emeril Live this evening. Yeah, there is a fair amount of hype in his TV shows, but he is a pretty good Cajun cook. I don't buy any of his products (I make all my own sauces, not everyone can make time for this) but I know what it is like to have a pro in the family) and Emeril ran a pretty good kitchen before he lost it in Katrina.

He made a chicken tonight that's an alternative to turkey for smaller families this Thanksgiving that left me in awe. Of course, it has bernaise sauce on it, and I've never met a bernaise sauce I didn't like, but I'd never thought of this pairing before. Enjoy. This is really tasty. It will serve four to six.

1 (2 3/4 to 3-pound) chicken, rinsed, patted dry, and cut into 6 pieces
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon plus 1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 cup small-diced boiled ham
8 ounces fresh white button mushrooms, stems removed, wiped clean, and thinly sliced
1/4 cup chopped green onions, green part only
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/2 pound Brabant potatoes (small diced, blanched potatoes that are fried until golden)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 recipe Bearnaise Sauce, recipe follows

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Season the chicken pieces on both sides with 1/2 teaspoon of the salt and 1/4 teaspoon of the pepper.

Heat the oil in a large ovenproof skillet or saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the chicken pieces and cook until golden brown on both sides, 4 minutes on the first side and 3 minutes on the second side. Transfer the pan to the oven and roast until the chicken is cooked through, 18 to 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and cook, stirring until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the ham, mushrooms, green onions, and the remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper and cook, stirring, until the mushrooms give off their liquid and start to turn golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the wine and bring to a boil, stirring to deglaze the bottom of the pan. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer until the liquid is reduced by two-thirds in volume, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the Brabant potatoes and parsley and cook, tossing gently to mix, until the potatoes are warmed through, 1 to 2 minutes.

To serve, place equal amounts of the vegetable mixture in the center of four serving plates and top with the chicken. Spoon the Bearnaise sauce over the chicken and serve immediately.

Bearnaise Sauce:
2 tablespoons chopped shallots
4 sprigs fresh tarragon
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup dry vermouth
4 large egg yolks
1 cup melted clarified butter or 1 cup (2 sticks) melted unsalted butter
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon leaves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper

Combine the shallots, tarragon sprigs, white wine, and vermouth in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, and cook until reduced to 4 teaspoons. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve and let cool.

In the top of a double boiler, or in a metal bowl fitted over a pot of simmering water, whisk the egg yolks and reduced wine mixture until ribbons start to form when the whisk is lifted. Whisking constantly, drizzle in the melted butter, a bit at a time, until the mixture thickens.

Remove from the heat, add the lemon juice, chopped tarragon, salt, and pepper and whisk to blend. Adjust the seasoning, to taste.

Serve immediately or keep warm, covered, over a pot of simmering water, for 5 to 10 minutes. Whisk before serving. My favorite Viet Namese/French restaurant that served an exquisite fillet of beef with Bernaise on the side closed a few years ago. I'm reduced to making it myself, and I'm not shy about eating it on damn near everything but Cheerios.

Yield: about 1 1/2 cups

This is an efficient and tasty way to get Bernaise Sauce into your pie hole. A spoon would be more efficient, but less nourishing.

One of the things I appreciate about Emeril is that, as a restaurant chef, he pays attention to "plating," the way a meal is presented on the plate. I've learned a million things from him about how to serve a plate which both tastes good and looks good. Most of the meals I attend are served family style, but once in a while, I like to do the French or Russian Service with all the frills. Learning to make garnishes is its own reward. Here are some fun things you can try. A pretty plate is a happy plate, even if you are using, like me, the $19.99 service for four you bought at IKEA. The ex got the expensive china.

Pinch His Cheeks

Baby panda Tai Shan was on the local news tonight, and I nearly cheered with pleasure. Here's a link to Animal Planet's Panda Cam, the angle isn't quite as nifty as the National Zoo's cam site, but you can actually get on this one. The Zoo's site is nearly always busied out. He's pretty active this evening after an exciting day of learning to climb the rock walls of his enclosure and playing with his mom. He's 19.6 pounds now, a handful, little butter-stick.

If you have a winter trip to the Nation's Capital in the works, check the zoo site to see if tickets are available to see the little guy. They're sold out for the first couple of weeks in December, but you might be able to get them for later. The zoo is more than worth seeing even if you can't get panda tickets, it is my refuge in the winter months. I have mixed feelings about zoos, but I would never get to see this mixture of creation in the wild without them. I've visited zoos all over the world (the one in Copenhagen gets a special recommendation) but we in the US have a right to feel pretty good about the National Zoo. The habitats could be bigger, but the animals seem lively rather than depressed, so they must be doing something right. I know a number of the keepers and their dedication to their animal charges rivals that of their commitments to their human families. The top management of the place hasn't always been sterling (Bushco appointments, again) but the line workers, the people I know, are pretty special.

If you have a trip to San Diego in your winter future, one of the best zoos on the planet graces that city. There is a Busch Garden's wildpark outside of town that's worth a trip, too, but it ain't cheap.

Change of Pace

The news is depressing so I'm changing gears.

You'll be tired of turkey soon enough.

White Pizza: Authentic Italian

4 3/4 - Cups white flour
2 - Cups warm water; 105° F.
3 - Teaspoons dry yeast
1 - Teaspoon salt
1 - Tablespoon olive oil
Olive Oil
Kosher salt
One sprig chopped fresh rosemary

Instructions

Dissolve yeast in the warm water, proof it with a teaspoon of sugar. Add yeast/water mixture to 3 cups of the flour. Mix, adding regular salt and olive oil a little at a time. Add the rest
of the flour bit by bit until the dough "feels right".

Turn dough onto a floured board and knead; adding more flour if necessary
to keep the dough from sticking to your fingers. Put the dough in a
greased bowl and rotate to distribute the grease all over the dough. Let
rise until about double in size (approx. 2 hours).

Remove the dough, punch down and roll out on the floured board to a
thickness of 3/8 to 1/2 inch (make it any shape you desire). Put dough in
a pan or cookie sheet. With a pastry brush, paint liberally with
additional olive oil. Use your thumb and 2 fingers to make dimples over
the entire surface. Sprinkle the Kosher sea salt and rosemary over the
surface of the dough. Let rise a little more.

Bake at 375° F for about 25 minutes. When done, paint liberally
again with olive oil.

I'd add a boatload of finely minced garlic before baking, but that's me.

The Victor Writes the History

Iraqis killed as U.S. fires on car

Monday, November 21, 2005 Posted: 1730 GMT (0130 HKT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- As many as four Iraqis were killed and five others wounded when a U.S. military patrol opened fire on a vehicle driving near a U.S. military base on the road between Baquba and Khalis, a Baquba police official said.

The official said two children were among the dead in the incident, which took place at 6:30 a.m. (0330 GMT) on Monday.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baquba confirmed to CNN that American forces did open fire on a civilian vehicle but said three people were killed and one was injured.

The spokesman said the circumstances of the shooting were still under investigation but that a civilian vehicle approached the military base and did not heed warning shots to stop, resulting in U.S. forces opening fire on the vehicle.

The spokesman could not confirm whether children were among those killed.

Baquba is in Diyala province, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) north of Baghdad.

Officials told The Associated Press the disputed death count was possibly a result of a car bomb that police said killed five people and wounded 11 others near a busy market in Kanaan, about 22 miles east of Baquba.

A U.S. military official said Monday's bomb, which was contained in a parked car, was probably targeting a U.S. military convoy but detonated just after the passage of the convoy, failing to harm anyone in it.

It is believed the triggerman miscalculated the timing of the detonation, the military official said.

Kanaan is a mixed city of Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen.
Zarqawi tests

The violence came as the deputy governor of Nineveh province told CNN Monday that top U.S. and security officials told him Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was "absolutely" not killed in a military operation Saturday.

Kahsro Goran said he was also shown pictures of four of the people killed in a U.S. assault on a home Saturday in Mosul, and none of the four looked like al-Zarqawi, whom U.S. and Iraqi authorities call the top al Qaeda leader in Iraq.

Iraqi military officials say eight people were killed in the house.

A U.S. military source in Mosul said, "We are conducting forensic tests on the bodies removed from the site to determine if any are that of Zarqawi."

National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones, traveling with President Bush in Asia, said any suggestions that al-Zarqawi was killed were "highly unlikely and not credible."

This is all bullshit and CNN isn't smart enough to figure out that they are being played. Zarqawi is just a place holder and the media haven't figured that out. They've had 30 years to figure out the lessons of Viet Nam, but still don't know how to cover a guerrilla war (the real name of "insurgency," changing the name doesn't change the reality, Wolfie, you frickin' idiot.)

Look at this story again, "we" killed 8 people in that house and that's somehow "good news?" How many were civilians with no ties to anything scary, like a parent and a child. Frickin' idiot CNN.

Naming Names

Jeebus. CNN is calling them "entertainment journalists." Back in the day, we called them "gossip columnists." The debasement of the journalismism profession deepens....

Fever Dreams

Bush Keeps Jabbing at War Critics
# He contends that leaving Iraq too soon would only strengthen terrorists, but he calls disagreements over the war a 'worthy debate.'

By Josh Meyer and Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld took on congressional critics of their war policy Sunday, saying that U.S. troops would remain in Iraq until the Baghdad government was ready to take charge, and that those calling for a hasty withdrawal were jeopardizing the safety of Americans abroad and at home.

"An immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq will only strengthen the terrorists' hand in Iraq and in the broader war on terror," Bush told reporters in Beijing.

Rumsfeld agreed with his boss' assessment, telling CNN's "Late Edition" — one of four shows on which he appeared Sunday — that a withdrawal anytime soon "would be a terrible thing for our country and for the safety of our people."

The president's comments came at the end of his weeklong visit to Asia, during which he and members of his administration were dogged by increasingly combative questions about Iraq as approval ratings for Bush and his war policy continued to sink.

On Thursday, a respected pro-military Democratic lawmaker said he no longer supported the war policy and called for the U.S. to begin a phased withdrawal of troops, which would leave only a rapid "reaction force" in the region.

The comments by Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania were seen as a particularly damaging blow for the administration, given the decorated Marine Corps veteran's ties to the military over his 31-year congressional career. The White House and congressional Republicans sparked a furor late last week by leveling attacks on him.

But during an informal meeting with reporters in Beijing on Sunday after his series of talks with Chinese leaders, Bush praised Murtha.

"Congressman Murtha is a fine man, a good man who served our country with honor and distinction as a Marine in Vietnam and as a United States congressman," Bush said. "And I know the decision to call for an immediate withdrawal of our troops by Congressman Murtha was done in a careful and thoughtful way."

Bush also went out of his way to call the Iraq question a "worthy debate" in which even patriotic Americans could disagree.

"People should feel comfortable about expressing their opinions about Iraq," he said. "I heard somebody say, well, maybe so-and-so is not patriotic because they disagree with my position. I totally reject that thought."

Murtha, whom the White House compared in a statement Thursday to left-wing filmmaker and Bush critic Michael Moore, continued to press his case Sunday, predicting on NBC's "Meet the Press" that U.S. forces would leave Iraq before next year's congressional elections as more members of the House and the Senate bowed to mounting pressure from their constituents.

Murtha also said he was "absolutely convinced we're making no progress" in Iraq.

The Baghdad government and its fledgling army are "going to let us do the fighting as long as we're there." Murtha added: "They'll have to work this out themselves. It's their country."

Despite their conciliatory rhetoric, Bush and Rumsfeld continued to characterize Murtha's call for withdrawal as dangerous, misguided and unsupported by the majority of Americans and their elected leaders in Congress.

Like Bush, Rumsfeld backed away from criticism of Murtha, specifically countering a freshman GOP congresswoman's comment on the House floor Friday that "cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

"He's not a coward, I'll tell you that," Rumsfeld said of Murtha on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Bushco is utterly delusional. I watched the Sabbath Gasbags yesterday, the air of unreality was breathtaking.

Hypocrites

Accountability Begins at Home

Published: November 21, 2005

There was a distinctly hollow ring to last week's talk by American officials of a zero-tolerance policy on the abuse of detainees in Iraqi-run prisons. Back at the ranch, Vice President Dick Cheney is still trying to legalize torture at C.I.A. prisons around the world; President Bush is still threatening to veto the entire Pentagon budget if Congress dares to impose actual rules on the handling of prisoners at military detention camps; and the officials behind the policies that led straight from the doctrine of legalized torture to the horrors of Abu Ghraib continue to be promoted, instead of being held accountable.

It took just a few days for the United States to demand a full investigation of Iraqi prisons. Washington immediately recognized that the Iraqi government could not investigate itself alone and assigned the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to help. This same administration, however, has spent the last 18 months obstructing the Senate's inquiries into Abu Ghraib and other aspects of the prison abuse mess, and has used the Republican leadership in Congress to block any outside investigations. It has narrowed the scope of its own inquiries to shield the civilian and military leadership.

We're happy the administration pressed for a full accounting of abuse of Iraqis by Iraqis. Now, about the abuse of Iraqis by Americans ...

And Bush wonders why he has a credibility problem.

MSIE 0-day scripting DoS and Remote Code Execution exploit

This one's a 0-day exploit, Bumpers. That means MS got scooped.

The initial attack vector will be a remote website you visit with your browser, which contains crafted malicious scripting code.

In the normal course of events, we can expect to see a worm or some other form of malware in the wild exploiting this within not more than a week, tops, possibly in as little as 24 hours or sooner.

There are no patch mitigations showing up anywhere in the posts about this one.

The only mitigations available seem to be workarounds. Either disable scripting completely for untrusted sites, or sideline IE altogether for Firefox or Opera until such time as MS responds. This will probably be soon.

Remotely exploitable application vulnerability, Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Exploit code published: See reference http://www.frsirt.com/exploits/20051121.IEWindow0day.php.

Affected Products:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 SP1 on Microsoft Windows XP SP2


• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 for Microsoft Windows XP SP1


• Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 SP4 on Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4


• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 SP1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4

Risks: Denial of Service (DoS). Execution of arbitrary code (privilege level not specified).

Mitigations:

• No patch or upgrade mitigation currently known.
• Workaround: Disable Active Scripting except for trusted sites. The following guidance is quoted from reference
  http://www.frsirt.com/english/advisories/2005/2509.
  
  
  • Start Internet Explorer.
  
  
  • On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
  
  
  • On the Security tab, click Custom Level.
  
  
  • In the Settings box, click Disable under Active scripting.
  
  
  • Click OK, and then click OK.
    
  
  
• Workaround: Use an alternative browser (Opera, Firefox). This particular vulnerability does not affect Firefox. Others may. For Firefox, the extension 'noscript' can be used to easily allow Javascript for selected sites only.

References:

• http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=874,


• http://secunia.com/advisories/15546/,


• http://www.frsirt.com/english/advisories/2005/2509,


• http://www.frsirt.com/exploits/20051121.IEWindow0day.php,


• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/13799/info/

BUGTRAQ ID: 13799

CVE Number: CVE-2005-1790

Waste of Time

Why is CNN wall to wall with this private jet/landing gear story? This kind of thing happens everyday. Isn't there any other story worth covering today? And why can't they hire someone who can actually speak the English language other than the execrable Kyra Phillips?

Endangering "Endangered Species"

Endangering Yellowstone's Grizzlies

Published: November 21, 2005

The recovery of the grizzly bear population in the greater Yellowstone region is a triumph of human restraint. Thirty years ago, after a long period of mismanagement, the bears were listed as a threatened species. Now, their numbers have risen from perhaps as few as 200 to perhaps as many as 600. That has led the Interior Department to consider removing them from the endangered species list - a proposal that has split the conservation world. The National Wildlife Federation, for instance, believes that the original goals of protecting the bears have been met. But other groups - including the Natural Resources Defense Council - believe the bears should still be protected. We agree.

If grizzlies are removed from the endangered species list, they will come under the protection of a management plan developed by the three states that surround Yellowstone. Given those states' historic hostility to large predators, the fact that the plan calls for a resumption of hunting is worrisome. But much more important is the danger that it might open up a good deal of the grizzlies' already-diminished range to commercial exploitation.

The fate of the grizzlies should remind us all how effective the Endangered Species Act really is and why it is worth safeguarding it from legislative assault. But it should also remind us that there is still no effective legal protection for animals that have recovered in numbers but are still threatened by the pressure of human activity.

When I read this, Justice Roberts' writing on "hapless toads" came to mind.

Too Late

Time to Leave

By PAUL KRUGMAN

So the question isn't whether things will be ugly after American forces leave Iraq. They probably will. The question, instead, is whether it makes sense to keep the war going for another year or two, which is all the time we realistically have.

Pessimists think that Iraq will fall into chaos whenever we leave. If so, we're better off leaving sooner rather than later. As a Marine officer quoted by James Fallows in the current Atlantic Monthly puts it, "We can lose in Iraq and destroy our Army, or we can just lose."

And there's a good case to be made that our departure will actually improve matters. As Mr. Murtha pointed out in his speech, the insurgency derives much of its support from the perception that it's resisting a foreign occupier. Once we're gone, the odds are that Iraqis, who don't have a tradition of religious extremism, will turn on fanatical foreigners like Zarqawi.

The only way to justify staying in Iraq is to make the case that stretching the U.S. army to its breaking point will buy time for something good to happen. I don't think you can make that case convincingly. So Mr. Murtha is right: it's time to leave.

Dr. Krugman is being more optimistic than I am. We have both career Army and reservist/guard who are preparing for their third tour in less than three years. The Army, guard and reserve are already broken.

You Can't Milk a Bull

Bush's Asia Trip Meets Low Expectations

By Peter Baker and Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 21, 2005; Page A01

BEIJING, Nov. 20 -- When President Bush was flying toward Asia a week ago, his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, predicted to reporters in the back of the plane that the four-nation trip would yield no "headline breakthroughs." He turned out to be right.

As Bush wrapped up his stay in Beijing on Sunday and prepared to head home Monday after a brief stop in Mongolia, the trip has produced no real breakthroughs of any sort. On a wide variety of issues, from trade to security to human rights, Bush won no concrete agreements from any of his summit partners.

White House officials said that did not mean the trip was unsuccessful, because they never expected to bring home any major agreements in the first place. Such trips, they said, reflect a more mature diplomacy aimed at building relationships and achieving steady progress that will produce gains at some later date. Yet at the same time, it means that a politically weakened Bush returns home without anything high-profile to brag about when he could use some good news.

"I know that it's not like a deliverable or big breakthrough, but when breakthroughs are made you'll be able to point back" at the trip as paving the way, White House counselor Dan Bartlett said. "Some of these things aren't things that happen with the snap of a finger. What these summits do provide is an opportunity to move forward."

Bush wanted Japan to drop its two-year ban on U.S. beef imports, but although Japan seems likely to do so soon, it did not declare its readiness while the president was in town. Bush wanted to propel free trade during an economic summit in South Korea, but the general statement drafted by Pacific Rim leaders drops no tariffs and merely sets the stage for further talks.

In another setback, South Korea's cabinet on Monday backed a proposal to withdraw one-third of the country's 3,200 troops from Iraq.

In China, Bush's meetings with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao produced little progress toward resolving long-standing differences. Hu pledged "to gradually achieve balanced trade between China and the United States" and to "unswervingly press ahead" with plans to allow the Chinese currency to float more freely. But he offered no plan for how he would achieve either goal.

Bush is diplomatically neutered, so unpopular on the world stage that no one besides maybe Tony Blair can be seen to be doing business with him. The next three years are going to be pretty bleak territory for the US on the diplomatic front.

Risk Communication and Flu

Thanks to reader Sal:

Firms ponder pandemic plans
Contingencies being developed for workplaces, operations
Issues include hygiene, drugs — and keeping economy going
Nov. 21, 2005. 05:20 AM
TYLER HAMILTON
BUSINESS REPORTER

A group of corporate Canada's top medical directors gathered last week at a closed-door luncheon in Toronto to brainstorm ways to keep the country's economic engine running in the event of a crippling flu pandemic.

They call themselves the Third Thursday club — an informal gathering of occupational health experts who meet on the third Thursday of every month to discuss health issues in the workplace.

The topic last week was Avian flu, and medical directors from such household names as Air Canada, Bank of Montreal, Enbridge Gas Distribution, and Sun Life Financial packed a room at the exclusive Ontario Club to share information and pandemic planning strategies.

"We don't want to be reinventing the wheel, so we're passing on what each company is doing and sharing ideas, and that's what's happening at the Third Thursday club," said Dr. Tom Keogh, who serves as occupational health physician for Enbridge, Toronto Hydro and several paint and chemical companies for the automotive sector.

Businesses large and small are increasingly realizing they have a major role to play in the event of a flu pandemic, both to contain the spread of the virus and to minimize the financial impact on their operations in the face of mass absenteeism, broken supply chains and consumer panic.

Measures can be as simple as workplace hygiene campaigns and the promotion of telecommuting, to the more thorny strategy of stockpiling anti-viral drugs, such as Tamiflu, to help protect war room executives, essential front-line staff and employees who must travel to high-risk regions in Asia and Europe.

Since June, when Keogh joined Toronto Public Health's vaccine and antiviral subcommittee, he has acted as a liaison between the city and his Third Thursday colleagues to help plan for business continuity in the event of an outbreak.

He said the business community, particularly large corporations with thousands of employees, can play a vital role — as they increasingly do every flu season — to take pressure off public healthcare providers should a pandemic situation emerge.

"The public health channels are going to be very, very busy," said Keogh, adding that getting vaccines and anti-viral medication to major employers, many of whom have their own occupational health physicians and nurses, could take a load off hospitals and health clinics.

He's concerned, however, that smaller businesses throughout the GTA aren't taking the issue seriously enough. "The planning may not be on their radar because they're so focused on getting their product out."

The issue began rattling the business community in August after Sherry Cooper, chief economist of BMO Nesbitt Burns, released a report on the Avian flu predicting that the virus, if it mutated to allow human-to-human transmission, could end up having a "devastating impact" on the global economy.

In a follow-up report in October, Cooper said businesses should not lean on government and need to start planning for themselves. "Businesses would be confronted with, say, 25 per cent absenteeism, maybe more, as many workers take ill, stay home to take care of children or family members or refuse to go to work, especially in heavily populated office towers," she wrote.

Cooper's reports got mixed reviews. Some occupational health physicians said it made more businesses think about their role in the pandemic planning mix, while others say it unnecessarily fanned public anxiety — what some refer to as the "panic-demic."

Sherry is one of the people I spent time with at the flu conference in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. She's not a hysterical person. The focus of her reports is excellent "risk communication." She lays out the range of possible scenarios, including the worst case. You can't plan properly without knowing the worst case scenario. Planning means being ready for whatever happens and if you haven't contemplated the worst case, you haven't planned.

That Strapping Economy

G.M. to Cut 30,000 Jobs and Close 12 Facilities in 3 Years

By MICHELINE MAYNARD
and VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: November 21, 2005

DETROIT, Nov. 21 - General Motors said it would cut up to 30,000 jobs and close a dozen automobile and parts factories and distribution centers in the next three years in an effort to stem the company's billion-dollar losses.

Rick Wagoner, G.M.'s embattled chief executive, announced the cuts this morning at the company's headquarters here before trading began on Wall Street. The company will offer early retirement packages to employee at the plants that will be closed, he said.

All together, the restructuring would reduce the company's costs by $7 billion a year by the end of 2006, $1 billion more than its previous target. The company's production capacity will be cut by 1 million cars and trucks, which comes on top of a reduction of 1 million automobiles from 2002 to 2005. After the latest round of cuts, the nation's biggest automaker will have the capacity to produce 4.2 million cars and trucks, down about 30 percent from 2002.

Shares of G.M. were up 25 cents, or 1 percent, to $24.30 on the New York Stock Exchange in morning trading.

"The decisions we are announcing today were very difficult to reach because of their impact on our employees and the communities where we live and work," he told employees in a televised address. "But these actions are necessary for G.M. to get its costs in line with our major global competitors."

However, I bet you that Wagoner will not sacrifice any of his benefits or those of his other managers. Clearly, the sacrifice only needs to be shared at the bottom and not at the top.

Don't Believe the Hype

1 in 20 Students a Crime Victim

Associated Press
Monday, November 21, 2005; Page A02

One in 20 students was a victim of violence or theft at school in 2003, the government said in a report that shows school crime rates were about half what they were 10 years earlier.

Yet the school crime rate essentially has leveled off, showing no change since 2000, according to a report yesterday from the departments of Education and Justice

There were about 28 reported crimes of rape, sexual assault, robbery and physical assault for every 1,000 students in 2003, compared with 59 per 1,000 a decade earlier. The study looked at crimes against the 26.4 million students who were 12 to 18 years old in 2003.

In 2002, the rate of violent crime per 1,000 students was 24. But government researchers said there was no statistically significant change between 2002 and 2003 because the numbers are estimates from relatively small surveys.

"The level of precision isn't good enough to say whether there has been a change," said Thomas Snyder, a report author at the Education Department.

We were required to attend seminars at the start of the year about how to "fix" our high schools that were idiotic. They brought in the same self help gurus that peddle their nonsense in the corporate boardrooms. One of the big reasons why people are so scared is because they never hear about the good things that go on. Let's face it, who wants to see something positive on the news? It certainly won't bring in the ratings, that's for sure.

There is a great book out about the crime rate and fear of crime called The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things by Barry Glassner. I've seen it in my neighborhood over the last week or so as there were a couple of robberies in the mall and the independent book store near my home. We have lived there over 10 years and this is only the second time there was a "crime spree" big enough that we found out about it.

Of course, I also have students who are shocked that I live in the city and don't own a gun, but that's another discussion. There is one thing to point out about this survey though:

Some school violence experts said the annual report routinely understates crime in schools because it is based on limited surveys and self-reporting.

The schools definately don't report everything that happens, but I don't think that so much is underreported that it would seriously change the statistics.

Day Is Done: Waxing Philosophical

The baby panda is walking like a champ! The local TV stations have video so let me see if I can find you a link. He's adorable and yours truly is going to head to the subway for the ride to the zoo as soon as the initial crowds have cleared. One of my coping strategies for the month of February (which only looks short on paper, in real life it is the longest month of the year in the temperate part of the northern hemisphere. You Aussies and Kiwis are free to nominate your own favorite month as the biggest winter drag) is to head to the Rain Forest building at the National Zoo with a book and sit by one of the beautiful ponds with the monkeys and tropical birds in the air over my head. When the weather has been stubbornly cold and relentlessly damp and cloudy and every arthritic bone in my body has been screaming for relief for weeks, it is the Tropical Rain Forest building, with hummingbirds aplenty in the tropical flowers, which lifts my mood.

Ah. Here is the Animal Planet Panda Cam Link. It looks like the little guy is sleeping right now. Yes, yer bloghostess is a sucker for baby animals. She might be one bad-ass, mouthy liberal, but put a puppy or a kitten or her lap and she melts.

One of the great things about going to see my brother and sis-in-law at the holidays (in addition to my brother's incredible cooking) is their manageriescroll down to the photos.) They have two great Golden Retrievers, Sadie and Darby, and Scat the cat. This is the house of the Blondies, les animaux and the humans are all the same shade of blonde. Scat the cat is great buddies with the dogs, less so with humans.

The weather for traveling is going to be lousy, but I'm taking the train. It's going to be touch and go snow-rain on Thursday, but I take the subway to Amtrak and 20 minutes later I'm at BWI train station. Whichever one of the team isn't up to their ass in cooking will pick me up at the station and I can read my next installment of John Barry's The Great Influenza on the train. I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is great writing on a riveting subject. Barry could have used a better editor, he repeats himself a bit much, but for the most part I find this as gripping as a good novel, the man understands narrative. I picked it up in paper at the Barnes and Noble at Dulles Airport on my way to the flu conference in San Fran. I read it on the plane on the way out and back, but there hasn't been a slow space which allowed me to pick up a book since I got back. It's nice to settle into a train seat, or a plane seat, and leave the rest of the travel to someone else while dropping yourself into the world a book creates. I'm in the habit of reading myself to sleep most nights, but the conference was so intense that I just dropped off after dealing with my email and didn't read a word the whole time I was there.

While at the Pandefense conference, I picked up a dead tree copy of Sherry Cooper's economic study of panflu for The Bank of Montreal. Going over a print document is different from reading it on the Web, so I'm having a completely different experience with reading it in my hands than I did on my screen. I may have some reflections about that later. Yes, it is possible to be brilliant, short and pretty. She also has a killer sense of humor. But you really have to be short to wear those impossible spike heals she wears. I'm only three inches taller, but a fall from this height breaks bones. Trust me, the orthopods and I know each other. Well.

I met Sherry at the conference. Her website is pretty good but it doesn't show you how funny she is.

To Begin the Feast

This is a great turkey day first course, particularly if you aren't going to be doing a pumpkin pie.

BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND APPLE SOUP

16 oz. butternut squash, peeled, seeded, cut up
3 med. green apples, peeled, cored, chopped coarsely
2 (10 1/2 oz.) cans chicken broth (or make your own)
1 med. onion, chopped
3 slices white bread, torn in pieces
Salt, pepper, rosemary, marjoram, allspice

Combine all ingredients. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about 45 minutes. Cool, then put in blender until smooth. When ready to serve, heat again. Add a swirl of half and half after you transfer the soup to the serving bowls. Garnish with some chopped parsley.

The Wretched Gulf

I just watched the 60 Minutes segment on New Orleans. The devestation is mind boggling, the people have nothing and FEMA is dragging their feet. Contrast that with this story.

Storm Hit Little, but Aid Flowed to Inland City

By ERIC LIPTON
Published: November 20, 2005

JACKSON, Miss., Nov. 19 - When the federal government and the nation's largest disaster relief group reached out a helping hand after Hurricane Katrina blew through here, tens of thousands of people grabbed it.

"Surely the Red Cross has to have a better use of funds," said Bob Parks, whose Western Union agency cashed hundreds of aid checks.

But in giving out $62 million in aid, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Red Cross overlooked a critical fact: the storm was hardly catastrophic here, 160 miles from the coast. The only damage sustained by most of the nearly 30,000 households receiving aid was spoiled food in the freezer.

The fact that at least some relief money has gone to those perceived as greedy, not needy, has set off recriminations in this poor, historic capital where the payments of up to $2,358 set off spending sprees on jewelry, guns and electronics.

Though a majority of the money appears to have been given out legally, the United States attorney's office is investigating at least 1,000 reports of fraud, including accusations that people lied about claims of damage or where they lived. State and local officials are criticizing FEMA and the Red Cross as doling out money without safeguards, but they also blame their fellow citizens.

"The donors all across this nation thought they were giving money to put food in the mouths of people who had nothing and clothes on the backs of people who had lost everything," said State Representative John R. Reeves, who represents Jackson. "But that is not what happened here. There was a feeding frenzy. Free money was being handed out."

And friends have turned against friends. When word of the Red Cross and federal money got out in Jackson's neighborhoods, many rushed to apply. Huge lines formed at Western Union outlets, discount stores and other places that issued or cashed the relief checks. Erica Thompson, 32, tried unsuccessfully to persuade her friends not to join in.

"People can take a good thing and abuse it," Ms. Thompson said while doing her wash at a coin laundry in Jackson this week. "It's not right."

Some of those who accepted the aid, though, feel no embarrassment. "I needed that money," said Lynn Alexander, 30, whose apartment lost power in the storm, but was not damaged. She collected $900, she said, from the Red Cross. "It helped me put gas in my car, wash my clothes and buy food."

What happened in Jackson and its suburbs - in Hinds, Madison and Rankin Counties - might not be unique. Emergency officials elsewhere in Mississippi and in parts of Louisiana have also questioned how so much federal aid could have been authorized, given the limited damage they documented.

"Someone is going to have to look at that," said Bo Boudreaux, deputy director of homeland security in Iberia Parish, west of New Orleans, where perhaps three mobile homes were damaged, he said, but 404 families, according to FEMA, received $2,000 checks in emergency aid.

FEMA, which is leading the $62 billion Hurricane Katrina relief effort, has been criticized as responding slowly to the disaster and then wasting recovery money. In defending the payments in the Jackson area, the agency and the Red Cross cited the tensions between moving quickly to help the desperate, and moving carefully to avoid aiding the undeserving.

"This is the challenge we perpetually face," said Nicol Andrews, a FEMA spokeswoman. "Do you get assistance into the hands of those who desperately need it as quickly as possible? Or do you slow it down to dot every single I and cross every single T? We chose to err on the side of the victim."

FEMA has put the evacuees on notice that it is cutting off their rent subsidies on two weeks, re-victimizing the victims.

Quagmire

Widespread Violence Kills Dozens Across Iraq

By EDWARD WONG
Published: November 20, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 20 - The Marine Corps said today that 15 Iraqi civilians and a United States marine were killed on Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded in the town of Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. At least 11 other Iraqis were killed or discovered dead today in various incidents, and military officials reported the deaths of two more Americans and a British soldier.

The deaths capped one of the deadliest three-day periods since the American invasion. In all, at least 155 Iraqis and 7 foreign soldiers have been killed in a spate of bombings and assaults that began Friday morning, when jihadists tried using two trucks packed with explosives to demolish a Baghdad hotel full of Western journalists.

That attack was followed by a pair of suicide bombings in two mosques in the northern Kurdish town of Khanaqin that left at least 80 dead and more than 100 wounded.

It is unclear what exactly provoked this series of attacks, but several factors could be stirring the anger of the Sunni-led insurgency. Last week, the American military announced that soldiers had discovered 169 malnourished, mostly Sunni Arab detainees in a secret police prison in Baghdad run by the Shiite-led Interior Ministry. The interior minister, Bayan Jabr, tried to play down the discovery, but admitted that seven of the detainees had been tortured.

In the northern city of Mosul, a senior police officer said a house raided on Saturday by the Iraqi police and American soldiers may have been a base for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the militant group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The officer, Brig. Gen. Muhammad al-Wagaa, said the Iraqi police surrounded the house after interrogating an insurgent captured on Friday. A fierce gun battle erupted, he said, and the police called for assistance from the American military.

The insurgents then detonated a ready-to-use car bomb in the house, General Wagaa said. The blast killed 11 people inside, he said, and Iraqi and American forces captured four people. One of the dead insurgents, the general added, was a woman wearing an amulet around her neck that proclaimed her a martyr.

My, this is all going so well.

Rumsfeld Says Iraq Troop Levels Must Be Maintained

By CHRISTINE HAUSER
Published: November 20, 2005

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, addressing the renewed debate over American troops in Iraq, said today that any paring down of the forces there would depend on military and security conditions, and that current troop levels must be maintained at least until the December elections in Iraq.

Speaking on the Sunday morning public affairs programs, Mr. Rumsfeld appeared to want to deliver the final word on the recent uproar sparked by a call for an expedited withdrawal of American troops issued by a Democratic congressman who has long been influential on military matters on both sides of the partisan divide.

The Democrat, Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a Vietnam combat veteran who voted for the Iraq war, said on Thursday that the 153,000 American troops now in Iraq should be pulled out within six months.

Mr. Murtha's remarks touched off angry partisan exchanges and a public debate in the House on Friday that culminated in a 403-to-3 vote against a summary troop withdrawal. In the process, Republicans and Democrats shouted and traded insults on the floor in a debate that disintegrated amid anger over both President Bush's handling of the war and Mr. Murtha's remarks.

Mr. Murtha was also on the air today, saying in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he believed that having American forces provide the bulwark against the insurgency discouraged Iraqi forces from taking on more responsibility for their country's security and stability.

"I'm absolutely convinced that we're making no progress at all," said Mr. Murtha, who served nearly four decades with the Marines and the Marine Reserves. "Until we turn it over to the Iraqis, we're going to continue to do the fighting. Our young men and women are going to continue to suffer."

G*dammed Rumsfeld has broken the Army and he's too stupid to see it. Jack Murtha's plea to bring the troops home is coming directly from his friends in the DoD, the career military, who know it.

The Art of Selling Your Soul

Washington Post rebukes Bob Woodward

Programming Note: Bob Woodward discusses the CIA leak probe and his silence, Monday on Larry King Live at 9 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The Washington Post's ombudsman rebuked journalist Bob Woodward on Sunday for withholding what he knew about the CIA leak probe from his editor and for making public statements that were dismissive of the investigation without disclosing his own involvement.

One of the best-known investigative reporters in the United States, Woodward revealed last week that he testified under oath to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that a senior Bush administration official told him in mid-June 2003 about CIA operative Valerie Plame's position at the agency.

Fitzgerald announced a few days later in court papers that his two-year criminal investigation into who leaked Plame's identity would be going back before a federal grand jury, a sign he may seek new or revised charges.

The name of Woodward's source has yet to be made public and so far more than a dozen senior administration officials have denied any involvement in the leak.

Asked on "Fox News Sunday" if he ever spoke to Woodward about Plame, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "No, of course not." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a similar denial through a spokesman on Saturday.

In a column highly critical of Woodward's conduct, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell said the newspaper took a "hit to its credibility" and called for more oversight of Woodward's work.

"He has to operate under the rules that govern the rest of the staff -- even if he's rich and famous," Howell wrote of Woodward, one of the two Washington Post reporters famed for coverage of the 1970s Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.

Howell said Woodward committed a "deeply serious sin" by keeping Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie in the dark about his source for more than two years.

"He also committed another journalistic sin -- commenting on National Public Radio and (CNN's) "Larry King Live" about the Plame investigation without disclosing his early knowledge of Plame's identity," Howell wrote.

In a series of television and radio interviews before publicly disclosing his involvement in the leak case, Woodward described the leak case as laughable and Fitzgerald's behavior as "disgraceful."

One day before Fitzgerald brought charges against Vice President Dick Cheney's long-time chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Woodward said he saw no evidence of criminal intent.

Woodward has apologized to Downie, who said "Bob made a mistake" by not informing him sooner of his source on Plame.

"Rich and famous" Bob is in the process of destroying his own credibility for the sake of Bushco. Go figure.

What's Wrong with the World

This has been bothering me for more than one fashion cycle. With the low rise jeans cut down to the pubic bone and belly shirts, today's girls are busting their fashion butts to become the sexual objects we fought so hard not to be. Feminism has been an utter failure, other than to make young girls as sexually aggressive as boys used to be when I was growing up. The author is a family therapist in my area.

What's Wrong With This Outfit, Mom?

By Patricia Dalton
Sunday, November 20, 2005; B01

I heard about it in my kitchen before I read about it in the newspaper: After visiting the expanded Tysons Corner Center this fall, my 23-year-old daughter said, "You won't believe how weird Victoria's Secret's gotten: It's all red and black with a bunch of mannequins that look like porn stars." Some shoppers were so outraged at the raunchy lingerie display that they threatened to boycott the store; others just yawned.

I've been hearing a variation on this theme with increasing frequency in my office. Mothers voice distress over the suggestive clothing their teen and preteen daughters are wearing, inside and outside the house. In fact, conflict over clothing is what prompts them to come in for family therapy. The daughters themselves may be imperious or sullen, but almost all employ the everyone-is-doing-it excuse. And an awful lot of girls are doing it.

Women once complained about being reduced to sex objects. Now, their daughters are volunteering to be sex objects. And while parents register disapproval, they often fail to take action. In that failure, they unwittingly place their daughters at risk by allowing them to bypass girlhood. When a daughter moves straight from little girl to woman, she's playing a role rather than gradually learning to live her own life. These girls may seem whole, but they aren't. There is often a lost girl inside.

Many who endorse provocative styles of dress have picked up on the liberal message of the '60s and taken it a step further. They see those who express distaste over the sexually explicit as hung up, old-fashioned. One young woman pointed out to me, "It's almost politically incorrect to say that something is inappropriate."

One of the most unsettling sights today is that of little girls dressed in teeny bikinis at the pool, or walking around in low-rise pants with midriff tops, or in heels and skimpy dresses, sometimes complete with makeup and jewelry. And this doesn't occur only at dance recitals. It can be everyday attire.

My local grocery is next door to the city's combined middle/senior high school and I see the kids everyday as they stop in for a soda and snacks after school. I'm appalled that any parent would let their daughter leave the house looking like a crack whore. Actually, now that I think about it, the crack whores on 14th St. in DC are more decorously dressed.

I've been teaching for thirty years and am pretty alarmed by the way I've seen kids change over that time. My cohort, the baby boomers, have been lousy parents. They don't know how to be the adults in the house or how to say "no." Parents aren't supposed to be their children's buddies, they are supposed to be parents and set limits. I have seen so many screwed up kids in screwed up families because nobody knew how to be the grown up. It's one of the reasons I quit teaching. The day I chided a student for having failed to practice for her music lesson for the sixth meeting in a row only to be told "Fuck you," was the day I realized that the wealthy families I was serving weren't interested in learning anything. Music lessons were just another activity to check off on their program. The kids have no self discipline because their parents have none.

Kids that have no qualms about giving and receiving blow jobs at age 12 or 13 are going to be adults with "issues" that will keep another generation of therapists happily employed.

Nation Building

A Rebuilding Plan Full of Cracks
After the routing of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Bush administration launched a $73 million program to construct schools and clinics. But design flaws and other problems soon plagued the effort.

By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 20, 2005; Page A01

MADRASAH, Afghanistan On a humid morning, scores of women and wailing babies crowded into the dirt courtyard of a private home a day's journey north of Kabul. They squeezed into a sliver of shade against a mud wall, the only refuge from the intense sun on a summer day when the temperature reached 120 degrees. Across the courtyard, inside a canvas lean-to, a doctor vaccinated infants atop a dusty plastic cooler.

A veiled woman named Tela squatted in the sun, lifting her black robe to create a bit of shade for her 9-month-old daughter, Shoghla, dehydrated from severe diarrhea.

"I have been here one hour and still I am waiting," said Tela, who like many Afghans uses only one name. "It is very, very crowded. We don't have anywhere to sit."

Next door, a large U.S.-financed health clinic, a brand-new building of concrete and steel, sat empty and locked.

"They should finish that clinic and we should be there," she said. "There would be a lot of places to sit over there."

The clinic in Madrasah is not just a building. It is part of a remote battleground in the war on terror, an attempt to win hearts and minds in the nation that was once al Qaeda's stronghold.

In September 2002, nearly a year after an American-led coalition deposed the Taliban, the United States launched what would become an aggressive effort to build or refurbish as many as 1,000 schools and clinics by the end of 2004, documents show. However, design flaws and construction errors caused the initiative to fall far short.

By September 2004, congressional figures show that the effort's centerpiece -- a $73 million U.S. Agency for International Development program -- had produced only 100 finished projects, most of them refurbishments of existing buildings. As of the beginning of this month, only about 40 more had been finished and turned over to the Afghan government.

Internal documents and more than 100 interviews in Washington and Kabul revealed a chain of mistakes and misjudgments: The U.S. effort was poorly conceived in a rush to show results before the Afghan presidential election in late 2004. The drive to construct earthquake-resistant, American-quality buildings in rustic villages led to culture clashes, delays and what a USAID official called "extraordinary costs." Afghans complained that the initial design for roofs made them too heavy to build in rural areas without a crane, and the corrected design made them too light to bear Afghan snows. Local workmen unfamiliar with U.S. construction methods sometimes produced shoddy work.

At the outset, USAID and its primary contractor, New Jersey-based Louis Berger Group Inc., failed to provide adequate oversight, documents state. Federal audits show that USAID officials in Kabul were unable to "identify the location of many Kabul-directed projects in the field." Officials at contracting companies and nonprofit groups complain that they were directed to build at sites that turned out to be sheer mountain slopes, a dry riverbed and even a graveyard.

Employees of a Maryland-based nonprofit relief agency hired to monitor construction quality demanded a $50,000 payoff from Afghan builders -- a scene captured in a clandestine videotape obtained by The Washington Post.

This is a long, page one story and deserves reading. My point in posting it today is that it is emblematic of US contracting failures in "nation-building." Bushco contractors are in it for the graft, kickbacks and rake-offs.

The Brookings Institution is tracking the "reconstruction" in Iraq, and Afghanistan is a similar boondogle.

W Does Bird Flu

The Perplexing Pandemic Flu Plan

Published: November 20, 2005

The Bush administration deserves credit for issuing a comprehensive plan to combat pandemic influenza and for seeking $7.1 billion to get it started. But the lengthy document recently issued by the Department of Health and Human Services looks like a prescription for failure should a highly lethal flu virus start rampaging through the population in the next few years. The plan sets lofty goals but largely passes the buck on practical problems. The real responsibilities wind up on the shoulders of state and local health agencies and individual hospitals, none of which are provided with adequate resources to handle the job.

Although President Bush promised a "crash program" for vaccines, the target dates are distant. The date for stockpiling enough vaccine for 20 million people is 2009. The date for converting the drug industry to more modern manufacturing techniques that could expand production quickly in an emergency is 2010. These lag times will be fine if no pandemic materializes soon, as seems likely, or if a pandemic arrives that is as mild as the 1968 version, which was not much worse than a typical flu season. But if a flu strain as lethal as the one that killed some 20 million to 100 million people around the world in 1918 were to hit before a vaccine is widely available, the nation's health care system would be overwhelmed.

Local health departments and hospitals would have to rely on isolating infected people to limit spread of the disease and using standard medical care to reduce death and suffering. Yet this is precisely where the plan is at its weakest. The voluminous document is mostly a laundry list of things state and local health agencies and hospitals should consider in getting ready. Professional groups and academic experts who have pored over the details find them disturbingly incomplete as a guide to action.

The chain of command is unclear, with myriad agencies and multiple levels of government playing a role. Medical or public health interventions are sometimes suggested without enough information to judge their likely effectiveness or downsides. Liability protection for health workers and compensation for those injured by vaccines are not addressed, nor is the issue of how the United States would respond to requests from other countries for vaccines and medicines. Health departments and medical institutions would be left to scramble for extra vaccines or drugs from private suppliers once stockpiles have been exhausted, setting off a race that should be averted by centralized purchases.

The word "perplexing" should be replaced by the word "incoherent." This isn't a plan, it is a press release.

Caveat Emptor

What I Knew Before the Invasion

By Bob Graham
Sunday, November 20, 2005
The writer is a former Democratic senator from Florida. He is currently a fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics.

At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.

Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.

There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.

Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.

The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq.

From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth.

On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.

Emphasis mine. Let the citizen beware. Do not trust. Verify.

Projection

How U.S. Fell Under the Spell of 'Curveball'
# The Iraqi informant's German handlers say they had told U.S. officials that his information was 'not proven,' and were shocked when President Bush and Colin L. Powell used it in key prewar speeches.

By Bob Drogin and John Goetz, Special to The Times

BERLIN — The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Five senior officials from Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said in interviews with The Times that they warned U.S. intelligence authorities that the source, an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.

According to the Germans, President Bush mischaracterized Curveball's information when he warned before the war that Iraq had at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also misstated Curveball's accounts in his prewar presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, the Germans said.

Curveball's German handlers for the last six years said his information was often vague, mostly secondhand and impossible to confirm.

"This was not substantial evidence," said a senior German intelligence official. "We made clear we could not verify the things he said."

The German authorities, speaking about the case for the first time, also said that their informant suffered from emotional and mental problems. "He is not a stable, psychologically stable guy," said a BND official who supervised the case. "He is not a completely normal person," agreed a BND analyst.

Curveball was the chief source of inaccurate prewar U.S. accusations that Baghdad had biological weapons, a commission appointed by Bush reported this year. The commission did not interview Curveball, who still insists his story was true, or the German officials who handled his case.

Look, Bushco wanted to go to war and if they hadn't dreamed up this nutcase, they'd have found another.

I remember Bush saying "I'm a war president" during the campaign and hearing that, damn, he's proud of that and that's what he wanted to be president for, we are living his oedipal nightmare. This giant adolescent ego is running our country now.

Part of America elected its adolescent id as president. That hasn't worked out so well, has it?

He's only playing president. He never got beyond the "playing" stage in his personal growth. He likes all the costumes and whatnot, but the "responsibility" part, well, he goes to bed early, takes a lot of vacations and doesn't worry about it much.

Freedom is messy

Sectarian Hatred Pulls Apart Iraq's Mixed Towns

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: November 20, 2005

Two-and-a-half years after the American invasion, deep divides that have long split Iraqi society have violently burst into full view. As the hatred between Sunni Arabs and Shiites hardens and the relentless toll of bombings and assassinations grows, families are leaving their mixed towns and cities for safer areas where they will not automatically be targets.

In doing so, they are creating increasingly polarized enclaves and redrawing the sectarian map of Iraq, especially in Baghdad and the belt of cities around it.

The evidence is so far mostly anecdotal — the government is not tracking the moves. In a rough count, about 20 cities and towns around Baghdad are segregating, according to accounts by local sheiks, Iraqi nongovernmental organizations and military officials, and the families themselves.

Those areas are among the most mixed and the most violent in Iraq — according to the American military, 85 percent of attacks in the country are in four provinces including Baghdad, and two others to its north and west. The volatile sectarian mix is a holdover from the rule of Saddam Hussein, who gave favors to Sunni landowners in the lush farmland around Baghdad to reinforce loyalties and to protect against Shiites in the south. Shiites came to work the land, and sometimes to own it. Abu Noor moved to Tarmiyah in 1987 after the government gave land to his father.

"The most violent places are the towns and cities around Baghdad," said Sheik Jalal al-Dien al-Sagheer, a member of parliament from a religious Shiite party. "It was a circle. It was invented. It did not exist before."

The result has been carnage on a serious scale. In Tarmiyah, Abu Noor's close friend who helped pack his furniture and drove it to Baghdad received a letter warning him to leave the town or be killed. Nineteen days later he was shot to death in his carpentry shop in front of his father and brother. In all, at least eight of Abu Noor's friends and close relatives, including a brother, have been killed since the beginning of 2004.

The motives for the attacks are often complicated. The complex webs of tribal affiliations and social status that rule everyday life in Iraq do not always line up as simply as Shiite against Sunni. But increasingly, despite the urging of some Shiite religious leaders and Sunni politicians, the attacks have been just that: A mostly Sunni Arab fringe is launching vicious attacks against civilians, often Shiites, while Shiite death squads are openly stalking Sunnis for revenge, and the Shiite-dominated government makes regular arrests in Sunni Arab neighborhoods.

Expressions of prejudice have been making their way onto walls and into leaflets, too.

In Tarmiyah, writing was scrawled on the walls of the city's main streets: "Get out of here, Badr followers! Traitors! Spies!" it said, using a reference to an armed wing of a religious Shiite party. In Madain, a mixed city south of Baghdad, a list of names appeared on the walls of several municipal buildings in a warning to leave. Many did.

In Samarra last fall, leaflets appeared warning in clumsy childish script that Samarra is a Sunni city.

"We thought at first that they were written by kids and that someone would discipline them," said Sheik Hadi al-Gharawi, an imam who left Samarra, north of Baghdad, a few months ago and now lives in Baghdad. "But later we found they were adults, and they were serious."

The civil war is underway. Which side are we on and why?

Staff of Life

Wild Rice Bread

If you are in a baking mood and have a pot of finished wild rice ready to be used somewhere, this sturdy loaf will do you proud.
At a Glance
Prep Time : 25min
Cook Time : 25min
Course : Bread
Special : Easy, Few Ingredients
Type of Prep : Bake
Cuisine : U.S. Regional
Occasion : Back to School, Fall, Family Dinner, Winter

If you've never tried wild rice bread, you're going to love it. The rice adds a fabulous texture and nutty flavor to this excellent bread recipe. You can use Homemade Hot Roll Mix if you'd like.

INGREDIENTS:

* 1/2 cup uncooked wild rice
* 1 pkg. hot roll mix OR 3-1/2 to 4 cups homemade Hot Roll Mix
* 1 pkg. instant dry yeast if using homemade Hot Roll Mix
* 1 cup water, heated to 120 degrees
* 2 Tbsp. oil
* 2 Tbsp. molasses
* 1 egg
* 1 tsp. water

PREPARATION:
Cook wild rice according to package directions and drain well. Set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, combine flour packet and the yeast from foil packet in the mix and stir well. Stir in cooked wild rice, hot water, oil, and molasses until mixture forms a ball. Knead dough on floured surface for 5 minutes until smooth. Cover dough with bowl and let rest for 5 minutes.

Divide dough in half and shape each half into a 12" long loaf. Place each loaf on a separate greased cookie sheet. Beat together egg and water and brush over each loaf. Let rise until doubled in size, about 30 minutes. Brush each loaf again with egg mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and loaf sounds hollow when tapped with fingers. 2 loaves, 20 slices

This is delicious. If you have no reason to try wild rice for dinner, make this bread. It will blow your mind.

Posted by Melanie at 01:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Shellfish, body and soul

I had never eaten an oyster before I was 32, which is when the beautiful beasts entered my life. I was living in North Carolina then and still didn't know much about seafood or shellfish. My brother invited me up to his new base in Baltimore and took me to the Harborplace and introduced me to Baltimore cheesebread and oysters on the half-shell at a Phillips seafood place at the Inner Harbor, that spectacular redevelopment which looks a lot like other Rouse developments in Boston and Columbia, Maryland. It was all new to me and I socked in cookbooks from the cookbook store (they are the only thing I collect) and Leigh took me around the seafood stands to eat. He ordered a half-dozen on the half-shell. They were served on rock salt, just like you are supposed to. He offered me one and said, "put a little lemon squeeze on it, you'll like the result." I followed his instructions and ate it on the half shell, drenched in oyster brine. I was immediately hooked and ate my way through the food court at the Inner Harbor, trying all of the permutations of things you can put on oysters and trying the different varieties alone. I must have eaten three dozen.

I have an iron gut, nothing bothers me, but you can't eat your way through that many oysters and combinations of Tabasco, lemon and horseradish with cocktail sauce without developing a strange gut. I was pretty much in pain by the time we got on his Kawasaki for the trip home, but all the new flavors kept me fascinated even as I was in pain.

I don't eat oysters often, they are too often the repositories of the literal crap which lies in our coastal waters, but when I can find a reliable supply, I'm good for a dozen on the half shell. The best are coming out of the Pacific Northwest and Japan, which has turned this food into an art, as they always do.

If you can find a good supply, here is what you can do besides use them in stuffing next week. You've got to be a kitchen warrior to shuck oysters at home, so I recommend trying this in a restaurant where the raw bar has excellent turnover. If you are going shopping anyway, give yourself a night out at the best seafood place in town. With raw oysters, I recommend white vermouth. With Antoine's recipe, a pinot grigio will serve nicely.

Roy Guste Jr., current fifth-generation proprietor of Antoine's, will still not give out the original Oysters Rockefeller recipe as it's still prepared at Antoine's, and it is not included in the Antoine's Cookbook. Hey, I heard the secret was green onions, not spinach ... let's give that a try with what's the best recipe I've yet come across (which makes a lot of sense), and then we'll reproduce the one to which Malcolm referred above. I bet ya like da foist one mo' betta.

This recipe purports to be a close version of one that supposedly came directly from Jules Alciatore, Roy's father. (It looks way, way better than the one that Roy supplied to Life.) Rather than using bunches of spinach, that so many of the recipes we've seen floating around, it has lots of herbs plus celery leaves, which is true to the rumor that Jules created the dish out of what happened to be lying around the kitchen, including scraps. It seems to me that the secret of this dish is the herbs -- tarragon, of course, and chervil. Use the freshest herbs you can find, and by no means ever used dried herbs for this dish.

* Two dozen fresh oysters on the half shell, oyster liquor reserved
* 4 springs flat-leaf Italian parsley
* 4 green onions (including the green part)
* A handful of fresh celery leaves
* At least 6 fresh tarragon leaves
* At least 6 fresh chervil leaves
* 1/2 cup dried fresh French bread crumbs (homemade, not out of a can)
* 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened (hey, it's supposed to be "rich enough for Rockefeller"!)
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
* Tabasco or Crystal hot sauce, to taste
* 2 tablespoons Herbsaint or Pernod (optional)
* Rock salt or kosher salt

Mince together the parsley, green onions, celery leaves, tarragon and chervil as finely as you possibly can. Take as much time as you need. Mince them more finely than anything you've ever minced in your life. Mix this together with the bread crumbs and the softened butter into a mortar and mix the whole thing together into a smooth paste, but do leave a little texture to it. (You can do this in a blender or food processor, but you'll leave a lot of it behind, stuck to the inside, and it'll be just easier to do it by hand in a mortar; you'll have an easier time getting it all out, and you'll have the satisfaction of serving something truly hand-made.) Season to taste with salt and pepper, Tabasco or Crystal and, if you like, the Herbsaint.

Preheat your broiler. Lower the top rack to the middle of the oven. Spread the rock salt (preferable) or kosher salt over a large baking sheet; this will keep the oysters level under the broiler, so that they won't tip over. Moisten the salt very slightly. Plant the shells in the salt, making sure they're level. Place one oyster in each shell, plus a little bit of oyster liquor. Spoon an equal amount of the prepared herb/butter mixture over each oyster.

Place the baking sheet on the middle rack and broil until the edges of the oysters have curled and the herb butter is bubbling, about five minutes. Watch carefully to make sure you don't overdo it. Serve immediately.

YIELD: Six servings of four oysters each (regular people-sized serving), or four servings of six oysters each (New Orleanian-sized serving)

This is a lot of work, but it is spectacular. If you can make your kitchen work this way, it could be part of a menu which includes lobster pie and bananas Foster that you make for your friends or family as an anniversary meal or for another special ocassion. This is special food.

If my friends Trammell and Holly can put me onto a supply of herbsaint here in DC, I'd be much beholdin'. A couple of Tulane grads ought to be good for something. And they might get dinner out of it, NOLA style.

Live well, it is still the best revenge.

For the next meal, Holly and Tramell, oysters served five ways. I'll help.

Update: Here are Dan Rogoff's oyster memories and recipes. The man is a gourmand and I like his work.

Soul's Mirror

Southern Exposure

By JAMES C. COBB
Published: November 19, 2005

Athens, Ga.

IN 1964, when the blood and terror of Freedom Summer prompted many Americans to condemn the South as backward and bigoted, the historian Howard Zinn struck a nerve with his suggestion that "the nation reacts emotionally to the South precisely because it sees itself there." Now, as Americans rebuild from the wreckage and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, they see another portrait in time, one that tells us much about what has and hasn't changed in the South in recent years, as well as about what the South can still tell the rest of the nation about itself.

At the very least, Hurricane Katrina put the lie to a generation's worth of ballyhoo about the newfound prosperity of the Sunbelt South. It showed us not only the impoverished and immobile masses of New Orleans, but the shack-dwelling, hand-to-mouth lives of thousands of others within the three-state swath of its hellish destruction. Here the disaster laid bare the shackling legacy of generations of pursuing industry through promises of low-wage, nonunion labor and minimal taxation and the correspondingly inadequate investment in public education, health and social welfare in the South.

Many of the places leveled by the hurricane were one-industry towns that had been reduced to no-industry towns when low-paying, tax-exempted, union-free employers repaid their hospitality by heading east or farther south where even cheaper labor and lower taxes awaited them. If Sherman originated urban renewal in Atlanta, Hurricane Katrina may have accomplished small-scale urban removal along the Gulf Coast, considering the number of towns that will likely never be rebuilt.

Even before the hurricane, more than two-thirds of the poverty-level families with children in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama fell into the "working poor" category. This figure is pretty much standard across the Old Confederacy, meaning that a great many Southerners beyond the physical reach of the storm would also be at the mercy of any such catastrophe of similar proportions. However, the same might be said for the almost equally prevalent working poor in such decidedly un-Southern locales as Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where folks have been laid low by wholesale outsourcing of jobs and economic policies that have left real wages stagnant and a social safety net in ever greater disrepair.

No Americans have had more experience with burden-bearing than Southerners, white and black. In this they have been well served by traits they exhibited repeatedly in dealing with Hurricane Katrina, especially their willingness to suffer extreme hardship and even death rather than sever their enduring ties to place, family and community.
....
As community after community across the South opened its arms to the displaced, small-town papers were awash in stories about middle-class whites who had obviously made homeless and penniless evacuees the first black guests ever to sit at their tables and sleep on their sheets. These breakthroughs might seem especially emblematic of change in Southern white racial attitudes, but my guess is that there were a lot of these "firsts" registered as well in homes above the Mason-Dixon line where Hurricane Katrina victims found shelter.

Hurricane Katrina should also have demonstrated to skeptical blue-staters that the South's vaunted religiosity amounts to more than a convenient vehicle for political manipulation of the ignorant, unthinking masses. Black and white survivors told story after story of reciting the Lord's Prayer or the 23rd Psalm as the storm raged around them, and though left penniless, homeless and uninsured, they expressed both gratitude and absolute confidence that the Lord would protect and provide.

If the Hurricane Katrina experience reveals that the South remains in many ways what Mr. Zinn described as a "marvelously useful" mirror where other Americans can see some of their nation's most egregious flaws magnified, it also suggests that in looking southward these days they should recognize some of its most admirable virtues writ large as well.

Zinn's suggestion is indeed a useful mirror, a mirror that invites us to look at our shadow side. When ever an idea, person or place gets fixed with a lot of emotion for no logical reason, it usually contains a message we're trying to send to ourselves.

Welcome to the Woodshed

China brushes off Bush's call for more freedom

BEIJING (Reuters) - China deflected a call from U.S. President George W. Bush to embrace democracy and religious freedom, choosing on Thursday to set a positive tone for his impending visit to Beijing.

A Chinese official said the country hoped to improve ties with the United States during President Bush's three-day visit, beginning on Saturday, which may set the tone for relations between the two powers for years to come.

"Chinese people enjoy all forms of democracy and freedom under law, including freedom of religion and belief," a spokesman for China's foreign ministry, Liu Jianchao, said.

"We hope to increase consensus and mutual confidence through President Bush's visit."

Liu was responding to a speech by President Bush in Kyoto on Wednesday in which he said China should accompany its economic boom with more freedom for its citizens.

"As the people of China grow in prosperity, their demands for political freedom will grow as well," Bush said.

He also called for lifting state controls on religion in China, including the right to "print Bibles and other sacred texts without fear of punishment".

Last week, China sentenced Protestant minister Cai Zhuohua to three years in jail for privately publishing the Bible and other religious publications. He was convicted of running an illegal business.

China has about 80 million Christians and allows citizens to worship in officially sanctioned churches. But tens of millions of them instead attend underground churches that refuse to accept state authority.

China was willing to discuss its human rights "on the basis of equality, mutual respect, and non-interference in internal affairs", said Liu, the spokesman.

In his Kyoto speech, Bush praised Japan as a model of a free Asian country, a gesture that may rankle in China, where anti-Japanese feeling runs high.

Bush also said the mainland should learn from Taiwan, the self-ruled island that China claims as its own. But Liu said China need not take Taiwan as its model.

"Taiwan has its circumstances, and the mainland has its circumstances," he said."

Circumstances? Bush has suggestions:

Bush's Asia Strategy
Engaging China economically, containing it with democracies.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Bush was of course talking about more than economic freedom in Kyoto. He was suggesting that the democratic world will retain its suspicions of China until the party loosens its tight grip on the behavior of the Chinese people: "As the people of China grow in prosperity, their demands for political freedom will grow as well. . . . By meeting the legitimate demands of its citizens for freedom and openness, China's leaders can help their country grow into a modern, prosperous and confident nation."

In short, Mr. Bush on this swing through Asia has been sending the message that the U.S. wishes China well but that Beijing will not earn trust from the world until it takes steps to grant its people their rights of free expression and the protection of law. It was a reminder that, while China is pressing its claim to great power status, it won't be accepted by the world's democracies until it makes democratic reforms. Mr. Bush clearly wanted to emphasize that Asia has strong democracies that are more inclined to side with the U.S. than China in any face-off.

Suggestions? The Chinese may have some of their own:

Bush Arrives in China

By Scott Stearns
Osan Air Base, South Korea
19 November 2005

During that speech, Mr. Bush held-up modern Taiwan as an example of a nation that has moved from repression to democracy as it has liberalized its economy - advancing freedom at all levels and delivering prosperity while creating a democratic Chinese society.

That drew a sharp response from some Chinese officials. Foreign Minister spokesman Liu Jianchao told reporters that China has made remarkable achievements in improving human rights and the Chinese people fully enjoy democracy and freedom, protected by laws and regulations, including freedom of religious belief.

Mr. Liu said the situations in Taiwan and mainland China are different and he hopes the United States can have a correct understanding of that, saying countries should conduct human-rights dialogue and exchanges on the basis of equality, mutual respect, and the principle of non-interference in each other's internal affairs.

Bush has gone out of his way to tweak the Chinese on human rights & economic development. My sense is that the Chinese are going to sit Georgie boy down in private meetings and explain the facts of economic life - the Chinese own lots of US debt. Bush has been borrowing from them like mad. You don't get to tell your creditors where to get off.

Wisdom

I don't read The Economist enough. The current Buttonwood, my favorite feature of the magazine, is turning in her wordprocessor after the current issue. She leaves us with this advice:

Don’t profit, be happy

So let us turn from financial gloom and doom, and consider briefly the point of it all. Does striving to make money make you happy? No, maintains James Montier, a strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. A year ago he proposed a notion that shocked some financial folk: that money and happiness are not positively correlated. Now, in a fascinating note, he expands that idea, citing a host of academic studies on the point.

Those who value “materialistic” goals (wealth, fame, image) are less happy than those who value more “intrinsic” goals (personal growth, relationships, community). Happiness is achieved by progressing towards these intrinsic goals, not by attaining materialistic ones. And too great an emphasis on money can predispose you to various nasty psychological conditions, including attention-deficit disorder. Which, it must be said, makes Buttonwood view her hyperactive teenaged daughters in a new light—as budding capitalists rather than potential school drop-outs.

So for those who missed the dotcom boom in the 1990s, the housing boom in the 2000s and the hedge-fund and private-equity booms throughout, perhaps it doesn’t really matter: living well is the best revenge on those who made a fortune. On this note, and in the hope that several far-flung heads will prove better than one London-based one, your columnist now hands over this space to a team who will be weighing in from financial centres around the world, beginning next week. Good night and good luck—and I will miss your letters.

Over the course of the years, I've gotten to know people who acquired fabulous wealth. Only one of them was actually happy.

Bluster Isn't Balls

Iraq: We stay in fight, says Bush

Saturday, November 19, 2005 Posted: 1348 GMT (2148 HKT)

BUSAN, South Korea (CNN) -- In a speech before U.S. troops who stand watch along the Korean frontier, President Bush on Saturday offered his latest rebuttal to Democratic calls to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, vowing to "stay in the fight until we have achieved the victory our brave troops have fought for."

"In Washington, there are some who say that the sacrifice is too great, and they urge us to set a date for withdrawal before we have completed our mission," Bush said Saturday. "Those who are in the fight know better."

"So long as I am commander-in-chief, our strategy in Iraq will be driven by the sober judgment of our military commanders on the ground," he said, adding that U.S. troops are "making steady progress" in training Iraqi forces to defend their country.

What do those commanders on the ground say?

Bad Case of the Sniffles

That sinking feeling

Nov 18th 2005
From The Economist print edition
The world’s largest carmaker is at sea and floundering

FOR years General Motors (GM) was the undisputed titan of the world’s car industry, effortlessly dominating everything. Now, to suppliers, employees and pensioners it must seem less like a titan and more like the Titanic, holed below the water-line, sinking slowly by the bow to the sound of loud shocks and bangs as bulkheads give way, one after the other. The chief executive on the bridge, Rick Wagoner, can rush around and bark orders, but to little effect.

At its peak in the early 1960s, the giant controlled over half the American car market and set the standards by which most of the world’s manufacturing industry was measured. But it has been more than a generation since GM’s dominance went unchallenged and, despite billions of dollars invested in new factories and vehicles, it has suffered a relentless decline in market share (see chart below). Earnings have plunged, especially in its core North American market. The good ship GM scraped even more icebergs lately, the most recent being an announcement last week that it would have to restate earnings for 2001, due to improperly booked credits from suppliers.
Advertisement Click here to find out more!

Although this latest news is relatively minor (affecting a four-year-old financial report by only $400m) it had the sound of another groaning bulkhead and made people nervous. Since the announcement, GM’s share price has plunged even further. By close of trading on Wednesday November 16th, the stock was 22% below its level at the beginning of the month; it dipped again on Thursday, to an 18-year low. And for the first time since the carmaker’s last big brush with disaster—in 1992, when the company came within 40 minutes of bankruptcy—GM’s bonds are back in the junkyard. Analysts and observers are muttering again about possible bankruptcy. So loud is the speculation, in fact, that Mr Wagoner wrote to the company's 325,000 employees this week to deny that GM had any intention of filing for Chapter 11 protection from its creditors.

Exactly how and why things have gone so wrong is a matter of debate. Certainly, the situation was dire 13 years ago when a newly energised GM board flexed its muscle. They turned to Jack Smith, who in turn signed on Mr Wagoner, then barely 40, as one of his top lieutenants. The new management closed plants, cut the workforce, sold lacklustre component operations and seemingly restored much of the company’s former lustre. By the boom years of the mid-1990s, GM was again rolling up record profits.

Yet, despite a few exceptional years, sales continued to decline. Critics, such as Dan Gorrell of Strategic Visions, a Californian consulting firm, say GM concentrated more on finance and marketing than designing and making cars. Indeed, after the company’s annual meeting, Mr Wagoner conceded: “If we had a chance to rerun the last five years, we probably would have done a little more thinking about making sure that each product was distinctive and had a chance to be successful.”

Gotta love the corporate-speak in that last graf. The translation: "We'd be in better shape right now if we hadn't been building shitty products that no one wanted."

This kind of large-scale corporate malaise is a drag on the entire economy, as health care costs get shifted to employees, reducing their consumer buying power. Since it is only consumer spending which is propping up our economy right now, anything which hurts the consumer hurts the economy.

Cruel Lies

House Erupts in War Debate
# Lawmakers launch personal attacks as Republicans force a vote on whether to pull out of Iraq immediately. The measure is rejected.

By Maura Reynolds, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — House Republicans forced a vote Friday over a proposal to begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, sparking a raw and raucous debate during which lawmakers hurled insults and jeered each other.

The GOP-sponsored proposal, intended to fail and aimed at embarrassing war critics, was overwhelmingly defeated shortly before midnight, 403 to 3.

But the debate vividly exposed the widening rifts between Democrats and Republicans over the course of the war — a disagreement that increasingly has dominated congressional proceedings.

The resolution grew out of a proposal made Thursday by Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania — a Democrat, a decorated Marine Corps veteran of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and one of the House's most respected military hawks — that the United States start pulling out of Iraq.

Republicans responded Friday by introducing a simplified version of his plan — a move Democrats denounced as a political stunt designed to force the hand of Murtha and his fellow Democrats.

But Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), who sponsored the resolution, responded: "This is a legitimate question."

Explaining his demand for a vote, Hunter said the escalating debate over the war had left the impression around the world "that Congress is withdrawing support of the mission in Iraq."

During the debate, House members frequently spoke out of turn. The presiding officer repeatedly called for order.

At one point, Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee and other Democrats surged toward the Republican side of the chamber, after Rep. Jean Schmidt, an Ohio Republican, suggested that Murtha — the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee and the recipient of two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star — was a coward.

Schmidt, a former state legislator who took office after a special election in August in which the war became the prominent issue, said a Marine colonel in Ohio had asked her to "send Congress a message: Stay the course."

"He also asked me," she said, "to send Congressman Murtha a message: Cowards cut and run. Marines never do."

Democrats erupted in boos and shouts. "You guys are pathetic! Pathetic!" yelled Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.).

I watched this on cable yesterday, it was both shocking and upsetting. It shows that the Iraq war is a lot like Viet Nam in that it is impossible to have a civil debate about it here at home. The Republicans have turned this into a jingoistic exercise in faux patriotism. What the fuck does "support the troops" mean when we have sent them into the sands ill-equipped? When they shouldn't be there in the first place? What does it mean when we've probably broken the Army for a decade (not that Bush cares?) To anyone who knows a fig about military history, strategy and warfighting, "support the troops" is a cruel phrase.

Heartless, Thoughtless

Tex. Governor Objects To Evacuee Deadline
Leaving Hotels by Dec. 1 'Unrealistic'

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 19, 2005; Page A12

Texas Gov. Rick Perry yesterday asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to postpone a Dec. 1 deadline for ending subsidies to 150,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees living in hotels, warning that the policy could trigger a "complex -- perhaps intractable" housing crisis.

Perry, a Republican, wrote FEMA's acting director, R. David Paulison, warning that the cutoff date "poses serious problems" and requesting a postponement to March 1 for Texas, where about 54,000 evacuees are living in 18,000 rooms.

"I recognize and fully support FEMA's efforts to make personal responsibility a part of the hurricane recovery process" and to control costs, Perry wrote. "However . . . the December date is an unrealistic target" and "will fuel the cycle of evacuees moving from one temporary housing situation to another -- if they can secure housing at all."

Perry joined a number of governors, mayors and others who have pressed for a delay or reversal of FEMA's deadline for evacuees to move out of hotels or begin paying the cost themselves. They are voicing increasing frustration with the way the Bush administration is providing housing to hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Aug. 29 Gulf Coast storm.

Since Tuesday, Houston Mayor Bill White, the governors of Mississippi, Minnesota and Washington, the South Carolina congressional delegation and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, have objected to the plan for evacuees living in hotels.

FEMA officials announced plans Tuesday to stop paying for 58,000 rooms in 5,700 hotels nationwide, largely in Texas and Georgia. Louisiana and Mississippi may seek extensions two weeks at a time until Jan. 7, because of those states' damaged housing stock.

FEMA has promised that many families who move out of hotels into apartments will be eligible for as much as $2,358 for three months of rental assistance, payments that may be extended for as long as 18 months.

FEMA is just begging for us to come up with a new definition for its acronym. It's pretty clear that the administration of this agency is completely out to lunch. That seems to be an endemic problem with Bushco.

The Lion Roars

Lawmakers Focus on Daily Brief In Prewar Intelligence Debate
Kennedy Pushes for Access to Bush's Classified CIA Reports

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 19, 2005; Page A05

Senate and House Democrats focused their attention yesterday on the highly classified intelligence provided in the President's Daily Brief, as they continued to challenge White House statements that members of Congress saw the same intelligence on prewar Iraq that President Bush saw.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) worked yesterday to attach to the fiscal 2006 intelligence authorization bill an amendment that would require portions of Presidential Daily Briefs (PDBs) from Jan. 20, 2000, to March 19, 2003, that referred to Iraq to be submitted to the appropriate congressional committees by the CIA Director Porter J. Goss.

In the House, Democrats on the intelligence committee sent a letter to Stephen J. Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, citing the PDB and other intelligence to argue that it was "highly misleading" to claim that the White House and Congress had equal access to prewar intelligence.

The moves on Capitol Hill were the latest in an increasingly hard-fought dispute between the administration and Democrats over whether the White House exaggerated and misused intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to muster public support for the invasion.

In a Veterans Day speech, Bush said that "a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate . . . had access to the same intelligence" as he did and voted "to support removing Saddam Hussein from power."

Five days later, Vice President Cheney said Democrats who now claim they were misled by the administration are "making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war," and he called the Democratic line of attack "one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city."

Kennedy yesterday described as "plain wrong" the statements by Bush and Cheney that Congress "had the same intelligence about Saddam's development of weapons of mass destruction as they did."

His amendment would give the Senate intelligence committee access to relevant PDBs as it conducts its "phase two" inquiry into prewar intelligence. That controversial probe will focus in part on how administration officials used intelligence in public speeches and testimony.

Kennedy's plan was to attach the amendment to the intelligence authorization bill that was expected to pass last night under a unanimous consent agreement. Late yesterday, however, when Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on final language for the Kennedy amendment, passage of the entire intelligence bill was delayed so that the Massachusetts senator's amendment could be voted upon when Congress returns Dec. 12.

This is the kind of procedural stuff that Kennedy's staff excels at. I'm not sure it will work, but I wouldn't want to be on the opposing team when his people crank up an effort like this.

Ahhh. Just So.

For Sunday Morning

This is the way I ate it in France.

French Scrambled Eggs Recipe

Ingredients:
2 eggs per person plus two for the pot
3 tablespoons milk per person (or more if you don't have the following ingredient)
2 tablespoons white wine or champagne (whatever you have left over) per person
2 cream cheese squares cut into 1/4" squares per person
Various herbs such as minced parsley, minced chives, minced basil, minced mint. Always better with fresh, but dried will do in the winter.

Instructions:
This recipe was given to me by a college friend after I began innkeeping. She had gotten it early in her marriage and it is so easy that even a non-cook will get praise when it is served.

Whisk eggs, milk and wine together. Roll cream cheese squares in mixture of herbs until they are coated with the herbs. Spray non-stick fry pan with Pam. Pour egg mixture into pan.

Stir and scrape until no longer runny but not cooked. Add herbed cream cheese and stir until dissolved and mixed with eggs. Cook to dryness you prefer.

For Beef Lovers

I've had Chiaina beef. You should, too, if you're a beef lover. God, is this good. If you start with good beef, the preparation doesn't matter all that much. This approach marries good beef with good preparation. Eat Good. Uh huh. This is a celebration dish and it ain't cheap.

Florentine Style Steak -- Bistecca alla Fiorentina Your Guide, Kyle Phillips

Many in the English-speaking world would call this a Porterhouse and wonder what the fuss is about. And they'd be right in most cases; though fiorentine are featured prominently on the menus of almost all the restaurants in Florence, finding a good one isn't at all easy. But when you do it's heaven on earth, delightfully rich, flavorful rare meat so tender it can be cut with a spoon. Much of the secret is the breed of cattle, Chianina beef...

INGREDIENTS:

* See Below

PREPARATION:
Continuing from above, Chianina beef are the huge white oxen raised in the Val di Chiana, near Arezzo. Their meats are both tender and flavorful, and because of the size reached by the animals the steaks can easily exceed 6 pounds -- to find a source for Chianina beef in North America contact the American Chianina Association (Tel. (816) 431-2808). Otherwise, buy a steak from another breed; to serve two people you will want one that has been well aged (go to a butcher you trust), weighs 1 1/2 to 2 pounds, and is 1 3/4 inch thick (6-800 g and 4 cm). As Vittorio Zani and Giampaolo Pecori note, in A Fuoco Vivo, a little collection of grilling recipes, the thickness is given by the thickness of the T-bone that separates the filet and contre-filet; this means that in the case of a huge animal the steak could be even thicker and weigh more. The cut? Porterhouse is best because it has both filet and contre filet. If that's not available, then T-bone or strip steak.

Once you have your steak and your coals, which should be quite hot (you should only be able to hold your hand over them at grill height for about 4 seconds), set your grill about 4 inches (10 cm) above them and let it heat for a few minutes, but not too long because otherwise it will burn lines into the meat. Drop the steak on the grill, let it sear briefly, and then reduce the heat by raising the grill slightly. As soon as the steak comes off the grill easily flip it and liberally salt the freshly grilled surface. After a few more minutes, when the other side comes free, flip again and salt. Don't worry about over salting because the seared surface won't allow the salt to draw out excess moisture. A few minutes more, flip, pepper (lightly), flip, pepper again lightly, and that's it.

The important thing is that the heat remain constant and intense following the initial very high-heat searing, and if the coals look like they're dying down gently fan them back to life. The cooking should happen in the space of a few minutes, and when done the steak should still be rare on the inside. How much time? This depends upon your fire and your taste.

One of the best tests for doneness of a steak is feel. Raw meat is squshy and soft, and as it passes from rare though medium to well done, toughening as it goes, it becomes progressively firmer, and finally unyielding. In terms of describing the feel, Bob Pastorio says, "Short course: press gently near the base of the thumb - that meaty place called the mound of Venus (really!) - with the index finger of the other hand. That's what rare meat feels like. Press in the center of the palm. Medium. Press at the outside edge of the hand at the pinkie knuckle. Well done." Do keep in mind that your steak, especially if it is thick, will continue to cook for a few minutes after you remove it from the fire. Therefore figure your cooking time accordingly. The Joy of Cooking suggests cooking times for steaks straight from the fridge, and says to add or subtract 1 minute per half-inch thickness of steak. If you're using room temperature meat, the meat will cook a few minutes faster.

* A 1-inch steak: Rare, 10-12 mins; Medium Rare, 12-16 mins; Medium, 16-18 mins
* A 2-inch steak: Rare, 18-20 mins; Medium Rare, 20-24 mins; Medium, 24-28 mins

What to serve your Fiorentina with? In the past people suggested a pat of butter, but the most you'll see today is a lemon wedge. And a tossed green salad, which will nicely complement the meat without impinging upon it the way a salad with tomatoes or other vegetables would. Other possibilities for side dishes include fried potatoes and freshly boiled white (canellini) beans drained well and seasoned with olive oil, salt, and pepper. And a rich red wine, a Chianti Classico Riserva, or a Brunello, or a Barolo.

This is so good that it will make you hug yourself.

All steaks should be broiled until a thumb print makes no impression on the surface of the steak. That gives you a medium rare result.

Black and White and Read All Over

I found this in the comments over at Tyler Cowan's (marginally) economics blog, Marginal Revolution. In addition, Tyler blogs flu and collects art.

I hadn't seen this before and it gave me a good chuckle on a cold Friday night.

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country -- if they could find the time ? and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running
the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.

10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country ... or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for.

11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.

12. None of these are read by the guy who is running the country into the ground.

Defining Terms

Can we get something straight? Rep. Jack Murtha isn't part of or even reflecting the positions of the "far left wing" of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has no "far left wing," and hasn't had one since Paul Wellstone died, and that wasn't a wing but one guy. All of the Democrats in party leadership or elected office are, at most, center-left. I'm a far left-winger, and the Democratic party and I look at each other with considerable suspicion: I don't particularly want them, nor they, me. But they are the only game in town for me as a voter. I voted for another center-right Democratic technocrat for governor a couple of weeks ago in order to keep the state executive out of the hands of the loony right who have taken over the Republican Party in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Before 2000, I would have described myself as a social democrat of the Scandanavian model. Since Bush, however, I've been pushed so far left that I could probably be accurately called a Trotskyite--and not one of the neo versions that became the neocons. I'm so tired of having triumphalist Chritianist corporatism pushed in my face that I'm ready to nationalise them all. When the revolution comes....

The $100 Solution: RT Has An Idea About Campaign Finance Reform

Here's a simple idea: how about if, in each election cycle, we just give every voting-age citizen a $100 PayPal-type account that they can only use to give to political campaigns?

Other than that, we could pretty much leave the system as it is, as far as I'm concerned.

I think this avoids a lot of the problems that encumber other proposed remedies. It doesn't place any new limits on political spending, either on donors or on campaigns. It doesn't set up government as the arbiter of who gets the money. It doesn't create or ban funky new classes of seimpolitical organizations.

On the other hand, it puts enough money into the system to overwhelm what the big contributors can give. And it gives every citizen a direct and reasonably effortless entree to being involved in the process.

$100 may not seem like much, but there are upwards of 200 million voting-age citizens. So we're potentially talking about an infusion of $20 billion into the political process - far more than is currently spent on all races, Federal, state, and local, in any one election cycle. And rather than mostly coming from high-end donors and corporate interests, it would be coming from the people of America, across the board.

One of the perpetual problems of our political system is, do the politicians heed the people with the votes, or the people with the money? This plan would ensure that the bulk of the campaign money came from the people with the votes.

I'm a populist. I believe that if we can get reasonably close to a system where people have influence proportionate to their numbers, rather than their dollars, the biggest stumbling block to solving all the rest of our problems will be removed. And this would do the trick, I think.

I don't think we'd get that entire $20 billion into play right away, of course. Even assuming the logistical problems get dealt with (more about that later), it's hard to visualize that much more than half of the population will get into this on the first go-around. But, first, I think $10 billion is nothing to sneeze at, and second, I thiink it'll spread. Just like guys now discuss their fantasy football picks, people will ask each other over a beer how they plan to divvy up their $100 this time: are they going to spend it on Federal or state races? Which parties? Which candidates? Gve early, or hold back and see who really needs the money after the first wave of donors gives? Our Senator's a jerk, but he's got no opponent; who in another state is worth sending some cash to?

I think you'd get a lot of buzz out of this, a heightened interest in politics, by virtue of giving everyone this small grubstake they can dole out amongst the candidates they like. And that's a worthwhile bonus - making everyone feel that they're participants, rather than spectators, in the political process. Who knows what that might lead to?

Like I said, I think this idea avoids some of the pitfalls of other reform proposals. For instance, I think it would be a lot more palatable to most Americans than traditional public financing of elections: rather than the government's doling out a certain amount to each candidate, everybody gets to decide for themselves which candidates should get a share of their $100. And it avoids the how-do-you-handle-third-parties problem entirely, since anyone who filed the usual paperwork with the FEC to be able to receive campaign contributions would be eligible. You want to 'throw away' your $100, as well as your vote, on a third-party candidate? You'd have every right to. And if enough other people felt the same way, maybe the minor party wouldn't be so minor. But under this plan, nobody has to enshrine the two major parties, or figure out how not to, because the citizenry decides who's major and who isn't.

I don't think the logistics would be overwhelming, so long as we were willing to accept less than perfection for the first few tries. The IRS would be in charge of setting up the accounts: anyone over 18, listed on a Federal return, would get one. They'd initially log in with their Social Security number, and the amount of their tax payment/refund on their most recent tax return; after that, they could choose a password. People without computers could use their local library's Web access. People with no tax returns would need to give their Social Security number and provide some other ID to set up an account.

Fraud might be a problem, but it's hard to see it becoming a big problem: if you create five fake accounts in addition to your real one, you've gained the ability to give your candidates an extra $500 of tax money in the current election cycle. It might make you feel good, but it's not going to make much of a difference. Even, say, an unscrupulous nursing home operator using the accounts of all his patients at a 100-bed facility won't exactly be a Pioneer, since he'd only control $10,000. And obviously accessing others' accounts without permission, or creating fictitious accounts, would be fraud, and punishable under Federal rather than state law; the reward would hardly be worth the risk.

The one problem I don't have a clue whether it would fix is that of Congresspersons spending most of their time chasing after campaign contributions. It might succeed in that, or it might just change the nature of the money chase. I honestly have no idea.

But it would be interesting to find out, and I think it would fix pretty much all the other problems of our current system.

Un-freakin'-believable

Tropical Storm Gamma.

Enough already!

Not so Intelligent Design

Vatican Official Refutes Intelligent Design

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 18, 2005

The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.

The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.

"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

His comments were in line with his previous statements on "intelligent design" — whose supporters hold that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Very interesting... I wonder if Pat Robertson is going to announce that the wrath of God may target the Vatican?

I also wonder what this will do to the supporters of "intelligent design", or are they already convinced that Catholics aren't real Christians?

Rollback on the Agenda

In Setback for Bush, Congress Fails to Pass His Proposals

By CARL HULSE and DAVID STOUT
Published: November 18, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - President Bush suffered a series of setbacks and rebukes on Capitol Hill on Thursday and early today as the Republican leadership was unable to push through some of his most cherished policy goals for his second term.

As the House and Senate struggled with spending and tax measures, two of Mr. Bush's main objectives - oil-drilling in Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge and an extension of the deep cuts to taxes on capital gains and dividends - were shelved by opposition from Democrats and some moderate Republicans.

The defeats for the White House on the oil-drilling and tax-cut proposals came as Senate Democrats threatened to mount a filibuster against extension of the USA Patriot Act, which was enacted just after the Sept. 11 attacks and is a centerpiece of Mr. Bush's antiterrorism policies. Democrats have been joined by several Republicans, some of them conservative, in contending that some parts of the act intrude too much on personal privacy in the name of national security.

This morning, several senators who are hardly ideological soul mates - Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the liberal Democratic whip, and Larry E. Craig of Idaho, a conservative Republican, for instance - reiterated their opposition to the act as it now stands. So more negotiations are on the horizon.

And Mr. Bush's policy on Iraq has been condemned by a leading Democrat on military affairs, Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, who said Mr. Bush's approach was folly based on illusion, and that American troops should be brought home. The comments of Mr. Murtha, a Vietnam combat veteran who is usually hawkish on military matters and supported the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Saddam Hussein, were still being discussed today on Capitol Hill as word reached Washington of the latest carnage wrought by suicide bombers in Iraq.

The House action on spending amounted to a rare defeat for Republican leaders as well as the White House as 22 Republicans teamed up with Democrats on Thursday to kill a major health and education spending measure. The 224-to-209 rejection of the $142.5 billion in spending on an array of social programs was the first time since the early days of the Republican takeover of the House a decade ago that the majority had come out on the losing end of such a vote.

Hours after the loss on the spending front, the leadership early this morning forced through a separate measure making nearly $50 billion in budget cuts over five years after massaging the plan to reduce opposition from Republican moderates. The vote was 217 to 215, and even that razor-thin victory was gained only after moderate Republicans successfully resisted Mr. Bush's oil-drilling plan.
....
Under the bill, health care programs would be cut by $976 million, including a $249 million reduction to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the smallest percentage increase for the National Institutes of Health in 35 years. The bill includes language naming two CDC buildings after Sens Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), another senior Appropriations Committee member.

Even the Repubs are running away from their unpopular, lame duck President. This has been a very bad week for team Bush.

It's very hard to think they take the bird flu threat very seriously when they cut the crap out of the CDC budget.

The Next Act

CIA leak prosecutor sees new grand jury proceedings

By Adam Entous
Reuters
Friday, November 18, 2005; 12:08 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in court filings that the ongoing CIA leak investigation will involve proceedings before a new grand jury, a possible sign he could seek new charges in the case.

In filings obtained by Reuters on Friday, Fitzgerald said "the investigation is continuing" and that "the investigation will involve proceedings before a different grand jury than the grand jury which returned the indictment" against Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Fitzgerald did not elaborate in the document. For two years he has been investigating the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. The grand jury that indicted Libby expired after the charges were filed late last month.

More popcorn, please.

Dishing It Out

Martin Rebukes Bush at Apec Over Trade

Brian Laghi
From Friday's Globe and Mail

Busan, South Korea — Prime Minister Paul Martin warned George W. Bush yesterday that U.S. credibility in seeking trade deals with the rest of the world is in doubt because his country won't respect a NAFTA ruling on Canadian softwood lumber.

Mr. Martin issued the caution yesterday in a meeting with Mr. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Peru's Alejandro Toledo Manrique just as the four men were set to join other leaders in trade talks at the meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders, also known as APEC.

"You cannot have free trade where one partner to a free-trade agreement -- when a decision goes against them -- simply says we're going to ignore it," Mr. Martin told reporters after the meeting.

"We're not going to have free trade of the Americas if that's the precedent that's been established. We're not going to have free-trade throughout the Asia-Pacific if that's what occurs."

Canada-U.S. relations were strained this summer after the U.S. refused to heed a NAFTA decision that found U.S. tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber to be in violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mr. Martin has increased his criticism of the U.S. decision to ignore the ruling in recent weeks, and went a step further yesterday by challenging the President in the presence of other international leaders.

Mr. Martin said the U.S. is undermining its own interests if its aim is to have liberalized trade with the rest of the world.

"People are going to look askance at those agreements if, once signed, are not honoured," he said.

APEC leaders were to discuss trade liberalization yesterday, particularly as it affects changes being discussed by the World Trade Organization. Today, they are to talk about ways in which they can co-ordinate the battle against terrorism and how to deal as a bloc with the possibility of an avian flu epidemic.

Mr. Martin said the President argued his case on softwood in return, but the Prime Minister did not elaborate.

"But let me tell you, fundamentally, they signed the agreement, we won. It should be honoured."

The G&M; is a frustrating paper: they've put most of the their most valuable content behind the subscription wall, their headlines aren't cut and pastable, but they are still the gold standard for the Candian press. But they have a new feature I really like: most articles have comments by readers at the end, like a blog. I like it that this allows me to hear what the conversation on the issues among Canadians.

On this issue, Canadians are asking if PM the PM is making a blatantly political move in the run up to a likely spring election, or if he's just doing the right thing. I definitely hear that Canadians are tired of being on the receiving end of bad Bush behavior. Well, guys, so are we.

Politically Incorrect

I've been thinking about this and wondering if one could even have this conversation. I'm glad to see this commentator in the Cincinnati Post is willing to say it out loud, as it were.

Catholics could control court
Column by George Mitrovich

Is five Catholics on the U.S. Supreme Court one Catholic too many?

Is five justices on the nation's highest court of any religious persuasion one too many - whether Jewish, Southern Baptist or Methodist?

While notice has been taken that Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., if confirmed, would become the court's fifth Roman Catholic, that fact is met with silence from the political left and right, but especially from America's Protestant communities - mainline, evangelical and fundamentalist.

Why?

Because political correctness strikes fear in the hearts of those who might otherwise think that a healthy discussion about having a fifth Catholic on the court is one worthy of a democratic society.

No one wishes to be accused of political incorrectness. No one wants to be thought narrow-minded. No one desires the grief of expressing an opinion likely to be attacked as intolerant.

Moreover, no one wants to revisit the days when it was fashionable to bash Catholics, or when employers discriminated against Catholics, or when some Christian fundamentalists claimed the pope was the anti-Christ. Those days of mindless and disgraceful bigotry are done, and their departure is bid good riddance.

But still, is five Catholics one Catholic too many?

Composed as it is of only nine justices, the Supreme Court cannot reflect the diversity of the American people - either ethnically or religiously. But shouldn't that alone require a greater balance than a Catholic majority of five on the court?

In the presidential campaign of 2004, some Catholic bishops ruled that Sen. John Kerry would not be permitted communion in their churches. They decreed that since Kerry was in favor of abortion rights, he was unworthy of the sacraments.

When they intoned at the communion rail that this is the body and blood of Christ broken for you, they did not mean Kerry. They made a religious ruling that had significant political consequences, and it denied Kerry a rite Catholics holds sacred.

Thus while the Bush administration says a person's religious faith should not be an issue in determining a nominee for the Supreme Court - Harriet Meirs, James Dobson and America's Christian fundamentalists notwithstanding - Alito's Catholicism has become one.
....
What Alito believes about abortion, not just his legal view but also his moral view, is a question deserving of broad public inquiry.

The public has a right to know how, as a member of the Supreme Court, Justice Alito would rule in a case affecting Roe v. Wade. Would the Catholic Church's position on abortion prevail? Because his church believes that abortion is murder, does he? Is he capable of separating his religious beliefs from his judicial philosophy? Moreover, should he?

The Constitution says there shall be no religious test for public office. But when a nominee for the Supreme Court is poised to join four of his Catholic brethren on becoming a majority of five, at a minimum we should have a public discussion as to the wisdom of that occurrence.

What do you think? Is this a legitimate line of questioning? Is this a discussion worth having?

Let me make a couple of points explicity: American Catholicism is by no means a monolith. The diversity of American Catholic opinion on politics, religious practice, theology and moral questions is at least as broad as it is in non-Catholic circles. That having been said, the Catholics currently seated on the court represent the Church's conservative political and theological wing, which I have every reason to believe Judge Alito will join.

Backtracking

Chemical Reactions

By Al Kamen

Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A21

American ambassadors abroad -- especially those in high-profile postings -- are often called upon to defend this country against scurrilous allegations. So it was no surprise that our man in London, mega-Bush contributor Robert H. Tuttle , fired back big time when the Independent in London last week accused the military of using chemical weapons in Iraq, specifically white phosphorus.

The controversy erupted after Italy's Rai News 24 news channel repeatedly aired a documentary that alleged many civilians had been burned to death by the incendiary substance during the assault on Fallujah a year ago. (Hey, doesn't our pal Silvio Berlusconi , the Italian prime minister, own Rai?) "These reports are not true," Tuttle wrote in Tuesday's editions of the Independent. "Had your correspondents acted responsibly," he wrote, "by checking these assertions either with the U.S. Embassy or with the Department of Defense, they would have learned the truth."

What's more, "U.S. forces do not use napalm or white phosphorus as weapons," Tuttle said in his first major foray into diplo-battle since arriving this summer. He noted that there's nothing wrong with using white phosphorus as "smoke screens and for target-marking" or flares, just not as weapons.

Alas. That same day, Lt. Col. Barry Venable , a Pentagon spokesman, was acknowledging in Washington that white phosphorus had been used at times during the fighting in Fallujah last year as an incendiary weapon -- though civilians had not been targeted. Defense officials of course could not rule out the possibility that civilians may not have been hit accidentally.

An article written by three of the soldiers in the Fallujah battles in a recent issue of Field Artillery magazine discussed their use of white phosphorous.

Venable, according to British news accounts, said a denial of the use of such weapons on the State Department's Web site had been entered more than a year ago and was based on "poor information."

Tuttle told the Times of London: "We did the best we could with the information we had, but we regret that it was not totally accurate."

The issue of white phosphorus has sparked a major flap and has been widely reported in European media, we're told -- and most likely hasn't been ignored in the Middle East, either -- but it has attracted virtually no attention in this country.

That's why I'm raising the issue. Of course, the WaPo prints Kamen's column buried deep in the A section.l

Practical Politics

What Abortion Debate?
Talking About Alito's Respect for Precedent Avoids the Real Questions

By Michael Kinsley

Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A23

These days, the vital importance of respecting past Supreme Court rulings is an urgent talking point for Democratic operatives, liberal talk-show hosts and senators feeling their way toward a reason to oppose Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Olympia Snowe, a liberal Republican from Maine, said Wednesday that Alito's respect for precedents will be "the major question" in her decision on whether to support him.

The major question for Snowe and other liberal senators actually is not respect for judicial precedents. The major question is abortion. They want to know whether Alito would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade . But by the absurd unwritten rules of these increasingly stylized episodes, they are not allowed to ask him and he is not allowed to answer. So the nominee does a fan dance, tantalizing the audience by revealing little bits of his thinking, but denying us a complete view. And senators pretend, maybe even to themselves, that they really care about precedents and privacy in the abstract.

The artifice can get quite elaborate. Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, makes a half-serious distinction among precedents, super-precedents and super-duper precedents. Others emphasize that social policies can start with a Supreme Court ruling and develop into deeply rooted national values. That happened with Roe and abortion, they would say, while the opposite happened with Bowers and laws against homosexuality. Of course, if a policy really has become a deeply rooted national value, then the once-controversial Supreme Court ruling is superfluous, because democracy will protect such a value. The fear that motivates the Roe panic is that the rights at stake are not deeply rooted. Or not deeply enough.

While Roe defenders play this double game, ostensible Roe opponents, especially those in the White House, may be playing a triple game. Their public position is (a) Roe is a terrible decision, responsible for a vast slaughter of innocents; (b) legal abortion is deeply immoral; and (c) we ignore all this in choosing Supreme Court justices and you ( Roe defenders) should, too.

It doesn't make sense, and it's not believable. The natural assumption is that President Bush is trying to con abortion-rights supporters. Only an idiot would squander the opportunity to rid the nation of Roe because of some fatuous nonsense about picking judges without finding out the one thing you most urgently want to know. But Machiavellians of my acquaintance believe that it is the antiabortion folks who are getting conned. The last thing in the world that Republican strategists want is repeal of Roe . If abortion becomes a legislative issue again, all those pro-choice women and men who have been voting Republican because abortion rights were secure would have to reconsider, and many would bolt.

Meanwhile, the reversal of Roe would energize the left the way Roe itself energized the right. Who needs that?

Kinsley makes his case in his usual circular fashion but he does cut to the heart of the issue in a pragmatic fashion. The SCOTUS fight is all about abortion, period, and neither side can afford a change in the status quo. Which makes all of the tv ads and the rest nothing more than judicial kabuki.

Deja Vu All Over Again

I know nothing about this reporter, but I don't know how anyone my age could write this first graf without a heavy sense of irony.

The Nation
By Tony Perry, Times Staff Writer

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. - About 350 Marines here and at Camp Pendleton are being trained as advisors to the Iraqi army, in the hopes that a strategy honed during the Vietnam War can be used to improve Iraq's military and hasten the withdrawal of U.S. personnel.

"These are our best and brightest," said Col. Tom Greenwood, who is heading the effort. Most of the Marines involved - who volunteered for the special, and especially dangerous, duty - are combat veterans. They have been to Iraq before.

Split into teams of 11 to 15 men, the Marines will provide monthly evaluations of the Iraqi troops they are embedded with. In many cases, that will mean living outside the security of U.S. bases.

Only when the advisors believe the Iraqi battalions are battle-worthy should the U.S. forces leave, Greenwood said.

"Our No. 1 priority is to train and mentor the Iraqi forces and, if necessary, to neutralize the enemy," said Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commander of the Camp Pendleton-based 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. More than 20,000 troops from the force are set to deploy to Iraq early next year.

This tactic was a failure in Viet Nam. That's an excellent argument in favor of trying it again, innit?

The Next Battle

Television Ad War On Alito Begins
Liberals Try to Paint Court Pick as Tool Of the Right Wing

By Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A03

The battle over Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. moved to the nation's airwaves yesterday, as conservative and liberal groups bought advertising time that could dwarf the meager efforts made in this year's other two confirmation efforts.

As Alito continued his round of courtesy calls on senators, his critics launched new television ads painting him as a tool of right-wing conservatives. Supporters, meanwhile, announced ads that say his opponents, not Alito, are outside the political mainstream.

The ad buys, as well as the early clashes between the interest groups, are another signal that Alito's confirmation will be more contentious and hard-fought than was that of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who was confirmed in September to replace the late William H. Rehnquist.

In part, that is because Rehnquist was a conservative whose replacement by Roberts did not significantly shift the court's balance. But Alito is tapped to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a swing voter who has cast pivotal votes on a host of issues including affirmative action and abortion.

With Roberts, most liberal interest groups held their fire, waiting to announce their opposition until just before the Senate Judiciary Committee convened his confirmation hearing. This time, they are moving much faster.

The nation's largest civil rights coalition, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, announced its opposition to Alito yesterday, criticizing his record on affirmative action, voting rights, job discrimination and other subjects. The announcement followed earlier ones by the liberal groups NARAL Pro-Choice America and People for the American Way.

In what it called a "substantial buy," a liberal coalition of those groups -- IndependentCourt.org -- launched a TV ad that will run nationally on Fox News and CNN, and on ABC, NBC and CBS affiliates in Maine and Rhode Island, which are home to three moderate Republican senators. The ad pictures conservative commentators Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh and highlights a memo Alito wrote during the Reagan administration in which he said "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

Alluding to conservatives' successful battle to defeat President Bush's previous nominee to fill O'Connor's seat, White House counsel Harriet Miers, an announcer intones: "The right wing has taken over the West Wing. Don't let them take over your Supreme Court."

Conservative groups, meanwhile, are targeting Democratic senators in states won by Bush in 2004. The conservative Committee for Justice announced a modest radio and television ad campaign that will air next week in Nebraska, West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Arkansas and Montana.

I really doubt that these ad campaigns do much other than add to the background noise of our lives.

Overstating the Obvious

Vital Military Jobs Go Unfilled, Study Says

By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: November 18, 2005

The military is falling far behind in its effort to recruit and re-enlist soldiers for some of the most vital combat positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new government report.

The report, completed by the Government Accountability Office, shows that the Army, National Guard and Marines signed up as few as a third of the Special Forces soldiers, intelligence specialists and translators that they had aimed for over the last year.

Both the Army and the Marines, for instance, fell short of their goals for hiring roadside bomb defusers by about 20 percent in each of the last two years. The Army Reserve, meanwhile, failed to fill about a third of its more than 1,500 intelligence analysts jobs. And in the National Guard, there have been consistent shortages filling positions involving tanks, field artillery and intelligence.

The report found that, in all, the military, which is engaged in the most demanding wartime recruitment effort since the 1970's, had failed to fully staff 41 percent of its array of combat and noncombat specialties.

Officials with the accountability office, the independent investigative arm of Congress, found that some of the critical shortfalls had been masked by the overfilling of other positions in an effort to reach overall recruiting goals. As a result, the G.A.O. report questioned whether Congress had been given an accurate picture by the Pentagon of the military's ability to maintain the force it needs for Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The aggregate recruiting numbers are rather meaningless," said Derek B. Stewart, the G.A.O.'s director of military personnel. "For Congress and this nation to truly understand what's happening with the all-volunteer force and its ability to recruit and retain highly qualified people, you have to drill down into occupational specialties. And when you do, it's very revealing."

The Times next indulges in some "he said/she said" journo by interviewing some undersecretary who says things are just fine (well, are they or aren't they? That's the point of the article, isn't it?) It continues:

The report found signs of wasted spending. In many cases the military offered enlistment bonuses to people who signed up for jobs that were already overfilled. An Army recruiter in New York, who insisted on anonymity because he had not been authorized to speak to the news media, said it was not uncommon for noncombat positions to be opened up at the end of a tough recruiting month even the Army did not need more people to do the job.

As a result, the report found that shortfalls in many occupations were more severe than overall recruiting totals. The active-duty Army missed its target of 80,000 soldiers by 8 percent last year, but fell short of its goal for human intelligence experts by 35 percent.

The Marine Corps, which reached its recruitment goal last year after missing a few monthly quotas, struggled to fill several positions. It hired only about three out of every four linguists for the Middle East and Asia that it said it needed for last year.

Even the Navy and Air Force, which met their annual targets for overall recruitment last year, could not find enough qualified people for several combat and intelligence positions, according to the report.

The war, several military experts said, has scared many young people away from dangerous work.

Ya think?

Dinner in Under 30

Easy salmon steaks. Elegant. Works for me. Serve with microwave steamed asparagus with butter and lemon and a light mushroom risotto and dinner is on the table in under 30 minutes.

Flan, The Classic

Mexican Flan

(This site has some great deals on flan pans and bain maries)

Flan

i n g r e d i e n t s
1 3/4 cups whipping cream
1 cup milk (do not use low-fat or nonfat)
Pinch of salt
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

1 cup sugar
1/3 cup water

3 large eggs
2 large yolks
7 tablespoons sugar

i n s t r u c t i o n s
Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350°F. Combine cream, milk and salt in heavy medium saucepan. Scrape seeds from vanilla bean into cream mixture; add bean. Bring to simmer over medium heat. Remove from heat and let steep 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine 1 cup sugar and 1/3 cup water in another heavy medium saucepan. Stir over low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat to high and cook without stirring until syrup turns deep amber, brushing down sides of pan with wet pastry brush and swirling pan occasionally, about 10 minutes. Quickly pour caramel into six 3/4-cup ramekins or custard cups. Using oven mitts as aid, immediately tilt each ramekin to coat sides. Set ramekins into 13x9x2-inch baking pan.

Whisk eggs, egg yolks and 7 tablespoons sugar in medium bowl just until blended. Gradually and gently whisk cream mixture into egg mixture without creating lots of foam. Pour custard through small sieve into prepared ramekins, dividing evenly (mixture will fill ramekins). Pour enough hot water into baking pan to come halfway up sides of ramekins.

Bake until centers of flans are gently set, about 40 minutes. Transfer flans to rack and cool. Chill until cold, about 2 hours. Cover and chill overnight. (Can be made 2 days ahead.)

To serve, run small sharp knife around flan to loosen. Turn over onto plate. Shake gently to release flan. Carefully lift off ramekin allowing caramel syrup to run over flan. Repeat with remaining flans and serve.

Miserable Failure

Here is a follow-on to Chuck's story below:

Involuntary call-ups stopped for some IRR officers

By Robert Burns
Associated Press

The Army said Thursday it has stopped the involuntary call-up of officers in a certain reserve status, following complaints by some officers mobilized after being out of uniform for years.

The policy change affects an estimated 15,000 officers in the Individual Ready Reserve, a segment of the reserve that consists mainly of soldiers who left active duty but still have time remaining on their eight-year military obligation.

The 15,000 have completed their eight-year obligation but chose to stay in the Individual Ready Reserve. The IRR differs from other reserve categories such as the National Guard by not requiring regular training.

Under a new policy adopted Nov. 4, IRR officers can avoid being called to active duty, but only if they resign their commission. Previously, an officer could not resign once ordered to active duty.

By staying in the IRR beyond the required eight-year obligation, officers remain eligible for promotions and enjoy some military benefits. They generally are not paid and are subject to recall to active duty.

The Army began notifying several thousand IRR soldiers in the summer of 2004 that they were being mobilized for possible deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. But a large number of them failed to report for duty or requested a delay. Some complained that they never expected to be forced back into uniform; many were unfit.

The Army has been unable to contact some.

Of the 511 IRR members who had not reported for duty as of early October, more then 80 percent had ignored the Army’s notification or could not be found, according to Army records. About 70 of the 511 had been contacted, but refused to comply with their mobilization order. The Army has yet to decide how to deal with those reservists.

The last time members of the IRR were called to active duty was 1990, when nearly 20,000 were mobilized but not deployed.

In recent years, most had come to assume they would never be called up. But the strains of simultaneous conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have forced the Army to mobilize about 6,500 IRR members.

As of October, the last month for which the Army has published figures, only 3,346 had reported for duty.

Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman, said IRR officers who are past their eight-year military obligation and who have been selected for potential recall to active duty will be discharged unless they elect to remain in the IRR. They also could choose to request a delay in their mobilization or request a waiver.

The policy does not affect enlisted soldiers in the IRR, many of whom also have balked at returning to service.

Inactive Again

It looks like another stunt to try and stretch the military in Iraq without resorting to the political suicide of a draft has failed. At least the Bush Administration is consistant in this war... they have a perfect batting average.

Army to Halt Call-Ups of Inactive Soldiers

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A11

he Army has suspended plans to expand an unwieldy, 16-month-old program to call up inactive soldiers for military duty, after thousands have requested delays or exemptions or failed to show up.

Despite intense pressure to fill manpower gaps, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said the Army has no plans for any further call-up of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) beyond the current level of about 6,500 soldiers. The IRR is a pool of about 115,000 trained soldiers who have left active-duty or reserve units for civilian life, but remain subject to call-up for a set period.

The Army also announced, in a memo released this week, that it will no longer involuntarily mobilize from the IRR an estimated 15,000 Army officers who have already completed their eight years of required military duty, stating that under a new policy it will offer them a chance to resign instead.

Poor records management has hampered the Army's efforts to draw on the pool, intended to fill holes in existing Army units, Harvey told defense reporters last week.

Since June 2004, the Army has begun mobilizing 6,535 people from the IRR. Of those, about 3,300 have reported for duty, and 1,450 have been granted exemptions on medical and other grounds, according to Army figures from October. The Army is trying to locate more than 400 who were supposed to report by October but have not.

Stretched thin by the war in Iraq, the Army began calling up IRR soldiers last year for the first time since the 1991 Persian Gulf War to meet its growing manpower needs. The Army taps the IRR for replacement troops and to bring undermanned units to full strength.

Officials said a year ago that they anticipated a similar dip into the IRR in 2005, but the Army is struggling to complete the first group.

"It's profoundly irritating to me. It's not good management," Harvey said. The Army said it has lacked resources to modernize its IRR record-keeping. Harvey said an initiative is underway to allow the Army to better track IRR members and how much time they have left to serve.

IRR call-ups -- in the form of Western Union Mailgrams -- have arrived as a welcome call to duty for some former soldiers and as a shock to others, many of whom have been out of uniform for years.

Again we see that an Administration that can only give its propoganda speeches in front of soldiers won't do anything to protect them or treat them decently. The fact that they used every loophole they could find to drag some of these soldiers back into service is simply disgraceful.

And on top of that, it looks like the record keeping was so poor that the Army did not know who to call up or even if they appeared at all....

Honestly... if this is the best we have, George better stop lecturing China on how wonderful life in Taiwan is.

Chemical Checks

Chemical Protection Legislation Approved

By JAN SLIVA
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 17, 2005

STRASBOURG, France -- The European Parliament on Thursday approved legislation designed to protect people from the adverse effects of chemicals found in everyday products. The vote followed years of intense lobbying by the multibillion-dollar European chemicals industry and by environmentalists who sought more restraints on the industry.

The legislation, known by its acronym REACH, now goes to European Union member states for approval.

Lawmakers reduced the scope and weakened the provisions of the original version of the bill, which puts the burden of proof on businesses to show that around 30,000 commonly used industrial chemicals and substances they put on the market are safe.

The European Commission, which drafted the bill, wanted chemical companies to register the properties of substances in a new central EU database. There are currently around 40 directives governing the sector. The new law would supersede them.

Because of fears over potential job losses, the Parliament substantially scaled back chemicals-testing requirements. Full safety tests would only be required on a fraction of the 30,000 substances originally targeted by the bill. A requirement for costly tests on the long-term toxicity of chemicals on the environment and their impact on DNA was dropped. Moreover, companies only would submit basic information - such as name, manufacture and safety data - in the first eighteen months of registration. This would enable businesses to exchange data, lightening the load for small and medium-sized companies, which make up a large portion of the multibillion industry in Europe.

The Parliament waived almost all tests for little-used chemicals _ between 17,500 and 20,000 substances of which only 1 to 10 metric tons are produced or imported annually. Proposed requirements will also be eased somewhat for substances of which 100 to 1,000 tons are produced or imported annually.

While I don't consider myself a crazy environmentalist, I really do like the idea behind this legislation. Granted, the last minute changes to protect industry and not test other substances does take some of the wind out of the sails, but in this case something is better than nothing.

Though, I'm sure that Adam Smith would argue that if the companies did the testing themselves in the first place and didn't produce stuff that would be harmful to people (or hide that fact from the consumer), they might not need so many protections in the law.

Eh, that sounds too much like personal responsibility.

Homeless Again

FEMA Broke Its Promise on Housing, Houston Mayor Says

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL and ERIC LIPTON
Published: November 17, 2005

HOUSTON, Nov. 16 - Mayor Bill White of Houston accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday of breaking its promise to Hurricane Katrina evacuees by imposing strict limits on a housing relocation program as it stops thousands of hotel subsidies.

"Great nations, like good people, keep their word," Mr. White wrote in a letter about Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other senior emergency officials.

On Monday, FEMA gave major cities like Houston until Dec. 1 to sign leases for apartments for evacuees under its existing reimbursement program. The agency limited the leases to three months.

On Tuesday, the agency announced that also as of Dec. 1 it would stop paying hotel bills for 50,000 families in hotels around the United States, except in Louisiana and Mississippi, where the cutoff date would be Jan. 7.

Because of the three-month limit on leases, Mr. White said, the leasing for more than 19,000 people who are still in hotel and motel rooms in the Houston area was shutting down. The program, he said, has been placing up to 500 people a day, and he appealed to FEMA to rescind its order.

"We can't get leases for three months," Mr. White told reporters after a City Council meeting. "Landlords won't do that."

Without a program to lease apartments, he added, finding housing would be difficult because of the cutoff of hotel subsidies, an action that would have the greatest effect in Texas.

Many families in Houston hotels learned of the cutoff from fliers slipped under their doors. One guest at a motel in West Houston, 19 miles from downtown, Gwendolyn Kennedy, said she did not know where she would find a bed.

Guess what gang? It's bad enough that a major hurricane destroyed your life and we still haven't gotten our act together to really tackle the rebuilding process, but you're going to have to find a new place to live since we have tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% to extend. After all, we don't want you to depend too much on the Federal Government.

So as you are dealing with this new crisis, just remember:

"This is not an ending," Mr. Jacks said. "We're not forcing anyone out of hotels. Yes, we will stop paying for hotel rooms the night of Nov. 30, and on Dec. 1 these people will need to be ready to move."

We aren't forcing you out, just not paying for it, because I know that great job you found with no references or transcripts has allowed you to stash away some extra $$ while you try to rebuild everything.

Have a nice day :).

Good food, Good Company

I Googled "the perfect hamburger" and came up with this. Hey, it works for me:

The Perfect Hamburger.

There are 7 elements to building a great backyard hamburger.

In Order - (Top to Bottom) - Crown of the Bun. - Salad = Lettuce Onion Tomato - Cheese (Optional) - Salt & Pepper - Meat - Condiments = Mayo / Ketchup / Mustard / Relish (Your Choice) - Heel of the Bun. Bottom. - You always build the Hamburger from the Bottom up, starting with the Heel. On the Heel of the Bun you add the Condiments, followed by the Meat Patty. The Heel of the Bun can handle the weight of the Patty and absorbs the juices of the meat. It is like a foundation for a home. It supports everything. The Salt and Pepper is added on to the meat patty after the patty is cooked, so that it does not dry the patty by absorbing the juices of the patty. Like Sand & Water. Then the Lettuce is ADDED, followed by the Onion and Tomato. The tomato reduces the strong almost over powering onion taste.Then the Crown of the Bun Top's off the Perfect Hamburger. The Cheese never goes on the Bottom. This would keep the juices of the meat patty floating on the cheese and dripping out of the hamburger. The cheese is always added after the salt and pepper. If the lettuce was below the meat patty, again the juices of the meat patty would float and drip out of the hamburger, losing the flavor of the Hamburger. The salt and pepper is added on to the meat patty after the first turn of the patty. The patty should only be turned once. Sear the meat patty and cook it for about 2/3's of the cooking time. Turn the meat patty add the salt, pepper & cheese and then cook the other 1/3 of the cooking time. Never use a steak sauce. It is recommended that you cook the Hamburger patty to 160 degrees to eliminate e-coli. Good Eating. Believe it or Not .... some folks like to place the Hamburger Patty on the top of the lettuce, tomato etc. ..... so the choice is yours ..... whatever works best for you !!!!

This works! I like mine with sharp cheddar cheese and apple-cured bacon on top, mustard only (the only time ketchup crosses my lips is on "denver sandwich," a family favorite, basically a Denver omelette between two slices of white toast, dunked into ketchup on the plate.) On fries, I want malt vinaiger.

An alternative burger is to melt bleu cheese on top of the burger after it has been flipped and serving them slavered with sauteed mushrooms. If you like burgers (and I do) this is a seriously good treatment. Serve on poppyseed buns. With fried onions, if you want to be a purist.

You can do the same thing with mini-roundels of tenderloin served on a dinner roll. Trim the slim end of a beef tenderloin of blue skin and fat. Cut roundels an inch thick and broil them with butter and crushed garlic. Serve them between pieces of sturdy baguette as high toned steak sandwhiches. This is a great dinner course for company on a Saturday night. Crack open a beer, and put some steak fries in the oven. Toss a salad and some berries for dessert, and, hey, it's dinner.

For the burgers: Put the salad on the top and let the bun pick up the juice. Just a suggestion from here. If you REALLY want a moist burger, add a tablespoon of bourbon per pound. Alcohol vaporizes faster than water and locks the flavors in sooner. This is a hint I learned long ago and it works. You won't taste the alcohol and you'll crank out superior burgers.

If you have a real bakery where you live, go there and buy real hamburger buns. The Potato Rolls from someplace in Pennsyvania won't hold up to a real burger, but you shouldn't need to get fingers wet if you have a good roll.

Enjoy.

Posted by Melanie at 07:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Perfect Bump Post

Surveillance could be pandemic plan's weak link

By Stephanie Smith
CNN
Wednesday, November 9, 2005; Posted: 2:14 p.m. EST (19:14 GMT)

(CNN) -- Somewhere in rural Asia, a bar-headed goose tramps through fields and puddles and makes itself comfortable inside the home of the farmer who owns her.

Somewhere else, chickens outnumber people, and can be found roaming every corner of the community.

Rural Asians are used to this constant contact -- it has been that way for centuries.

But it's a coexistence that could threaten the worldwide community.

The reason: bird flu, or what scientists are calling H5N1. It has been a smoldering threat this time in Asia for almost three years. Millions of birds have been killed either by the flu or by officials killing off flocks of birds to stop its spread. So far, it is blamed for killing more than 60 people.

Worse, infected birds have been found as far away as Turkey, England and possibly Canada.

This has started the murmurings of a bird flu pandemic among humans.

"Pandemics, the bottom line is they happen," said U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt. "Ten times in the last 300 years, and three times in the last 100 years, viruses have mounted a massive pandemic assault that have made masses ill and caused millions to die. They happened before, they'll happen again and we need to be prepared."

The U.S. is preparing with a proposed $7.1 billion plan to fight the bird flu, with most of the funding aimed at improving vaccine production and stockpiling anti-virals like Tamiflu.

President George W. Bush said stopping the disease at its source is an integral part of the plan.

But only a small part of the Bush plan's budget -- $251 million -- would go toward surveillance in other countries, what many experts say is the most important part of stopping a bird flu pandemic at its source.

"The world is unprepared," Leavitt said.

Many of the poorest countries in Asia lack the resources to launch a formidable effort against a formidable virus. According to the journal Nature, there is a dearth of Tamiflu doses in Cambodia, so if the flu struck, many residents would have no ability to fight it.

In Indonesia, according to the journal Nature, many chickens reside in backyard farms spread throughout an idyllic countryside and on thousands of sparsely populated islands, possibly too far from the reach of government.

And health experts in Thailand, government officials pride themselves on strong surveillance, but across the Mekong river in Laos, there is barely a public health system.

Even in China, the disease surveillance capacity is slow.

The result of this mix of capabilities in Asia spells problems for the rest of the world.

"One just has to look at the current polio, measles and dengue epidemics in Indonesia to realize that the public health system is having trouble coping with preventable diseases," an unnamed outbreak investigator told Nature.

The World Health Organization will work with other international organizations to coordinate with countries whose surveillance is, at best, flagging, but an integral part of the plan may also be the most difficult -- asking farmers to part with their birds, their economic and social cohorts for centuries.

"We must help people accept that the current strain of bird flu challenges a way of life that has been with us for centuries," said U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan at the Time Global Health Summit last week. "Hard as it will be, we must find ways to structure that coexistence or we will never be able to stop the viruses migrating from animals to us and to our children."

Even the U.S., with all its economic power, is unprepared. In this country, as in Cambodia, there is a shortage of Tamiflu, there is no viable vaccine against H5N1 and should bird flu strike humans here, infectious disease experts say the public health system would be crippled.

"Our hospitals will be overrun," said infectious disease expert Dr. Michael Osterholm. "We'll run out of ventilators, we'll run out of drugs. How are we going to get through that? That's the basic plan we need right now."

Some of the experts that I spent last week with view Osterholm and the Council on Foreign Relations' Laurie Garrett as self-promoting hysterics. That might be true. But what if they are right?

Every one of he virologists who spoke to us last week put the possibility of an avian influenza pandemic as greater than zero. Some scoffed that the chances are so low as to be statistically insignificant. Another epidemiologist told me that if you figure the odds are in the "significant single digits," you might buy Tamiflu. My wiki partners probably fall into the "significant single digits" realm of probability, and that means plan. I ask Charles to weigh in here and talk about the significance of the statistics, which mean something different at the statistical level than they do at the arithmatic level, which is how most of us understand numbers. The probability range, as expressed to me by the epidemiologists, is 2-15%, which a statistician will tell you is virtually a universe.

A lot of the conference was spent in discussing "risk communication," and how to do risk assessments when we have so little data. The link to Peter Sandman's site tells us that it is about the opposite of spin. Tell your public everything, tell it immediately and tell it often. Tell the entire range of opinion. Peter and his wife Jody Landay are probably two of the premiere risk communicators in the US right now and I learn from them. If you are aware of the panflu story and you are telling family and friends about it, you are a risk communicator. Go read Peter and learn how to do it well.

I got to have lunch today with fellow flu blogger Tyler Cowan, an economist at the university down the street (George Mason.) Tyler asked me to read and critique his big bird flu paper and we spent a few hours doing that earlier this month. I got Indian food (very good indian food) for lunch today in return. My tummy is still smiling. Tyler is a splendid fellow and we spent a sprightly hour over lunch talking the politics of flu.

There. This might be the perfect Bump post: it has news, flu and food all in one place!

Getting Real

Survey Shows a Revival of Isolationism Among Americans

By MEG BORTIN
Published: November 17, 2005

Shaken by the Iraq war and the rise of anti-American sentiment around the world, Americans are turning inward, according to a Pew survey of United States opinion leaders and the general public.

The survey, conducted this fall and released today, found a revival of isolationist feelings among the public similar to the sentiment that followed the Vietnam War in the 1970's and the end of the Cold War in the 1990's.

But at the same time, the survey showed, Americans are feeling less unilateralist than in the past, appearing to indicate a desire for a more modest foreign policy.

Forty-two percent of Americans think that the United States should "mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own," according to the survey, which was conducted by the Pew Research Center in association with the Council on Foreign Relations.

That is an increase of 12 percentage points since a poll taken in December 2002, before the American -led invasion of Iraq; at that time only 30 percent of Americans said the country should mind its own business internationally.

The result appeared to represent a rejection by the public of President Bush's goal of promoting democracy in other nations, a major plank of his administration's foreign policy.

"We're seeing a backlash against a bumbled foreign policy," said Stephen Van Evera, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said Americans were concerned over the failure to make progress on North Korea and Iran, or in the fight against Al Qaeda, but he added, "The American people in particular are looking at Iraq and seeing nothing's working."

The war in Iraq "has had a profound impact on the way opinion leaders, as well as the public, view America's global role, looming international threats, and the Bush administration's stewardship of the nation's foreign policy," Pew said in its analysis of the poll.
....
The public lined up with opinion leaders in disapproving of the way President Bush is handling his job. Fifty-two percent of the public expressed disapproval; the figure soared to 87 percent among scientists and engineers.

Moreover, the poll found, "Pluralities in every group of influentials -as well as the public - attribute the fact that there has not been a terrorist attack in the U.S. to luck." Just a third say it is "because the government has done a good job protecting the country."

Regarding the use of torture against terrorist suspects, the overwhelming majority of opinion leaders believe it can rarely if ever be justified. Among the public, however, 46 percent say it is often or sometimes justified. Full poll results and analysis are available at www.people-press.org.

Looks like the majority of Americans are joining the reality-based community.

A Hawk Turns

Pro-Defense Democrat Calls for Immediate Troop Withdrawal

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 17, 2005; 12:54 PM

Saying that the future of the nation and the U.S. military are at risk, an influential Democratic congressman known for his pro-defense stands called today for the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), who served 37 years in the Marine Corps, said he was introducing a bill today to start an "immediate redeployment" of U.S. troops out of Iraq, to be completed within six months. He also called for the creation of a "quick-reaction force" in the region to deal with emergencies.

"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised," Murtha, 73, said in a Capitol Hill news conference. "It's a flawed policy wrapped in illusion."

Murtha, the top Democrat on the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, supported U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and voted for an October 2002 joint resolution that authorized President Bush to take military action in Iraq to address a threat from weapons of mass destruction.

But he said the discovery that deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein possessed no stockpiles of such illegal weapons showed that "the main reason for going to war has been discredited." And now, he said, U.S. forces in Iraq have become a magnet for terrorism.

"The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress," Murtha said. "The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq. But it's time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region."

He cited cuts in defense budgets and soaring deficits at a time when the Army needs to be rebuilt. He also said he came away from a recent trip to Iraq dismayed by continuing shortcomings in oil production, reconstruction efforts, employment and overall security.

Murtha, a Vietnam war veteran who retired from the Marine Corps Reserve as a colonel in 1990, said he had concluded that the U.S. troop presence in Iraq is "impeding" that country's progress toward self-sufficiency.

"Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency," he said. "I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control."

Murtha added, "I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid-December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice: The United States will immediately redeploy."

The redeployment should be "consistent with the safety of U.S. forces," and the aim should be to "diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq," he said. "Our military's done everything that has been asked of them. The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It's time to bring the troops home."

In response to questions, Murtha said that "six months would be a reasonable time to get them out of there."

Asked about Republican criticism that Democrats are promoting a "cut-and-run" strategy, Murtha said that "this war has been so mishandled from the very start" and that "80 percent of the Iraqis want us out of there."

U.S. troops "don't deserve to continue to suffer," he said. "We're the targets. We're uniting the enemy against us. And there's terrorism all over the world that there wasn't before we went into Iraq."

Murtha said that "lashing out at critics doesn't help a bit. You've got to change the policy."

But he also had some sharp criticism for the Bush administration, which he compared unfavorably to the government of Bush's father, former president George H.W. Bush. The former president "might not like the criticism and constructive suggestion, but he listened to what we had to say," Murtha said. By contrast, he said, "This outfit doesn't want to hear any suggestions. It's frustrating. And the troops are paying the price for it."

I'm listening to the Repub push-back on CNN. It's all about the brave women of Iraq coming out to vote.

Laptops

As the world gets more and more advanced, the technological divide between the 1st and 3rd World nations is something that must be address by the world community. See, it's great to have the promise of high paying technical jobs, but they aren't available to most people in the world if they can't learn about the technology.

That's why I'm excited about this annoucement, because there are millions of people who can benefit from this, even in the United States.

UN debut for $100 laptop for poor

By Jo Twist
BBC News technology reporter in Tunis
November 17, 2005

A prototype of a cheap and robust laptop for pupils has been welcomed as an "expression of global solidarity" by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The green machine was showcased for the first time by MIT's Nicholas Negroponte at the UN net summit in Tunis.

He plans to have millions of $100 machines in production within a year.

The laptops are powered with a wind-up crank, have very low power consumption and will let children interact with each other while learning.

"Children will be able to learn by doing, not just through instruction - they will be able to open up new fronts for their education, particularly peer-to-peer learning," said Mr Annan.

He added that the initiative was "inspiring", and held the promise of special and economic development for children in developing countries.

Green machine

The foldable lime green laptop made its debut at the World Summit on the Information Society, which is looking at ways of narrowing the technology gap between rich and poor.

Nicknamed the green machine, it can be used as a conventional computer, or an electronic book. A child can control it using a cursor at the back of the machine or a touchpad on the front.
It can also be held and used like a handheld games console and can function as a TV.

"The idea is that it fulfils many roles. It is the whole theory that learning is seamless," said Professor Negroponte, who set up the non-profit One Laptop Per Child group to sell the laptops to developing nation governments.

"Studies have shown that kids take up computers much more easily in the comfort of warm, well-lit rich country living rooms, but also in the slums and remote areas all around the developing world."

There has already been firm interest in the machines from governments, though no laptops have yet been manufactured.

Professor Negroponte said he had asked the most enthusiastic countries, Thailand and Brazil, not to give written commitments to buy the machines until they had seen the working model, likely to be produced in February.

There has also been interest in the machines from five manufacturers and three big brand name technology firms, but no firm commitments had been made.

Just imagine what could be done if every student had access to a computer! It won't solve the huge problems with illiteracy and underdeveloped nations, but I'm glad to see that places like Brazil are seriously investigating these computers. Maybe the US can too.

Moving Backward

Alito disagreed with court decisions on reapportionment
Written statement in '85 challenged Warren era rulings

By Michael Kranish and Alan Wirzbicki, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent | November 17, 2005

WASHINGTON --In the same 1985 job application in which Samuel A. Alito Jr. said there is not a constitutional right to abortion, he made a statement that has startled many legal analysts: He said he disagreed with the Warren court decisions on reapportionment, which required that voters have equal representation.

The reapportionment cases, heard by the court when Earl Warren was the chief justice, are among the court's most widely accepted decisions on civil rights and equal representation. Until the cases were decided in the early 1960s, many state legislators were elected by geographic area, rather than by population. The result was that a legislator representing a sparsely inhabited rural area had as much power as a representative of a much more heavily populated urban area.

Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said yesterday that the Supreme Court nominee's views ''on reapportionment cases are deeply troubling. His opposition to one person, one vote is an extraordinary statement about his views on important principles of . . . democracy."

Gordon Todd, a Justice Department lawyer who is working on the Alito nomination, cautioned against reading too much into a line in Alito's application for a post as deputy assistant attorney general.

''He doesn't say in here, 'I disagree with one person, one vote,' " Todd said, adding that only the word ''reapportionment" is used. Moreover, Todd said, the principle of one person, one vote ''is not an issue that is going to come before the court again, and is widely accepted."

The reapportionment cases were hotly disputed when they were decided four decades ago. Many states argued that the Supreme Court should not intervene in local politics.

''Basically, what happened is that in a number of states, legislatures had been apportioned in the late 19th century and they hadn't been reapportioned since then," said Richard Fallon, a Harvard Law School professor. The Warren Court declared that unequal legislative districts had violated the Constitution's equal protection clause, establishing the ''one person, one vote" framework that governs election law today.

Once decided, the cases became widely accepted, legal scholars said. By the time Alito expressed his disagreement with the cases, in 1985, they had not been challenged even by most conservative legal activists.

''I would say that within a decade, nearly everybody had come to accept these decisions," Fallon said.

This looks like "dangerously out of the mainstream" to me.

Slow Lane

Get up to speed on broadband
The United States can't afford to fall any further behind competitors around the world.
Jim Hoolihan and Gary Evans

Last update: November 16, 2005 at 5:32 PM

Here is a question to ponder over your morning coffee: Where does the United States rank when it comes to the use of high-speed broadband telecommunication service? First? Second? Top 10? Not by a long shot.

Once first, the United States now ranks 16th in broadband market penetration -- a precipitous drop and a big reason why so many high-tech service center jobs are located in Bangalore, India; why radiologists in Israel and Russia are interpreting MRI images for U.S. hospitals; and why manufacturing engineers in China are designing, rather than just manufacturing, some of our products.

The competition is doing more with high-speed broadband -- cheaper and up to 1,000 times faster.

Too many American businesses and people are shuffling along with broadband speeds of 1 megabit per second or slower. We aren't even taking advantage of the broadband capacity we already have. More than half of Americans are using our "slow band" service or none at all. Why?

First, we don't know and appreciate the benefits afforded by high broadband speeds. Second, there has been a lack of private and public investment.

What can broadband do for you? How would you like to be able to bid and deliver projects and products worldwide from a home-based office, have videoconferences with 10 family members or college classmates, save money on your health care costs, watch any movie anytime from your couch at home, or get an advanced degree on your own time from any major university anywhere?

What do we need? We need to help business leaders, health care professionals, students and educators recognize these possibilities to build the demand to warrant the needed investment. We need much faster service. (The FCC still defines broadband as 200 kilobits per second, laughable by a factor of 20, according to global standards.) We need high speed in both directions, not just in receiving mode. Most important, we need affordable service available to all.

To thrive in the innovation economy we must build and use the tools of ultra-high-speed connectivity. Unless you're comfortable with the picture of the United States hovering at 16th globally in terms of broadband penetration, it's time to start cracking.

I haven't checked the speed of my own service lately, but I don't think it is anywhere near international standards.

Major Failure

Newsview: Bush risks alienating GOP on war

By TOM RAUM

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's efforts to paint Democrats as hypocrites for criticizing the Iraq war after they once warned that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat could backfire on Republicans.

Polls show marked declines in support for the war, notably among moderate Republicans, especially Republican women, and independents - voting blocs that the GOP needs to woo or keep in their camp.

If Bush castigates Democrats for changing their minds on the war, he might wind up alienating Republicans who have done so, too.

The administration has been engaging in a rhetorical high-wire act in its efforts to defend its use of prewar intelligence - so much that some analysts have likened it to President Clinton's remark in his deposition on the Monica Lewinsky case: "That depends on what the definition of 'is' is."

Bush and his advisers have conceded that the administration was wrong in its assessment of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion. So the debate centers on whether they misled members of Congress and the American people.

"The fact is this was a truly major failure in intelligence and analysis," said Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert and former Pentagon intelligence official. "But that does not mean that information was not manipulated or used to create a case for war that was much stronger than the assessments made before the conflict."

Well, maybe it depends on what the definition of "manipulated" is.

"In reality in this city, on a bipartisan basis, everybody always spins the facts to support the policy they advocate. There are no innocents," said Cordesman, now an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He suggested those in the intelligence community didn't have to be told that, if they wanted to exert influence and have their advice taken seriously, "you better tell policy-akers there was a really good case for war."

Anxiety over Iraq among both Republicans and Democrats seemed apparent as the Senate voted 79-19 on Tuesday to demand regular updates from the White House on progress in Iraq until all U.S. troops are withdrawn.

The vote on a defense policy bill came after the GOP-led chamber rejected a far more restrictive Democratic amendment demanding that Bush set a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq.

Bush said during a news conference in Kyoto, Japan, on Wednesday he was "more than happy" to provide Congress with more regular updates on Iraq progress and did not view the vote as a setback. "I appreciated the fact that the Senate rejected an amendment that would have taken our troops out of Iraq before the mission is complete," he said of the Democratic bid for a withdrawal schedule.

Blowback is hell, innit?

Bill of Rights Be Damned

Congress Arrives at A Deal on Patriot Act
Limits Would Spare Some Controversial Government Powers

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 17, 2005; Page A01

House and Senate negotiators reached a tentative agreement yesterday on revisions to the USA Patriot Act that would limit some of the government's powers while requiring the Justice Department to provide a better accounting of its secret requests for information on ordinary citizens.

But the agreement would leave intact some of the most controversial provisions of the anti-terrorism law, such as government access to library and bookstore records in terrorism probes, and would extend only limited new rights to the targets of such searches.

For President Bush, renewal of the act would provide a boost as he looks to restore his image as a strong commander in chief in combating terrorism. And Democrats said yesterday that the administration largely got what it wanted -- a major break after lawmakers challenged the White House in recent days on the conduct of the Iraq war, budget policies and tax cuts.

The deal would make permanent 14 Patriot Act provisions that were set to expire at the end of the year. Three other measures -- including one allowing law enforcement agents access to bookstore and public library records -- would be extended for seven years, or three years longer than the Senate had agreed to. The House initially extended the provisions for 10 years but later voted to accept the Senate's four-year extension.

Also extended for seven years is a provision allowing roving wiretaps that follow an individual who may use multiple means of communication, rather than targeting a single phone line. The agreement also extends for seven years a provision of a separate intelligence law passed last year that allows federal investigators to track an individual not connected to a foreign government but suspected of operating as a "lone wolf" terrorist.

This is mostly bullshit which will allow the W admin to act against bloggers like me and do very little for citizens like you. I already assume my phone is tapped and so should you if you call me.

Blame the Victims

A Timetable for Mr. Bush

Published: November 17, 2005

No matter how the White House chooses to spin it, the United States Senate cast a vote of no confidence this week on the war in Iraq. And about time.

The actual content of the resolution, passed on a vote of 79 to 19, was meaningless. The Senate asked the administration to provide regular reports on progress in Iraq, and took the position that next year should be "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty." It was a desperate - but toothless - cry of election-bound lawmakers to be let off the hook for a disastrous military quagmire.

Republican leaders, who supported the proposal, argued that the vote was a repudiation of a Democratic motion to set possible withdrawal deadlines for American troops. But the proposal would never have gone to the floor if members of President Bush's party had not felt the need to go on the record, somehow, as expressing their own impatience with the situation.

The ultimate Iraqi nightmare, which continually seems to be drawing closer, is a violent fracturing of the country in which the Kurdish north and Arab Shiite southeast break away, leaving the west, dominated by Arab Sunnis, an impoverished no man's land and a breeding ground for international terrorism. While this page was completely wrong in our presumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, we - and virtually everyone outside the Bush administration - warned about this danger from the beginning. Only loyalists who had bought the fantasy about dancing Iraqis throwing flowers before American tanks dismissed it as unlikely.

The consequences of such a breakup would be endless and awful: civil war, the persecution of minority populations in the new states, an alliance between the Shiites and Iran, and a complete breakdown of American moral and military influence in the Middle East.

No one wants that to happen, but Americans must ask themselves every day whether the troops who are risking their lives in Iraq are doing anything more than postponing the inevitable.

The one frail hope for a better outcome lies with the ongoing struggle to create a democratic central government in Iraq. We are encouraged by the high participation in elections, including the enormous increase in the number of Sunni voters in the last balloting, and by the declared willingness of leading Iraqi officials and sectional politicians to make political concessions to keep the country patched together. It is very possible that most of the voters are simply casting ballots on behalf of supremacy for their own religious or ethnic factions, and that the officials are only going through the motions, hoping to keep the United States minimally satisfied while they move toward their own self-serving goals. But at this moment, both the people and their leaders are clearing at least the lowest possible bar for measuring their progress.

A precipitous withdrawal at this point would be counterproductive. And while a timetable is certainly an option, the people who need deadlines are the Iraqis. Their government must be put on notice that the United States expects Iraq to show speedy, measurable progress in taking control of its own security, and that it must demonstrate that it is not just stalling for time when it comes to guaranteeing democracy and human rights.

The current constitution is unsatisfactory. It shortchanges the Sunni minority and fails to provide Iraqi women the guarantee that they will not wind up worse off under the new government than they were under Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leaders have promised to change it after next month's elections. Washington needs to carefully scrutinize how quickly and how fully they honor that promise.

This is dishonest. The Times seems to have forgotten that we invaded Iraq without provocation, and it is unreasonable to insist that the Iraqis come up with a timetable for solving the the problems we caused. What we did was illegal and immoral. Putting off the blame onto the victims is childish.

The SCOTUS War

1985 Memo by Alito Has Legal Weight, Senators Say

By Charles Babington and Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 17, 2005; Page A08

Two key Republicans and some Democrats said yesterday that Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. will be unable to assert during his confirmation hearing that his personal views have no bearing on how he might rule because he has stated legal opinions on contentious issues so strongly.

Alito's comments on abortion, affirmative action and other issues in a 1985 memo went beyond personal musings, these senators said, and instead were stated as clear-cut legal opinions. One of those opinions was that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

According to the senators, including Republicans Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and John Cornyn (Tex.) and Democrat Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), Alito has two options in his ongoing efforts to distance himself from the comments: He can say he has changed his mind, they said, or he can say the accumulation of cases affirming the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision now outweighs his belief that Roe was wrongly decided.

The lawmakers suggested that Alito has largely forfeited a third option that helped some of his predecessors sidestep questions about their legal views and deny opponents a hook for claiming that their future court rulings were predictable. Clarence Thomas, for example, said at his 1991 confirmation hearing that he had barely given a thought to Roe , even though he became an outspoken critic of the ruling soon after joining the Supreme Court.

And Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. recently deflected senators' questions about memos he signed in the 1980s attacking Roe , saying he was merely representing his client, the George H.W. Bush administration.

Alito's 1985 memo, which was a bid for a promotion in the Justice Department, did not express "a personal view," Schumer, a Judiciary Committee member, said in a floor speech yesterday. "It is decidedly a legal view which involves judicial philosophy and judicial reasoning." At Alito's committee confirmation hearing, to start Jan. 9, Schumer said, "he cannot, as previous nominees have done, say 'I refuse to answer.' "

Some Republican defenders of Alito agreed. Unless Alito states that Roe should be overturned -- which they consider unlikely -- his answers probably will stress the weight that should be given to legal precedence, or stare decisis , Latin for "to stand by that which is decided." The principle is meant to protect society from jarring changes to settled law, but the Supreme Court can overturn precedents, as it did in striking down "separate but equal" accommodations for blacks and whites.

Alito's 1985 memo "may be a legal opinion, but it is not an answer to the question, 'If confirmed, will you apply the principles of stare decisis in regard to Supreme Court decisions including Roe v. Wade ?' " Cornyn, an Alito advocate, told reporters.

Snowe, who supports abortion rights and is uncommitted on Alito, met with him yesterday and then addressed reporters. "He didn't repudiate what he said" in the 1985 memo, she said, and it was unclear to her whether he still thinks the Constitution does not protect abortion rights.

"It goes back to the question of how he will regard precedent," Snowe said. "Ultimately that becomes the essence of the issue.

"He said that obviously he has changed over the years, primarily because he's been a judge over the last 15 years," Snowe said.

Meanwhile, more details emerged about cases on abortion and affirmative action that Alito handled while at the Office of the Solicitor General. A 1986 Michigan case, Wygant v. Jackson , struck down an arrangement between a teachers union and local school board to lay off white teachers before laying off blacks with less seniority to preserve minority hiring gains. Alito signed a brief for the Reagan administration opposing the arrangement. It suggested that such a system could teach students that 120 years "after the end of slavery, government may still advance some and suppress others, not as individuals but because of the color of their skin."

Rep. Davis Warns of Backlash if Roe v. Wade Is Overturned

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 17, 2005; Page A08

Reversal of the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide could produce an upheaval in U.S. politics and would put candidates who oppose abortion rights at risk of defeat in many parts of the country, a leading House Republican said yesterday.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the Government Reform Committee, said the desire of GOP conservatives to see a newly constituted Supreme Court eventually overturn Roe v. Wade could produce a political backlash, particularly in the suburbs. "It would be a sea change in suburban voting patterns," Davis said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Davis's comments came days after the revelation that Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, had written in a 1985 memo that he did not believe there was a constitutional right to abortion. Alito has since told senators that those views would not influence his actions if he is confirmed.

But the comments underscored the potential collision between the long-sought goal of religious and cultural conservatives to undo the court's 1973 abortion rights decision and the political implications for the Republican Party's aspirations of expanding its majorities in Congress and holding the White House after President Bush's term ends.

Davis, who previously chaired his party's congressional campaign committee, also offered a critical analysis of the state of his party, saying that while there is time for a turnaround, the president and the GOP must find a way out of their current problems or face major difficulties in the 2006 midterm elections.

He complained that until last week, when Bush lashed back at critics who have accused him of misleading the country before the Iraq war, the White House has been too passive. "Until the president spoke last week, nobody's been defending anything," he said. "It's just been a complete retrograde operation on the part of the White House the last couple of months. They have a story to tell; nobody's been telling it."

Davis claimed that that frustration over the war in Iraq and Bush's and Vice President Cheney's continued refusal to publicly address the CIA leak investigation continue to serve as a drag on the party. "I think the vice president and the president both right now probably are not helpful in a lot of marginal congressional seats," he said.

Life won't get boring anytime soon.

Rapscallions

Curbs on Insurance for Military Are Urged

By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
Published: November 17, 2005

In a report to be released today, the Government Accountability Office strongly urges Congress to act to protect military personnel from the deceptive sales practices and unsuitable investments and insurance policies that the report says have been a disturbing fact of military life.

The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs will examine the study at a hearing today in Washington. The report's delivery to Congress clears the way for the Senate to consider a bill that has been pending since early this year. The bill has twice passed the House with strong bipartisan support.

Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama and chairman of the banking panel, has said that passage of a law to protect troops from financial exploitation was a priority in the current session of Congress.

The witnesses at today's hearing will include Richard J. Hillman, the G.A.O. official who oversaw the study; Lori A. Richards, the director of compliance, inspections and examinations at the Securities and Exchange Commission; John M. Molino, deputy under secretary of defense for military community and family policy; Mary L. Schapiro, vice chairwoman of NASD; and John W. Oxendine, the Georgia insurance commissioner and the leader of a multistate investigation of military insurance sales and products.

The House bill awaiting Senate action incorporates most of the recommendations in the G.A.O. report, based on a late draft, which was obtained by The New York Times from a former federal official. People in various agencies who have reviewed the draft confirmed that it matched the final report in substance.

"The need to take definitive actions to better protect service members appears overdue," the draft report concluded. "The legislation that passed the House and is being considered in the Senate includes various provisions that, based on our work, would appear to improve the protections for military members."

Specifically, the report calls on Congress to ensure that insurance products sold to military consumers comply with state laws; to abolish a form of mutual fund sold almost exclusively to military consumers; to clarify that state insurance and federal securities regulators have jurisdiction over sales on military bases; and to direct the Defense Department to work more cooperatively with state and federal regulators.

But the agency went further, recommending that the Pentagon and state regulators work together to determine what insurance products are "appropriate and suitable" for sale to military consumers, whose financial and family circumstances are different from those of most civilians.

That recommendation is certain to generate debate at the state level, where insurance products are regulated. The insurance industry has long resisted state laws requiring agents to sell only products suitable for the customer - a standard that has long applied to the sale of securities, which are federally regulated. Some states have recently adopted such standards for the sale of annuities to the elderly, but 35 states have no suitability rules at all.

Without calling for a universal suitability standard, the agency urged that such a standard be developed and applied to the sale of insurance products to military personnel at domestic and overseas bases.

The study also offered fresh examples of dubious sales practices and raised questions about the basic design of the products that have been sold to tens of thousands of military consumers each year.

For example, investigators noted that 98 percent of service members have low-cost military life insurance. Pentagon rules impose a seven-day "cooling off" period before payroll deductions for insurance premiums go into effect for enlisted personnel, to allow time for them to seek financial counseling about buying additional insurance.

But the investigators found many instances in which the premiums were routed to the insurer through a savings bank, using paperwork that made it appear that the payroll deduction was actually for a savings account, rather than for insurance.

These and other "indications of potential fraud" were referred to the accountability office's investigators, who are coordinating their efforts with other law enforcement organizations, including Defense Department agencies and state regulators, the draft report noted.

In a nutshell, the military has allowed fly-by-night brokers to sell dubious "insurance" products to clueless enlistees for a good, long time. Your average 18 year old has no idea what they are signing up for when they buy these products, which are "junk" insurance. The armed forces have been acting as a sales force for these rotten brokers since WWII. It's time for this practice to end.

Confidentiality of Sources: A Rant and a Proposal

This is something I posted over at TPM Cafe earlier this afternoon. It got good feedback there, so I thought I'd bring it over here. Much that's in here has already been said by others, but it's organized around what I hope is a good test for when a reporter should and shouldn't grant anonymity to a source. I'll let you guys tell me what you think. And I'm hoping somebody catches the reference in the last line.

Bob Woodward, earlier this summer: "This [Fitzgerald] investigation that's been going on for two years is just running like a chain saw right through the lifeline that reporters have to sources who will tell you the truth, what's really going on."

Y'know what, Bob? I've got a simple rule for you, on this business of confidentiality of sources. (And all you other Beltway reporters are welcome to listen in too.) I think this will help you sort out all this nonsense that has you so helplessly confused, an incredible third of a century after you and Carl Bernstein were put on the Watergate story.

When a source asks to go on background - that is, when you can report what he says, but not who he is - ask yourself this: is his boss, or his boss's boss, and so forth, going to be mad when he sees these words in the paper? Is this guy going to be in trouble, maybe even lose his job, if I were to name my source? Or are his employers perfectly happy to see these words make it into the news, but they simply want to blur the fingerprints a bit?

I'm not a reporter; far from it. And I may not understand some of the dilemmas imposed by your profession. But you know what? I bet this will give you a pretty good clue, the vast majority of the time, about whether you ought to be giving a source the protection of confidentiality.

Because if his bosses are happy that he's saying what he's saying, then there's no need for him to be saying it on background. Maybe he, and they, are just using you. Just a hunch, Bob. And all you and your buddies are doing is carrying their water, doing stenography for them as they write anonymous letters to the public.

This is especially obvious in its truth when you aren't meeting with the source in some quiet corner, but rather in a meeting room or auditorium with half the Beltway press corps present, and copies of prepared remarks being handed out. If it's no secret to the whole damned press corps who the "senior Administration official" is, then what's the justification for keeping the rest of the country in the dark, other than to feel like you're 'in the know,' as they used to say in my dad's time? You aren't getting at the truth; you're doing a favor to a big-shot.

And one final hint on an unrelated matter, Bob: if a well-placed source tells you something "in an offhand, casual manner," as if it was "almost gossip," you might not "attach any great significance to it," but he might. After one-third of a century in the game, how is it that you're this easily played?

What did you cover at the Saigon bureau, Roland? Sports?

The Classic

You need a get-together next weekend before the holiday madness starts. Denude that turkey carcass and make a big batch of turkey tetrazinni.

1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt
Dash nutmeg
Dash cayenne
2 c. milk
1 can (10 1/2 oz.) condensed chicken broth undiluted
2 egg yolks
1/2 c. light cream
1/4 c. dry sherry
1 pkg. (8 oz.) thin spaghetti
4 c. cooked turkey, in large pieces
1 can (6 oz.) sliced mushrooms
1 c. grated sharp cheddar cheese
Parmesan cheese

Make sauce: Melt butter in saucepan stir in flour, salt, nutmeg and cayenne pepper until smooth. Gradually stir in milk and chicken broth; bring to boil, stirring constantly. Boil gently, 2 minutes or until mixture is slightly thickened.

In small bowl beat yolks with cream. Gently beat in a little of the hot mixture. Return to saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until sauce is hot do not boil. Remove from heat and add sherry.

Cook spaghetti as to package directions; drain. Add 2 cups sauce to drained spaghetti and toss until well blended. Add turkey and mushrooms to remaining sauce.

Turn spaghetti into 12 x 8 x 2 inch baking dish. Spoon turkey mixture over top. Sprinkle with cheddar cheese, then cover top with Parmesan cheese.

Bake in preheated 300 degree oven covered 25 minutes; uncover and bake 10 minutes more or until piping hot. Serves 8.

When I was in graduate school in Boston a million years ago (and away from "home" for the first time) I did fine with homesickness up until Thanksgiving weekend. I was playing in a little orchestra in Concord, MA, that weekend, and those of us who were student "ringers" were put up in the homes of friends of the orchestra. The lady of the house made turkey tetrazinni for dinner one night and I just disolved in homesickness. Dishes like this, with mushroom soup and white sauce, are the core of Minnesota cuisine.

I learned to cook a lot of new things that year, living alone for the first time and needing to please only myself, but the foods of "home" occupied a very special place in my repertoire.

Beyond Turkey

I hope you'll be able to find the very slender, very fresh and tasty haricot verts, french green beans, for your Thanksgiving feast. I love these things and have a hundred ways to prepare them. Steam them briefly, blanch them to stop the cooking and then saute them briefly in melting unsalted butter to reheat them and dress them for the table. What to do with the leftovers? Here's my favorite, Salad Nicoise, which will get something besides turkey to the table next weekend. All you need is a can of tuna and you have that in the cupboard, right?

For 6

Salad Bar Items:
6 small New Potatoes
1 pound green beans
1/2 pound mixed greens
1 cup artichoke hearts
6 tomato wedges
3 hard boiled eggs, halved
1/2 cup black olives
1 (6-ounce) can tuna packed in water
Vinaigrette:
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon garlic, smashed with salt until paste
Pepper to taste
9 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

In a bowl, whisk together white wine, Dijon, garlic, and pepper. Drizzle in olive oil while whisking constantly. Arrange salad decoratively on a platter. Drizzle with the dressing.

Classically, this is served as a composed salad on a platter with each ingredient kept separate. Each diner serves themselves the components they wish on their own salad plate. Pass extra dressing, salt and the pepper grinder.

This is both elegant and simple and gets a good meal on the table in under 20 minutes.

Light Fare

This is a nice idea for any time of the year. Salad isn't on my Thanksgiving menu, but I'd make this one in a heartbeat. For a nice dining experience at mealtimes when the board isn't quite so groaning as turkey day, I'd add bleu cheese and walnuts to this, but as a first course before a feast, this trimmed down recipe works very well. This is from today's WaPo:

Pears Shine in Salad's Spotlight

Wednesday, November 16, 2005; Page F06

My assignment for Thanksgiving is a salad. Growing up, my family never had a salad on Thanksgiving. What's your advice?

Keep it simple. The salad is a preface to the feast, not a feast in itself. What that means is to resist the temptation to load it down with carrots, cukes, fruits, nuts and cheese. Pick one. Save the creamy dressing for another occasion and go with a vinaigrette.

Mixed Greens With Pears and Balsamic Vinaigrette

8 servings

For some families, salad is as much a part of the Thanksgiving feast as stuffing and cranberries. In this simple salad, pears bestow an autumnal touch and the balsamic dressing is so good you'll want to make it year-round.

MAKE AHEAD: The vinaigrette can be made 2 to 3 days in advance and refrigerated. Salad greens can be washed on Thanksgiving morning, loosely wrapped in paper towels and refrigerated in resealable plastic bags until ready to use. Concorde pears, unlike other varieties, are very slow to oxidize, or turn brown, so they can be sliced and refrigerated with the salad greens several hours in advance. If using another type of pear, slice and add to the salad just before dressing it.

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 cup walnut oil

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 to 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar (may substitute 1 tablespoon sherry and 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar)

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

8 cups mesclun greens

3 pears, preferably Concorde*

In a small bowl, add the oils and the vinegars and whisk to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste. If serving immediately, set aside; otherwise, transfer the vinaigrette to an airtight container and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature when ready to serve.

Place the mesclun greens in a large bowl. Halve the pears lengthwise and core. Thinly slice each pear half lengthwise at full length to retain the pear shape. Add to the greens and toss. Shake the vinaigrette and add just enough to moisten the greens and pears (there will be some vinaigrette left over). Toss gently to coat. Serve immediately.

Fundraising Hustle

Those wacky feds:

High Noon for Angry Enviros

Speaking of the environment, it's payback time again for enviros itching for just one clean shot at their arch-nemesis, Undersecretary of Agriculture and former timber industry lobbyist Mark E. Rey , as part of a fundraising effort for the Combined Federal Campaign.

But this time, there'll be no dunking pool at the Whitten Patio at the Department of Agriculture's headquarters. Last time, too much water was splashed around, soaking the floor and apparently shorting out some electrical fixture.

So it's a pie in the face this year. One throw for $3, two for $5. Or, to really show Rey how you feel, enviros -- several groups said they were coming -- can just walk up and plaster him. (A $20 donation for that.) These will be whipped cream pies, a department source said, which are "environmentally safer" than the chemical-laden shaving cream ones.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns does the honors at 10:05 tomorrow with a blast at his chief of staff Dale W. Moore . Deputy secretary Chuck Connor gets his at 11:30, and Rey's the target at noon.

The Combined Federal Campaign is a big deal in DC, it is the primary fundraiser for national charities and includes a lot of employers besides the Feds.

The Beginning of the Flood

China reports three human bird-flu cases
11/16/2005, 9:43 a.m. CT
By JOE McDONALD
The Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) — China reported its first three confirmed human cases of bird flu Wednesday as the government raced to vaccinate billions of chickens, ducks and other poultry in a massive effort to stop the spread of the virus. The World Health Organization said the victims contracted the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu, and two of them died.

The Health Ministry confirmed two human cases in the central province of Hunan and one in the eastern province of Anhui, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Both areas reported outbreaks in poultry in the past month.

Experts are especially worried about the potential for bird flu to spread and mutate in China because of its vast poultry flocks and their close contact with people. It also is a major migration route for wild fowl, which experts say might be spreading the virus.

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 64 people in Asia since 2003.

The Chinese government has responded quickly to public health threats after being criticized in 2003 for failing to respond to foreign pleas for information and cooperation at the start of its outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Since the SARS outbreak, Beijing has created disease testing laboratories and a national health warning network. It has promised to be more open about epidemics and to cooperate with other nations.

Dick Thompson of the WHO's Communicable Disease Section told the British Broadcasting Corp. that the outbreaks in china represented "a very disturbing situation."

"They have reported these outbreaks rapidly, they've been investigated promptly, the laboratory analysis was done under the supervision of WHO," Thompson said from Geneva. "I think they're doing the right things. It's just disappointing that there's so many human and animal outbreaks."

The Chinese bird flu fatalities were a 12-year-old girl in Hunan and a 24-year-old female poultry worker in Anhui, said Roy Wadia, a WHO spokesman in Beijing. The third case was the girl's 9-year-old brother, who fell ill but recovered.

China initially said the girl, her brother and a schoolteacher who fell ill at the same time were negative for the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu. But the government later reopened the investigation and asked WHO for help.

Agency experts traveled to Hunan this week.

Wadia said China recorded the girl as a bird flu death, but WHO could not reach a conclusion because her body was cremated. He said Chinese investigators based their decision on the girl's shared background with her brother and the circumstances of her illness. There was no official word on the teacher's status.

The government had not previously disclosed there were any suspected human cases in Anhui, where an Oct. 20 outbreak in the city of Tiancheng killed about 550 birds.

As with SARS, China is secretive about reporting influenza infections, so this news story is a big deal. Bird flu watchers know that this report may be the tip of an iceberg.

Fact-Based

I regard Harold Meyerson as the voice of pragmatism on the WaPo op-ed page. He leans left, but he is no ideologue.

Alito's Smoking Gun

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, November 16, 2005; Page A19

Now, maybe I'm cockeyed here, but I don't read Alito's abortion assertion as either personal or political. A personal view would say, "I'm opposed to abortion." A political declaration would say, "Abortion is a bad public policy." But those aren't the sentiments that Alito voiced. What he said, if you'll pardon the strict construction here, is that there is no constitutional right to an abortion. Which is a viewpoint, if agreed to by five Supreme Court justices, that can change the law, and social fabric, of the land.

Alito's advocates argue that he never once called for overturning Roe v. Wade during his 15 years on the appellate bench. But appellate judges interpret the law within the framework that the Supreme Court lays out. Supreme Court justices can change that framework when they see fit -- and they do. Those are the Supreme Court decisions that make the history books, and there are a number of them. Deference to precedents may be a pillar of the law, but -- and on this, conservatives and liberals agree -- it is clearly less of one for Supreme Court justices than for appellate and trial judges.

Alito's champions would have us believe, however, that he will defer even to precedents that he regards as unconstitutional -- despite the fact that the job of a justice is precisely to determine what is and isn't constitutional. That's asking us to believe a lot.

Clearly, the senators charged with questioning Alito will ask him if he still believes what he wrote 20 years ago. In this instance, since his assertion to Meese was so unequivocal, not answering has to be taken as a de facto yes. He could argue, I suppose, that Roe is a more settled point of law now, 32 years after the decision, than it was in 1985. But do time and repeated citation really validate a ruling that Alito viewed -- and unless he tells us otherwise, still views -- as unconstitutional to begin with? Do Alito's constitutional views count for nothing? Did George W. Bush appoint him simply to leave everything as is?

Alito's antipathy toward Roe wasn't the only high point of his '85 job application. He also noted that he disagreed with the Warren Court's decisions "in the areas of criminal procedure, the Establishment Clause and reapportionment." Reapportionment? By far the most notable reapportionment decision of the Warren Court was its famous one-man, one-vote ruling, which required state legislatures to create districts of equal population. By 1985 this decision -- unlike Roe -- had won universal acceptance. What on earth did Alito disagree with here? The disenfranchisement of pasture and cow?

Alito's memo to Meese was, to be sure, a job application, and the assertions people make when applying for jobs tend to the hyperbolic. But Sam Alito comes off as one of nature's straight shooters, and I see no reason to take his declarations as anything other than accurate representations of his beliefs. Which means, unless he's reversed his thinking or unless deference to precedent trumps his deepest beliefs on constitutionality, that Justice Samuel Alito would, given the opportunity, abolish a woman's federal right to reproductive choice. It's not personal for him; it's constitutional. But it's plenty personal for the American people.

I'm with Meyerson. Alito is still a cipher, but one with an ideological track record. It may be a principled record, but sure itsn't one I want deciding the fate of my body.

Enter Winter

It's 73 degrees right now. The low temp later today is going to be 34. Getting from here to there is going to involve some serious thunderstorms. The usual caveats about power outages apply.

The Non-Establishment Clause

Alito's church-state stance important to all
Charles C. Haynes
Gannett News Service

So what does Alito think about "separation of church and state" under the establishment clause? We get our best clues from his opinions in cases involving religious expression by individuals and groups in public schools. Writing for the court in Child Evangelism Fellowship of N.J. Inc., v. Stafford Twp. Sc. Dist. (2004), Alito upheld the order of a lower court to treat Child Evangelism like other community groups "with respect to the distribution and posting of materials and participation in so-called 'Back-to-School nights."'

Although there is some precedent for Alito's views in past Supreme Court decisions, his strong support for "equal treatment" of religious expression under the free-speech clause could break new ground.

While Alito stays within the limits recent Supreme Court decisions have placed on religious-freedom claims, he clearly argues for the most expansive reading of the free-exercise clause possible under current law.

With all we don't know about how Alito would decide cases involving religion and government under the establishment clause, we do know that he has consistently defended religious speech and practice under the free-speech and free-exercise clauses. If you agree that religion needs more protection, Samuel Alito may be your cup of tea.

The mixing of church and state is a detriment to both. As a religious professional (I'm a spiritual director on an interfaith basis) I want the government very far away from the door of the church, synagogue, mosque or temple.

Three Rings and a Bear

Journalists Said to Figure in Strategy in Leak Case

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: November 16, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - Lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former White House official indicted on perjury charges, plan to seek testimony from journalists beyond those cited in the indictment and will probably challenge government agreements limiting their grand jury testimony, people involved in the case said Tuesday.

"That's clearly going to be part of the strategy - to get access to all the relevant records and determine what did the media really know," said a lawyer close to the defense who spoke on condition of anonymity.

At Mr. Libby's arraignment this month, his lawyers alluded to using a First Amendment defense in fighting the charges, but they have declined to say what that strategy might entail.

In interviews, lawyers close to the case made clear that the defense team plans to pursue aggressively access to reporters' notes beyond the material cited in the indictment and plans to go to the trial judge, Reggie B. Walton of United States District Court, to compel disclosure as one of their first steps.

Defense lawyers plan to seek notes not only from the three reporters cited in the indictment - Tim Russert of NBC News, Matt Cooper of Time Magazine and Judith Miller, formerly of The New York Times - but also from other journalists who have been tied to the case.

Chief among those is Robert D. Novak, who first disclosed in a column in July 2003 that Valerie Plame worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Ms. Plame, also known as Valerie Wilson, is married to Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who became a vocal critic of the Bush administration's use of intelligence on Iraq's weapons capability after he was sent to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq had sought to buy uranium there.

Mr. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted last month on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Prosecutors said he misled a grand jury and investigators about his conversations with journalists about Ms. Wilson.

With critical issues of journalistic confidentiality at stake, lawyers and news media analysts said, the issue of Mr. Libby's access to reporters will probably end up before the appellate court, just as the battle over Ms. Miller's confidentiality agreement did earlier this year.

This is the "infotainment" strategy. This is going to be a circus.

Eating Words

Insight into Alito

NOMINEES TO THE SUPREME COURT are almost always lawyers, which means they're good at not answering questions. And senators are by definition politicians, which means they're good at not asking them. So at confirmation hearings, the senators give speeches, the nominee gives compliments, and too often a nominee's views are no clearer after the hearings than they were before.

But the hearings for Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, threaten to be interesting. The person to thank for this turn of events is none other than Alito himself — albeit the Alito of two decades ago.

In November 1985, Alito applied for a job as deputy assistant attorney general. The application included a line asking for "information that you regard as pertinent to your philosophical commitment to the policies of this administration." Alito, then working as a lowly assistant to the solicitor general, complied by writing a tidy 500-word essay that contains this sentence: "It has been an honor and a source of personal satisfaction for me to serve in the office of the solicitor general during President Reagan's administration and to help to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly."

Elsewhere in the memo, he mentions a few of those positions. He does not believe in "racial and ethnic quotas," the constitutional right to an abortion or the Warren court. He likes Edwin Meese III (then attorney general) and National Review magazine.

None of this is very surprising, of course. But the essay provides Alito's opponents and supporters alike with incontrovertible evidence of his views on controversial matters nominees normally don't like to discuss. Just as important, it robs Alito of a few of the excuses that nominees usually trot out when asked about such things.

Alito cannot say, as Clarence Thomas did, that he has no position on abortion. He cannot say, as John G. Roberts Jr. did when confronted with memos from his past, that he was stating not his personal views but those of the administration he worked for. And he cannot say, as has just about every nominee in the past quarter of a century, that his personal views are separate from the performance of his official duties.

Judge Alito has a track record, and that is what will make his confirmation hearings so interesting. I'm a wonk who thinks that C-Span is must see TV, but I suspect the rest of the viewing public will find these hearings very compelling.

Faith Based?

FEMA gave bishops 'run around' on disaster aid, says archbishop

By Agostino Bono
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Church officials got the "run around" from the Federal Emergency Management Agency when they wanted to know what federal plans were for helping the regions devastated by Hurricane Katrina, said the head of the bishops' hurricane relief task force.

The harsh criticism of FEMA came from Archbishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston, named earlier this year to head the task force coordinating church aid to the regions devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

"It was clear to me that not a whole lot of help was coming from FEMA," he said.

Bishops' conference officials had to engage in several conference calls with the White House before Jim Towey, head of the White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, was appointed as a liaison to the bishops, but still "the answers we were getting were not clear," said Archbishop Fiorenza in a Nov. 15 report to the fall meeting of the U.S. bishops.

"The task force believes strongly that we must continue to put strong pressure on the White House and Congress so that we get the needed answers," he said.

At a news conference afterward, the archbishop said that the task force became involved after New Orleans Archbishop Alfred C Hughes and Bishop Thomas J. Rodi of Biloxi, Miss., got the "run around" when they asked FEMA what it would be able to do and how to access FEMA aid.

"They asked the task force to contact the White House," said the archbishop.

But even after Towey was named there were differences in what FEMA was saying about relief efforts and what its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, was saying, he added.

"There is still that type of confusion," he said.

The bishops have a special interest in New Orleans because the rebuilding of the city is tightly bound with the reconstruction of the New Orleans Archdiocese, said the archbishop.

"It would be difficult to consider the life of New Orleans apart from the culture, traditions and customs of the Catholic Church," he said.

Archbishop Fiorenza cautioned against believing that New Orleans is recovering because of media reports that electricity has been restored to some parts of the city.

"The New Orleans power company has gone bankrupt," he said. "Electric power has not been restored throughout New Orleans."

A few hospitals have reopened but they provide "emergency care only for those with insurance. Uninsured persons are forced to use 'triage centers,' which are still set up in tents," said the archbishop.

"New Orleans is a long, long way from recovering," he said.

He made a special plea to Catholic universities to help in the rebuilding of Xavier University in New Orleans, which "provides African-Americans with outstanding programs in medicine, pharmacy and education."

Xavier, the nation's only historically black Catholic college, is closed, having suffered $90 million in damage, said the archbishop.

What's the point of having an office to deal with faith based issues if they can't do their job? The fact is, like so many other areas that were struck with catastrophic disasters, New Orleans is a long way away from recovery.

I know Tulane thinks they will be open for the Sping Semester, but that strikes me as optomistic at best. We should continue to work to make sure that everyone who needs the help gets it, especially places like Xavier which will not make the mainstream media's radar.

The Owners

Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force

By Dana Milbank and Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; Page A01

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.

Chevron was not named in the White House document, but the Government Accountability Office has found that Chevron was one of several companies that "gave detailed energy policy recommendations" to the task force. In addition, Cheney had a separate meeting with John Browne, BP's chief executive, according to a person familiar with the task force's work; that meeting is not noted in the document.

The task force's activities attracted complaints from environmentalists, who said they were shut out of the task force discussions while corporate interests were present. The meetings were held in secret and the White House refused to release a list of participants. The task force was made up primarily of Cabinet-level officials. Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club unsuccessfully sued to obtain the records.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who posed the question about the task force, said he will ask the Justice Department today to investigate. "The White House went to great lengths to keep these meetings secret, and now oil executives may be lying to Congress about their role in the Cheney task force," Lautenberg said.

Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on the document. She said that the courts have upheld "the constitutional right of the president and vice president to obtain information in confidentiality."

The executives were not under oath when they testified, so they are not vulnerable to charges of perjury; committee Democrats had protested the decision by Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) not to swear in the executives. But a person can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years for making "any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation" to Congress.

Since this is a government run by, for and with the complicity of the billionaires who own it, don't expect much in the way of accountability.

Oily Slope

File this one under the "honor & integrity" crowd.

Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force

By Dana Milbank and Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 16, 2005

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.

Chevron was not named in the White House document, but the Government Accountability Office has found that Chevron was one of several companies that "gave detailed energy policy recommendations" to the task force. In addition, Cheney had a separate meeting with John Browne, BP's chief executive, according to a person familiar with the task force's work; that meeting is not noted in the document.

The task force's activities attracted complaints from environmentalists, who said they were shut out of the task force discussions while corporate interests were present. The meetings were held in secret and the White House refused to release a list of participants. The task force was made up primarily of Cabinet-level officials. Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club unsuccessfully sued to obtain the records.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who posed the question about the task force, said he will ask the Justice Department today to investigate. "The White House went to great lengths to keep these meetings secret, and now oil executives may be lying to Congress about their role in the Cheney task force," Lautenberg said.

Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on the document. She said that the courts have upheld "the constitutional right of the president and vice president to obtain information in confidentiality."

Lea Anne, they haven't upheld the right to lie in front of Congress. That is, unless you want to go about "rewritting" history.

I can't wait to see how the other side of the blogsphere tries to spin their way out of this one... we know how much they hate it when politicians lie...

More of the Same

Torture Alleged at Ministry Site Outside Baghdad
Johan Spanner/Polaris, for The New York Times

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: November 16, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 15 - Iraq's government said Tuesday that it had ordered an urgent investigation of allegations that many of the 173 detainees American troops discovered over the weekend in the basement of an Interior Ministry building had been tortured by their Iraqi captors. A senior Iraqi official who visited the detainees said two appeared paralyzed and others had some of the skin peeled off their bodies by their abusers.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari held a hurriedly organized news conference to announce the official inquiry, and a wider one that he said would involve a comprehensive count of the thousands held in Iraqi jails to determine whether there was a wider pattern of abuse, as many opponents of his government have claimed.

A joint statement by the American embassy and the United States military command called the situation "totally unacceptable" and said American officials "agree with Iraq's leaders that mistreatment of detainees will not be tolerated."

The discovery of what appeared to have been a secret torture center created a new aura of crisis for American officials and Iraqi politicians who hold power in the Shiite-led transitional government. For many Iraqis, the episode carried heavy overtones of the brutality associated with Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-dominated government.

Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss. Torture? Touch line 5 on the familiar phone.

The Leftovers

For me, the highlight of Thanksgiving Day (in addition to getting time to spend with my brother and his wife, whom I don't get to see nearly often enough) actually comes on the day after. Why is it that all the leftovers taste even better on the second day than they did on Thursday? For me, the day-after tradition is to start the day with left over pumpkin pie for breakfast. Leigh and Anne aren't big on pumpkin pie, so I make one for myself.

I'm trying a new recipe this year, one I just found, for crustless pumpkin custard.

6 eggs
1/2 cup sugar*
1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
3 cups skim or low-fat milk, heated until very hot
Ground nutmeg or cinnamon for garnish, optional

* The amount of eggs used can vary according to your needs. When I make the custard for dessert, I usually use 4 eggs. When making for breakfast, I increase the recipe to 6 eggs.

** If you are on a sugar-free diet or just trying to lose weight, substitute Splenda for the sugar.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Adjust oven rack to center position. Lightly butter (or use non-fat vegetable spray) eight (6-ounce) custard cups and set them into a large baking dish. If cooking custards in a metal pan, cover the bottom of the pan with a layer of newspaper to ensure an even temperature on the bottom.

In a large bowl, beat eggs slightly; add sugar, pumpkin, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves and beat until combined. Mix in hot milk until blended. Pour egg mixture into prepared custard cups. Sprinkle with nutmeg or cinnamon.

Bring the water for the water bath to a light simmer on top of the stove; carefully pour hot water into the baking pan to come half-way cup the sides of the custard cups. NOTE: The most common mistake people make in baking a custard is not putting enough water in the hot-water bath. The water should come up to the level of the custard inside the cups. You must protect your custard from the heat. Carefully pour hot water into the baking pan to come halfway cup the sides of the custard cups.

Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until set around the edges but still loose in the center. The cooking time will depend largely on the size of the custard cup you are using, but begin checking at 20 minutes and check back regularly. When the center of the custard is just set, it will jiggle a little when shaken, that's when you can remove it from the oven. Remove from oven and immediately remove cups from water bath; cool on wire rack until room temperature. Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least 2 hours or up to a week.

Makes 8 servings (depending on size of custard cups).

I'll serve this with a spritz of whipped cream from a can, which I prefer to any of the non-dairy products (which taste like floor polish to me,) coffee and juice. Note the way the author of this recipe varies the number of eggs depending on whether or not the intent is for breakfast or dessert.

Note the directions for the water bath. This is critical for success. The very first recipe I ever cooked all by myself (at the age of 7, I think) was plum pudding (really, a custard with flour) and I ruined it by not understanding the water bath. I was 7, so I forgive myself.

Thanksgiving Friday starts with pie and moves on to turkey sandwiches on really good sourdough bread from the excellent bakery down the street. My mom likes the leftover cranberry sauce on her sandwiches, but I like good quality, country style French mustard, the grainy, unground stuff. No lettuce, no tomatoes (not this time of the year), no mayonnaise, just a little mustard, good bread and the bird. I make a side dish of leftover potatoes, dressing and gravy. Sure, this is starchy, but I eat like this twice a year. Any turkey not consumed by the weekend goes into turkey and wild rice pancakes. These are seriously good. Scrumptious topped with sour cream. Serve with Aidells apple-chicken sausage.

Hannukah is coming. What's ritual about Hannukah meals is the oil, not the potato pancakes. Skip the chicken sausage and you are kosher and Minnesotan all at once.

For Turkey Day

My mother's sage turkey dressing:

Sage Stuffing

Ingredients

# 1 cup celery, finely chopped
# 1/2 cup chopped onion
# 1/2 cup butter or margarine
# 1 tsp. dried sage or six finely chopped fresh sage leaves
# 1/2 tsp. salt
# 1/8 tsp. pepper
# 8 cups bread cubes, a 1 inch dice of a stale loaf of bread
# 3/4 to 1 cup chicken broth or water*

Directions

1. In a saucepan, cook celery and onion in butter until tender but not brown: remove from heat and stir in sage, salt and pepper.

2. Place the dry bread cubes in a large mixing bowl. Add the onion mixture. Drizzle with enough broth or water to moisten, tossing lightly. Stuff the turkey loosely and cook.

* Make your own broth by cooking the giblets in a couple of cups of waters. Mince the cooked giblets and add to the dressing. Or use them to feed the cat, who will agree that Thanksgiving is the best day of the year.

My brother-the-chef uses chicken broth base to both moisten the dressing and make the gravy (and, let me tell you, his gravy is the stuff of legends.) This is one of those professional chef products that working cooks use to save time and it works very well. My contribution to the gravy and dressing conversation: use arrowroot instead of flour or cornstarch to thicken your gravy. It will guarantee you a lump-free result. Follow the directions on the link. You'll have an error free gravy.

Use in Case of Emergency Only

'Promise Broken': N.Y. to Lose 9/11 Aid

By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press
Tues Nov 15, 2005

WASHINGTON - Congressional budget negotiators have decided to take back $125 million in Sept. 11 aid from New York, which had fought to keep the money to treat sick and injured ground zero workers, lawmakers said Tuesday.

New York officials had sought for months to hold onto the funding, originally meant to cover increased worker compensation costs stemming from the 2001 terror attacks.

But a massive labor and health spending bill moving fitfully through House-Senate negotiations would take back that funding, lawmakers said.

"It seems that despite our efforts the rescission will stand, very sadly, and that is something of a promise broken," said Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y. "We will try hard in the coming weeks, but ultimately Congress will have something of a black eye over this."

If any of the Democratic candidates for this Fall are looking for an effective campain commercial that sums up their opponents in a nut shell, here it is.

So much for standing tall with the first responders... I guess we only do that when the cameras are on.

Bring Them Home

Senate Votes to Demand Regular Iraq Updates From White House

By CARL HULSE
Published: November 15, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - The Senate signaled its growing unease with the war in Iraq today, voting overwhelmingly to demand regular reports from the White House on the course of the conflict and on the progress that Iraqi forces are making in securing their own country.

The vote, 79 to 19, came on an amendment to a spending bill that ultimately passed without opposition. The bipartisan support for the amendment sponsored by Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, reflected anxiety among Republicans as well as Democrats.

Mr. Warner said afterward that he was "very grateful" for the wide backing of his amendment, which he called "forward looking" and distinctly different from a Democratic alternative that many Republicans said would signal that the United States was ready to "cut and run" from the battlefield.

The message that Iraqis should take from the Senate action, Mr. Warner said, is that "we have stood with you, we have done our part," and now it is time for them to do theirs. He said 2006 would be a pivotal year for the campaign in Iraq.

Minutes before endorsing Mr. Warner's amendment, the Senate voted, 58 to 40, against a measure offered by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, to demand that President Bush set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

"We need to have 2006 be a year of transition," Mr. Levin said as he declared that with his own amendment defeated, he would back the one offered by his Republican colleague. "I support the Warner amendment as the second-best approach," he said.

Despite the overwhelming vote on Mr. Warner's measure, it is by no means certain that it will emerge from Congress. For that to happen, it would have to be endorsed by the House as well, and there is stronger sentiment in that chamber to let the Bush administration have its way in Iraq.

Nevertheless, the Senate action was significant, since a number of lawmakers in Mr. Bush's own party have backed away from wholehearted support for the president's Iraq policy. Forty-one Republicans, 37 Democrats and the lone Senate independent, James Jeffords of Vermont, voted in favor of the Warner amendment; 13 Republicans and 6 Democrats voted against it.

This kind of stuff make me nuts. We invade their country and tell them that's up to them to undo the damage?

Crooks and Liars

Former CPB Head Reportedly Broke Rules, Ethics Code
By Matea Gold, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- The former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting repeatedly violated the organization's contracting rules and code of ethics in his efforts to promote conservatives in the system, according to an internal investigation released today.

The 42-page report — the culmination of a six-month investigation by Kenneth A. Konz, the corporation's inspector general — described former Chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson as a rogue politico who overstepped the boundaries of his position to right what he viewed as a liberal tilt in public broadcasting.

Tomlinson, who resigned his board position this month in advance of the report, denied any wrongdoing in a statement included in the report, calling the charges "malicious and irresponsible."

The investigation was requested in the spring by Reps. David Obey (D-Wis.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.).

Konz and his nine-member staff documented numerous occasions in which Tomlinson circumvented the corporation's contracting procedures in trying to hire his own handpicked candidates to study the political balance in public broadcasting.

According to the report, Tomlinson failed to get board approval for his hiring of a consultant, Fred Mann, to monitor the political leanings of the guests on "Now With Bill Moyers" and three other programs. Mann, who divided guests into categories such as "pro-Bush" and "anti-Bush," was paid $20,200 for an analysis that was "not sophisticated," the report said.

Tomlinson also had inappropriate involvement in the development of "The Journal Editorial Report," a public affairs program that began airing on PBS in September 2004, Konz wrote.

The inspector general also uncovered numerous e-mails between Tomlinson and White House staff about the hiring of Patricia Harrison, a former Republican Party chairwoman, as the new CPB president.

"While cryptic in nature, their timing and subject matter gives the appearance that the former chairman was strongly motivated by political considerations in filling the president/CEO position," Konz wrote.

In addition, Konz found that a candidate for a senior management position at the corporation was asked by a board member about her political contributions. The inspector general could not determine whether the question was posed by Tomlinson or another board member.

In response to the report, Chairwoman Cheryl Halpern called the findings "bracing." She and the rest of the board unanimously approved the creation of board subcommittees aimed at providing better oversight of contracting and hiring.

It seems that all R's are crooks, and inept crooks at that.

Getting Older

Two years ago today, at about 4:45 in the morning, if memory serves me, Just a Bump in the Beltway went live. Today is our second blogiversary. Thanks, Mel and Reid.

Well, there you go again

Another Set of Scare Tactics

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Mr. President, it won't work this time.

With a Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll finding 57 percent of Americans agreeing that George W. Bush "deliberately misled people to make the case for war with Iraq," the president clearly needs to tend to his credibility problems. But his partisan attacks on the administration's critics, in a Veterans Day speech last week and in Alaska yesterday, will only add to his troubles.

Bush was not subtle. He said that anyone accusing his administration of having "manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people" was giving aid and comfort to the enemy. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will," Bush declared last week. "As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them."

You wonder: Did Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the Valerie Plame leak investigation, send the wrong signal to our troops and our enemy by daring to seek the indictment of Scooter Libby on a charge of perjury and obstruction of justice? Must Americans who support our troops desist from any criticism of the use of intelligence by the administration?

There is a great missing element in the argument over whether the administration manipulated the facts. Neither side wants to talk about the context in which Bush won a blank check from Congress to invade Iraq. He doesn't want us to remember that he injected the war debate into the 2002 midterm election campaign for partisan purposes, and he doesn't want to acknowledge that he used the post-Sept. 11 mood to do all he could to intimidate Democrats from raising questions more of them should have raised.

Grand talk about liberating Iraq gave way to cheap partisan attacks. In New Mexico, Republican Steve Pearce ran an advertisement against Democrat John Arthur Smith declaring: "While Smith 'reflects' on the situation, the possibility of a mushroom cloud hovering over a U.S. city still remains." Note that Smith wasn't being attacked for opposing the war, only for reflecting on it. God forbid that any Democrat dare even think before going to war.

Marc Racicot, then chairman of the Republican National Committee, said about the late Sen. Paul Wellstone's opposition to the war resolution: "He has set about to diminish the capacity of this nation to defend itself. That is a legitimate issue." Wellstone, who died in a plane crash a few days before the election, was not intimidated. But other Democrats were.

The bad faith of Bush's current argument is staggering. He wants to say that the "more than a hundred Democrats in the House and Senate" who "voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power" thereby gave up their right to question his use of intelligence forever after. But he does not want to acknowledge that he forced the war vote to take place under circumstances that guaranteed the minimum amount of reflection and debate, and that opened anyone who dared question his policies to charges, right before an election, that they were soft on Hussein.

Thankfully, this nonsense has started to wear thin. People are starting to see through the rhetoric. The more he repeats the same things over and over again, the less credible he is.

And have you noticed, all of these speeches are taking place on military bases in front of preselected crowds? Simply gutless.

Down, Down, Down

Rebublicans Want Answers, Too

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; 12:42 PM

President Bush doesn't much like answering tough questions.

Faced with a profound souring of public opinion, Bush has held only one full-scale press conference since June. His press secretary won't give straight answers to even the simplest questions anymore. And Bush's aides continue to keep skeptics out of the Oval Office and away from his public events.

The president has refused to answer any questions about the recent indictment of a top White House aide. And most recently, his response to questions about his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq has been as unenlightening as it has been vitriolic.

Only Congress can legally demand answers from the President -- but with both Houses controlled by docile Republicans, that hasn't been a problem.

Until now.

Signs are that members of Bush's own party, at least in the Senate, are increasingly sick of the mushroom treatment -- particularly when it comes to the future of American involvement in Iraq.

With his numbers in the toilet, even the Congressional Repubs are running away from him.

Under Advisement

Alito Downplays 1985 Abortion Statement

By JESSE J. HOLLAND
Associated Press Writer
November 15, 2005

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito distanced himself Tuesday from his 1985 comments that there was no constitutional right to abortion, telling a senator in private that he had been "an advocate seeking a job."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., an abortion rights supporter and the only woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she asked the conservative judge about a document released Monday showing Alito in 1985 telling the Reagan administration he was particularly proud to help argue that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

"He said first of all it was different then," she said. "He said, 'I was an advocate seeking a job, it was a political job and that was 1985. I'm now a judge, I've been on the circuit court for 15 years and it's very different. I'm not an advocate, I don't give heed to my personal views, what I do is interpret the law.'"

When asked whether she found his answer satisfactory, Feinstein said: "The question is, Did I believe he was being absolutely truthful, and I did."

Alito did not respond to reporters' questions about the document before meeting Feinstein. "I'm just here to speak with Sen. Feinstein," Alito said.

After the meeting, Feinstein said Alito "was very sincere, he was very direct in answering my questions, he clearly is well-steeped in the law, has a good mind, is an able thinker."

Alito's abortion statement is expected to be the topic of conversation with senators during his Tuesday visits.

The 1985 document, released by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Monday, shows a young Alito applying to become deputy assistant attorney general and saying his previous government work had included helping "to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly."

"I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government argued that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion," wrote Alito, who was then working for the solicitor general's office.

Alito's supporters say there's nothing surprising in that statement.

He "joins a long list of jurists who have written that Roe" _ the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion _ "was wrongly decided," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a Judiciary Committee member.

"The question is whether he will put his personal views aside as any judge should and base his rulings on what the Constitution says," he added. "His long track record as a federal appeals court judge shows that he has indeed put his personal views on abortion aside, and I have every confidence he will continue to do so."

President Bush picked Alito after White House counsel Harriet Miers withdrew her Supreme Court nomination when confronted by withering criticism by some conservatives.

"This may explain why the right wing expressed such enthusiastic support for Judge Alito after campaigning against Harriet Miers," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., a Judiciary Committee member and one of several senators who will meet with Alito privately on Tuesday.

Alito would replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a deciding vote on abortion on the Supreme Court. Alito's opponents fear that he and recently confirmed Chief Justice John Roberts would swing the Supreme Court to the right and lead to overturning Roe v. Wade.

Alito, 55, has told senators in his two weeks of private meetings that he has "great respect" for Roe v. Wade as a precedent, but he did not commit to upholding it.

I'll wait on the hearings in January.

The New Kid

Bernanke Unwrapped
The Fed Nominee Won Spelling Bees, Plays Squash and Cracks Jokes

By Ben White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; Page D01

In the early 1970s, when college for many meant antiwar protests and experimenting with recreational drugs, friends say Ben S. Bernanke was busy at Harvard and MIT trying to figure out the monetary causes of the Great Depression.

Now the shy, bearded, 51-year-old academic is President Bush's nominee for chairman of the Federal Reserve, anointed successor to celebrated central banker and cultural icon Alan Greenspan.

On Monday, Oct. 24, 2005, President Bush nominated Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan when he retires in January. Learn more about Bernanke's background and nomination.

The public will get its first extended look at the little-known Bernanke today, when he sits for questions from members of the Senate Banking Committee at his one-day confirmation hearing. If confirmed, Bernanke will take over the Fed at a moment of rising economic unease. The U.S. trade and budget deficits are soaring. The once-blistering housing market may be cooling. Rumors continue to rumble through Wall Street of dangerously overextended hedge funds ripe for collapse. The next Fed chairman could face significant challenges, as Greenspan did, within months of taking office.

Bernanke's friends, colleagues and former students say the would-be Fed chairman is likely to come across in the hearing as anything but a starchy academic wedded to arcane theories and rigid economic models.

Instead, they describe Bernanke as a supple thinker and a deceptively shrewd politician with a deadpan wit, a deeply calming bedside manner and no strident political or economic ideology.

Those traits came in handy during his years as chairman of Princeton University's economics department. Bernanke took over a bickering department in 1996 and turned it into a smoothly running machine now often mentioned as one of the top two or three in the nation. Colleagues said Bernanke always knew where each faculty member stood on any issue before a department meeting, something also said to be true of Greenspan at the Fed, an institution that seeks to operate by consensus.

Yet, while reminiscing about his years as department head, Bernanke did not take the position -- or himself -- too seriously. "I served seven years as the chair of the Princeton economics department," Bernanke recalled in a January speech, "where I had responsibility for major policy decisions, such as whether to serve bagels or doughnuts at the department coffee hour."

Um, in the early 1970's, I was working 3 jobs to keep myself in school and couldn't afford dope or booze. Ben White has some very curious assumptions.

Brad deLong thinks Bernanke is okay. That's good enough for me.

I'm watching the hearing on C-Span, and I'd love to hear some of that sense of humor.

Too Little, Too Late

Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials

Published: November 15, 2005

To avoid having to account for his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the intelligence. He's tried to share the blame, claiming that Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as President Bill Clinton. He's tried to pass the buck and blame the C.I.A. Lately, he's gone on the attack, accusing Democrats in Congress of aiding the terrorists.

Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today.

It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true.

Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.

Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress had nothing close to the president's access to intelligence. The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove dissent and make conjecture seem like fact.

It's hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working - a view we now know was accurate. France, Russia and Germany said war was not justified. Even Britain admitted later that there had been no new evidence about Iraq, just new politics.

The administration had little company in saying that Iraq was actively trying to build a nuclear weapon. The evidence for this claim was a dubious report about an attempt in 1999 to buy uranium from Niger, later shown to be false, and the infamous aluminum tubes story. That was dismissed at the time by analysts with real expertise.

The Bush administration was also alone in making the absurd claim that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and somehow connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was based on two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk. The other was that Iraq trained Qaeda members in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Before the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that this was a deliberate fabrication by an informer.

This is all well and good, NYT edboard. But you were frontpaging Judy Miller in the run-up to war and you are damn near as guilty as Bushco. I believe you owe us an apology, 2,100 lives and a couple hundred billion dollars.

Read The Foreign Press

The fog of war: white phosphorus, Fallujah and some burning questions

By Andrew Buncombe and Solomon Hughes in Washington
Published: 15 November 2005

The controversy has raged for 12 months. Ever since last November, when US forces battled to clear Fallujah of insurgents, there have been repeated claims that troops used "unusual" weapons in the assault that all but flattened the Iraqi city. Specifically, controversy has focussed on white phosphorus shells (WP) - an incendiary weapon usually used to obscure troop movements but which can equally be deployed as an offensive weapon against an enemy. The use of such incendiary weapons against civilian targets is banned by international treaty.

The debate was reignited last week when an Italian documentary claimed Iraqi civilians - including women and children - had been killed by terrible burns caused by WP. The documentary, Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, by the state broadcaster RAI, cited one Fallujah human-rights campaigner who reported how residents told how "a rain of fire fell on the city". Yesterday, demonstrators organised by the Italian communist newspaper, Liberazione, protested outside the US Embassy in Rome. Today, another protest is planned for the US Consulate in Milan. "The 'war on terrorism' is terrorism," one of the newspaper's commentators declared.

The claims contained in the RAI documentary have met with a strident official response from the US, as well as from right-wing commentators and bloggers who have questioned the film's evidence and sought to undermine its central allegations.

While military experts have supported some of these criticisms, an examination by The Independent of the available evidence suggests the following: that WP shells were fired at insurgents, that reports from the battleground suggest troops firing these WP shells did not always know who they were hitting and that there remain widespread reports of civilians suffering extensive burn injuries. While US commanders insist they always strive to avoid civilian casualties, the story of the battle of Fallujah highlights the intrinsic difficulty of such an endeavour.

It is also clear that elements within the US government have been putting out incorrect information about the battle of Fallujah, making it harder to assesses the truth. Some within the US government have previously issued disingenuous statements about the use in Iraq of another controversial incendiary weapon - napalm.

The assault upon Fallujah, 40 miles from Baghdad, took place over a two-week period last November. US commanders said the city was an insurgent stronghold. Civilians were ordered to evacuate in advance. Around 50 US troops and an estimated 1,200 insurgents were killed. How many civilians were killed is unclear. Up to 300,000 people were driven from the city.

Following the RAI broadcast, the US Embassy in Rome issued a statement which denied that US troops had used WP as a weapon. It said: "To maintain that US forces have been using WP against human targets ... is simply mistaken." In a similar denial, the US Ambassador in London, Robert Tuttle, wrote to the The Independent claiming WP was only used as an obscurant or else for marking targets. In his letter, he says: "US forces participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom continue to use appropriate, lawful and conventional weapons against legitimate targets. US forces do not use napalm or phosphorus as weapons."

However, both these two statements are undermined by first-hand evidence from troops who took part in the fighting. They are also undermined by an admission by the Pentagon that WP was used as a weapon against insurgents.

In a comprehensive written account of the military operation at Fallujah, three US soldiers who participated said WP shells were used against insurgents taking cover in trenches. Writing in the March-April edition of Field Artillery, the magazine of the US Field Artillery based in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which is readily available on the internet, the three artillery men said: "WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions ... and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against insurgents in trench lines and spider holes ... We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents using WP to flush them out and high explosive shells (HE) to take them out."

Another first-hand account from the battlefield was provided by an embedded reporter for the North County News, a San Diego newspaper. Reporter Darrin Mortenson wrote of watching Cpl Nicholas Bogert fire WP rounds into Fallujah. He wrote: "Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused."

Mr Mortenson also watched the mortar team fire into a group of buildings where insurgents were known to be hiding. In an email, he confirmed: "During the fight I was describing in my article, WP mortar rounds were used to create a fire in a palm grove and a cluster of concrete buildings that were used as cover by Iraqi snipers and teams that fired heavy machine guns at US choppers." Another report, published in the Washington Post, gave an idea of the sorts of injuries that WP causes. It said insurgents "reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns". A physician at a local hospital said the corpses of insurgents "were burned, and some corpses were melted".

The use of incendiary weapons such as WP and napalm against civilian targets - though not military targets - is banned by international treaty. Article two, protocol III of the 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons states: "It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects, the object of attack by incendiary weapons." Some have claimed the use of WP contravenes the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention which bans the use of any "toxic chemical" weapons which causes "death, harm or temporary incapacitation to humans or animals through their chemical action on life processes".

However, Peter Kaiser, a spokesman for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which enforces the convention, said the convention permitted the use of such weapons for "military purposes not connected with the use of chemical weapons and not dependent on the use of the toxic properties of chemicals as a method of warfare". He said the burns caused by WP were thermic rather than chemical and as such not prohibited by the treaty.

The RAI film said civilians were also victims of the use of WP and reported claims by a campaigner from Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq, that many victims had large burns. The report claimed that the clothes on some victims appeared to be intact even though their bodies were badly burned.

Critics of the RAI film - including the Pentagon - say such a claim undermines the likelihood that WP was responsible for the injuries since WP would have also burned their clothes. This opinion is supported by a leading military expert. John Pike, director of the military studies group GlobalSecurity.org, said of WP: "If it hits your clothes it will burn your clothes and if it hits your skin it will just keep on burning." Though Mr Pike had not seen the RAI film, he said the burned appearance of some bodies may have been caused by exposure to the elements.

Yet there are other, independent reports of civilians from Fallujah suffering burn injuries. For instance, Dahr Jamail, an unembedded reporter who collected the testimony of refugees from the city spoke to a doctor who had remained in the city to help people, encountered numerous reports of civilians suffering unusual burns.

One resident told him the US used "weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud" and that he watched "pieces of these bombs explode into large fires that continued to burn on the skin even after people dumped water on the burns." The doctor said he "treated people who had their skin melted"

Jeff Englehart, a former marine who spent two days in Fallujah during the battle, said he heard the order go out over military communication that WP was to be dropped. In the RAI film, Mr Englehart, now an outspoken critic of the war, says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete ... Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children."

In the aftermath of the battle, the State Department's Counter Misinformation Office issued a statement saying that WP was only "used [WP shells] very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters." When The Independent confronted the State Department with the first-hand accounts of soldiers who participated, an official accepted the mistake and undertook to correct its website. This has since been done.

Indeed, the Pentagon readily admits WP was used. Spokesman Lt Colonel Barry Venables said yesterday WP was used to obscure troop deployments and also to "fire at the enemy". He added: "It burns ... It's an incendiary weapon. That is what it does."

Why the two embassies have issued statements denying that WP was used is unclear. However, there have been previous examples of US officials issuing incorrect statements about the use of incendiary weapons. Earlier this year, British Defence Minister Adam Ingram was forced to apologise to MPs after informing them that the US had not used an updated form of napalm in Iraq. He said he had been misled by US officials.

Napalm was used in several instances during the initial invasion. Colonel Randolph Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11, remarked during the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003: "The generals love napalm - it has a big psychological effect."

In his letter, Ambassador Tuttle claims there is a distinction between napalm and the 500lb Mk-77 firebombs he says were dropped - even though experts say they are virtually identical. The only difference is that the petrol used in traditional napalm has been replaced in the newer bombs by jet fuel.

Since the RAI broadcast, there have been calls for an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the battle of Fallujah. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has also repeated its call to "all fighters to take every feasible precaution to spare civilians and to respect the principles of distinction and proportionality in all operations".

There have also been claims that in the minutiae of the argument about the use of WP, a broader truth is being missed. Kathy Kelly, a campaigner with the anti-war group Voices of the Wilderness, said: "If the US wants to promote security for this generation and the next, it should build relationships with these countries. If the US uses conventional or non-conventional weapons, in civilian neighourhoods, that melt people's bodies down to the bone, it will leave these people seething. We should think on this rather than arguing about whether we can squeak such weapons past the Geneva Conventions and international accords."

The controversy has raged for 12 months. Ever since last November, when US forces battled to clear Fallujah of insurgents, there have been repeated claims that troops used "unusual" weapons in the assault that all but flattened the Iraqi city. Specifically, controversy has focussed on white phosphorus shells (WP) - an incendiary weapon usually used to obscure troop movements but which can equally be deployed as an offensive weapon against an enemy. The use of such incendiary weapons against civilian targets is banned by international treaty.

The debate was reignited last week when an Italian documentary claimed Iraqi civilians - including women and children - had been killed by terrible burns caused by WP. The documentary, Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, by the state broadcaster RAI, cited one Fallujah human-rights campaigner who reported how residents told how "a rain of fire fell on the city". Yesterday, demonstrators organised by the Italian communist newspaper, Liberazione, protested outside the US Embassy in Rome. Today, another protest is planned for the US Consulate in Milan. "The 'war on terrorism' is terrorism," one of the newspaper's commentators declared.

Imagine that: the Pentagon lies and uses anti-personnel weapons against civilians. Imagine that!

That's what is going on in our name. You and I have signed our names to this horror.

Your Stolen Dollars

Pentagon's Fuel Deal Is Lesson in Risks of Graft-Prone Regions

By DAVID S. CLOUD
Published: November 15, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - Soon after the American invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, the Pentagon opened an air base in neighboring Kyrgyzstan and made a deal to get jet fuel from the only two suppliers in the country. The companies just happened to be linked to relatives of the country's president. The airport in Bishkek became the site of an American air base.

Now the two businesses are under scrutiny by Kyrgyz prosecutors and F.B.I. agents who are looking into whether the president at the time, Askar Akayev, and his family pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars, partly from Pentagon fuel contracts, before he was ousted this year.

The family's involvement at the base, a critical site for refueling Air Force aircraft flying over Afghanistan, is a story of everyday cronyism in an impoverished country where the coming of the Americans was seen as a financial windfall for the well connected.

But the case also illustrates the risks of alliances with nations that are unstable and rife with corruption. Mr. Akayev's abrupt departure in March has put the Pentagon in an awkward bind. It needs continued access to the base, but the $207 million spent on fuel contracts has created resentment among the country's new leaders, some of whom contend that the United States knew where the proceeds were going.

"We are currently the only country in the region willing to provide the United States with an air base," said Zamira Sydykova, the country's ambassador to Washington. "Over the last four years the U.S. has paid little in the way of rent. Yet at the same time, the U.S. was paying inflated fuel prices to companies stolen by the family of the former president."

A lawyer representing the family, Maksim Maksimovich, said the former president had not been involved in improper business dealings connected with the base and described the Kyrgyz investigation as politically motivated.

Pentagon officials say the two businesses, Manas International Services Ltd. and Aalam Services Ltd., were used not because of their connections but because they were the only ones with facilities to transport and store fuel at the air base in Bishkek, the capital. Though the Akayevs may have benefited, the officials said, Pentagon rules do not bar contracts with companies that have ties to a foreign leader.

"There is nothing per se improper about relatives of a foreign leader having an ownership interest in a company that is a U.S. government contractor or subcontractor," said Lana Hampton, a spokesman for the Defense Energy Support Center, the Pentagon agency that oversees the contracts. She would not address whether Pentagon officials had known of the Akayev family ties to the two fuel companies.

Scott Horton, an American lawyer and an expert on Central Asia, said the Pentagon's handling of the matter had damaged its standing in Kyrgyzstan. "The Pentagon was doing contracts that they knew were going to benefit the ruling family," said Mr. Horton, who said the Kyrgyz government had informally consulted him when the base was established. "It was very clear that this was an effort to secure the support of the old regime. But it had the exact opposite effect that the Pentagon wanted it to have."

The current president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, is insisting that the United States make retroactive lease payments of $80 million and help recover the contract money that he says should have gone to the Kyrgyz government - not to the Akayevs and their supporters. Lease payments since 2002 have been only $2 million a year, the Kyrgyz complain.

But Pentagon officials say the demand amounts to asking them to pay twice for use of the base for the last four years. "Any possible misappropriation of funds is an internal Kyrgyz matter," a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said in a statement.

An internal F.B.I. report given to Kyrgyz prosecutors in September found that the two businesses might have been involved in money-laundering through accounts at Citibank in New York and the Dutch bank ABM Amro. The companies also had transactions with "a myriad of suspicious U.S. shell companies" associated with Mr. Akayev, his family and arms traffickers, the report said.

If they were any good at graft, it wouldn't be on the front page of the Times.

New Lows

President's ratings hit new low in poll
By Susan Page, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Americans' views of President Bush and his trustworthiness have hit new lows, a downturn that could make it more difficult for him to push his legislative agenda and to boost Republican candidates in next year's congressional elections.

Fewer than one in 10 adults say they would prefer a congressional candidate who is a Republican and who agrees with Bush on most major issues, according to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday. Even among Republicans, seven of 10 are most likely to back a candidate who has had at least some disagreements with the president. (Related: Poll results)

Bush's job-approval rating sank to a record 37%, down from a previous low of 39% a month ago. The poll finds growing criticism of the president, unease about the nation's direction and opposition to the war in Iraq.

"All of this is a culmination: How we ended up going into Iraq, gasoline prices, the underlying economic jitters, the sense that the president is out of touch with what the average person wants," Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio says. "What good news have people heard?"

G. Terry Madonna, a political scientist and director of the non-partisan Keystone Poll in Pennsylvania, sees officeholders in the state reacting to Bush's declining ratings. "More and more Republicans will begin to separate themselves from the president and establish independent positions," he predicts.

Last week, Republican candidates lost both of this year's gubernatorial races, in New Jersey and Virginia. New Jersey contender Doug Forrester said in an interview published in the Newark Star-Ledger on Sunday that Bush's lack of popularity was too much for him to overcome.

In the poll:

• Two-thirds of independents and 91% of Democrats disapprove of the job Bush is doing. Even among Republicans, 19% express disapproval — a new high.

• For the first time — albeit by a narrow 49%-48% — a plurality disapprove of the way Bush is handling the issue of terrorism. Six in 10 disapprove of the way he's handling the economy, Iraq and immigration, and 71% disapprove of him on controlling federal spending.

• By 12 points, those surveyed say the country would be better off if Democrats controlled Congress.

Tracey Schmitt of the Republican National Committee dismissed the poll results as "bumpy political atmospherics" and said Bush "will remain focused on the nation's priorities."

Schmitt is playing the R game and pretending that Americans aren't paying attention to the news. The reason that we are on bumpy road is that W is driving. It's not like we got here by accident.

Good Eatin'

This is a presentation of huevos rancheros I fully support. Have them for breakfast or lunch, as we say in the Minneapple.

Baby Steps II

Senators reach Gitmo detainees compromise

LIZ SIDOTI
Associated Press
Mon, Nov. 14, 2005

WASHINGTON - A bipartisan group of senators reached a compromise Monday that would allow detainees at Guantanamo Bay to appeal the rulings of military tribunals to the federal courts.

Under the agreement, detainees who receive a punishment of 10 years in prison to death would receive an automatic appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Lesser sentences would not receive automatic review, but detainees still could petition the court to hear their case.

In addition, the 500 or so detainees at the U.S. naval base in Cuba would be allowed to challenge in federal court the procedure under which they were labeled an "enemy combatant."

The compromise proposal allows the federal court reviews in place of the one tool the Supreme Court gave detainees in 2004 to fight the legality of their detention - the right to file habeas corpus petitions in federal courts.

"Instead of unlimited lawsuits, the courts now will be looking at whether you're properly determined to be an enemy combatant and, if you're tried, whether or not your conviction followed the military commission procedures in place," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in an interview.

The Senate will vote on the compromise provision Tuesday. Approval would mean the Senate endorses the Bush administration's military tribunals for prosecuting suspected foreign terrorists at Guantanamo. The Supreme Court agreed last week to review a constitutional challenge to those tribunals.

Graham sponsored the original provision the Senate added Thursday to a defense bill on a 49-42 vote. It simply barred suspects from filing habeas corpus petitions used to fight unlawful detentions, a vote that came in spite of last year's Supreme Court decision granting detainees such rights.

Human-rights groups, many Democrats and four Republicans opposed the original provision, saying it was flawed because it only allowed one very narrow appeal of a detainee's status as an "enemy combatant" to a federal court.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., called the compromise "a significant improvement" because it provides a much-needed automatic review by a federal court in death penalty cases and would not strip courts of jurisdiction over the cases of detainees, unlike Graham's original proposal.

It's a start. Let's see if we can get our Senators to vote for the Bingaman proposal to restore some of the habeas corpus rights back to the detainees.

Special Education

This is a fascinating case that the Supreme Court decided today... it's one I can see from both points of view but ultimately agree with the majority on (which means I'm agreeing with Thomas again... a clear sign of senility)

Parents Carry Burden of Proof in School Cases, Court Rules

By DAVID STOUT
Published: November 14, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - The Supreme Court ruled today, in a case of intense interest to educators and millions of parents, that people who demand changes to their children's special-education programs have the burden of proving those programs inadequate.

The court decided, 6 to 2, that the party bringing a challenge to a disabled child's "individualized education program" before an administrative law judge has the responsibility of showing that it is unsatisfactory.

The majority, in an opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, held that the 1970's Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, sometimes referred to as IDEA, does not necessarily place the onus on the school district. Rather, the majority said, the burden of proof is on whoever brings the challenge - the parents, as in this case, or the school district.

Justice O'Connor rejected the argument that a school district ought to bear the burden of proof more or less automatically because they have more resources than individual parents. The act in question, she said, gives parents plenty of power in disputes over individualized education programs.

"They are not left to challenge the government without a realistic opportunity to access the necessary evidence, or without an expert with the firepower to match the opposition," Justice O'Connor wrote. She was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter and Clarence Thomas.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer dissented. Justice Ginsburg said, in this case, the school district in Montgomery County, Md., had been slow to meet the needs of Brian Schaffer, a special-ed student, whose parents brought the suit.

"Had the school district, in the first instance, offered Brian a public or private school placement equivalent to the one the district ultimately provided, this entire litigation and its attendant costs could have been avoided," Justice Ginsburg wrote.

It is nice to see teachers afforded the same rights in this case that most other professionals have, namely the person making the accusation has to prove it.

I am all for parental involvement in their child's school, but telling me that a student who does nothing should receive a passing grade because I am not "meeting their needs" is insane, yet a fellow coworker of mine went through that all of last year with one of her English students. Thankfully, she had detailed records of the child's behavior so the principal could back her up. Still, the law should not make the assumption that she was unable to do her job.

Still, that doesn't mean much for the families that are stuck in districts with poor or non existent special education programs because the district has a hard time recruiting and retaining people in that field. Hopefully, this case will encourage both the parents and teachers to work together for what is best for the students.

Moving Backward

Court Pick Described View on Abortion in '85 Document

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 14, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in 1985 that he was proud of his Reagan-era work helping the government argue that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion," documents showed Monday.

Alito, who was applying in 1985 to become deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, boasted in a document that he helped "to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly."

"I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government argued that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion," he said.

The document was included in more than 100 pages of material about Alito released by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library on Monday.

Abortion will be a key topic in January at Alito's confirmation hearings to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who is a crucial swing vote on abortion on the high court.

Alito, 55, has told senators in private meetings that he had "great respect" for the precedent set by the 1973 Supreme Court ruling, Roe v. Wade, that legalized abortion but did not commit to upholding it.

Some abortion rights groups already have come out against Alito because of his work as a federal appellate judge, including a dissent on a U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking down a law requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

So, he's proud of this, eh? It tells me everything I need to know.

HPI*

It was so nice to be away from the TeeVee and to spend a few days with the other Flu Obssessed (which is the language favored by the director of the conference.) Here is some other language I want to give you (my specialty is Risk Communication): pandemic influenza is a low probability event, but if it happens, the effects might be catastrophic. That is why we plan for it.

One of the things I got to miss while being away from the TeeVee was the fingernails-on-the-blackboard presentation of CNN's Kyra Phillips. It all comes back so quickly....

(*Highly Pathogenic Influenza)

Crystal Ball Gazing

Postie Dan Balz was the reporter taking part in this morning's Politics Live Chat. A perceptive question and answer between Balz and a reader:

Annandale, Va.: Do you think it's a major deal that Dems won the Governors office in two states that had... Democratic governors? Is this the first shot of 2006, status quo, or something else?

Dan Balz: I don't think it's all that significant that Democrats won New Jersey. That state has gone from a genuine swing state to a pretty solidly blue state in the past 15 years, mostly during the 1990s. But I think it is significant that Democrats won again in Virginia, because that is a state that remains a Republican bastion in presidential races. The state is changing, however, and this election might have been a further sign of that. One other thing to note about Virginia is that Gov. Mark Warner and Gov.-elect Tim Kaine have provided a centrist (and in Kaine's case, a faith-based) model for the Democrats to study and perhaps adopt.

The last month of the campaign was butt-ugly and I was glad to see the end of it, but Balz picked up on what I thought was the real news out of the contest. Tim Kaine is Catholic (in a Baptist state) and managed to find a principled way to make that work for him. Northern Virgina (that mass of DC suburbs) is both more Catholic and more liberal than the downstate area is, so this is not a small thing, even in the face of the population growth of NoVA (which is growing fastest in traditionally Republican counties.) I'm not going to try to read too many tea leaves into this, but I do think we can look for more candidates running toward the center in '06.

PR

It's Not up to the Court
By Howard Zinn
November 2005 Issue

John Roberts sailed through his confirmation hearings as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with enthusiastic Republican support, and a few weak mutterings of opposition by the Democrats. Then, after the far right deemed Harriet Miers insufficiently doctrinaire, Bush nominated arch conservative Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. This has caused a certain consternation among people we affectionately term "the left."

I can understand that sinking feeling. Even listening to pieces of Roberts's confirmation hearings was enough to induce despair: the joking with the candidate, the obvious signs that, whether Democrats or Republicans, these are all members of the same exclusive club. Roberts's proper "credentials," his "nice guy" demeanor, his insistence to the Judiciary Committee that he is not an "ideologue" (can you imagine anyone, even Robert Bork or Dick Cheney, admitting that he is an "ideologue"?) were clearly more important than his views on equality, justice, the rights of defendants, the war powers of the President.

At one point in the hearings, The New York Times reported, Roberts "summed up his philosophy." He had been asked, "Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?" (Would any candidate admit that he was on the side of "the big guy"? Presumably serious "hearings" bring out idiot questions.)

Roberts replied: "If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy's going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy's going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution."

If the Constitution is the holy test, then a justice should abide by its provision in Article VI that not only the Constitution itself but "all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land." This includes the Geneva Convention of 1949, which the United States signed, and which insists that prisoners of war must be granted the rights of due process.

A district court judge in 2004 ruled that the detainees held in Guantanamo for years without trial were protected by the Geneva Convention and deserved due process. Roberts and two colleagues on the Court of Appeals overruled this.

There is enormous hypocrisy surrounding the pious veneration of the Constitution and "the rule of law." The Constitution, like the Bible, is infinitely flexible and is used to serve the political needs of the moment. When the country was in economic crisis and turmoil in the Thirties and capitalism needed to be saved from the anger of the poor and hungry and unemployed, the Supreme Court was willing to stretch to infinity the constitutional right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. It decided that the national government, desperate to regulate farm production, could tell a family farmer what to grow on his tiny piece of land.

When the Constitution gets in the way of a war, it is ignored. When the Supreme Court was faced, during Vietnam, with a suit by soldiers refusing to go, claiming that there had been no declaration of war by Congress, as the Constitution required, the soldiers could not get four Supreme Court justices to agree to even hear the case. When, during World War I, Congress ignored the First Amendment's right to free speech by passing legislation to prohibit criticism of the war, the imprisonment of dissenters under this law was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which included two presumably liberal and learned justices: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis.

It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.

There are the plutocrats and oligarchs and then there are the rest of us, the hell raisers willing to take the fight to the streets. Howard Zinn is a historian, and a good one. The history of government in this country has been the history of violating the constitution. The Patriot II Act is the current iteration. Go Google the or to get a little blast from the past. "The Constitution" is something honored in the breach and during elections.

WaPo Prints Propaganda

Safer Smallpox Vaccines In Works
U.S. Preparing For Potential Bioterror Attack

By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 14, 2005; Page A01

New vaccine technologies are emerging that offer a fresh chance to devise a strategy against smallpox, the most fearsome potential weapon in the bioterror arsenal.

Two companies are reporting rapid progress in developing a new vaccine designed to be safer than the standard one, and a third company, with no government support, is developing yet another new vaccine. That vaccine could offer significant advantages if terrorists were to unleash the smallpox germ in several cities at once, requiring the vaccination of huge numbers of people.

The government stumbled badly in its campaign after Sept. 11, 2001, to vaccinate health care workers who would respond to a smallpox attack. It has since spent millions to fund development of a new, safer vaccine and has already decided to order enough to protect at least 10 million people. It could buy far more if money becomes available.

Progress on safer vaccines is a success for U.S. policymakers, but it also confronts them with vexing new questions about which vaccines to buy, how many doses to buy, whether to resume a failed program to inoculate some people in advance of an attack and how to deploy the vaccines rapidly if smallpox is unleashed by terrorists.

The government is preparing to tackle the strategic questions over the next few months. "Right at the present moment, we're setting up a committee to really look at this with a very hard eye," said D.A. Henderson, a Baltimore doctor who advises the government and who is often called the world's premier expert on smallpox. "There are major changes that have occurred that force us to reexamine what we're going to do."

After the terrorist and anthrax attacks of late 2001, concern about the unrelated smallpox virus reached a fever pitch. Anthrax is deadly, but it does not spread from person to person; smallpox does, and an attack could theoretically kill millions. For a population of nearly 300 million, the country had only 15 million doses of vaccine.

This is basically horseshit. No one is going to use small pox as a bioweapon. The blowback would be fearsome. This is Bushco using fear, nothing more, to keep us frightened and complacent.

The Players

More from the NYT. I know something about how long it takes to knock a website together. This is impressive. Ya think they might have had advance warning or something? Nah....

Unwavering Bush Ally Acts Quickly on Court Choices

By GLEN JUSTICE and ARON PILHOFER
Published: November 14, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - When President Bush named Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. as his Supreme Court pick, it took Progress for America just 39 minutes to introduce a slick Web site and begin lobbying for his confirmation. And that was slow.

The group had taken 11 minutes to do the same for Harriet E. Miers and only 7 minutes for John G. Roberts Jr. before that. Knowing it would support whomever Mr. Bush chose, Progress for America started working months ago to create more than two dozen Web sites promoting various potential candidates. When the announcements came, it was prepared.

"We get out of the box quickly," Brian McCabe, the group's president, said in an interview.

While many Republican organizations support the White House selectively, Progress for America has shaped an unusual role for itself as an unwavering ally on just about every issue: Supreme Court nominations, tax cuts, terrorism and changes to Social Security.

The group, which is likely to play a leading role in support of Judge Alito, expects to spend at least $2 million on several waves of television advertisements as he heads into Senate confirmation hearings, Mr. McCabe said. And it has also vowed to respond to any attacks by Democratic groups. "P.F.A. stands ready to do what it takes," he said.

Though the group describes itself as an independent grass-roots organization, it receives millions of dollars from the president's largest fund-raisers, is run by former Bush campaign aides and draws heavy support from a Republican lobbying and consulting firm in Washington.

As a result, Progress for America often functions like an unofficial extension of the White House, advancing the president's policies alongside the Republican National Committee.

The group's campaign arm, the Progress for America Voter Fund, is one of the so-called 527 committees, which spent tens of millions of dollars on both sides to influence last year's elections. Though the groups can collect unlimited contributions, they were barred from coordinating with campaigns. But in the postelection season, there is no prohibition against coordinating with the White House and the party, and Progress for America has become one of the strongest players to emerge from 2004.

"It has become a weapon in the arsenal of the Bush administration and the R.N.C.," said David B. Magleby, a professor at Brigham Young University who studies politics. "You can be sure the Democrats are watching and learning, and that this will become the mode of future politics."

The group was formed in 2001 as a nonprofit organization to support Mr. Bush's agenda, but drew widespread attention in last year's presidential race. Its Voter Fund raised roughly $45 million in a few months and financed a barrage of television advertisements focused on terrorism. Now, the group is pushing Mr. Bush's new priorities.

With a bottle of Pepto at my elbow, I monitor these websites and they are slick, not something thrown together at the last minute. I'll try to put up the links later today, once I've rescued the cats from the boarding place. Yes, I'm back, after a long couple of days at a pandemic flu conference in San Fran.

We'll take a little closer look at Judge Alito today along with some of the more general judicial news.

My laptop is happy to be back on her usual workstation, with her cooling pad beneath her and her USB hub whirring next to her.

Hiding the Truth

My mother still hasn't figured out how to use Internet Explorer. This is a disaster.

Your government on drugs

STARTING TUESDAY, RETIREES can sign up for the new Medicare prescription drug benefit. Besides some luck and patience, they'll need an actuarial advisor, a personal pharmacist, a high-speed computer connection and maybe a sharp 12-year-old to help them navigate the Medicare website.

Oh, and one more thing: They could also use a government with the sense to change the program if it doesn't work. It has the potential to be catastrophic for the U.S. Treasury, if not for retirees' health.

Several foundations and advocacy groups, such as the Center for Healthcare Rights, are equipped to offer good advice to individuals. But they usually have small local staffs, which may be overwhelmed. (In Los Angeles County alone, for example, about 70 different plans are available.) There is a Medicare hotline, 1-800-MEDICARE, but it starts with a voicemail maze and is staffed by low-paid employees unlikely to have answers to complicated queries.

Recipients who are already in Medicare HMOs and satisfied with their offerings can accept their HMO's default offering. Patients in nursing homes have protections to ensure that necessary medications won't be interrupted. Those who are on Medi-Cal and Medicare are also automatically enrolled in a plan, and retirees with a drug plan through a former employer may want to keep it instead — if the employer continues to offer it. And people with annual incomes of about $13,000 or less are being offered a simpler, more generous program.

That leaves the tens of millions in regular Medicare — people who choose their own doctors.

The Medicare website, if it works properly, may be useful — although the site is confusing, and 75% of Medicare beneficiaries, according to the most comprehensive survey, don't use the Internet. For those who manage to enter their personal and prescription information, the site promises to show what purports to be the lowest-priced plan for them, but many details are omitted. Do certain drugs, and drug changes, require special authorization? For patients with severe chronic conditions, it could be crucial information. And each plan may change what drugs it offers from year to year.

True, these plans will reduce costs for most Medicare beneficiaries who don't already have a good drug benefit. It's just that the difficulty of making a "right" choice is mind-boggling. Meanwhile, fraud alerts are sounding because federal Medicare rules allow the plans to be sold by telemarketers. Bogus outfits intent on gathering seniors' financial information may pose as "experts" promising to help them navigate the confusion of new benefits.

One of the questions I learned to ask when discussing legislation is "who benefits?" Qui bono, in formal rhetorical language. Big PHarma wrote this legislation. End of question.

Winter Comes

Survivors of the Pakistani earthquake left to die of cold
Thousands have no shelter with the first snows of winter only days away
By Justin Huggler in Bagh, Kashmir
Published: 13 November 2005

At least 500,000 earthquake survivors in Pakistan still have no shelter with the fierce Himalayan winter just days away, international relief agencies have warned. Aid workers are scrambling to get tents to survivors in high mountain areas where snow may arrive any day, but the international relief effort is failing.

The problem is a severe lack of funds. Relief agencies warn that if they do not get adequate shelters to survivors before snow falls, thousands will die.

A desperate plea made to The Independent on Sunday, from a village in the mountains above the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, illustrated the scale of the crisis.

"Please tell the British government to help us. Please tell anyone," Mohammed Idris said by telephone. "We have no tents and it is so cold at night. If we do not have tents soon the children will die."

Mr Idris said he was one of 4,000 villagers in Rajmerra with only 20 tents between them. On some nights, he added, temperatures already dip below freezing and water turns to ice. On other nights survivors are pelted with torrential rain, havenothing to sleep under and sit awake all night, shivering.

"We can see the snow on the hills and it will be here any day now," Mr Idris added. "I went to the Pakistan army today to ask for tents but they say they cannot help, as they don't have any. Please tell people we need tents, food and blankets." Rajmerra lies in Battamori district, near Battagaram. Time for them is running out fast.

Much the same situation can be seen throughout northern Pakistan. In the village of Maira, in the hills above Bagh, we found a two-month-old baby named Ariba, sleeping with her mother under a thin sheet of tarpaulin that did not even cover the rope-bed, which jutted out into the rain. At 4,500ft above sea level, temperatures plunge once darkness falls and the snow will be here soon, too.

"If it starts to snow we'll have to try to build a new house," Ariba's father, Abdul Rauf, said. But the family has no money and no building materials.

In the same village we found Mohammed Haleem salvaging wood from his ruined home to use as winter fuel, including beams, doors and even the roof thatch. He was dismembering the house to keep his family alive. "It burns my heart to do this but I have no choice," he said.

Of an estimated three million people made homeless by the earthquake, only 10,000 are in official relief camps. Most remain in their often remote mountain villages, where aid is still struggling to get through. The charity World Vision last week said around 250,000 survivors had received no aid at all.

Aid agencies say they are doing what they can but governments have not put up enough money. The United Nations has received only $133m (£76m) towards an emergency appeal for $550m. It urgently needs $42m just to keep the current aid effort going.

Pakistan says that out of the $2bn pledged by foreign governments, it has received only $9.5m. The charity Oxfam says Britain has contributed only 24 per cent of what it says would be its "fair share", based on the size of its economy.

Even when survivors do have tents, they are often inadequate for the needs of a fierce Himalayan winter. In Maira, where the Pakistan army finally dropped some tents - though not enough to go around - they were lightweight summer tents that are not even waterproof.

All over the quake-affected area, there is the smell of rotting bodies. No one has had time to dig out the corpses, such is the struggle to stay alive.

Even in a city that enjoys easy access, such as Muzaffarabad, the state of the relief camps is terrible. In one camp, we found 3,000 people sharing 12 toilets. These camps have already suffered outbreaks of diarrhoea and doctors fear cholera may follow.

Pakistani troops evicted quake survivors from one informal relief camp in the city as the sanitation and overcrowding were so poor that they feared for people's lives.

Some survivors said the Pakistan authorities had inadvertently added to their woes. In Maira, they said the authorities thwarted their attempts to draw on their savings to rebuild their homes by freezing their accounts for three months.

The move was apparently made to prevent villagers who drew out all their money from being robbed, but it left them defenceless against the elements.

With such a dire shortage of tents, many men are giving up their spaces to the women and children and sleeping outside. Among those who have to sleep outside are boys as young as 10.

Another problem is that villagers are reluctant to move down to the valleys. The Pakistani government has called on homeless quake survivors in villages where snow is imminent to go down. But often they don't want to go. "Where will we put our farm animals?" Raja Moidnaiz, of Maira, asked. "Even if we go down there, there are no tents for us."

He added: "The government is talking about villages where the snow is 10ft deep. Here, the snowfall is light - it's only 4ft deep."

That, however, is still deep enough to kill anyone without a proper shelter.

According to official figures, about 73,000 people died in the quake itself. Without urgent action in the coming weeks, that figure will grow by several thousand - victims of an additional disaster that was entirely avoidable.

At least 500,000 earthquake survivors in Pakistan still have no shelter with the fierce Himalayan winter just days away, international relief agencies have warned. Aid workers are scrambling to get tents to survivors in high mountain areas where snow may arrive any day, but the international relief effort is failing.

The problem is a severe lack of funds. Relief agencies warn that if they do not get adequate shelters to survivors before snow falls, thousands will die.

A desperate plea made to The Independent on Sunday, from a village in the mountains above the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, illustrated the scale of the crisis.

"Please tell the British government to help us. Please tell anyone," Mohammed Idris said by telephone. "We have no tents and it is so cold at night. If we do not have tents soon the children will die."

Mr Idris said he was one of 4,000 villagers in Rajmerra with only 20 tents between them. On some nights, he added, temperatures already dip below freezing and water turns to ice. On other nights survivors are pelted with torrential rain, havenothing to sleep under and sit awake all night, shivering.

"We can see the snow on the hills and it will be here any day now," Mr Idris added. "I went to the Pakistan army today to ask for tents but they say they cannot help, as they don't have any. Please tell people we need tents, food and blankets." Rajmerra lies in Battamori district, near Battagaram. Time for them is running out fast.

Much the same situation can be seen throughout northern Pakistan. In the village of Maira, in the hills above Bagh, we found a two-month-old baby named Ariba, sleeping with her mother under a thin sheet of tarpaulin that did not even cover the rope-bed, which jutted out into the rain. At 4,500ft above sea level, temperatures plunge once darkness falls and the snow will be here soon, too.

"If it starts to snow we'll have to try to build a new house," Ariba's father, Abdul Rauf, said. But the family has no money and no building materials.

In the same village we found Mohammed Haleem salvaging wood from his ruined home to use as winter fuel, including beams, doors and even the roof thatch. He was dismembering the house to keep his family alive. "It burns my heart to do this but I have no choice," he said.

Of an estimated three million people made homeless by the earthquake, only 10,000 are in official relief camps. Most remain in their often remote mountain villages, where aid is still struggling to get through. The charity World Vision last week said around 250,000 survivors had received no aid at all.

Aid agencies say they are doing what they can but governments have not put up enough money. The United Nations has received only $133m (£76m) towards an emergency appeal for $550m. It urgently needs $42m just to keep the current aid effort going."

Can someone tell me why the victims of the tsunami are somehow more worthy of aid? Send your dollars
here. Help will go out today.

Monday Monday

I don't know about you, but I'd like to have some good news before I get rolling, so here it is.

Odds More in Pandas' Favor Than Ever Before

By D'Vera Cohn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 14, 2005

Even as they celebrate the thriving giant panda cub at the National Zoo, many scientists and environmentalists are increasingly hopeful about the prospects for the species in the wild bamboo forests of China, a startling turnaround from their gloomy outlook a decade ago.

They base their optimism on a recent census that found more giant pandas than previously believed, on expanded Chinese government protections for the rare black-and-white bear, and on an infusion of U.S. money into conservation projects.

"There are more pandas surviving in the wild than we thought before," said Karen Baragona, who heads the giant panda program of the World Wildlife Fund, which has worked in China since 1979. "The population seems to be much more stable, and the prospects for making major progress are excellent."

Giant pandas are endangered chiefly because their living space has been eaten up by logging, farming and other human activities. Baragona and others emphasized that the situation remains fragile, threatened by the explosion of population growth and economic development in southwestern China -- the only place where the animal lives in the wild. The giant panda, one of the world's most endangered animals, still demands an extraordinary level of permanent protection, they said.

At the same time, the number of captive giant pandas has grown because of improvements in breeding that are producing more cubs. There are now about 160 captive animals worldwide. Chinese officials say that when that population grows large enough, they hope to try to reintroduce some captive-born animals into the wild.

Not long ago, the giant panda's chances appeared to be dwindling. A count in the 1980s had found only 1,000 of them in the wild. More than half their habitat in Sichuan province was destroyed in the 1970s and 1980s. In the early 1990s, there were only a few protected panda reserves.

Giving one reason for hope, the Chinese government and the World Wildlife Fund announced last year an updated count that tallied nearly 1,600 pandas in the wild.

Despite the higher number, most scientists believe the panda population may actually have remained stable since the previous count in the 1980s. The most recent survey probably did a better job of finding animals, they said. But in any event, they said, the numbers may no longer be declining.

"The pandas are more secure than they've ever been," said Donald Lindburg, head of the giant panda team at the San Diego Zoo. "The Chinese have learned the whole world is watching, now more so than in the past."

Advocates are also cheered that the Chinese government has established a growing number of giant panda reserves -- up from 13 in the early 1990s to 56 this year. The reserves protect about half the country's giant panda habitat in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. Logging, livestock grazing, hunting and the collection of medicinal herbs are prohibited on reserve land.

U.S. money plays a growing role. Funds began pouring into China from U.S. zoos after giant panda loans resumed in the late 1990s. As a condition of getting their pandas, the four zoos that exhibit the animals are required to spend $4 million a year on projects in China to conserve the species in the wild, though some of the money has been held up because of disputes over how it should be spent.

It's a nice and long article that should put a smile on your face. Now, once again into the breach... and where did I put those tests...

...a tool of despotism

Torture Powers Are Now in the Senate's Hands

by JEREMY BRECHER & BRENDAN SMITH
[posted online on November 14, 2005]

Can US government officials lock people up and throw away the key without having to prove their case to any court? This fundamental question of democratic government is hanging in the balance in the US Senate.

Last Thursday, the Senate voted to support the "Graham amendment" restricting the authority of American courts--specifically, their authority to make the government explain why it is holding foreign nationals. The measure would reverse a 2004 Supreme Court decision that detainees, even those the government has declared "unlawful combatants," have the right to appeal to American courts. This right--technically known as "habeas corpus"--is enshrined in the US Constitution.

There was an immediate tidal wave of protest--and not just from the usual suspects. John Hutson, a retired rear admiral and former judge advocate general of the Navy, not only protested but organized 60 former military officers to object. The National Institute of Military Justice, the organization of military lawyers, denounced it. High-powered legal scholars like Judith Resnick of Yale Law School, David Shapiro and Frank Michelman of Harvard Law School, and Burt Neuborne of New York University Law School circulated a letter describing the legislation in the starkest of terms:

"The Graham amendment embodies an effort to alter fundamental precepts of our constitutional order. It consigns the protection of fundamental human liberties to unilateral executive determination."

An editorial in the New York Times concurred: "History shows that in the wrong hands, the power to jail people without showing cause is a tool of despotism."

Cooler heads in the Senate are already reconsidering its action. An amendment proposed by Senator Jeff Bingaman that would restore habeas corpus may come up as early as this week. Senator John McCain says it is "entirely possible" that the Graham amendment, which he supported, will be modified "to address concerns about lawful treatment and the scope of independent appeals."

The five Democrats who provided the 49-42 margin of support for the bill--Senators Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon--may well be hearing from their constituents. But the Administration may try to make an end-run around all Senate-initiated limits on its powers by blocking them in the House. If so, this dubious battle could take weeks to unfold.

Graham, a former JAG lawyer, should know better than to offer such a blatantly unconstitutional amendment. And why McCain would support this is beyond me. This amendment is an open invitation to continue the policies of secret prisons, torture & rendition.

You CAN Go Home Again

I'm back, and couldn't be happier to be back in my own little snuggery. The conference was excellent, but I hate travelling.

I'll have a lot to say after I've had a couple of days to sleep on all I've learned. Thanks to the great job written by the relief team, the hit count stayed high while I was gone. I'm real proud of the job that they did.

There will be a Pandefense 2.0 conference, probably this spring here in DC to track the appropriations process for W's panflu plan. We plan to do some lobbying, and I'll be holding down part of the PR effort (lots of experience.) I'm hoping that the reveres will be able to join us for that one and the three Wiki editors can get some face time with each other.

Sunday Science

A good friend of mine who, like me, is a recovering science geek sent me this link. Both of us love science, but had issues with a thorny subject called Calculus that made us investigate other career options (he's a religion teacher at a Catholic school in Maryland).

Apparently a patent was granted for an anti gravity device which sounds really cool. There is only one problem... it looks like it needs a limitless supply of energy (don't we all?). Still, the article has the link to the actual papers explaining the device and even has a sketch of it.

So what do you think of it?

Suspension by Race

The local paper here is ok and every once in a while it knocks your socks off with a well done article. Today, it did just that and it hit home for me because of my profession.

The main article dealt with the problems of minority men in school and doesn't offer any simple answers. This was made especially aware a few weeks ago when an Todd Antonio Douglas was killed in a drive by in Durham. Now, the fact that a kid was killed in a shooting in Durham is not news per se, even though the crime rate there has dropped quite a bit, but this kid's mother is well known in Durham. Over the last couple of years, she has waged a war with the Durham County Schools. Why?

That day in September 2003, an argument erupted between Todd and another student. At first, McDonald gave Todd an in-school suspension -- he could attend school but was not allowed in regular classes -- and called Smith to the school. Not wanting the confrontation to escalate, Smith asked McDonald to set up a meeting for her and Todd with the other boy and his parents.

The families met and ironed out the differences. Smith thought the matter was resolved. But later that day, Smith said, McDonald called to say Todd was being suspended for 10 days because he was in a gang.

Confused and angry, Smith appealed to a hearing officer but said her calls went unanswered.

Irate that no one seemed to care that her son, a junior, was missing two weeks of school for a simple argument, she drew up a sign and began picketing in front of the district administration building.

A few days later, when Todd's suspension ended, Smith took her son back to Southern, where she learned that he had been "administratively transferred" to Lakeview for the rest of the year. Lakeview is the district's alternative school for students kicked out of their regular schools.

The decision was made, McDonald wrote in an Oct. 2, 2003, letter to Superintendent Ann Denlinger, because Todd was a member of the Crips street gang. "It is my belief that because of his behavior which is irate and unstable, his defiance toward authority and his involvement in a gang that he poses an immediate threat," McDonald's letter stated.

Smith demanded proof. She does not claim that her son was perfect -- he'd gotten into trouble at another school the year before for groping a classmate -- but Smith said she knew her son did not run with a gang.

"If my child is leading some gang, show me his file that says so," Smith said she demanded of McDonald. "He said, '[Todd] wears white T-shirts and bluejeans and associates with other kids who are in gangs.' "

Smith shook her head ruefully.

"That's what started this all."

Now I've taught Freshmen for the last 3 years and have seen quite a few suspended and long termed for a variety of reasons (I don't teach in Durham County though but most discipline procedures are roughly the same from county to county). In most cases, I think the kids who got suspended deserved it. I've got one coming back tomorrow from 3 days for argueing with me and walking out without permission. If she lasts half the class period, I'll be amazed.

However, this doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of the kids that receive a long term suspension tend to be minority males. In fact the article says that:

In school, black and Latino males are more likely to be suspended; black males in North Carolina accounted for nearly half of all suspensions in the 2003-04 school year. Black boys lag every other group in classroom performance. Black males have the shortest life expectancy and the highest unemployment rates.

"It's much worse than it was a generation ago," says Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project. He says the likelihood that a black male born today will spend time in prison has more than doubled in the past 20 years or so.

As for Hispanics, Mauer says, the rising number of prisoners reflects the country's growing immigrant population.

"It's disproportionate, although it's not as high as African-American incarceration," he says.

If you want the specific numbers, they can be found here . They really are amazing, but many people in the field of education have known this for a while but were reluctant to say anything for fear of being labelled, or having their co-wokers labelled as "racist". And this isn't just a problem in North Carolina... I strongly believe you'd find it in any ethinically mixed district.

The newspaper also offers some vingettes on kids that were suspended and have either quit or don't know where they are going to do next. You can find them here , here , and here . What do we do with these kids once they have left the main school building? Why should we care, because they've made their choice right (that's the line I give them in class... something about natural selection)? Look at these comments here

The group is called the Triangle Lost Generation Task Force. Its chairman, Dr. David Forbes, uses the starkest terms to describe the crisis.

Without change, he says, a large percentage of black and Latino males will never hold meaningful jobs, enjoy normal family life or be full participants in society.

"It is tantamount to genocide," says Forbes, pastor of Raleigh's Christian Faith Baptist Church. The crisis, he says, is as urgent as any he faced as a civil rights organizer at Shaw University in the 1960s.

Among the task force members is Kimberly P. Wilson, coordinator of a program for the Governor's Crime Commission that examines the causes of high imprisonment rates of young black and Hispanic men. She says the path to prison is predictable.

"Kids that get suspended from school often end up in juvenile detention," Wilson says. "Juvenile detention is a direct pipeline to the adult prison system."

Nationally, one in eight black men between the ages of 25 and 29 spent some time in jail or prison in 2004, according to the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy organization in Washington. The figure for Hispanic males was one in 28; for white males, one in 59

Honestly, I don't know what to do. I look at my list of "at risk students" and it's amazing how they fit into these articles. I teach 4 minority males in my first period standard class. 2 passed for the first quarter and the other 2 failed miserably (4 students failed in the class out of 22, all either african-american or hispanic). The chances are pretty good that one of the ones who passed in the first quarter won't this time even though he's unbelievably smart. In my 2 honors classes, I teach 3 minorty males. Only one of them failed the first 9 weeks but another was quite close (only one other student failed in honors and she's *just* bipolar). All of them have the ability, but they simply will not do the work once they leave school.

What do we do as a society? I know education is the key but if we lose them now, or in many of the cases have already lost them by the time they get to me, how do we keep them from crime? I really worry about my two african american boys that are passing right now. I'm sure they are under a lot of expectations to "not be smart" and dress like thugs. And there are quite a few people that will look at them and just assume by their mode of dress that they are "guilty" if something bad happens. I've seen it too many times where there are good quality kids who are borderline but cross over during the summer and are lost for good to the wrong elements. There are three boys that I had last year who fall under that category.

What do we do to save them? I've only got them 90 minutes a day for one semester and the school only has them 180 days a year. So what should our society do after that?

British Bailing Out

Here:

U.K. May Be Able Withdraw Iraq Troops by End '06, Talabani Says

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. may be able to withdraw its 8,000 soldiers from Iraq by the end of 2006, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said.

``I think in the end of 2006 Iraqi troops will be ready to replace British forces in the south,'' Talabani said in an interview with ``The Jonathan Dimbleby Programme'' broadcast today on ITV1. He added he hasn't taken part in any negotiations on the subject.

Britain has consistently refused to discuss publicly a timetable for pulling its troops from Iraq. Prime Minister Tony Blair has said soldiers, based in the south of the nation, will stay ``as long as it takes'' for Iraqi forces to be ready to take over security in the country.

The U.K. was the U.S.'s largest partner in the 2003 invasion of Iraq that ousted Saddam Hussein, and 97 British personnel have died in the country until now. Every poll since May 2004 has found more Britons say the war was a mistake than supported it.

and here:

UK troops could leave Iraq 'within one year'

Gerri Peev, Political Correspondent

BRITISH troops could leave southern Iraq by the end of next year, the Defence Secretary, John Reid, signalled yesterday.

Mr Reid appeared to be taking his cue from Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president, who, for the first time yesterday, indicated a time when British forces might leave the country.

"We don't want British forces forever in Iraq," Mr Talabani said. "Within one year - I think at the end of 2006 - Iraqi troops will be ready to replace British forces in the south."

However, he warned that immediate withdrawal would be a catastrophe, fuelling the insurgency into a civil war that could affect the entire Middle East region.

Instead, he called for a gradual pull-out.

The Defence Secretary appeared to give credence to the Kurdish leader's remarks, saying this would be consistent with the aims of the British government.

British forces would stay in Iraq until the Iraqi people could provide their own security, he said.

A "gradual pull out" at all deliberate speed.

Rejecting the Test

Md. School Assessment Supplants National Tests

By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 13, 2005; Page SM01

Standardized testing used to be a straightforward affair in Maryland. Once a year, students brought home carbon-copy sheets filled with percentile scores that compared them with children from Maine to California on a scale of 1 to 99 against a national average of 50.

These days, the percentile has fallen from favor.

How students stack up against the national average -- the standard measured by the Stanford Achievement Test, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and other norm-referenced tests -- is no longer the chief concern of teachers, principals and superintendents in the Maryland suburbs.

Maryland, like Virginia and most other states, has embraced its own test and a new way of rating the performance of test takers. The two-year-old Maryland School Assessment (MSA) judges whether students have mastered material taught at their grade level. Parents are urged to focus less on scores and more on three broad categories of achievement: basic, proficient and advanced.

Education leaders say the new rating system tells parents more than any percentile could about whether students are performing at their grade level and mastering academic standards set by the state. How those students rank against their peers around the nation is a secondary concern.

"The standardized tests are important, but they tell you ultimately far less about your kid than what the teacher can tell you from the classroom," said Ronald A. Peiffer, Maryland's deputy superintendent for academic policy.

The percentile has not completely disappeared from the student testing universe.

The Maryland State Department of Education still dispenses percentile scores for individual students as part of its MSA reports to parents. It can do that because the statewide test was built from a core of questions taken from two venerable percentile tests. The Stanford Achievement Test, published by Harcourt, provides reading questions; TerraNova, from McGraw-Hill, supplies math content.

Parents say they appreciate seeing the familiar two-digit scores on MSA reports.

"It's just helpful to give you an idea of where your child stands," said Stephanie Coakley, a Howard County parent.

Coakley said parents may find it more meaningful that a child ranks at the 90th percentile, terminology familiar from their own childhoods, than to know that he or she rates "advanced" on the MSA.

"Percentiles, we all understand," said Sara Seifter, another Howard parent.

Except, you don't understand them. I am really happy to hear an educational professional come out and say what many of us already know... namely if you want to know how your child is doing, ask the teacher don't just look at the numbers.

Ms. Seifter, here's an example of how the numbers can lie. When I was in school we had to take the California Achievement Test (CAT) from 1st grade to 9th grade. Our scores on that test determined, among other things, what level of math and language arts we were assigned to for the next year.

The last year I took it, my parents were called in for a conference on those scores. Now I was a decent test taker, but then again my parents put no presure on them ("They're stupid, but try anyways" was my father's mantra). That night after meeting with my teacher they sent my brother out of the room and asked if I was having any problems in school. My response was that aside from Geometry, everything was ok why?

My Dad told me they wanted to move me to remedial English because I had scored below a 50% in spelling (no surprise to anyone here). Thankfully, this was corrected by my English teacher because my folks didn't depend on the numbers to tell them how I was doing. And here's the kicker, if we know the numbers don't mean that much then why are we wasting precious resources (money and time) on these things?

Israel Upset

Israel Labour leader threatens PM

BBC
Sunday, 13 November 2005

The Israeli Labour Party has warned that it will bring down the government if Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refuses to meet its new leader immediately.

Amir Peretz wants to pull the party out of the governing coalition and discuss a date for an early election.

Mr Sharon delayed a meeting initially scheduled for Sunday until Thursday.

Mr Peretz said Mr Sharon had acted irresponsibly, as it was better that the Labour Party leave the government in a "co-ordinated way".

"If a meeting with Sharon does not take place at the beginning of the week, we may act to topple the government on Wednesday," Mr Peretz told Israeli television.

"I have political means to act and I will not allow Sharon to behave as though political ground is his private property," he said.

Mr Peretz said he would propose to Mr Sharon holding elections in March or May, advancing a vote not due until November 2006.

All six Labour cabinet ministers in the Sharon government agreed with him on the need to leave the government, he added.

I knew things were too quiet in the Middle East. The issues here are mostly domestic, but I'm not sure we need anything overturning the proverbial apple cart right now.

Home Boy

Yale Law Frets Over Court Choices It Knows Best

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: November 13, 2005

NEW HAVEN, Nov. 8 - The morning after Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. was announced as the president's choice for the Supreme Court, some students and professors at his alma mater, the Yale Law School, were already hard at work - to defeat him.

Professor Bruce Ackerman, who teaches constitutional law here, appeared on CNN with this instant assessment: "I don't think conservative is the word. This person is a judicial radical."

A group called Law Students Against Alito was formed the same day. "There is a chunk of the population, probably a majority," said Ian Bassin, a founder of the group, "who does not want this guy on the Supreme Court."

If the past is any guide, the bond between this conservative judge and this law school, which has traditionally attracted liberal students and faculty members, is about to be tested. And the early indications here are that Judge Alito will face some of the hostility that met the last two Supreme Court nominees with connections to the school, Judge Robert H. Bork and Justice Clarence Thomas.

Conservative students here said they were concerned that the Alito nomination would be a replay of what they called the savage treatment meted out to Judge Bork and Justice Thomas, who endured bruising confirmation battles.

Judge Bork's nomination was rejected in 1987, and Justice Thomas was confirmed by a vote of 52 to 48 after his hearings in 1991.

Faculty members testified on both sides both times. But the school was generally opposed to their nominations, said professors, students and alumni. Justice Thomas was thought to be unqualified, and Judge Bork's views were considered too extreme.

In his 14 years on the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas, of the Yale class of 1974, has refused to return here, and Judge Bork, who was on the faculty for 15 years, chortles during speeches when he cites "a bit of populist wisdom" he once saw on a bumper sticker: "Save America. Close Yale Law School."

For now at least, Judge Alito, of the class of 1975, retains strong ties to the law school. In a recent note to its dean, he apologized for missing his 30th reunion last weekend, presumably because he was busy courting senators and preparing for his confirmation hearings.

"I believe," he wrote, "that this is the first five-year reunion I have not attended."

Judge Alito may yet attract substantial support here, students and professors said, because he is popular on a personal level, qualified as a formal matter and technical rather than overtly ideological in his approach to the law.

He was also better known as a student than Justice Thomas, and he has not espoused sweeping theories, as Judge Bork did in his academic writings.

The mood here appeared to be cautiously hostile. A few students who supported Judge Alito tended to make strategic or structural arguments. Some said, for example, that ideology alone should not derail a candidate who was otherwise qualified.

"He is a remarkably careful, conscientious, craftsmanlike, modest, even humble judge," said Peter H. Schuck, a law professor who described himself as a political moderate. "It's true that he generally comes out on the side of those who call themselves conservative. If I were in the Senate, I would like to think I would not vote against him on that ground."

But the dominant view, based on a day of interviews at the law school, appeared to be that Judge Alito's jurisprudence represented a betrayal of the law school's liberal values.

The hearings won't start until January 9, but they promise to be enormously interesting. Even if you don't have cable, C-Span will be webcasting them.

Guantanamo Revisted

Guantánamo Tour Focuses on Medical Ethics

By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: November 13, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 - Troubled by news accounts of medical participation in coercive interrogations at Guantánamo Bay and the resulting unease in the professional medical community, the Pentagon led an intense one-day tour of the detention camp last month, several participants said in recent days.

The purpose of the trip, some of the participants said, was for the military leadership to convince the ethicists, psychiatrists, psychologists and others who visited the detention camp at the United States Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that what was occurring there did not violate medical ethics and was necessary to strengthen the nation's security.

But many participants seem not to have been convinced. Dr. Steven S. Sharfstein, the president of the American Psychiatric Association, who went on the trip, said that the group's members' assembly voted unanimously on Saturday to recommend a strict code against participation in some of the activities described in news reports. Dr. Sharfstein said that the recommendation was certain to be adopted by the association's board next month, making it official policy.

He said the main concern was the use of military psychiatrists as members of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, known as biscuit teams, to advise interrogators at Guantánamo.

"Our position is very direct," Dr. Sharfstein said. "Psychiatrists should not participate on these biscuit teams because it is inappropriate."

He said the military hosts, who included the commanding general at Guantánamo, the surgeon general of the United States and the medical personnel at Guantánamo, said they had sought to use psychiatrists and psychologists only for advice aimed at building rapport with detainees during interrogation. They said the professional advice was not used to harm detainees.

That description is at odds with some news accounts. The New York Times reported in June that former interrogators at Guantánamo had described in interviews how military doctors had helped them in refining coercive interrogations, including providing advice on how to increase stress levels and exploit fears.

It's nice to see the old Grey Lady rear her head and do some reporting. So will we have to drag this group into the Hague in chains for this nation to ever have any credibility again?

Fessin' Up

John Edwards' mea culpa:

The Right Way in Iraq

By John Edwards
Sunday, November 13, 2005

I was wrong.

Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told -- and what many of us believed and argued -- was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.

It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn't make a mistake -- the men and women of our armed forces and their families -- have performed heroically and paid a dear price.

The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth.

While we can't change the past, we need to accept responsibility, because a key part of restoring America's moral leadership is acknowledging when we've made mistakes or been proven wrong -- and showing that we have the creativity and guts to make it right.

And (WOW!) via Fox News:

Methodist Bishops Repent Iraq War 'Complicity'
By Kaukab Jhumra Smith

WASHINGTON — Ninety-five bishops from President Bush's church said Thursday they repent their "complicity" in the "unjust and immoral" invasion and occupation of Iraq.

"In the face of the United States administration's rush toward military action based on misleading information, too many of us were silent," said a statement of conscience signed by more than half of the 164 retired and active United Methodist bishops worldwide.

President Bush is a member of the United Methodist Church, according to various published biographies. The White House did not return a request for comment on the bishops' statement.

Although United Methodist leadership has opposed the Iraq war in the past, this is the first time that individual bishops have confessed to a personal failure to publicly challenge the buildup to the war.

The signatures were also an instrument for retired bishops to make their views known, said bishop Joseph H. Yeakel, who served in the Baltimore-Washington area from 1984 to 1996. The current bishop for the Baltimore-Washington area, John R. Schol, also signed the statement.

The statement avoids making accusations, said retired Bishop Kenneth L. Carder, instructor at Duke University's divinity school and an author of the document.

"We would have made the statement regardless of who the president was. It was not meant to be either partisan or to single out any one person," Carder said. "It was the recognition that we are all part of the decision and we are all part of a democratic society. We all bear responsibility."

Stith, who spent more than three years after his retirement working in East Africa -- including with Rwandan refugees -- said going to war over the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks did not solve the real problems behind them.

The real issues are that much of the world lives in poverty, desperation and depression, he said, while an affluent minority of the world often oppresses them. Americans need to take responsibility for their world, Stith said.

Dividing the Division

Civil Rights Focus Shift Roils Staff At Justice
Veterans Exit Division as Traditional Cases Decline

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 13, 2005

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which has enforced the nation's anti-discrimination laws for nearly half a century, is in the midst of an upheaval that has driven away dozens of veteran lawyers and has damaged morale for many of those who remain, according to former and current career employees.

Nearly 20 percent of the division's lawyers left in fiscal 2005, in part because of a buyout program that some lawyers believe was aimed at pushing out those who did not share the administration's conservative views on civil rights laws. Longtime litigators complain that political appointees have cut them out of hiring and major policy decisions, including approvals of controversial GOP redistricting plans in Mississippi and Texas.

At the same time, prosecutions for the kinds of racial and gender discrimination crimes traditionally handled by the division have declined 40 percent over the past five years, according to department statistics. Dozens of lawyers find themselves handling appeals of deportation orders and other immigration matters instead of civil rights cases.

The division has also come under criticism from the courts and some Democrats for its decision in August to approve a Georgia program requiring voters to present government-issued identification cards at the polls. The program was halted by an appellate court panel and a district court judge, who likened it to a poll tax from the Jim Crow era.

"Most everyone in the Civil Rights Division realized that with the change of administration, there would be some cutting back of some cases," said Richard Ugelow, who left the division in 2004 and now teaches law at American University. "But I don't think people anticipated that it would go this far, that enforcement would be cut back to the point that people felt like they were spinning their wheels."

Hmmm...why such a "focus shift"?

The change in emphasis is perhaps most stark in the division's appellate section, which has historically played a prominent role intervening in key discrimination cases. The section filed only three friend-of-the-court briefs last year -- compared with 22 in 1999 -- and now spends nearly half its time defendingdeportation orders rather than pursuing civil rights litigation. Last year, six of 10 briefs filed by the section were related to immigration cases.

William R. Yeomans, a 24-year division veteran who took a buyout offer earlier this year, wrote in an essay in Legal Affairs magazine that "morale among career attorneys has plummeted, the division's productivity has suffered and the pace of civil rights enforcement has slowed."

In an interview, Yeomans said some of the problems stem from the way the "front office" at Justice has treated career employees, many of whom have been forced to move to other divisions or to handle cases unconnected to civil rights. As an example of the strained relations, Yeomans points to the recent retirement party held for a widely admired 37-year veteran: Not one political appointee showed up.

At the same time, Ashcroft implemented procedures throughout Justice that limited the input of career lawyers in employment decisions, resulting in the hiring of many young conservatives in civil rights and elsewhere in the department, former and current lawyers have said.

"The more slots you open, the more you can populate them with people you like," said Stephen B. Pershing, who left the division in May and is now senior counsel at the Center for Constitutional Litigation, a Washington law firm that handles civil rights cases. "It's pretty simple really."

Very simple.

Lessons Learned

Hi, Bumpers. Melanie checking in from the left coast. This private flu conference was amazing for a number of reasons: I sorta figured out what my role is in the flu community right now and changed the way I see both myself and the problem at hand. Those of you who use The Flu Wiki may not know that the prominence of the site in the national consciousness has gone through the roof in the last month. My role in the flu community is changing, and I'm going to have to change with it. DemfromCT and I attended this conference together (we've been working together on various projects for over two years, but this was the first time in meat space) and we are coming to a much better understanding of the community which needs the wiki and what it needs from it. This means standing up more resources behind the wiki to support it and creating an organization (raising money, hiring expertise and so forth.) Dem and I networked heavily at the conference and shook out some excellent opportunities for deals to support the growth of the wiki and get us the resources that we need. Nothing is a done deal, but lots of conversations are underway. We need more bandwidth and we need it now. We need staff and we needed that last month. We are victims of unexpected success. There will be a lot of new and unexpected activity in my life as I take a bunch of meetings on the fly, IM and email with possible deal makers and so forth. I've done this sort of thing before when I wore the labor organizer hat and it is always a confusing time, even when good things are happening, so I'm going to ask the guest posters to hang around, watch the activity level on the site and post whenever they feel like after I return home late today. My next week is likely to be a little hairy.

As Bump approaches its second blogiversary on Tuesday, things are looking up at Harmony Hall. I'll have a better summary of what I learned at the conference after I've had a couple of days to sleep on it. Let's just say that my understanding of pandemic influenza and risk communication has acquired a lot of nuance and I'll be ready to talk about it after I've gotten back home and done the day of intense slogging that it takes to get up to speed on the news stories and meta-narrative you care about after I've been off the net for even a day. Hey, the guest posters have been doing awesome work and they've been my news filter for the last four days. They deserve a round of applause in the comments box below.

I have some inspiring stories to tell from the conference and got to meet some of the real heroes of public health and epidemiology, the people who wiped out small pox, for example. According to the Chatham House Rule, I can't identify the participants or attribute any statements to anyone (yeah, right, like I could REMEMBER who said what after 3.5 18-hour days. The meeting ended on a somber note, with a grand rounds*, more or less, by an avian vetrinarian who works with the bird vaccine industry. I learned boatloads about how disease circulates in birds before becoming available to infect humans. It's not a rare event, but most avian bugs (except influenza, sometimes) are asymptomatic in humans if we can catch them at all.

It was a very rich time and today I simply want to celebrate spending three and a half days of very hard and results-oriented work and learning with one of the finest groups of people I have ever had the opportunity to meet. The other finest group ran this blog in exemplary fashion. Check your stats, guys, you have been racking up pretty amazing hit counts. Oh, you aren't obsessively checking your sitemeter? Oh, you have a life? Maybe it is just me, then....

I wifi'ed here at the conference for the first time and the damn thing works, even I could figure it out. Awesome. The DSL in the room is glitchy by comparison.

I've got a lot of things to think about and an even longer list of decisions to make with the wiki partners, but we aren't going to get bored anytime soon. Bored. I wonder what that feels like?

Since chuck is recommending movies, let me repeat my recommendation of John Barry's The Great Influenza, a superb history of the science of medicine in the modern era, as well as the gripping read of the 1918 pandemic. I'm a fast reader, but I'm reading this one slow, there is so much telling detail. I'm going to pick up his Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America next, also an important story in our post-Katrina shaped consciousnesses.

Let me nicely ask the guest posters for some recipes. Maybe we'll get some.

*In a classical grand rounds, typically a patient who is an interesting case is presented in her hospital setting to be examined by the residents as the attending physician fires questions. It is one kind of teaching setting. More generally, "grand rounds" are offered to practitioners on a variety of teaching subjects, more like a lecture, for topics on which they need to be informed by their hospitals. I've been a patient in a classical grand round once and it was one of the most humiliating situations in my life when I was desperately ill, and have been a participant in a couple of the latter.

You can't do a vet grand round with dead birds in the room (you have to be very strong to be a vet, the feed sacks are enormous, as are the weight of dead birds) so the attending doc presents a summary of cases and lessons learned. For an avian vet, that means the poultry industry, and that's a lot of cases.

Good Night and Good Luck

If you get a chance to go to the movies this weekend, I would like to recommend the George Clooney production of Good Night and Good Luck. Now I don't just say this because the cast is impressive and does an amazing job (Clooney is Fred Friendly, David Strathairn plays Murrow, and Robert Downey Jr. shines in a minor role), but becaue it is an important movie.

Now, Hollywood produces a lot of these "important" movies that takes themselves wwwwaaayyyy too seriously, and this is an observation that could be made of this movie. The difference is what is going on right now with the Republic and how badly it needs someone with the gravitas of a Murrow to step up.

If I ever get to teaching US History again, this movie will be required viewing for the 1950's and McCarthyism. The whole thing was shot in black and white which works perfectly especially given the thesis of the film. Likewise, they use authentic tape from the McCarthy hearings and his attack on Murrow to emphasize what things were really like.

The movie starts with the case of the Air Force member who was kicked out because of his father's supposed ties to the Communist Party (he was reinstated after Murrow's report). It then continues with the fight between Murrow & Friendly vs McCarthy. The words of Murrow still ring true today about what the media *should* do vs what it does.

There are some excellent links, summaries, and interviews collected at Boing Boing as well as places on the web to hear some audio clips of Murrow.

Finally, I simply loved the movie because it was an opportunity for my father and I to have some quality time together. We were able to incorporate our two favorite passions, movies and history, and we even talked about what he was doing during the McCarthy hearings and his memories of Murrow.

More FEMA Fallout

Storm Victims Suing FEMA for More Aid

By LYNETTE CLEMETSON
Published: November 10, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - When the government check arrived 38 days after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their trailer in Long Beach, Miss., Russell and Tammy Hayward bought some towels, sheets and dishes. They paid for emergency dental care and kept receipts for everything linked to the $2,358 assistance check, which came without explanation.

Three weeks later a letter arrived at the couple's temporary home with friends in Texas, specifying that the check had been for rental help. When Mr. Hayward called the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ask about more aid, he said, he was denied additional help because he had misspent the initial money.

Mr. Hayward, along with 12 other plaintiffs, is joining a class-action suit against FEMA. The complaint, to be filed on Thursday in Federal District Court in New Orleans, states that the agency has "failed to fulfill its mandate" in providing housing assistance to the storm's victims.

"I'm 42 years old and I have never asked the government for a thing," said Mr. Hayward, a construction worker. "I'm not just out for me. I'm out for everyone that got hit and hurt. Everybody has been done wrong."

The complaint charges FEMA with imposing "retroactively inconsistent rules," in Mr. Hayward's case and others. It also asserts that the agency has been inexcusably slow in processing applications and has unfairly denied claims from large families and unrelated individuals sharing the same address. The plaintiffs are not seeking damages, but immediate assistance.

Heck of a job there Brownie. Now I've been in areas that have been declared "disaster areas" and know that there is a lot of confusion at first. However, there is not any good excuse for these mistakes.

Maybe they are still stinging from the reports about all of the money they wasted in Florida in 2004? Too bad for New Orleans that it wasn't an election year in the First Brother's state.

...the taint of American fingerprints

U.S.-Backed Meeting of Muslim Nations Ends in Discord

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Published: November 13, 2005

MANAMA, Bahrain, Nov. 12 - A meeting of Muslim nations initiated by the Bush administration ended in discord on Saturday after objections by Egypt blocked a final declaration supporting democracy. The administration had hoped to get backing for a $50 million foundation to support political activities in the Muslim world, with money to be raised from American, European and Arab sources, and a $100 million fund largely financed by the United States to provide venture capital to businesses.

Diplomats at the conference said Egypt wanted the language in the meeting's final declaration to say that only "legally registered" groups should be aided by the foundation.

The Americans expressed open irritation with Egypt for its efforts to "scuttle," as one put it, what they had hoped would be a milestone in its efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East.

"Obviously, we are not pleased," a senior State Department official said. Another said, in a tone of exasperation, "I don't understand why they should make this an issue." Both declined to be identified because they did not want to criticize Egypt directly.

Egyptian diplomats have complained that outside financing for groups may end up in the hands of extremists or even terrorists. American officials dismiss those warnings as absurd, noting that some American aid to Egypt, about $430 million this year, already goes to groups in Egypt that do not have government approval.

But American support for independent groups in other countries has alarmed some Arab leaders. They cite American aid that supported groups that led the uprisings in Georgia and Ukraine and point out that both Russia and Uzbekistan have sought to block American aid to groups in their countries.

Since President Bush's inaugural address in January calling for sweeping adopting of democratic rule in autocratic countries, the administration has pressed more and more for aid to the Middle East to go, at least in part, to groups supporting change in their societies, with training, subsidies and such mundane things as printing presses.

The administration first set up its own Middle East Partnership Initiative, which committed $300 million in aid in the last few years to political and business activity in the region.

Now, in part to remove the taint of American fingerprints in a region where anti-American sentiments run high, about $85 million money is to be taken out of this initiative and spun off to the new Foundation for the Future, for support of democratic groups, and the Fund for the Future, for entrepreneurial efforts. Both are part of the Bush administration's so-called Broader Middle East and North Africa initiative, which was set up in the meeting of the major industrial democracies at Sea Island, Ga., in mid-2004.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in remarks at the session of the conference, hailed the foundation's establishment, which had been negotiated for a year and a half, saying it "will provide grants to help civil society strengthen the rule of law, to protect basic civil liberties and ensure greater opportunity for health and education."

Some delegates to the meeting saw Egypt's objections as a reflection of the Arab world's growing irritation with what some say is the lecturing tone of American calls for democracy. United States involvement in Iraq plays a part in that: the Arab world is not persuaded by the administration's portrayal of Iraq, which Secretary Rice visited on Friday, as a beacon for democracy.

Rather, they say, Iraq represents the perils of imposing democracy from outside. Its current chaos and violence is widely seen as a cautionary tale rather than an inspiration, American officials acknowledge.

Lack of credibility & trust will continue to stymie the Bush Administration.

High Crimes

Now I'm the first to argue against the idea of the "liberal media". Personally, I think if you are going to be stuck with a tag like that you should try and live up to it. Guess what, they are starting to wake from their 5 year slumber.

Asterisks Dot White House's Iraq Argument

By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, November 12, 2005; Page A01

President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.

Neither assertion is wholly accurate.

That's as close as the mainstream media is going to get to accusing Bush of lying and look where it is... page A1!

But wait, there's more!

The administration's overarching point is true: Intelligence agencies overwhelmingly believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and very few members of Congress from either party were skeptical about this belief before the war began in 2003. Indeed, top lawmakers in both parties were emphatic and certain in their public statements.

But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.

National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, briefing reporters Thursday, countered "the notion that somehow this administration manipulated the intelligence." He said that "those people who have looked at that issue, some committees on the Hill in Congress, and also the Silberman-Robb Commission, have concluded it did not happen."

But the only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not yet done its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions. And Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction, said in releasing his report on March 31, 2005: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."

Bush, in Pennsylvania yesterday, was more precise, but he still implied that it had been proved that the administration did not manipulate intelligence, saying that those who suggest the administration "manipulated the intelligence" are "fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments."

In the same speech, Bush asserted that "more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power." Giving a preview of Bush's speech, Hadley had said that "we all looked at the same intelligence."

But Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers. Also, the National Intelligence Estimate summarizing the intelligence community's views about the threat from Iraq was given to Congress just days before the vote to authorize the use of force in that country.

Anyone see a pattern here? Much like the Patriot Act and other controversial activities, the White House and its allies repeatedly waited util the last second to present confusing and sometimes incomplete information to Congress and rammed through a vote on it right away.

This is worse than Watergate folks. A lot worse. Even a majority of the otherwise clueless public agrees. The only question now is will Congress go (lame)duck hunting in order to save their own skins in 2006 or will it take a Democratic Congress to pick up the momentum?

Shifting Standards

Army Meets a Recruitment Goal

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 11, 2005

The Defense Department opened its new recruiting year with good news: announcing yesterday that the Army met its goal for October. But officials also said that the Army lowered the October recruiting goal by about a third from last year's.

Army officials said that they recruited 4,925 soldiers into active duty in October, the first month of the new fiscal year, exceeding the monthly goal of 4,700. Last October, the Army slightly exceeded its goal of 6,935.

The Army, which still hopes to recruit 80,000 soldiers during the fiscal year, plans to sign up 10,450 people in July, 10,050 in August and 9,800 in September -- months that are traditionally strong for recruitment. That means the Army is leaving 30,300 recruits -- or 38 percent of its annual goal -- for the final three months of the fiscal year.

The Army did not recruit more than 9,500 in any month last year and fell far short of its monthly goals several months in a row.

In fiscal 2005, the Army fell more than 8 percent short in its annual recruiting, missing a goal of 80,000 recruits by 6,600. This fiscal year, the Army has set lower monthly goals for six months compared with last year.

We can play with the numbers all we want, but the promise of signing bonuses and the lessening of standards the army still can barely make their reduced recruiting targets?

I hope the Chinese don't know this...

The Beat Goes On

While Melanie is In Conference:

Eighth bird flu outbreak in China

China has confirmed a fresh outbreak of the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu - the country's eighth within a month.

The latest cases are in Jingshan county in Hubei province, indicating that the virus appears to be spreading.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao warned this week that the country was facing a "very serious situation".

Four suspected human cases of the virus are being investigated, but so far there have been no confirmed human infections in China.

Bird flu has killed more than 60 people in South East Asia since 2003.

Fears for humans

China says the latest outbreak has killed 2,500 birds, and more than 30,000 birds are being culled.

These are the first reported cases in central Hubei province, but there were confirmed cases last month in neighbouring Anhui and Hunan provinces.

Medicare Supplement

I wanted to link to this column yesterday but I couldn't climb the Great Wall of Times Select. Fortunately, truthout offers complete reprints of Krugman, Bob Herbert & MoDo a day later.

The Deadly Doughnut

By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 11 November 2005

If all of this makes the drug bill sound like a disaster, bear in mind that I've touched on only one of the bill's awful features. There are many others, like the clause that prohibits Medicare from using its clout to negotiate lower drug prices. Why is this bill so bad?

The probable answer is that the Republican Congressional leaders who rammed the bill through in 2003 weren't actually trying to protect retired Americans against the risk of high drug expenses. In fact, they're fundamentally hostile to the idea of social insurance, of public programs that reduce private risk.

Their purpose was purely political: to be able to say that President Bush had honored his 2000 campaign promise to provide prescription drug coverage by passing a drug bill, any drug bill.

Once you recognize that the drug benefit is a purely political exercise that wasn't supposed to serve its ostensible purpose, the absurdities in the program make sense. For example, the bill offers generous coverage to people with low drug costs, who have the least need for help, so lots of people will get small checks in the mail and think they're being treated well.

Meanwhile, the people who are actually likely to need a lot of help paying their drug expenses were deliberately offered a very poor benefit. According to a report issued along with the final version of the bill, people are prohibited from buying supplemental insurance to cover the doughnut hole to keep beneficiaries from becoming "insensitive to costs" - that is, buying too much medicine because they don't pay the price.

A more likely motive is that Congressional leaders didn't want a drug bill that really worked for middle-class retirees.

Political opportunity anyone? Sorry to keep bangin' on this issue, but if the Dems don't hammer the Repubs on this they truly are hopeless.

Blame Shifting

From our daily dose of reality-based analysis:

JUAN COLE

Claims were made on the internet that the four suicide bombers who attacked tourist hotels in Amman, Jordan on Thursday were Iraqis, including a wife-husband team. Although the four were claimed as members of "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" by "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," this allegation makes little sense. Zarqawi's group is alleged to be made up primarily of foreign fighters, including Jordanians, Saudis, Algerians, etc. So where did they get these Iraqi members, and why send them to Jordan, when Jordanians from say Zarqa would have been under less scrutiny than foreigners? Some eyewitnesses heard one of the bombers speaking with an Iraqi accent. This information bolsters the case I made yesterday for the remnants of the Baath Party being behind these bombings. I believe that they blame their worst misdeeds on "al-Qaeda," so as to divert attention from their own sinister role. The Iraqi nationalists and post-Baathists fighting the guerrilla war routinely punish "collaborators" with the Americans. Since those tourist hotels are typically full of "collaborators," and since the Jordanian regime cooperated extensively with the US invasion of Iraq, the Baathists intended the bombings to punish King Abdullah II.

The Bushies will, of course, play the "Zarqawi did it" angle for all it's worth. And the True Believers will continue to truly believe.

Update from Juan Cole:

Sister of Tawhid's Anbar Cell Captured in Jordan Bombings

Jordanian authorities have captured Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, the wife of suicide bomber Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari, who detonated his belt bomb at the Radisson in Amman. She turns out to be the sister of the Anbar leader of the Monotheism and Holy War (al-Qaeda in Iraq), who was killed at some point in Fallujah. HIs name was Thamir al-Rishawi

So this Amman operation really does seem to have come out of Zarqawi's group, rather than just using that group as a cover, as is so often done inside Iraq.

Ms. al-Rishawi's husband was from the Shamar tribe, the same large and important clan to which vice president Ghazi al-Yawir belongs.

Accounting Errors

Fannie Mae Finds More Errors in Books

By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Published: November 11, 2005

Fannie Mae, the nation's largest mortgage finance company, said yesterday that it had found more accounting violations, which could add to a $10.8 billion restatement of earnings.

The company also hired a chief financial officer, Robert T. Blakely, filling an 11-month vacancy. Mr. Blakely is joining Fannie Mae from MCI, where he was hired as chief financial officer to help the company, then known as WorldCom, leave bankruptcy in 2004 after an accounting fraud.

Fannie Mae's chief executive, Daniel H. Mudd, said in a conference call with investors yesterday that the additional mistakes included misreporting the accounting method for tax credits and insurance.

Fannie Mae shares have lost more than a third of their value this year as the company has struggled to correct its financial reports. The shares fell 1 cent yesterday, to $46.39, and are down from $71.21 at the end of 2004.

The company and the smaller Freddie Mac own or guarantee almost half the $7.6 trillion mortgage market. Freddie Mac has finished restating three years of income, increasing it by $5 billion after finding bookkeeping errors.

I'm glad that Grover decided to try and fit the government in a bathtub. So.... how's that recovery going to continue if things get worse with Fannie and Freddie?

Attacking those patriotic Americans

Bush Forcefully Attacks Critics of His Strategy in Iraq

By MARIA NEWMAN
November 11, 2005

President Bush lashed out today at critics of his Iraq policy, accusing them of trying to rewrite history about the decision to go to war and saying their criticism is undercutting American forces in battle.

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decisions or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," the president said in a Veterans Day speech in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Bush delivered his aggressive and unusually long speech as part of an effort to shore up his credibility as he faces growing public skepticism about Iraq and accusations by Democrats and others that he led the nation into war on false pretenses.

Those accusations seem to be making a dent in public confidence in him, as public opinion polls show more people questioning the president's honesty about Iraq and about whether American troops should remain in the fight.

Today's remarks by the president, which painted his critics as hypocrites, drew quick and angry responses from Democrats, and quickly led to a back-and-forth with Republicans about who was exploiting Veterans Day by using it as a forum to voice their views on Iraq. The president's speech is part of a new strategy by the administration that will play out in the next few weeks in other presidential speeches and remarks by other leading Republicans, top senior administration officials said.

The president spoke at the Tobyhanna Army Depot near Wilkes-Barre. He talked not only about why Americans are at war - "the terrorists are as brutal an enemy as we've ever faced, unconstrained by any notion of our common humanity or by the rules of warfare" - something he has mentioned in almost every speech, but turned on his critics more directly than he usually does.

"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges," he said. "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."

Before going to war, Mr. Bush said, Democrats and Republicans alike were privy to the same intelligence that indicated former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

"Some Democrats and antiwar critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war," he said. "These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein."

The Senate's Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Mr. Bush had "resorted to his old playbook of discredited rhetoric about the war on terror and political attacks as his own political fortunes and credibility diminish."

"Attacking those patriotic Americans who have raised serious questions about the case the Bush administration made to take our country to war does not provide us a plan for success that will bring our troops home," Mr. Reid said. "While the Bush administration continues to stonewall the Congress from finding the truth about the manipulation of pre-war intelligence, Democrats will continue to press for a full airing of the facts."

Lashing out in anger is not a strategy which will improve Bush's poll numbers.

Judith Miller: WaPo Buries the Lede

From RT:

The WaPo had a long, long, long story about Miller in the Style section yesterday, taking up the top half of page C1, all of C8, then finally a modest chunk of C9. The really important part was on C9:

But in her reporting, there was something else on which Miller relied as much, if not more: her personal belief in the danger that Saddam Hussein posed to the world.

It was personal, for she had been detained for a day by Hussein's security forces back in the 1980s, she says. And it was personal because, as she writes in her 1996 book on Islam, "God Has Ninety-Nine Names," an Iraqi source once told her "that I was on a very short list of writers who are considered the regime's 'eternal enemies.' "

No, she says, she wasn't just being fed information by sources.

There's a difference between being a thug, which Saddam was, and being a threat to America's national security, which Saddam wasn't. And because Miller had experienced Saddam's thuggishness, not only should she have realized that she might carry her quite understandable personal feelings about Saddam's regime into her reporting of Saddam's alleged threat to America, but more importantly, her editors should have realized this. However, they were asleep at the switch, and let her use the front page of the New York Times as a tool to get us as a nation involved in her personal revenge against Saddam.

Charming, huh?

It gets even more ridiculous at the end:

"I had my own independent knowledge of Saddam Hussein. I was on record in 'Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf,' talking about this horrible regime and its use of chemical weapons against its own people. . . . I feared there was nothing he wouldn't do if he had access to such weapons. I was genuinely fearful of what he might do to American forces, to American installations in the Middle East and, if there was an al Qaeda link -- and I didn't know that and I never wrote that -- what he might do in the United States. My own reporting on Iraq made me fearful of Saddam Hussein."

And so fighting him, fighting his terror, became a passion. Fighting chemical and biological threats became a passion. Fighting al Qaeda became a passion.

As she speaks of 9/11's galvanizing impact, her voice rises.

"I hope to God that I'm wrong. I hope to God that not another American ever dies in a terrorist attack. But I would take no comfort. I would be heartsick to have to say I told you so.
"But I will make no apologies for my continuous commitment, my desire to pursue stories about threats to our country," she says emphatically, almost frantically, her crusading eyes brimming with tears.

Mission to Venus

Express mission to morning star

By Paul Rincon
BBC News science reporter
Thursday November 10, 2005

As the Soyuz rocket carrying Venus Express climbed steadily into the morning sky, big grins broke out on the faces of delegates who had come to watch the launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

And the grins kept getting wider throughout the morning, as the spacecraft successfully completed a number of steps needed to send it on its way from Earth orbit to our nearest planetary neighbour.

The textbook launch came as a much needed boost to the European Space Agency (Esa) after the failure of its eagerly awaited Cryosat explorer.

This spacecraft, which was to have shed light on the response of Arctic ice to climate change, crashed into the sea following a malfunction at lift-off.

Venus Express also aims to study the effects of greenhouse warming, albeit on another planet.

As with its "sister" spacecraft, Mars Express, the launch took place at Baikonur, the historic spaceport in Kazakhstan.

This is where Sputnik, Earth's first artificial satellite, and Yuri Gagarin, Earth's first spaceman, blasted off into orbit.

"This is where space began. If you have the slightest sense of wonder at being able to get off the planet, Baikonur is the place to be," said David Southwood, Esa director of science.

Venus Express is being billed as a mission to study the runaway greenhouse warming that has turned Venus into the hottest planet in the Solar System, with a view to learning lessons about how climate change will shape Earth.

But to many of those working on the mission it is about the advancement of knowledge, full stop.

"Earth is halfway between Venus and Mars. When the data is put together with that from Mars Express, it will really teach us about all three planets," Professor Manuel Grande, from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, UK, told me just after the launch.

Remind me again why the US isn't supporting projects like this again? I can't wait to see what they find.

Photo Op Diplomacy

Rice, in Iraq, Says Strategy Against Rebels Is Working

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Published: November 11, 2005

BAGHDAD, Nov. 11 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise stop in a troubled Sunni stronghold in northern Iraq then met with Iraqi leaders in the capital of Baghdad, appealing in both places to disaffected Sunnis to address their grievances by voting in the election in five weeks and rejecting the insurgency.

But both Ms. Rice and the Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, responded warily to suggestions from the Arab League and others that the insurgency be addressed by a political reconciliation process extending to major figures in the regime of the ousted leader, Saddam Hussein.

"The American people and I think the world continues to be impressed and inspired by the commitment of the Iraqi people to their democratic future," Ms. Rice declared at the end of a long day that started in the troubled northern city of Mosul and ended in conference rooms in Baghdad's secure area known as the Green Zone.

Ms. Rice detoured unannounced to Iraq after flying overnight from Washington to Bahrain to start a Middle East trip. She arrived in Bahrain at sunrise and switched immediately to an Air Force transport for the flight to Mosul in the north, capital of Ninevah Province, a Sunni-dominated area that has seen much violence and voted against the proposed Iraqi constitution last month.

Donning a flak vest under her suit coat, Ms. Rice swept into a secure army base on Mosul's northern outskirts at the site of a palace that once belonged to Saddam Hussein's son, Uday. She then took the transport plane to Baghdad before flying back to Bahrain in the evening.

After nearly 30 hours on planes, helicopters or in meetings, Ms. Rice appeared to display some impatience in Baghdad over certain matters, notably a suggestion by the Arab League that a conference in Cairo on Nov. 19 include members of the Hussein regime who still do not recognize the legitimacy of the current government in Iraq.

"I would hope that those who participate in the Arab League conference will recognize that they are participating with an Iraqi government that has indeed been elected government," Ms. Rice said sharply, adding that it was up to Iraqi leaders to decide with whom to reconcile.

Mr. Jaafari then shut the door on going too far to meet with his government's enemies, saying that the Arab League parley should be for "all of those who are part of the political process in Iraq." But he added: "We will never accept that the conference become a platform for terrorism and for high-level Baathist officials from the former regime."

Taken together, all these comments suggested that the Iraqi leadership was still wrestling with American demands that more be done to work with Sunni dissidents. In other remarks showing displeasure with Arab countries, Ms. Rice said that "not enough" was being done by Arab governments to aid Iraq, establish a diplomatic presence and in support its legitimacy.

The theme of lagging Arab efforts is to be raised again over the weekend on a conference on the future of democracy in Muslim countries from northern Africa to South Asia, State Department officials say.

In urging Iraqis to do more to bring Sunni dissidents into the political process, Ms. Rice made clear that she did not want to second-guess Iraqi efforts and would remain neutral in its political jockeying. "We will support no particular candidate or party," she said. "That is for the Iraqis to decide."

Excuse me? Who does she think she's kidding with that last quote, especially after they made sure to get the Constitution passed, no matter what.

Honestly, the only thing that was missing from this trip was the turkey. Too bad he's in Washington

Why should they stay?

via truthout:

An Army Ready to Snap

By Bob Herbert
The New York Times

Thursday 10 November 2005

The Washington Post, in a lengthy article last week, noted:

"As sustained combat in Iraq makes it harder than ever to fill the ranks of the all-volunteer force, newly released Pentagon demographic data show that the military is leaning heavily for recruits on economically depressed, rural areas where youths' need for jobs may outweigh the risks of going to war."

For those already in the Army, the price being paid - apart from the physical toll of the killed and wounded - is high indeed.

Divorce rates have gone way up, nearly doubling over the past four years. Long deployments - and, especially, repeated deployments - can take a vicious toll on personal relationships.

Chaplains, psychologists and others have long been aware of the many dangerous factors that accompany wartime deployment: loneliness, financial problems, drug or alcohol abuse, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, the problems faced by the parent left at home to care for children, the enormous problem of adjusting to the devastation of wartime injuries, and so on.

The Army is not just fighting a ruthless insurgency in Iraq. It's fighting a rear-guard action against these noncombat, guerrilla-like conditions that threaten its own viability.

There are reasons why parents all across America are telling their children to run the other way when military recruiters come to call. There are reasons why so many lieutenants and captains, fine young men and women, are heading toward the exit doors at the first opportunity.

A captain who is on active duty, and therefore asked not to be identified by name, told me yesterday:

"The only reason I stayed in the Army was because one colonel convinced me to do it. Other than that, I would have walked. Basically, these guys who are leaving have their high-powered educations. Some are from West Point. They've done their five years. Why should they stay and go back to Iraq and die in a war that's just going to keep on going?"

Beyond that, he said, "Guys are not going to stay in the Army when their wives are leaving them."

From the perspective of the troops, he said, the situation in Iraq is perverse.

He could find no upside. "You go to war," he said, "and you could lose your heart, your mind, your arms, your legs - but you cannot win. The soldiers don't win."

Not to mention phantom "bonuses" & cuts in benefits to veterans.

The Depths of Our Understanding

Deciding between Medicare drug plans has become a complex task

BY TONY PUGH

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - With less than a week to go before the signup begins, Medicare's new drug benefit is proving to be a prescription for confusion.

With a multitude of plans to pick from, delays in rolling out Medicare's computer tool to help compare them and the general complexity of the benefit, many of those eligible are wondering if it's worth the trouble.

Most of the 43 million elderly people and those with disabilities who qualify must select from about 40 plans, making sense of an array of premiums, formularies, co-payments, coverage gaps, deductibles and pharmacy networks.

Barbara Potter, who's disabled and now gets Medicare benefits, said she'd had trouble getting information about the 46 Medicare drug plans available in her area.

"I've been a government contractor for years, so I'm used to bureaucracy, but this is just ridiculous," said Potter, a retired freelance health writer in Hornell, N.Y. "I am finding this the most labyrinthine experience I've ever had with government."

Medicare officials recognize that getting people to enroll depends largely on the ability of their staff and volunteer counselors to steer fragile, elderly and sick clients through the confusion.

"It's going to take time for seniors to become comfortable with the choices they have," Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said Thursday. "Enrollment may start out slowly. But we're confident that over time seniors are going to like the benefit."

Medicare officials hope to sign up 28 million to 30 million people during a general enrollment period that runs from Nov. 15 to May 15. Coverage begins Jan. 1.

However, Potter's assessment is hardly unique.

According to a survey released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, 61 percent of seniors said they understood the new benefit "not too well" or "not well at all." Only 35 percent thought they knew it "very well" or "somewhat well."

Nearly 3 out of 4 of the respondents thought that the myriad of choices "makes it confusing and difficult to pick the best plan," the survey found.

In the Los Angeles area, Medicare recipients have nearly 80 plans to choose from, said David Lipschutz, a staff attorney at California Health Advocates, a nonprofit Medicare education and advocacy group.

"There's such a thing as too much choice," Lipschutz said. "If you give seniors a bunch of choices as opposed to a few, their typical reaction is to throw up their hands and take no choices."

Among seniors with no drug coverage - who need the benefit most - 23 percent of those surveyed said they wouldn't enroll in a Medicare plan and 49 percent weren't sure.

Leavitt was undeterred. "By the time we get to May, people will have experience with this and they'll have a much deeper understanding and those polls will have changed."

A "much deeper understanding"? How's this for a much deeper understanding:

To make the process easier, Medicare offers an online plan finder, at www.medicare.gov, that tells people which Medicare drug plans cover the medications they take, how much those plans charge and what pharmacies are in their networks.

But 64 percent of the Kaiser survey respondents had never heard of the Web site. Seventy-six percent had never been online.

In addition, the software for the site just became operable this week, nearly a month later than previously announced.

Earlier this week, Potter said she couldn't access the Web tool because it was malfunctioning.

"It has made it impossible for us to make decisions because that's the only source for formulary information that's out there," Potter said.

The delay was caused by the failure of firms that offer the plans to provide pricing information, McClellan said.

The wait left thousands of volunteer Medicare counselors across the country unable to assist callers in selecting plans.

"It takes our credibility away," said Lisa Trumbell of Detroit, the assistant director of the Michigan Medicare and Medicaid Assistance Program, which helps callers pick Medicare plans. "If a beneficiary gets to us and we say, `Gee, the Web site's not up and running yet,' what does that tell them? It tells them we don't know what we're talking about."

That's about as deep as it gets.

Pandemic Flu Report

A good conference is one in which you run into yourself, in which there is time for introspection, conversation and the time needed to confront your own biases. This is one of those, but I don't suspect that the designers made it that way.

Oops, I slipped. A good retreat is structured that way and I'm used to the retreat model and imported it over here. I had an uncomfortable day running into my own biases. The conference design model doesn't take that into account, and I take that as an interesting data point into conferences, which are mostly about affirming your biases, and retreats, which ask you why you have biases.

Perhaps I've been with the monks too long. Even monks have biases, but they do talk about them in weekly chapter. We non-monks have to have conferences and spend a lot of money to do what monks do nearly without thinking about it. I find that strange.

I'm yearning for home already and back to Bump. You are much missed and represented us as the home defense that no one yet has chosen to engage. I haven't had time to read a newspaper since I got here, so you are all ahead of me on the news. My space this week is to invite you into some introspection about bio-weapons (not so speculative) panflue and the meaning of community when it is really stressed,

The comments boxes don't belong to me or the regular commentors, they belong to you. Your hopes and your fears will be honored here. Meet Bump where the rubber meets the road, in comments. You will find a community there. Join your peers. And have some fun.

Melanie

Bad Penny

Rove re-emerges at conservative lawyers' group

By Tom Curry
MSNBC
Nov. 10, 2005

WASHINGTON - Emerging from weeks of political hibernation, President Bush's longtime advisor Karl Rove told the right-wing Federalist Society that rulings by liberal judges will “provoke a strong counter-reaction” through laws or constitutional amendments to limit the judiciary.

Rove addressed the group Thursday evening at the Federalist Society's annual meeting in Washington.

“The public will reclaim its rights as a sovereign people,” Rove predicted, and “at the end of the day the views of the Founders will prevail.”

He confidently predicted that soon Chief Justice John Roberts will be joined by “a proud member of the Federalist Society,” Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

Karl, here is a hint: The Founders believe that EVERYONE deserved a fair trial no matter what crimes they were accused of. One of those "evil" lawyers you like to bash even had the courage to risk his practice and career to stand up for the rights of the British soldiers who particpated in a policing activity the media and 18th Century bloggers spun as the "Boston Massacre".

These soldiers were granted their rights to a jury trial, something y'all don't believe in, and habeas corpus, a right your buddies in the Senate would have denied them. Now for most lawyers and politicans, that's the end of their career. After all, it's a time of WAR and their clients are the ENEMY. End of discussion.

John Adams didn't think so. He gave those soldiers his best and instead of being bannished to the dust heap of American politics, he became the first Vice-President (ok, not much different) and the 2nd President. Sure he made mistakes, but he's gone down in history as one of the most influential men in US History. I doubt you could Swift Boat him.

More to the point, I'm positive that he understood the Constitution and the Enlightenment ideas that inspired it far better than you and your toadies ever will; namely those basic, fundamental rights are there for all citizens and have been since the Magna Carta in 1215. And that's why you'll fail in the end, because you don't get it.

False Prophet

You won't find a bigger and more ardent supporter of the 1st Amendment than me. I think that everyone has the right to open their mouths and make an idiot of themselves if they want to, but some people really should have a muzzle slapped on them. Case in point:

Pat Robertson warns Pa. town of disaster

Associated Press
Thursday, November 10, 2005

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday that disaster may strike there because they "voted God out of your city" by ousting school board members who favored teaching intelligent design.

All eight Dover, Pa., school board members up for re-election were defeated Tuesday after trying to introduce "intelligent design" - the belief that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power - as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city," Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club."

Eight families had sued the district, claiming the policy violates the constitutional separation of church and state. The federal trial concluded days before Tuesday's election, but no ruling has been issued.

Later Thursday, Robertson issued a statement saying he was simply trying to point out that "our spiritual actions have consequences."

"God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in his eye forever," Robertson said. "If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them."

Where to start? If God is tolerant and loving, and I for one certainly hope so otherwise I need to start stocking up on asbestoes pants, then we will be forgiven for sins and misdeeds. Robertson even represents, all be it in a warped way, a flavour of Christianity that believes that if you ask God for forgiveness and accept his Son that all will be forgiven and that no action afterwards is necessary. Part of the entire purpose of the Reformation was to state that good works were not required for Salvation, only faith.

So why isn't he preaching this (forget practicing and modelling)? After all, the media is more than willing to remind us about every mistake that preachers on the other side like Jesse Jackson have made and rightfully so. So how is it thne that Robertson is allowed a pass for the insane cr*p that comes out of his mouth and still be considered a "Christian leader"? He certainly doesn't lead me nor anyone else I know." Or is this a "hey, I've got the crazy bat s**T preacher in my conact list... I wonder what he's going to spew?"

Besides, Robertson should be careful of what he says or he might go here . And maybe to this ditch:

Bolgia Nine: Sinners who, in life, promoted scandals, schism and discord are punished here; particularly those who caused schism within the church or within politics. They are forced to walk around the circumference of the circle bearing horrible, disfiguring wounds inflicted on them by a great demon with a sword. The gruesomeness of the wound is proportional to the sins of the particular soul; while some only have gashes or fingers and toes cut off, others are decapitated, cut in half or completely disemboweled.

Now that's an inspirational image to go to bed with. Almost something from the Simpsons . Can I get an AMEN from the congregation?

Opps!

Suit targets Sony BMG anti-piracy technology

Reuters
Wednesday, November 9, 2005

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Record company Sony BMG Music Entertainment has been targeted in a class-action lawsuit in California by consumers claiming their computers have been harmed by anti-piracy software on some Sony BMG CDs.

The claim states that Sony BMG's failed to disclose the true nature of the digital rights management system it uses on its CDs and thousands of computer users have unknowingly infected their computers, according to court documents.

The suit, filed November 1 in Los Angeles Superior Court asks the court to stop Sony BMG from selling additional CDs protected by the anti-piracy software and seeks monetary damages for California consumers who purchased them.

Of course, Sony's attempts to minimize the public relations damage have been... a disaster. This article shows what kind of damage this software can do to a person's computer and how well the patch works. What bothers me the most is that the company feels it can get away with placing that spyware on the computer of someone who wants to play it their computer.

Gee, I wonder what they can do to make the large record companies even more irrelevant than they already are. Maybe their CEO's can find another field where collosal screw ups can go work.... like the airline industry or a county's school system.

What have we become?

Some Kind of Manly

Bush administration, dead to morality, says torture is the American way
by Molly Ivins

Austin, Texas -- I can't get over this feeling of unreality, that I am actually sitting here writing about our country having a gulag of secret prisons in which it tortures people. I have loved America all my life, even though I have often disagreed with the government. But this seems to me so preposterous, so monstrous. My mind is a little bent and my heart is a little broken this morning.

Maybe I should try to get a grip -- after all, it's just this one administration that I had more cause than most to realize was full of inadequate people going in. And even at that, it seems to be mostly Vice President Cheney. And after all, we were badly frightened by 9-11, which was a horrible event. "Only" nine senators voted against the prohibition of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of persons under custody or control the United States." Nine out of 100. Should we be proud? Should we cry?

"We do not torture," said our pitifully inarticulate president, straining through emphasis and repetition to erase the obvious.

A string of prisons in Eastern Europe in which suspects are held and tortured indefinitely, without trial, without lawyers, without the right to confront their accusers, without knowing the evidence or the charges against them, if any. Forever. It's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich." Another secret prison in the midst of a military camp on an island run by an infamous dictator. Prisoner without a name, cell without a number.

Who are we? What have we become? The shining city on a hill, the beacon and bastion of refuge and freedom, a country born amidst the most magnificent ideals of freedom and justice, the greatest political heritage ever given to any people anywhere.

I am baffled by these "arguments": But we're talking about really awful people, cries the harassed press secretary. People like X and Y and Z (after a time, one forgets all the names of the No. 2's after bin Laden we have captured). The SS and the Gestapo and the KVD weren't all that nice, either.

Then I hear the familiar tinniness of the fake machismo I know so well from George W. Bush and all the other frat boys who never went to Vietnam and never got over the guilt.

"Sometimes you gotta play rough," said Dick Cheney. No shit, Dick? Now why don't you tell that to John McCain?

I have known George W. Bush since we were both in high school -- we have dozens of mutual friends. I have written two books about him and so have interviewed many dozens more who know him well in one way or another. Spare me the tough talk. He didn't play football -- he was a cheerleader. "He is really competitive," said one friend. "You wouldn't believe how tough he is on a tennis court!" Just cut the macho crap -- I don't want to hear it.

If you are dead to all sense of morality (please let me not go off on the stinking sanctimony of this crowd), let us still reason together on the famous American common ground of practicality. Torture. Does. Not. Work.

Torture does not work. Ask the United States military. Ask the Israelis.

There seems to be some fantastic scenario floating around -- if Osama bin Laden had an atomic bomb hidden in a locker at Grand Central Station, and it was due to go off in 12 hours, and we had him in prison ... I seem to have missed some important television program on this theme. I am told it was fiction, but it must have been really scary -- it certainly seems to have unbalanced the minds of some of our fellow citizens.

Torture does not work. It is not productive. It does not yield important, timely information. That is in the movies. This is reality.

I (heart) Molly. She tells it like it is.

The Urban Mythologist

Iraqi politician denies giving false prewar intelligence to U.S.

By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi refused to apologize Wednesday for providing the U.S. government with false information on Saddam Hussein's weapons and ties to terrorists, calling charges that he did so an "urban myth."

Chalabi, now a deputy Iraqi prime minister with a chance to become the country's next leader, is the former exile whose group lobbied vigorously for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. The group, the Iraqi National Congress, provided intelligence agencies and reporters with defectors whose accounts of bioweapons factories and terror training sites proved to be bogus.

Chalabi is visiting Washington to try to mend ties with the Bush administration, which were publicly strained over allegations last year that he or one of his aides told Iran that the U.S. government had broken its secret codes.

An FBI investigation of the matter has barely progressed, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it's an active law enforcement issue.

Answering questions after a speech at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Chalabi denied the Iran allegation and said that relations with the White House are improving.

"I think confidence is being built now," he said.

Chalabi met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen Hadley on Wednesday, although neither would be photographed with him. He's to meet with Vice President Dick Cheney, a longtime patron, next week.

Chalabi's presence poses a dilemma for President Bush and his aides: It comes at a time when questions over the administration's case for a pre-emptive war against Iraq are being raised anew. But Chalabi could play a major role in Iraq's future, making him hard to ignore.

On the prewar intelligence, Chalabi pointed to one passage in a March report by an independent presidential commission - he cited the page number - that he said cleared the INC of charges of feeding false information.

The passage, however, deals with only a single source - code-named "Curveball" - who provided fabricated information on Saddam's supposed mobile biological weapons facilities. The report concluded that "Curveball" wasn't connected to the INC.

But Chalabi's organization provided the Bush administration and some news organizations with other alleged Iraqi defectors who claimed that Saddam had hidden nuclear, chemical and biological warfare programs and was training Islamic extremists in assassinations, hijackings and bombings.

Why anyone would pay any attention to a convicted embezzler & pathological liar is beyond my ability to comprehend.

dealing with both ends of the rainbow

House Republicans struggle to agree on budget cuts

BY JAMES KUHNHENN

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - In a stunning breakdown of Republican unity, House leaders failed Thursday to muster enough votes to pass $50 billion in budget savings, their ranks torn between moderate and conservative wings that rejected pleas for party discipline.

The GOP leaders, faced as well with unified Democratic opposition, were forced to pull the budget bill off the House floor rather than see it defeated.

At the same time, rebellion by Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican from Maine, blocked the Senate Finance Committee from approving a $70 billion tax-cut package, another Republican priority.

The disruptive rifts in Republican ranks in Congress underscored the changing political landscape in Washington, as President Bush's popularity is waning and the governing party faces mounting public opposition on everything from the war in Iraq to sky-high gasoline prices.

In addition, Democratic victories and Republican defeats in Tuesday's elections signaled to Republican moderates that voters may be tiring of hard-edged conservatism, stiffening the moderates' spines and will to challenge the leaders.

The House leadership's failure to pass budget cuts came even after Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., agreed to placate moderate Republicans by removing a provision authorizing oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) - a provision long sought by the Bush administration but opposed by environmentalists.

The abandonment of ANWR outraged some Republican conservatives, who threatened to oppose the bill. Yet the move still didn't mollify some Republican moderates, who thought the proposed $50 billion in spending cuts over five years concentrated too heavily on social programs that serve the old and the poor.

In addition, House Democrats, in a firm display of unity, had been prepared to vote against the budget-reduction package unanimously.

Together they sank the measure.

Acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said that "it's possible, I'd like to say likely" that the leadership would bring the bill back up next week. But the difficulty of assembling a majority in the now-fractious House was beyond argument.

"We weren't ready to go to the floor yet," Blunt acknowledged.

It was a rare concession. For most of Bush's presidency, the Republican-controlled House has led the way on Bush initiatives - voting in near lockstep and acting as a bulwark against the Senate's more-moderate tendencies.

But recent polls put Bush's job-approval ratings at record lows, and House GOP leaders find themselves working for votes without their most effective disciplinarian - former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who had to give up his leadership post when he was indicted on charges related to laundering illegal political contributions.

"The leadership is a little fragmented at this point, and they're dealing with both ends of the rainbow," said Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del., referring to the pressure from conservatives and moderates.

The ANWR issue was pivotal. With 26 moderate Republicans threatening to join Democrats in voting against the budget bill if it included the oil-drilling provision, the GOP leaders agreed to remove it.

That prompted an outcry from drilling supporters, several of whom threatened to vote against the bill if ANWR was removed. Among them was Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

"How I vote on final passage right now is between me and my Maker," Barton said at midday, before the leadership pulled the plug on the bill.

Rich people fighting over money. Can't we all just get along? The Republicans have painted themselves into too many corners at once.

San Franciso Treat

NRA sues to overturn San Francisco gun ban

DAVID KRAVETS
Associated Press
November 10, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO - The National Rifle Association sued Wednesday to overturn an ordinance voters here overwhelmingly approved a day earlier that bans handgun possession and sales of firearms in the city.

Measure H was put on Tuesday's ballot by the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors, who were frustrated by the alarmingly high number of gun-related homicides in this city of 750,000 residents.

In 1982, a state appeals court nullified an almost identical gun ban here largely on grounds that the city cannot enact an ordinance that conflicts with state law that allows for the sale and possession of handguns and ammunition.

The NRA filed its lawsuit Wednesday with the same court, the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco, asking the judges to nullify the law that demands the surrender of handguns by April.

"Cities do not have the authority under the state law to ban the possession of handguns," said NRA president Wayne LaPierre.

The group also claims the law unfairly puts San Francisco residents at a disadvantage, denying them the means to protect themselves. The law does not bar nonresidents from lawfully possessing handguns within city limits.

Mayor Gavin Newsom has acknowledged the measure likely wouldn't withstand legal scrutiny, but said it had symbolic value.

It's items like this that feed the Ringt Wing spin machine. Sure, many of us here are for some type of gun control/restrictions and probably feel that the existing laws need to be a) enforced better and b) strengthened. Still, that doesn't mean that a sweeping measure like this is needed.

Instead, what it does is provide perfect fodder for the next NRA letter for donations. And the sad thing, they are right. As long as the current interpretation of the 2nd Amendment stands, a citizen with no arrest record has the right to own a gun. I'm not claiming this is the original intent behind the 2nd Amendment, but it's the current one.

Still, there was something very interesting near the bottom of the article... this little nugget:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is hearing a challenge to a similar handgun ban in the District of Columbia that alleges the law violates a Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The NRA lawsuit avoids those allegations - for now.

"If we lose under California state law, which I don't expect, that is not the end of it," LaPierre said. "The next step would be a federal lawsuit based on infringement of the Second Amendment of the Constitution."

Note, the NRA isn't claiming that the ban involves their precious 2nd Amendment. They are working more from the angle of Federalism (powers between the different levels of government). In fact, the NRA hasn't, to my knowledge, ever gone to court with the 2nd Amendment as the reason to stop gun control laws. If they are so positive that it is an unalienable right, then why dance around with Federalism?

Could it be that they are worried about how the court might try interpret US vs Miller 1939? It's a case which both seemed to reafirm an individual's right to bear arms but also to allow the government to restrict which arms they could have (specifically sawed off shotguns in this case). Very interesting... perhaps someone with a stronger knowledge of Constitutional Law can shed some insight on this.

Diplomatic Inaction

Six-Party Talks on North Korea Turn Sour

By KWANG-TAE KIM
Associated Press Writer
Thursday November 10, 2005

BEIJING (AP) - Talks on North Korea's nuclear programs turned sour Thursday as Pyongyang demanded that Washington lift sanctions against firms suspected of weapons proliferation and stop accusing the North of counterfeiting U.S. money, news reports said.

North Korean delegates accused the United States of undermining a September agreement in which Pyongyang pledged to disarm in exchange for aid and security guarantees, the South's Yonhap news agency reported, citing unidentified officials.

The North also voiced displeasure over President Bush's reference to a ``tyrant'' in North Korea - widely seen as a slap at its leader, Kim Jong Il, Yonhap said.

The disputes cast a pall over the talks between the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia. South Korean officials told Yonhap that progress had become difficult.

It's a good thing we tossed out all of those radical ideas done by that insane group of Democratic in the 1990's. Now we can return back to the glory days of the 1950's with nuclear weapons as an upgrade.

"Ethical" Administration

Democrats Press Court Designee Over Mutual Fund Case

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: November 10, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - Laying the groundwork for a possible strategy of attacking Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., Senate Democrats are ratcheting up their questions about the judge's failure to disqualify himself from a case involving Vanguard, the mutual fund company that managed his investments.

While Judge Alito, President Bush's choice for the Supreme Court, continued Wednesday to pay courtesy visits in the Senate, all eight Democrats on the Judiciary Committee sent a letter about the Vanguard case to Judge Anthony J. Scirica, who is chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where Judge Alito sits.

The letter asked for documents relating to the Vanguard case, including records of "any communication between Judge Alito and you, any other member of the court, or the court's staff" discussing a promise by Judge Alito in 1990, made in a Senate questionnaire submitted as part of his appeals court confirmation, to recuse himself from matters involving Vanguard.

A White House spokesman, Steve Schmidt, accused Democrats of trying to smear the judge. "It is worrisome that there may be an effort under way by Democrats to try to cut up the judge and attack his integrity, and try to blemish a career of public service where his integrity has never been questioned," Mr. Schmidt said. "His integrity is beyond reproach. There is no substantive basis at all to any allegation of impropriety."

The case involved a woman who said Vanguard had improperly denied her funds that belonged to her late husband. After the woman complained about Judge Alito's participation in the case, he stepped aside, and the matter was reheard.

The judge has told senators, including Mr. Conrad, that a court computer program designed to flag potential conflicts had failed to do so.

The Vanguard issue also came up Wednesday in Judge Alito's meeting with Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. Mr. Schumer said afterward that he thought the judge's explanation "was plausible" but that he wanted more information "to check out the facts and see if it backs up the answer."

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, has also made an issue of the case and sent Judge Alito a letter about it on Tuesday.

Democratic investigators on the Judiciary Committee are looking into at least two other matters in which, they say, Judge Alito appears to have failed to keep promises to disqualify himself.

Don't you just love it when the spin can't even last through the entire article? When 60% of Americans believe that Bush lied about war and don't trust him, shouldn't he had selected a nominee that doesn't have ethical issues of his own?

I wonder if the White House will be willing to release any of the Judge's papers without editing prescreening them?

In Denial

Oil company executives deny price-gouging

Senators question record-high profits after hurricane

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff | November 10, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Oil company executives, under fire for enjoying record profits while consumers complain about high prices at the gas pump, were grilled yesterday by senators who questioned whether the companies were engaged in price-gouging or manipulation of the energy market.

The executives denied that they were taking advantage of consumers, and instead called on the government to ease regulations for an industry they said is facing a complicated and competitive world market.

Oil profits were indeed high in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, said Lee Raymond, chairman and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil Corp., which clocked a record $9.9 billion in profits last quarter. But he said oil profit margins were not excessive compared with those of other US industries.

''Our numbers are huge because the scale of our industry is huge," he said.

If the federal government really wants to lower energy costs, Raymond and the other executives said, Congress needs to ease environmental regulations, make it easier to site liquefied natural gas terminals despite local opposition, and open up more areas like the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas exploration.

But last night, House leaders jettisoned an attempt to push through a controversial plan to open the wildlife refuge for drilling, fearing it would jeopardize approval of a sweeping budget bill today.

About 25 Republicans, led by Representative Charles Bass of New Hampshire, signed a letter asking GOP leaders to strike the Alaskan drilling provision from the broader $54 billion budget-cut bill. The leaders also dropped from the budget document plans to allow states to authorize oil and gas drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

The Republicans had told the House leadership they would not vote for the budget bill unless the drilling provision was removed and they were assured that it will not return after House and Senate negotiators agree on a final measure.

The actions were a stunning setback for those who have tried for years to open a coastal strip of the Alaska refuge to oil development, and a victory for environmentalists. President Bush has made drilling in the Alaska refuge one of his top energy priorities.

The move came as lawmakers in both parties said they are under heavy pressure from constituents, who are angry about gas prices that now average $2.31 a gallon in the Northeast and are worried about the cost of heating their homes this winter. Even Senator Larry Craig, a conservative Republican from Idaho and backer of two energy bills that gave tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks and subsidies to oil and gas interests, indicated he was running out of patience.

Senator Craig, you're not the only one who is running out of patience.

Flu Conference Notes

No, it's not really 1:34 AM. It's 10:34 PM PST. My body only ThINKS it's 1:30.

Today was hard. One of the cats bloodied me at 6 AM as I tried to get the unwilling puss into the cat carrier. After nearly 7 hours on a plane, the courtesy van from the hotel never showed and the cab driver got lost twice trying to find the hotel. I barely made it to the registration in time. My stress hormones got a work out today.

I'll be jet lagged in the morning, but one of the things I've learned about multi-time zone travel is to put yourself on the new schedule immediately, so I'm staying up tonight to get plugged back into the internets, clean up my emails and so forth. Today was the longest day I've spent away from the Net in many, many months. And that was exhausting in and of itself: I'm used to being plugged in constantly. I haven't seen a paper since Tuesday and chances are I won't until I return home, the schedule here is exhausting, we meet tomorrow through all of the meals from 7:30 AM PST to 9 PM, and then there are all those meetings you need to take in the halls after the sessions for the day are finished. The DSL connection from my room is very buggy. I'll try the lobby wifi tomorrow.

DemfromCT, my wiki partner, caught me up on the news (Judy Miller resigned? She'll never find work in newspapers again.) It was great to finally meet him and find him to be the same man that you'll met at The Flu Wiki and The Next Hurrah.

My vote on the conference so far: cautious optimism. There are a lot of heavy hitters in the room and I can hold my own with them and even challenge them. I was worried about that because I have one of the thinner resumes here when it comes to panflu science and risk communications (which, I learn from Peter Sandman, the father of risk communication, is what I've been doing all along.)

There are enough varieties of opinions that there is plenty of room to mix it up, and I'm sure that Dem, who is a far nicer person than I am, will restrain some of my more radical, um, tendencies. Meeting him in person today was already the highlight of the conference. If you read him, you will know the man. What you see is what you get.

My body is noticing that is now after 2 AM EST, and I've got to get some sleep. When it is 7 AM in San Francisco, it will be 10 EST and I can probably handle that.

Thanks to all who've sent best wishes and godspeed for this conference. Every new, true thing I learn will be posted here on my return, you'll get my brain dump. I'll try to provide nightly updates but I can't promise, the schedule here is severe and the DSL is a pain in the ass.

Thanks to wayne, RT, mike,chuck, Charles and the team for standing up the blog today (well, yesterday on the East Coast,) in exemplary fashion. God, these guys are good, Bumpers on the job without fear or favor.

Stay strong, men, and don't be afraid to post the odd recipe. I'm pretty much locked down in a conference which runs dawn to dark and can't escape the hotel for a meal with Dem.

Thinking of all of you from San Fran,
Melanie

Yogi was Right

House GOP makes concession on Arctic drilling

Associated Press
November 9, 2005

WASHINGTON - House Republican leaders late Wednesday abandoned an attempt to push through a hotly contested plan to open an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil drilling, fearing it would jeopardize approval of a sweeping budget bill Thursday.

They also dropped from the budget document plans to allow states to authorize oil and gas drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts — regions currently under a drilling moratorium.

Sweet! Now that's what happens when you present an unified front and can then negociate from a position of strength to get reluctant members of the majority party to work with you.

In other words, you act like the Minority Party until such time as you become the Majority. This victory is definately a feather in Rep. Pelosi's hat.

Sigh

I really hope this isn't true. Over at Kos there are multiple diaries here and here (warning, very graphic picture in the second link) about allegations that the US used white phosphorus rounds during the attack on Fallujah.

These diaries get into the effects that white phosphorus has on exposed skin and that, despite what the military tells us, it was used as an offensive weapon.

If this is true, then God have mercy on us. We went in there to "find" weapons of mass desrtuction only to use them on the people we were going to "liberate"?!?!

On the Side of Right for a Change

As I've mentioned before Zimbabwe is one of those places in the world that the US could/should use it's might and prestige (whatever is left) to get involved. In other words, it's a horrible senario, unlike Syria which is just bad, that demands International attention ASAP or we might have another unavoidable disaster on our hands (think the North Korean famine and secrecy with an African face).

That's why it's nice to see the US doing *something* there even if it is just irritating Mugabe.

Zimbabwe Foreign Minister Chastises U.S. Ambassador

By Craig Timberg
Washington Post
Wednesday, November 9, 2005

JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 9 -- Zimbabwe's foreign minister chastised U.S. Ambassador Christopher W. Dell on Wednesday but stopped short of expelling the envoy for a pair of sharply critical speeches last week in which he blamed the nation's troubles on "corrupt rule" by President Robert Mugabe.

Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi warned Dell of the government's displeasure about his recent comments and reiterated earlier threats that he may be expelled if he makes similar remarks again, according to news reports. A state radio broadcast said Dell had "deliberately gone on a confrontational course with the government of Zimbabwe."

On Tuesday, Mugabe was even more blunt in remarks to reporters in Harare, the capital. "You can tell him that I can't spell Dell, but I can spell hell," Mugabe said, according to news reports. "That is what I know, and he might be there one of these days."

Embassy spokesman Timothy Smith said Dell made no immediate response to the remarks by the foreign minister, conveyed in a morning meeting, but may reply after consulting with the State Department during an upcoming trip to Washington.

The clash has come at a volatile time in Zimbabwe as the leading opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, has split into feuding factions and the nation's top trade unionists have grown more aggressive in challenging Mugabe's 25-year-old government.

Government-owned newspapers reported that more than 150 union activists, including top officials, were arrested Tuesday after protesting in Harare and the eastern city of Mutare, in violation of Zimbabwe's strict laws restricting political activity.

Morgan Tsvangirai, a former union head and leader of one of the splintered opposition factions, warned in a statement on Wednesday that the arrests had brought Zimbabwe to "the precipice of a full-scale national conflict."

Tensions with Dell escalated dramatically last week after two speeches by Dell in which he bluntly accused Mugabe's government of causing Zimbabwe's collapsing economy, chronic shortages of food and fuel, hyperinflation and an unemployment rate estimated at 70 percent.

"The Zimbabwe government's own gross mismanagement of the economy and its corrupt rule has brought on the crisis," Dell said, according to a transcript of the Nov. 2 speech provided by the U.S. Embassy.

Let's see if Bush has learned anything from his Dad and can gather stronger international support for sanctions against Mugabe and his thugs.

It Ain't Over till It's Over

Moderate Republicans balk at refuge drilling

By BENNETT ROTH
Nov. 8 2005
Houston Chronicle

WASHINGTON - A House Republican push to pass federal budget cuts is being stymied by opposition from moderate Republicans to a provision that would allow oil and natural gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

In a letter delivered to the House leadership on Tuesday, 25 GOP lawmakers requested that the refuge drilling approval be removed from the budget bill that is designed to help defray the costs of hurricane relief.

The provision "would undermine the protection of all public spaces by valuing the worth of the potential resources contained within these lands over their conservation value," the letter said.

The House GOP leadership has tentatively planned a vote for Thursday on $54 billion in cuts to entitlements, including reductions to social programs such as Medicaid and food stamps.

The measure includes $3.7 billion in additional federal revenue from opening the Alaskan refuge and giving coastal states the authority to approve offshore oil and gas drilling.

The offshore item has caused concern among some GOP lawmakers from Florida who think it could open up drilling along the state's Gulf Coast.

House Majority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., conceded Tuesday that the budget measure would fail if all the GOP lawmakers who opposed drilling vote against it.

It looks like the Democrats are going to hold the line on this vote, between ANWAR and the domestic cuts, so it may come down to how much power that other endangered species lamdeous duckous has at the White House.

Perhaps we need to contact those moderate Representatives with the election results from last night....

Anyone? Anyone?

Army reaches low to fill ranks

Twelve percent of recruits in October had lowest acceptable scores
By Tom Bowman
Sun reporter

November 8, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The number of new recruits who scored at the bottom of the Army's aptitude test tripled last month, Pentagon officials said, helping the nation's largest armed service meet its October recruiting goal but raising concerns about the quality of the force.

Former Army Secretary Thomas E. White said the service was making a mistake by lowering its standards. "I think it's disastrous. You are throwing the towel in on recruiting quality," said White, a retired general whom Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fired in 2003 over other policy differences.

"We have clear experience from the 1970s with recruiting a sizable number of people from the lowest mental categories," said White. After the Vietnam War, the Army accepted a higher proportion of low-scoring recruits, leading to training and discipline problems, he added.

To achieve last month's recruiting targets, 12 percent of those accepted by the Army had the lowest acceptable results. They scored between 16 and 30 points out of a possible 99 on an aptitude test that quizzes potential soldiers on general science, mathematics and word knowledge.

No more than 4 percent of all recruits can come from that lowest category, according to Pentagon limits. Army officials insisted they would still meet the 4 percent goal - despite the October spike - when numbers are tallied for an entire year. October is the first month of the service's fiscal year, which will end Sept. 30, 2006.

"We're on track to meet our 4 percent annual goal," said Lt. Col. Brian Hilferty, a spokesman for Army personnel. He declined to comment on the 12 percent figure. "It's very early in the year," he said.

The National Guard's October recruit pool included 6 percent from the lowest-scoring category, though Guard officials also said they expected that figure to drop below the 4 percent ceiling by the time the recruiting year ends. Defense officials discussed the numbers on the condition of anonymity. The recruiting figures will be officially released later this week.

The sad thing is that one of the biggest legacies of the War in Iraq will be the army that is left for whomever follows Bush. There are super qualified people that are bailing out left and right because of what they are being asked to do. One of my co-workers whose late husband was in Vietnam says that we are rapidly returning back to that demoralized, undermanned army that emerged from Vietnam. And don't you doubt that our enemies know this.

BTW, Who are these people that we are so desparate to stick in the military so the numbers will look good? They are the ones who can't get a job at McDonalds, or can't hold one for more than a couple of weeks. They are the ones in my History classes that have no clue where anything is on a map or care to learn about the different cultures in the world ("Who cares about them? We're the strongest country.")

I'm not saying they are bad people, but do you want them representing us in pressure situations like Iraq where difficult decisions are made every day?

Blair's Smackdown

Blair defeated over terror laws

BBC News

MPs rejected the plans by a bigger than expected margin of 322 votes to 291, before later backing a 28 day limit.

The defeat came despite Mr Blair saying MPs had a "duty" to support the police.

Tory leader Michael Howard said Mr Blair should resign after failing to "carry his party" but Downing Street says it was not a confidence issue.

Forty-nine Labour MPs rebelled in the key vote but it does not mean Mr Blair, who is already pledged to stand down before the next election, will have to stand down as prime minister.

Downing Street says the decision is not in the interests of the country - Mr Blair always said anything less than the 90-day plan would be "second best" for the nation's security.

The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and some Labour backbenchers said the 90-day plans went too far.

Civil liberties groups compared the proposal to internment - a charge rejected by ministers.

In his final plea for MPs to back the plans, Mr Blair urged MPs to take the advice of the police who had foiled two terrorist plots since the 7 July attacks in London.

In heated exchanges at prime minister's questions, Mr Blair said: "We are not living in a police state but we are living in a country that faces a real and serious threat of terrorism."

I think the Poodle has run into the same problem the Republicans have stumbled into here... the farther away we get from 9/11, the harder it is to scare people into giving up their rights and liberties.

If you combine this with the almost daily revelations of the way we have treated the "enemy" in our jails and courts, is it any wonder that reasonable people are finally putting a stop to these draconian policies. I just hope we can slow them down enough here in America to make it to the 2006 elections for Congress.

Still Searching

Justices Hear Home-Search Case

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 9, 2005; Page A05

When police answered the domestic dispute call at the home of Janet and Scott Randolph in Americus, Ga., she told them where they could find his cocaine. An officer asked Scott Randolph for permission to search the house; he refused, but Janet Randolph said yes.

The police went in, found a straw covered in cocaine crystals and arrested Scott Randolph.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about whom the police should have heeded that July day in 2001 -- the husband who did not want them to enter his house or the wife, who did.

The court's ruling could have implications for police in the many instances in which they must deal with two or more quarreling occupants of a place officers want to search. In a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Georgia police, the Bush administration told the court that the issue is of national importance because federal officers "frequently conduct searches of premises based on an occupant's consent."

Searches without warrants are allowed in such circumstances. But Georgia's Supreme Court agreed with Randolph that when homeowners are divided, the search cannot happen without a warrant. The straw was inadmissible, the Georgia court ruled, because one inhabitant's consent "is not valid in the face of the refusal of an occupant who is physically present at the scene."

Guess which side the administration falls on... yup, they think you can be searched if the other person says it's ok even if you don't.

There are some more interesting points brought out by the article including the participation of Justice Thomas (!).

Finger in the Wind

More good news, via Suze:

Voters oust Pa. school board that backed "intelligent design"

By MARTHA RAFFAELE
The Associated Press

DOVER, Pa. - Voters in this rural school district Tuesday ousted eight school board members who backed a controversial policy to introduce high school students to "intelligent design," which critics say is a form of creationism.

Voters replaced the GOP incumbents with a Democratic slate that called for removing intelligent design from Dover's science curriculum, returns from all six precincts showed.

The incumbents supported a board policy adopted in October 2004 requiring ninth-graders to hear a prepared statement about intelligent design before learning about evolution in biology class.

The election unfolded as a judge considers evidence presented in a landmark six-week federal trial over whether the concept promotes the Bible's view of creation.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III expects to rule by January. The winners of the school board race will be sworn in on Dec. 5.

Eight of the nine school board members were up for election; six of the incumbents were appointed within the past year to temporarily fill vacancies created by resignations. They were challenged by a slate known as Dover Citizens Actively Reviewing Educational Strategies, or Dover CARES.

For the record, Intelligent Design is a theological proposition. It can't be tested by the scientific method, it isn't science. It is theology. I have no problem with theology, I have a degree in it, but let's not pretend that it belongs in a science class room.

Ch-ch-changes

Voters Reject Schwarzenegger's Bid to Remake State Government
# The governor's four ballot proposals, the foundation of his sweeping plans for change in Sacramento, are halted at the polls.

By Michael Finnegan and Robert Salladay, Times Staff Writers

In a sharp repudiation of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Californians rejected all four of his ballot proposals Tuesday in an election that shattered his image as an agent of the popular will.

Voters turned down his plans to curb state spending, redraw California's political map, restrain union politics and lengthen the time it takes teachers to get tenure.

The Republican governor had cast the four initiatives as central to his larger vision for restoring fiscal discipline to California and reforming its notoriously dysfunctional politics.

The failure of Proposition 76, his spending restraints, and Proposition 77, his election district overhaul, represented a particularly sharp snub of the governor by California voters. It also threw into question his strategy of threatening lawmakers with statewide votes to get around them when they block his favored proposals.

Also, Schwarzenegger's defeat on Proposition 75 was a major victory for his rivals in organized labor. It would have required unions for public workers to get written consent from members before spending their dues money on politics.

On a Beverly Hills stage Tuesday night next to his wife, Maria Shriver, Schwarzenegger pledged "to find common ground" with his Democratic adversaries in Sacramento.

"The people of California are sick and tired of all the fighting, and they are sick and tired of all the negative TV ads," he told supporters at the Beverly Hilton. He did not concede, saying instead that "in a couple of days the victories or the losses will be behind us."

Dogging the governor, as it has for months, was the California Nurses Assn., which organized a luau at the Trader Vic's in the same hotel. As Schwarzenegger's defeats mounted, giddy nurses formed a conga line and danced around the room, singing, "We're the mighty, mighty nurses."

At labor's election night party in Sacramento, union leaders were not in a forgiving mood, vowing revenge against the governor next year when he seeks reelection. They were particularly incensed that he had not given union members their due for what they believed to be a clean sweep of his agenda.

"He never apologized once for trashing every one of us," said Mike Jimenez, president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. "And I can tell you, tomorrow we're not going to apologize for the way this election turned out. Tomorrow starts Round 2."

California Teachers Assn. President Barbara Kerr told several hundred activists in the ballroom: "This governor wasted $50 million, and he does not have the courage to apologize to all of you for the trash he talked about you. He doesn't have the courage to say he was wrong, that we're the real heroes of California."

For months, labor and its Democratic allies called Schwarzenegger's agenda an assault on nurses, firefighters, teachers and other public employees. Labor's $100-million campaign against the governor this year has battered his public image as he prepares to seek reelection in 2006.

Also on the ballot were four other initiatives. Voters were narrowly defeating Proposition 73, which would bar abortions for minors without parental notification. The state Republican Party promoted Schwarzenegger's endorsement of the measure among evangelicals and other religious conservatives in a bid to boost turnout of voters who would back the rest of his agenda.

By a wide margin, voters also rejected rival measures on prescription-drug discounts. The pharmaceutical industry spent $80 million on a campaign to defeat Proposition 79, a labor and consumer-group proposal, and pass its own alternative, Proposition 78.

Voters also turned down Proposition 80, a complex measure to revamp rules governing the electricity industry. The initiative, sponsored by consumer advocates, tried to draw on public anger from the state's 2000 energy crisis, but polls suggested that it confused voters.

Overall, the special election called by Schwarzenegger to win public validation of his agenda sparked a campaign that became the costliest in California's history. All told, the yes and no campaigns on the eight initiatives spent more than $250 million.

Schwarzenegger put in $7.2 million of his own money. That brings his total personal spending on political endeavors to $25 million since he ran for governor in the 2003 recall race.

The voters revolted yesterday. We've had enough. Thank God, it's time for a change.

Update: Still a Beautiful Morning

Defeats for G.O.P. Come at a Sensitive Time

By ROBIN TONER
Published: November 9, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - After months of sagging poll ratings, scandal and general political unrest, the Republicans badly needed some good news in Tuesday's elections for governor. What they got instead was a clear-cut loss in a red state, and an expected but still painful defeat in a blue one.

The Republican loss in Virginia, which President Bush carried with 54 percent just a year ago, came after an 11th-hour campaign stop by Mr. Bush and the kind of all-out Republican effort to mobilize the vote that reaped rich rewards last year.

Republicans argued on Tuesday that Virginia was a local election driven by local events, with little long-term national significance. But the loss clearly stung, as did the double-digit defeat in New Jersey, a blue state that had seemed within reach for the Republicans.

Whatever their significance as predictors, the elections come at a sensitive time for both parties, as they scramble to raise money, recruit strong candidates for next year's Congressional elections and, equally important, minimize the number of retirements. Candidates and incumbents are often swayed by their sense of the national mood and the political landscape.

Democrats, already emboldened, hailed the results as the first shots in the battle of the 2006 midterm elections, when control of the House and Senate will be at stake.

"Our voters, going into the midterm elections, are mobilized and energized; theirs are despondent," said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Reflecting Democratic euphoria over what was perceived as a shifting electoral tide, Mr. Emanuel added, "Virginia is a bright, bright red state - shining red."

Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, countered that Democrats also won these races in 2001, only to suffer losses in the 2002 midterm elections. "It will mean exactly what it meant for them in 2001: not a thing," Mr. Forti said.

Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said that in the last seven elections, the party that had won the White House the year before had lost the race for Virginia governor. As for New Jersey, Mr. Mehlman said, "It's a tough state, and our candidate was overwhelmingly outspent."

In many ways, Tuesday's elections were decidedly local affairs, a collection of mayor's races and ballot initiatives from California to Maine. In Ohio, voters rejected a package of measures including strict new limits on campaign contributions and the creation of an independent panel to redraw legislative district lines.

But the two governor's races loomed large. Democratic strategists said they were counting on the victories to help them mobilize for 2006. "This will be a real shot in the arm to Democratic efforts to take back the Senate and the House," said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Republicans argued that the institutional protections of their Congressional majority - including the party's fund-raising advantage and the limited number of competitive seats because of redistricting - would hold fast against any political winds.

(snip)

The elections capped a season of political turmoil for the Republican governing majority, which has been buffeted by Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, soaring energy prices, scandal on Capitol Hill and, most recently, the indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney.

The national mood remains dark. A new poll by the Pew Research Center, released on Tuesday, showed Mr. Bush with an approval rating of 36 percent, the lowest of his presidency; his approval rating among independents had dropped to 29 percent, from 47 percent in January, and he was also losing support among Republican moderates and liberals.

But Republicans note that voters have yet to turn to Congressional Democrats as a compelling alternative. The Pew survey found that voters were unhappy with both Republican and Democratic leaders.

Still, the results are likely to feed the Republican anxiety on Capitol Hill and exacerbate the sense among Republican lawmakers that after years of having Mr. Bush as an advantage at the top of the ticket, they are increasingly on their own.

The Republicans are going to come to terms with having to run the 2006 races while dragging the ball & chain of the failed Bush presidency.

It's A Beautiful Morning

Dems won governorships in VA and NJ, and with 95% of California precincts reporting, it looks like all eight of Ahnold's referenda have been defeated.

Enjoy your coffee!

Hmm. We'll See.

Alito Signals Reluctance to Overturn Roe v. Wade

By Charles Babington and Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 9, 2005; Page A01

Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. has signaled he would be highly reluctant to overturn long-standing precedents such as the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling, a move that has helped to silence some of his critics and may resolve a key problem early in the Senate confirmation process, several senators said yesterday.

In private meetings with senators who support abortion rights, Alito has said the Supreme Court should be quite wary of reversing decisions that have been repeatedly upheld, according to the senators who said it was clear that the context was abortion.

President Bush today named U.S. Appeals Court Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court. Alito, 55, serves on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, where his record on abortion rights and church-state issues has been widely applauded by conservatives and criticized by liberals.
Bush Selects Alito for Supreme Court
President Bush today named appeals court Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court. Alito, 55, serves on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where his record on abortion rights and church-state issues has been widely applauded by conservatives and criticized by liberals.

"He basically said . . . that Roe was precedent on which people -- a lot of people -- relied, and been precedent now for decades and therefore deserved great respect," Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) told reporters after meeting with Alito yesterday. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she had a similar conversation about an hour later with Alito, who has made clear that he personally opposes abortion.

"I asked him whether it made a difference to him if he disagreed with the initial decision but it had been reaffirmed several times since then," Collins told reporters. "I was obviously referring to Roe in that question. He assured me that he has tremendous respect for precedent and that his approach is to not overturn cases due to a disagreement with how they were originally decided."

Collins, Lieberman and others cautioned that they did not directly ask Alito if he would vote to overturn Roe , and that his comments should not be seen as a guarantee of how he may rule. But the conversations appear to be building Alito's resistance to what might be the biggest impediment to his confirmation: liberals' claims that he is a threat to legalized abortion, which most Americans support, according to opinion polls.

As a moderate Republican who supports abortion rights, Collins is viewed as pivotal to any serious bid to block Alito. She is a member of the bipartisan "Gang of 14," which has agreed to oppose a filibuster unless the nomination involves "extraordinary circumstances." After meeting with Alito, Collins said: "At this point, I see no basis for invoking 'extraordinary circumstances' and for anyone to mount a filibuster."

Her comments came as some key Democrats also said they saw slim chances for a filibuster, in which 41 senators can keep a question from coming to a vote. Republicans hold 55 of the Senate's 100 seats.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), a former Judiciary Committee chairman, said this weekend that "my instinct is we should commit" to an up-or-down vote on Alito.

The nominee's well-received meetings with senators, and his ability to calm the concerns of pro-abortion-rights legislators, have largely quieted discussions of Alito in a Capitol more consumed by indictments of prominent Republicans, the war in Iraq and the treatment of terrorist suspects. At yesterday's weekly news briefing by Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and his lieutenants, Alito was not mentioned.

Color me sceptical.

Workers' Rights

While there isn't a great deal to say about the SCOTUS right now, it's nice to see that even though it's toppled over to the right, there are still some good decisions that come out which make sense. They even seem to realize that workers have rights too.

Kevin Drum mentions one of those here . In this case, Tyson Foods claimed that it didn't have to pay it's workers during "the time spent walking to the assembly line after donning protective gear but before the first piece of work comes down the line."

To me, this reads like something out of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle or even more recently Fast Food Nation . At least in this case, the Court had an unanimous verdict in favor of the workers. If you are a business, you know your arguement is weak if you can't get Thomas to side with you.

Sadly though, it's not a case that will help many non unioned, white collared, or unskilled workers who do not have anyone to go to bat for them since they are "independent contractors" or don't know any difference. How many teenagers do you know that clearly violate the federal and state laws every night when they opperate machines or work off the clock for the local sub place or Wally World? In North Carolina, they aren't supposed to work past 7 pm on a school night if they are under 16, yet I have plenty of students who lodge in 6 hours on the clock after they leave school at 3 and another 1 or 2 off the clock cleaning up or they will be fired. Granted, we could debate if many of them really need their jobs or not, but that doesn't change what is taking place. Who is going to stand up for them in the courts?

Fiscal Responsibility

Democrat Kaine Wins Virginia Governor's Race

By JAMES DAO
Published: November 8, 2005

RICHMOND, Va., Nov. 8 - Lt. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a Democrat, won the race for governor in Virginia tonight, scoring a major political victory for his mentor, Gov. Mark Warner, and sending a powerful message that President Bush's political standing has fallen in this reliably Republican state.

With 93 percent of the ballots counted, Mr. Kaine had 52 percent of the vote to 46 percent for his Republican opponent, Jerry W. Kilgore, a former attorney general. An independent candidate, state Senator H. Russell Potts Jr., a Republican, had 2 percent.

The comeback victory by Mr. Kaine, who had trailed for much of the race, provided a big boost to Mr. Warner, who had anointed Mr. Kaine his successor and who is now considering running for president in 2008.

The outgoing governor, who has approval ratings over 70 percent in Virginia but was prohibited by state law from succeeding himself, is attempting to cast himself as a pragmatic, centrist Democrat who can win in the South, and Mr. Kaine's victory clearly burnished that image.

Equally significant, Mr. Kaine's victory was a major blow to Mr. Bush, who campaigned for Mr. Kilgore on Monday night even though his own approval rating has dipped below 50 percent in Virginia.

Mr. Kilgore's aides said Mr. Bush's appearance was crucial in driving up Republican turnout, but Democrats and political analysts said Mr. Bush's visit might have also energized as many or more Democrats and independent voters to come out for Mr. Kaine.

Ya think?

Democrats are now likely to trumpet Mr. Kaine's victory as evidence that Mr. Bush has become a detriment to local and state Republican candidates in advance of next year's mid-term congressional elections.

But Mr. Kilgore may have also hurt himself by running harshly negative advertisements attacking Mr. Kaine's positions on the death penalty, taxes and illegal immigration. According to some political analysts and polls, those ads alienated many independent voters.

Mr. Kaine, 47, is a lawyer and former mayor of Richmond. His wife, Anne Holton, is a state juvenile court judge and the daughter of former Gov. Linwood Holton, a Republican, who campaigned for Mr. Kaine.

Kilgore's negative ads were so offensive that they turned off lifelong Repubs that I know. It was a very nasty campaign, but I think the referendum on W is coming in. This red state is being shaken, not stirred, and every Dem campaign consultant should be studying the result for next year. I can already identify the House districts which are vulnerable. DCC, you have my phone.

Bush is toast. Does the DCC and the party have something better to offer than marmalade? That's a good question. See my Saul Alinsky post below, we do have a history and we seem to be having collective amnesia at the moment.

For the record, I'm a marginal Democrat, so far to the left of the party that they'd disown me in a heart beat, But until this country can stand up a social democratic movement (and I'm not holding my breath) this is going to be the closest thing to a real progressive party I can find. As I did today, I'll hold my nose and vote.

Mark Warner balanced the budget and he didn't put most of it on my back. Put his second in Command back in office.

Shaking Things Up

I've been reviewing a lot of reading and some new things colleagues have shown me as I get read for this flu meeting. I want to open up a little of it for you: some of what I'm re-reading is Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, which might be out of print, my copy is ancient. I've been thinking alot about Alinsky for the last couple of weeks, if his name is new to you, check it out at Powells or your local used bookstore. His wisdom remains as fresh today as when I first read it in the early 70's. His Wikipedia entry is on the link. I'm really glad I reviewed this, because I want to show up at this conference remembering what it means to be a radical. Conferences tend to be cautious, but this one can't afford to be. Not if we are going to turn up something new.

Here are some words from Saul, from the Wikipedia article. Hey, I'm a former labor organizer, there really is a time and place to use this stuff:

"Power goes to two poles: to those who've got money and those who've got people."

"Liberals in their meetings utter bold works; they strut, grimace belligerently, and then issue a weasel-worded statement 'which has tremendous implications, if read between the lines.' They sit calmly, dispassionately, studying the issue; judging both sides; they sit and still sit."

"Society has good reason to fear the Radical. Every shaking advance of mankind toward equality and justice has come from the Radical. He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous. Conservative interests know that while Liberals are most adept at breaking their own necks with their tongues, Radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of Conservatives."

"The Radical may resort to the sword but when he does he is not filled with hatred against those individuals whom he attacks. He hates these individuals not as persons but as symbols representing ideas or interests which he believes to be inimical to the welfare of the people."

"If you have a vast organization, parade it before the enemy, openly show your power."

"If your organization is small, do what Gideon did: conceal the members in the dark but raise a clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more that it does."

"If your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place."

"Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict."

"Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in."

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins – or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.” -Rules for Radicals

I hope I've piqued your curiosity and you'll at least make a trip to the library, or blow the dust off the top of your old copy.

Peering into the Dark Places

GOP leaders urge leak probe into secret prisons report

Tuesday, November 8, 2005; Posted: 3:15 p.m. EST (20:15 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republican congressional leaders said Tuesday they are asking committees to investigate the possible leak of classified information about secret U.S. prisons for suspected terrorists overseas.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert said the disclosure, first reported last week in The Washington Post, could damage national security.

Hastert, R-Illinois, and Frist, R-Tennessee, have asked the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees to look into the origin of the disclosure.

"If accurate, such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences, and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks," the lawmakers wrote in a letter requesting the investigation.

The Post reported November 2 that top al Qaeda suspects were being held for questioning "at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe" and other locations around the world. (Full story)

Critics said the arrangement suggests U.S. agents are engaged in activities that would be illegal under American law.

Top U.S. officials declined to confirm or deny the report but insisted that all prisoners are being treated humanely.

President Bush, while in Panama on Monday, said flatly, "We do not torture."

The GOP leaders' move comes as the White House tries to oppose a Senate-approved measure that explicitly bars "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of prisoners in U.S. custody.

The White House has threatened to veto a $440 billion Pentagon spending bill if it includes that measure, which is backed by Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, a onetime prisoner of war who was tortured by his North Vietnamese captors.

The announcement also follows Democrats' call Monday for an independent investigation into the treatment of prisoners in American custody.

CNN is now reporting that the Repub leadership is now agreeing to bicameral investigations into the secret prisons and the leaked Plame intel. They must be scared.

Site News

I'm off to this big flu conference outside San Francisco first thing in the morning. The cats go to the vets for boarding at 0h-dark-hundred in the morning while I race to finish packing and grab a cab to the airport for a noon flight. I'll be back late Sunday night so you won't see much posting out of me until Monday. This will feel very weird, I've never been away from the blog this long in two years. Actually, it is a good thing that I'm getting a break, I'm very tired from doing this 12-15 hours a day, seven days a week. The conference schedule is extremely intense, the meetings start with breakfast, all of the meals are catered and we will be working through them into the evening every night. This will not be a vacation. I am staying over an extra night to give myself a chance to decompress before I get on that long flight home on Sunday. I will be arriving very tired at this conference and that isn't likely to get better over the four days. I can't tell you the participant list ("Chatham House Rules") but I will tell you what I learn and I expect to learn a lot, I will be working with a group of very smart, accomplished and thoughtful people. In fact, when I got the participant list, I wondered what the hell I'm doing with them. I've been assured that they want me there.

The highlight of the conference, however, will be meeting my wiki partner, DemfromCT, in real time for the first time. We've gotten to know each other over the phone in conference calls with the reveres over the last couple of weeks as we plan next steps for the The Flu Wiki, and he's as funny in person as he is in email. He's a practical joker who always has a smart-ass comment and is one of those high-speed New Yorkers who wonders why I'm so quiet. Hmm, in Minnesota I'm considered a very forward loudmouth. Dem and I go back a few years as guest posters at Kos, which is, I think, something like 15 years in Internet years (sorta like dog years.) I don't think he's bringing a computer, so he'll be missing from The Next Hurrah as I'll be missing from here. The meeting venue is wifi enabled and I'm taking the laptop to take notes and keep up with email, and I may squeek out an evening email to summarize my workday (if there are things I feel I can safely blog about without violating the confidence of the conference. I was invited as a "risk communicator" and that is what this blog is.)

I don't know what will happen with me as a poster, but the guest posters will be around and I continue to grow in admiration of their posts, which have become increasingly shrewd and sophisticated. When I get back, I'll issue a new call for new guest posters to add to the crew so that my absences won't be a burden on a small group but can be spread around a little more widely. Think about it.

This trip is a big deal for me on a lot of levels. Obviously, being included in with a bunch of flu heavy weights is a huge thing. Me, I'm just a blogger. My inclusion means that, for all of us who have been paying attention to and commenting about avian influenza, our work is validated. That's pretty cool when a substantial fraction of the country is still in denial. I'm also aware that I haven't been out of DC in over a year, and that's not good. I need to get away from the "inside the beltway" mindset for a while, and it will be good to go somewhere in which no one cares about all that. Berkeley, CA, couldn't be more different, so this trip is perfect.

Please be encouraging to the guest bloggers. Until you've done it yourself, you can't really imagine how hard this is, to use the vast Internet to bring you the information that's important to you, to edit it well and to add original analysis. I'm not asking for sympathy, but for a little compassion for the guests, all of whom were superior writers when I met them. Blogging is a little different and they've become excellent bloggers in a short period of time. That should be rewarded.

I know I'll miss you while I'm gone. You've been a big part of my daily life nearly every day for two years, so this is going to feel weird, even as I know that getting away for a few days to learn something new is exactly the right thing to do.

How Not to Make Friends...

US steps up surveillance of foreigners under Patriot Act

WASHINGTON (AFX) - US government surveillance of foreign nationals living in the US -- even those suspected of no wrongdoing -- has increased dramatically since the adoption of the USA Patriot Act, the Washington Post reported.

The documents in question range from an individual's telephone record, correspondence and financial data.

The newspaper reported that US authorities issued some 30,000 such national security letters last year -- roughly a hundredfold increase over historical norms.

And I STILL have friends who wonder why the rest of the world got ticked off at us last year....

I hope the FBIes enjoyed getting a record of my son's godmother (Norwegian) purchasing his birthday gifts this summer. That really helped on the War on Terror.

Civic Religion

I voted. Did you? I have serious questions about the audit trails on the new voting machines and have to follow up with the election board.

Echoes of the Past

I haven't been saying much about the situation in France because, in truth, there are only so many issues that I can keep straight in my head. The situation needs mention, however, as it has now reached crisis proportions.

France Declares 12-Day State of Emergency to Curb Crisis

By MEG BORTIN,
International Herald Tribune
Published: November 8, 2005

PARIS, Nov. 8 - France declared a 12-day state of emergency today in an attempt by the government to curb the worst civil disturbances in the country in nearly four decades.

The government of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin used a 1955 law drafted during the Algerian War to impose a curfew and other restrictive measures on areas where rioters have sown disorder in the streets for 12 days, burning thousands of cars, targeting businesses, schools and churches with gasoline bombs, and firing ammunition at the police. At least one person has died.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy announced after an emergency cabinet meeting this morning that the curfew would take effect at midnight in areas to be determined at a meeting of senior regional officials later in the day.

By mid-afternoon, the officials - prefects of France's seven military zones - were still trying to hammer out details of the measure, said Franck Louvrier, a spokesman for Mr. Sarkozy. He said it was unclear whether the curfew would apply only to minors or to the entire population of towns like Clichy-sous-Bois, the suburb northeast of Paris where the trouble started on Oct. 27 when two youths jumped over the wall of an electrical substation and died, thinking they were being pursued by the police.

There was no immediate statement from President Jacques Chirac, who appeared fatigued when speaking briefly after an emergency cabinet meeting on Sunday, his only televised comment since the disturbances began. Mr. Chirac suffered a minor stroke in September.

The impending curfew, which was unveiled by Mr. Villepin on nationwide television Monday night, received a mixed response from politicians and ordinary citizens alike. Many people expressed relief at the idea of order returning to the streets of embattled communities following night after night of violence that has spread to almost all the big cities of France. But others criticized the measure as inappropriate, saying it could aggravate an inflamed situation.

The leftist newspaper Liberation, in an editorial dripping with irony, called it "a brilliant step forward" that confirmed "that the reign of Chirac is a tragic farce." Elisabeth Guigou, a leading member of the Socialist Party and former justice minister, said the Algerian War was "not the best reference" for measures aimed at stemming disturbances involving many youths of North African descent.

The law itself states that emergency measures can be enacted by government decree for up to 12 days on all or part of the territory of France. Beyond a curfew, the law gives the authorities powers to conduct raids without a warrant; to restrict freedom of the press and freedom of assembly; to shut down theaters; to close bars; and to put under house arrest any individual whose activities are deemed dangerous to the maintenance of law and order.

It's chilling to know that the government is using a law crafted for the Algerian crisis. We all know how that ended.

Defining Torture Down

Bush's Tortured Logic

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, November 8, 2005; 11:59 AM

Just what did President Bush mean yesterday when he said: "We don't torture?"

News outlets all over the world reported Bush's words as if they were definitive. But they are in fact enigmatic at best, because it's not at all clear what the president's definition of torture is.

His comments came yesterday in a press availability with President Martin Torrijos in Panama, in response to a question about secret CIA prison camps and Vice President Cheney's crusade against legislation that would prohibit U.S. government employees from using cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

But if we don't torture, then why is the White House fighting tooth and nail against a law that would say as much? Why are those prison camps secret? And what are we to make of the widespread, documented practice of prisoner abuse? Bush wouldn't say. And he didn't take any follow-up questions.

Here's the full text of the exchange:

"Q Mr. President, there has been a bit of an international outcry over reports of secret U.S. prisons in Europe for terrorism suspects. Will you let the Red Cross have access to them? And do you agree with Vice President Cheney that the CIA should be exempt from legislation to ban torture?

"PRESIDENT BUSH: Our country is at war, and our government has the obligation to protect the American people. The executive branch has the obligation to protect the American people; the legislative branch has the obligation to protect the American people. And we are aggressively doing that. We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice. We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do to that effort, to that end, in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture.

"And, therefore, we're working with Congress to make sure that as we go forward, we make it possible -- more possible to do our job. There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans, and wants to hurt America again. And so, you bet, we'll aggressively pursue them. But we will do so under the law. And that's why you're seeing members of my administration go and brief the Congress. We want to work together in this matter. We -- all of us have an obligation, and it's a solemn obligation and a solemn responsibility. And I'm confident that when people see the facts, that they'll recognize that we've -- they've got more work to do, and that we must protect ourselves in a way that is lawful."

Leave it to the bloggers to slice and dice:

Andrew Sullivan writes: "If that's the case, why threaten to veto a law that would simply codify what Bush alleges is already the current policy? If 'we do not torture,' how to account for the hundreds and hundreds of cases of abuse and torture by U.S. troops, documented by the government itself? If 'we do not torture,' why the memos that expanded exponentially the lee-way given to the military to abuse detainees in order to get intelligence? The president's only defense against being a liar is that he is defining 'torture' in such a way that no other reasonable person on the planet, apart from Bush's own torture apologists (and they are now down to one who will say so publicly), would agree. The press must now ask the president: does he regard the repeated, forcible near-drowning of detainees to be torture? Does he believe that tying naked detainees up and leaving them outside all night to die of hypothermia is 'torture'? Does he believe that beating the legs of a detainee until they are pulp and he dies is torture? Does he believe that beating detainees till they die is torture? Does he believe that using someone's religious faith against them in interrogations is 'cruel, inhumane and degrading' treatment and thereby illegal? What is his definition of torture?"

Bob Cesca writes on Huffingtonpost.com: "He's either outright lying or the administration has a very different definition of torture than the rest of the world. I would argue that it's both."

Steven C. Clemons writes: "Bush seems to think that his personal assessment about what is within the interests of the United States should be good enough for the citizens of the United States. The problem is that the American public doubts the Bush team's truthfulness -- particularly after the lies and mistruths that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove offered to colleagues like Scott McClellan, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, and the American public in the Valerie Plame outing case."

Clemons also excerpts from the influential Nelson Report, in which Chris Nelson writes that Bush appears to be claiming that when the facts come out, "we will discover that whatever torture which took place was done strictly according to his Administration's legal guidelines.

"And that, of course, goes to the crux of the matter . . . the President's infamous 'torture memo' which authorized CIA and military interrogators to torture someone up to but not past the point of 'organ failure and death' in order to make them talk. A friend with an interesting intelligence analysis approach to all this suggests: 'Bush sincerely, albeit conveniently, believes physical abuse without intent to cause permanent injury or loss to vital organs is not torture, and believes the CIA black op is staying within boundaries most of the time.' (The best historical analogy: 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.') Maybe . . . but even if true, it's hardly exculpation."

Life in Iraq

Another Lawyer in Hussein's Trial Is Slain

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and CHRISTINE HAUSER
Published: November 8, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 8 - Insurgents opened fire today on two lawyers who are representing Saddam Hussein's co-defendants, killing one of them and seriously wounding the other, according to an Interior Ministry spokesman.

The two lawyers were driving in the Al-Adel neighborhood in western Baghdad when their vehicle came under fire. The two men were identified by the spokesman as Adel Muhammad Abbas and Thamir Mahmood Hadi. They were representing Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former vice-president, and Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Mr. Hussein's half-brother and a former head of the Mukhabarat secret police directorate, in a trial that opened on Oct. 19.

The attack on lawyers involved in the proceedings was the second since the trial started. On Oct. 20, a group of armed men seized one of the lawyers, Sadoun al-Janabi, from his Baghdad office and his body was found about an hour later with two bullet wounds to the head. Mr. Janabi had been shown on television presenting arguments on behalf of his client, Awad Hamed al-Bander, the former head of the Revolutionary Court under Mr. Hussein.

After that killing, defense lawyers demanded that the Iraqi government provide them with 15 bodyguards each. It was not immediately clear what kind of protection Mr. Abbas and Mr. Hadi had.

America: Bringing peace and stability to the nation since 2002.

And close to 40% of the public still supports the yahoos in charge here? If we can't even make the nation secure enough for the lawyers to travel anywhere, then exactly what has been accomplished?

Oh yeah, Halliburton "lost" a couple of billion dollars. Mission Accomplished indeed.

Constitutional Originalism

No More Blank-Check Wars

By Leslie H. Gelb and Anne-Marie Slaughter

Tuesday, November 8, 2005; Page A19

Too often our leaders have entered wars with unclear and unfixed aims, tossing away American lives, power and credibility before figuring out what they were doing and what could be done. Congress saw the problem after the Vietnam War and tried to fix it with the War Powers Act. It states that troops sent into combat by the president must be withdrawn within 60 days unless Congress approves an extension. But presidents from Richard Nixon on never recognized the validity of this legislation against their powers as commander in chief. Nor did Congress ever assert its rights and take political responsibility. Since the Korean War, the process has consisted at most of a presidential request for a congressional resolution, a few serious speeches and authorization for the president to do whatever he wants. Odds are against changing these "political realities." But impaled as we are on the costs and carelessness of so many of our recent wars, it is worth trying to find a better way.

As often happens, an answer can be found with the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. They could not have foreseen the present age of nuclear missiles and cataclysmic terrorism. But they understood political accountability, and they knew that sending Americans to war required careful reflection and vigorous debate. Their answer survives in Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution, which gives Congress -- and only Congress -- the power to declare war. That power, exercised only a few times in our history, and not at all since World War II, needs to be reestablished and reinforced by new legislation. This legislation would fix guidelines for exercising the provision jointly between the White House and Congress. It would restore the Framers' intent by requiring a congressional declaration of war in advance of any commitment of troops that promises sustained combat.

Requiring Congress to declare war, rather than just approve or authorize the president's decision to take troops into combat, would make it much harder for Congress to duck its responsibilities. The president would be required to give Congress an analysis of the threat, specific war aims with their rationale and feasibility, general strategy and potential costs. Congress would hold hearings, examine the information and conclude with a full floor debate and solemn vote.

In case of a sudden attack on the United States or Americans abroad, the president would retain his power to repel that attack and strike back without a congressional declaration. But any sustained operations would trigger the declaration process. In other words, the president could send troops into Afghanistan to hunt down al Qaeda and punish the Taliban in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. But if he planned to keep the troops there to topple the government and transform the country, he would need a congressional declaration. Without one, funding would be restricted to bringing the troops home soon and safely.

This declaration process should appeal to conservatives and even neocons. It meets their valid concern that the United States often loses diplomatic showdowns and wars not on the battlefield but at home. It adds credibility to presidential threats and staying power to our military commitments. Binding Congress far more closely to war, for instance, might have convinced Saddam Hussein of Washington's resolve to fight him in both gulf wars; today it would help convince insurgents in Iraq of America's long-term commitment to make Iraq secure. Liberals and moderates, always rightly complaining about a rush to war, would welcome the restored declaration. Not least, the attractiveness of this approach would be aided by the political power of the Constitution itself.

Nor would the process proposed here diminish a president's leadership or stature as commander in chief as he makes his case to Congress. If, even with these advantages, his arguments fail, then the case cannot be very compelling.

Today Congress deliberates on transportation bills more carefully than it does on war resolutions. Our Founding Fathers wanted the declaration of war to concentrate minds. Returning to the Constitution's text and making it work through legislation requiring joint deliberate action may be the only way to give the decision to make war the care it deserves.

Makes sense. Congress should have asked to see Bush's plan. We wouldn't be lost in the sands of Mesopotamia if they subjected Bush to the same level of scrutiny that the HHS appropriation gets.

Spectacular Failure

President Bush's Walkabout

Published: November 8, 2005

After President Bush's disastrous visit to Latin America, it's unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can't afford an American government this bad for that long.

In Argentina, Mr. Bush, who prides himself on his ability to relate to world leaders face to face, could barely summon the energy to chat with the 33 other leaders there, almost all of whom would be considered friendly to the United States under normal circumstances. He and his delegation failed to get even a minimally face-saving outcome at the collapsed trade talks and allowed a loudmouthed opportunist like the president of Venezuela to steal the show.

It's amazing to remember that when Mr. Bush first ran for president, he bragged about his understanding of Latin America, his ability to speak Spanish and his friendship with Mexico. But he also made fun of Al Gore for believing that nation-building was a job for the United States military.

The White House is in an uproar over the future of Karl Rove, the president's political adviser, and spinning off rumors that some top cabinet members may be asked to walk the plank. Mr. Bush could certainly afford to replace some of his top advisers. But the central problem is not Karl Rove or Treasury Secretary John Snow or even Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary. It is President Bush himself.

Second terms may be difficult, but the chief executive still has the power to shape what happens. Ronald Reagan managed to turn his messy second term around and deliver - in great part through his own powers of leadership - a historic series of agreements with Mikhail Gorbachev that led to the peaceful dismantling of the Soviet empire. Mr. Bush has never demonstrated the capacity for such a comeback. Nevertheless, every American has a stake in hoping that he can surprise us.

The NYT ed board finally gets the glimmer of a clue. I'm afraid I see little grounds for their hopefulness.

Call for Help

Read this WaPo story in combination with Charles Roten's avian influenza piece below.

12 years ago, I lived in Fairfax County, Virginia, the wealthiest county in the US. I fell down the stairs and broke a bone in my elbow. I had a cast on my right foot at the time from an earlier auto accident and couldn't drive. I called 911. Two hours (and two more calls) later, there was still no ambulance nor any information when one might be expected. I called a girlfriend to take me to the orthopedic hospital which had patched up my broken foot 12 days earlier. This, in the wealthiest county in the US on a weekday morning.

Thousands of Katrina 911 Calls Went Astray

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 8, 2005; Page A03

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Early in the afternoon of Aug. 29, as Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast, the phones inside the Louisiana State Police emergency operations center here began ringing with frantic pleas for help -- 467 that first day.

Families perched on rooftops, a grandmother trapped in an attic, gunfire outside a hospital. As the floodwaters rose, so, too, did the calls -- to 1,875 the following day, to 3,108 on Aug. 31, and to 3,284 on Sept. 1. The vast majority came from 70 miles away in New Orleans, but what was strange was not the volume of calls or that they were made, but how they ended up so far away from the people who needed help.

Floodwaters had forced 120 operators at the 911 center to abandon the New Orleans police headquarters. Emergency calls were supposed to be routed to the fire department but its main station was already abandoned. And so -- after hours of confusion -- many calls were shunted north to Baton Rouge, where unsuspecting emergency personnel suddenly found their phones ringing off the hooks.

The disintegration of New Orleans's 911 system carries national implications for future disasters, said public safety experts. While some communities boast sophisticated, high-tech centers with elaborate contingency plans, most cities have older systems lacking adequate backup measures for massive disasters.

"People in our country have gotten to believe that no matter what kind of trouble you get into, all you have to do is dial 911," said William Smith, chief technology officer at BellSouth, which is the phone carrier for New Orleans 911 calls. "That's not necessarily the case."

When airplanes struck the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, New York City lost its main emergency call router, but Rick Jones of the National Emergency Number Association said it was one of the few places in the country with a backup system to automatically reroute calls.

The 911 network is actually little more than a patchwork, subject to the budgetary pressures and technological whims of local and state governments, with no national standards.

Last year, Congress passed the Enhance 911 Act, which set aside $1.2 billion over five years to upgrade emergency systems and create a national coordinating agency for 911. But as Katrina was approaching, the money had still not been appropriated.

Imagine what is going to happen to this fragile system in a pandemic influenza when first responders (including 911 call center workers) will fall ill at the same rate as everyone else.

Get Involved

Trouble in Wal-Mart's America

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page A19

Is Wal-Mart going wobbly? Over the past couple of weeks, America's largest company -- linchpin of the low-wage, no-benefit economy that is increasingly the norm in America -- has announced some surprising reversals of course. In a series of speeches and interviews, chief executive H. Lee Scott unveiled four initiatives that he clearly hopes will polish the company's increasingly tarnished image.

Wal-Mart, he said, will shift to more environmentally responsible practices -- demanding greater mileage of its truck fleet and better packaging of its products. It will offer more affordable health insurance to its employees, cutting the monthly premium in some cases to just $11. It will monitor the environmental and health and safety practices of its foreign suppliers. And it will lobby for a higher federal minimum wage.

Scott's timing is anything but accidental. The sweatshop conditions in which thousands of employees of Wal-Mart's suppliers routinely work, and the depressive effect that Wal-Mart has on working-class living standards here in the United States, are receiving increasing scrutiny -- enough to impede the company's growth. Wal-Mart's attempts to open stores in the major cities of the Northeast and West Coast have been largely checked by a coalition of fearful and indignant unions, smaller retailers, churches and liberal activists. Wal-Mart's stock is down 13 percent this year. And worse is still to come. In November filmmaker Robert Greenwald will release "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," a scathing documentation of the company's business practices at home and abroad.

So the leopard realized it was time to change its spots -- up to a point. Only 44 percent of Wal-Mart's nearly 1.3 million U.S. employees are covered under its health insurance plan; indeed, as any state government can attest, many thousands of Wal-Mart employees qualify for and routinely use the Medicaid program for the indigent. Now the company says it will make its insurance more affordable -- though it still comes with a $1,000 annual deductible, a hefty chunk of change considering that the average Wal-Mart employee makes less than $19,000 a year.

Scott's announcement that Wal-Mart wants better environmental and workplace practices from its foreign suppliers raises many more questions than it answers. The reason Wal-Mart has 3,000 factories in China making the products that go on its shelves isn't that U.S. workers can't do the work, of course. It's because China is home to more cheap labor than anyplace else on earth. In 2003 Wal-Mart imported $15 billion worth of goods from China, 11 percent of China's total exports to the United States.

Now Scott says that Chinese factories should be brought up to U.S. standards. And how amenable is China to that transition? "China actually has very good environmental and safety standards on the books," Beth Keck, Wal-Mart's director of international corporate affairs, assured me last week. Right, and the Soviet constitution under Stalin contained ringing affirmations of civil liberties. Wal-Mart didn't shift production to China because of the communist state's safety standards. On the contrary, Scott and Co. knew full well that workers in China who agitate for better safety standards are commonly arrested and occasionally tortured. Wal-Mart is in China because it's been able to forge a symbiotic relationship between its own dirt-cheap and inherently abusive labor practices and the Chinese government's totalitarian suppression of worker rights. To demand that Wal-Mart's foreign suppliers clean up their act is to demand that Wal-Mart alter its own zealous low-wage culture. Which is why Scott's pledges merit a healthy dose of skepticism.

Of all Scott's commitments, the one that does merit belief is his out-of-the-blue declaration of support for a higher minimum wage. For Wal-Mart is bumping up against a serious problem at least partly of its own making: Because it pitches its products to a disproportionately low-income clientele, its revenue rises and falls with the fortunes of the lower end of the American working class.

And those fortunes these days are anything but bright. The coming crunch in heating oil prices, the decimation of American manufacturing, the steady decline of median family incomes over the past several years, the failure to raise the federal minimum wage since 1997 and the fact that Wal-Mart is setting the pay standards for millions of American workers -- all these are combining to limit the ability of Wal-Mart shoppers to buy as much as they used to. While sales at the Neiman Marcus end of retailing have been doing just fine, the working-class money crunch is taking a real toll in Wal-Mart-land.

Wal-Mart, could, of course, raise its workers' wages, but Scott has dismissed that out of hand. So now it's the feds' responsibility to rescue Wal-Mart from the consequences of the low-wage, low-consumption economy that Wal-Mart, with such fanatical devotion, has created. For, in Wal-Mart's America, it's not clear that even Wal-Mart can thrive.

From Moveon.org:

This week, the director of "Uncovered: The War on Iraq" and "Outfoxed" released his latest film, "Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Prices." It's a powerful exposé on the toll the Wal-Mart behemoth has taken on workers and communities across the country, and how we can help turn the tide.

Wal-Mart is going into attack mode. The company has literally created a war room, staffed with political consultants who are working day and night to undermine the movie and spread pro-Wal-Mart propaganda.1 But it's not working: thanks to the questions raised by the film, national media are tuning in to Wal-Mart's high cost to American families—and last week the movie was featured on page 1 of the New York Times.2

Next week, a coalition of hundreds of unions, churches, small business associations and citizens' groups3 are taking this fight to thousands of living rooms around the country, holding viewing parties to watch the movie and get organized. They've invited us to join them.

Can you host a Wal-Mart movie screening party next Tuesday, November 15th? Sign up today:

http://www.walmartmovie.com/host.php

We'll make sure you get the movie before the 15th if you order by Tuesday, November 8th.

If you can't host a party, you can still buy an advance copy of the new film and send a important message to Wal-Mart: they can spin, but they can't hide. Order your copy online at:

http://www.walmartmovie.com/host.php

I don't often repeat the work of an activist organization like Moveon.org, but this is important. Walmart is one of the most destructive forces for the life of the working class, and those who would attain it, in this country. It benefits the fortunes of the Walton family at the expense of the people who work for it, while hollowing out the communities it invades.

I will be at the Washington opening of the movie on the 15th.

A few thoughts about the state of the country, during and after a flu pandemic

Well, Melanie, you asked for it ... :)

I am going to make several assumptions in what follows.

• I am assuming that H5N1 "earns its jump wings", i.e., either mutates or recombines out a strain that is airborne-transmissible between humans.


• I am assuming that the "jump wings" strain is capable of using migratory birds as a vector, much as the Qinghai Lake strains have been doing for the last six months.


• I am assuming levels of lethality and contagiousness similar to the 1918 pandemic. Barry gives an overall percentage fatality rate of 0.65% in the U.S. for the 1918 pandemic. That's 675,000 deaths out of a total population of 105 million. Scale to today's population size and you get roughly two million American fatalities. Please note that I'm not citing Barry as any kind of authority on this influenza. It's simply that the 1918-1920 pandemic is the closest historical parallel I know of, and Barry's account of 1918 is the best I've seen in print.

Early Stages of the Pandemic

• Panic "above and beyond" the level merited by risk

  One thing that emerged from Barry's exposition was the way in which the newspapers of the time compulsively lied about the coming pandemic and the risks it posed. They fixated on "happy talk" in much the same way that modern presstitutes do.

  The predictable result was that fear turned into blind panic, since the fog of disinformation left people with no way to get any sort of handle on the actual risks or ways they might be partially mitigated.

  In early 2003, the government of the People's Republic of China went to great lengths to cover up the mini-epidemic of SARS then present in the PRC. Predictably, this attempt failed miserably, leading to exposes in the foreign press like this story in the Washington Post, this one run by the BBC, and this one, archived at Time Asia's web site.

  In due course, a public approximation of sanity prevailed, and the usual suspects were duly beheaded.

  But the damage was already done.

  Now, mind you, the total number of SARS fatalities in the entirety of the mainland PRC during the whole course of the epidemic never topped 350. Even if every single one of these people took sick and died in Beijing, a city whose population is 15 million souls, the fatality rate, even calculated over a period of two months, would have been less than 6 per day on average.

  Annualized, that's a probability of fatality, due to SARS, to an individual, of 0.000142 in Beijing in 2003.

  By way of comparison, given our annual automobile fatality rate of some 41,500 highway deaths per year, my own risk of turning into a statistic during my daily commute up and down I-5 is, on an annualized basis, 0.00141.

  In plain language, my risk of dying on the highway every year is ten times higher than that of any citizen of Beijing, picked at random, dying of SARS in 2003.

  But there was complete panic in Beijing that spring. The story at The Age is behind one of those bloody registration walls. Fortunately, www.bugmenot.com is now back in business after its little hassle over domain registration. The story was from Reuters.
  

  Exodus from SARS-hit Beijing

  April 23 2003

  A sea of people in white masks thronged Beijing railway stations today as hundreds of students and migrant workers tried to flee from China's capital following the outbreak of SARS.

  Disinfection squads spread across the mammoth nation as the government stepped up the war against the disease.

  Armies of workers in masks and rubber gloves and armed with spray guns spritzed down airports and planes, buses and terminals, trains and stations.

  The government cancelled domestic travel tours, sent teams of medical experts to the provinces to contain the virus and cancelled classes for Beijing's 1.7 million school students.

  The World Health Organisation has said the disease, already present in 19 cities, provinces and regions, could explode across the country of 1.3 billion people if sharp measures were not taken to curb it.

  Worried migrant workers and university students flocked to train and bus stations and airports in the hope of getting out of Beijing, where the government has raised the number of cases from 37 to 588 in three days, out of the country's 2,158.

  The city of 14 million people has also reported 666 suspected cases and 28 deaths. Ninety seven people have died across the country so far.

  Hundreds of travellers lugging suitcases clogged the square in front of Beijing Railway Station in hopes of getting on one of the dozens of train going to the north, south and west.

  A sea of faces in white cotton masks scanned coveted train tickets, waiting for hours outside in the open, chilly air rather than linger in crowded, enclosed waiting rooms.

  "My train doesn't leave for another six hours, but I'm not waiting inside," said 20-year-old Cao Shu, a student whose university halted all classes two days ago because of SARS fears.

  Across town at the Beijing West Railway Station, Deng Pao, a 30-year-old migrant worker, read the latest SARS update from a tabloid newspaper as he waited for an overnight train to Zhengzhou in Henan province, which has reported just three cases.

  "I'm going home because I'm scared of getting sick," he said after managing to buy a ticket. "I've been in Beijing for two months and had a good job, but it's not worth it."

  Deng said he would return once the outbreak was controlled.

  These people weren't running away from SARS. They were running away because they feared the unknown. The only thing they knew for sure was that their government was lying to them. So they jammed into train stations in their thousands. Panic, pure and simple, over a threat so minor that if they had been properly briefed, they would NOT have reacted the way they did.

  The threat from a future influenza pandemic, of course, will be about 500 times larger if it behaves as the 1918 agent did. Even so, if the MSM and the government both botch this, as past behavior suggests they probably will (almost complete certainty on the part of the Feds), expect a level of blind galloping panic much larger than even that level of hazard would justify.

• Rapidity of Spread

  Those of you who stayed on top of things during the SARS incident will not be at all surprised at the speed with which airborne H5N1 will spread. The rest will find this next slice of history unsettling.

  The WHO report titled Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS): Status of the outbreak and lessons for the immediate future mentioned, into it's timeline, that SARS left its epicenter in Guangdong Province in the person of a 65-year-old medical doctor who was symptomatic upon arrival in Hong Kong in February 21, 2003. He checked into the 9th floor of a Hong Kong hotel. He infected at least 12 other guests and visitors to the 9th floor.

  By February 26'th, SARS had spread, via commercial airline flight from Hong Kong, to Hanoi.

  By March 1, it was in Singapore.

  My March 5, it was in Toronto, Canada.

  By March 17, there were cases being reported to the WHO from Germany and Switzerland.

  And by March 21, 2003, there were cases being reported from no fewer than 15 countries, including Ireland, Slovenia, Italy, Spain, and the United States.

  SARS had gone right round the planet in 28 days.

  Influenza victims can shed virus, and thus be active spreaders, for a period of 24 to 48 hours before they show overt symptoms.

  Hence, in my opinion, it will require a special miracle for every week past a month that it takes an influenza pandemic to spread to every country on Earth that is serviced by commercial passenger air travel.

• Failed countermeasures: troop-enforced quarantines

  If it was not reasonable to expect H5N1 to hitch a ride on geese, crows, ducks, and just about everything else that flies, and if victims broke with overt symptoms before becoming contagious, measures like this might actually make some vague sense.

  The way things stand, the only impact such a measure might have is to widen the already growing, and highly warranted, mistrust American citizens have in their feudal overlords elected officials.

  Because this pandemic can literally fly right over the heads of the enforcers, and land in their rear areas like microscopic paratroops.

  Given problems like this with any remotely imaginable enforced quarantine, I rather suspect that morons cabinet members like Rumsfeld will be all for it.

• Questionable countermeasures: Escape from "unsafe" urban areas to "safe" rural areas

  I suspect this option will be chosen by quite a few rather smart people who haven't carefully looked over its intermediate- and long-term viability.

  I can see several problems right away.

  • Take the frightfulness of a standard workday commute in the DC, LA, or Metro Seattle areas, multiply it by a factor of five to ten. Then garnish with accidents which go uncleared for longer than usual because (i) terrified roadcrews do not want to risk infection, and (ii) they couldn't get to the wreck site anyway because ALL outbound routes are in "parking lot" conditions.
  • Add some outright highway banditry. Panicky roadbound refugees will make a densely packed and enticing prey for human predators, in a situation where normal law enforcement is either attenuated or completely absent.
  • Just how safe is the countryside, really, once you've gotten there? Remember, this one uses birds as a secondary vector. Barry recounts little outposts in the Arctic getting badly hammered by the 1918 pandemic.



• Emergency Health Care: Welcome to the Fourth World

  Given an influx of flu victims literally in the millions, many of whom will require intensive care if they are to survive, it would be most unreasonable to expect the emergency health care system not to break down, even under far better stewardship that the present infestation of the White House could provide, even were it minded to.

  The consequences, though, go far beyond victims of the pandemic proper. Anyone and everyone requiring hospital care is going to get shorted, often lethally so.

  The automobile accident victim with a flailed chest. The patient with chronic heart disease whose condition is touch-and-go. The diabetic whose condition goes temporarily out of control. The asthmatic undergoing a crisis. The wretch who suffered major burns to the torso. The guy who checked in with a bleeding ulcer who has lost half his blood supply through a hole in his stomach and whose lack of overt pain did not alert him until the lassitude and fatigue became too great ...

  The prognosis for all of these people, and hundreds upon hundreds of thousands like them will be poor to terminal given a total whiteout of medical care capacity. Which is all that we can reasonably expect to see.

Once the pandemic has settled in

• Business Impact: Galloping Absenteeism in Public Workspaces

  This will be driven, just as in 1918, by fear of contagion.

  During the course of the 1918 pandemic, nursing help was almost impossible to come by. Simply because nobody in their right mind was going to expose themselves to the risk of infection.

  I honestly fail to see why a future pandemic will be any different, absent a better vaccine than the candidate announced by the NIAID recently.

  This will cause the health care system to persist in its Fourth World limbo.

  The effects on more prosaic businesses may be almost as bad. But the anguish may not be evenly distributed, but may instead depend upon the kind of trade each business is engaged in.

  There is a commonly repeated factoid in the Disaster Recovery Planning community, that a business that closes its doors for more than a week or so is extremely unlikely to ever open them again. Whether this will still hold true in pandemic conditions is an open question.

  I suspect that businesses completely dependent upon walk-in trade in public spaces are at extreme risk here. I'm thinking about beauty salons, haircut salons like Supercuts, restaurants, bars, pubs, swimming pools, and every other similar kind of business.

  Banks and other financial institutions may be much less hard hit, even if nearly all of their tellers and loan officers are lying low, simply because many of the functions of banking, particularly mortgage payments, deposits, withdrawls, account balance information, and so on, can be and usually are provisioned as well via automated systems or over the phone as by direct person-to-person contact. It must have been four years or more since I last mailed a mortgage payment in. These days, I just pick up the phone and call up the bank's computer, for all intents and purposes.

  Grocery stores, drug stores, hardware stores, and similar facilities will find themselves short of both staff and walk-in trade, both for the same urgent and compelling reason. Unlike businesses like beauty salons, however, they may find a way to do business nevertheless. People will still need necessities which stores can provide, as long as the trucks still roll. Barry described a thing that often happened during the 1918 pandemic: a customer would call, place an order, it would be delivered to the customer's front porch, and after the delivery person had been and gone, the frightened householder would dare to open the door and take possession.

  As I recall, Barry was distressed by this. But we have seen just the same sort of arrangement, if my memory does not fail me, time and time again during the periodic mini-epidemics of horrors like Ebola in Central Africa. If both sides need to do business, and yet both, quite reasonably, fear contagion, how else to get the job done?

  In these days of ubiquitous land lines, nearly ubiquitous cell phones, and computers so common and commoditised that a server that cost ten or twenty thousand dollars just five or six years ago goes for one or two hundred today, it is easy to see how such arrangements could be quickly copied from the experiments of the first groundbreakers, and rapidly become institutionalized. I'm not kidding about those server prices, BTW, having just commissioned a two-processor Sun Ultra 2 Unix workhorse whose sticker price would have had me in cardiac arrest just half a decade ago. I spent less on it than I usually do when I allow myself to enter a bookstore without a very strict laundry list and budget. The operating system? Solaris an now be had from Sun Microsystems as a freebie. Don't even ask about OSS alternatives, such as FreeBSD or OpenBSD. Anybody with a broadband line and a CD burner can D/L those any time they feel the urge. :)

• A Graver Extreme: Shutdown of Essential Public Services

  If this happens, things could get very very ugly, very very quickly.

  I am thinking of several possibilities here, any one of which could generate bands of armed and desperate people out foraging for food and/or supplies, without much care as to who was first owner. With all of the potential for lawlessness and bloodshed that entails.
  

  
  
  • Shutdown of the land line telephone system.

    This doesn't sound too serious. Most of us have cell phones, right? It has been some months since I last used my land line.

    But if the root cause is a breakdown in the "backbone" providers, this could also deal a severe blow to Internet connectivity. Today, this is a luxury because we can physically go to a store to shop for necessities. What does one do when that act entails a very real heightened risk of contagion? What if the store, as a public space, is shut down either voluntarily or by fiat?

  • Shutdown of the gas mains.

    Unless your living space is heated electrically, this is going to be a serious issue come winter. Fireplaces?? Most of the heat goes up the flue, and firewood is going to be hard to come by in a suburban community of, say, half a million or more, nearly every resident of which is suddenly dependent upon combustibles like wood for winter heat.

  • Shutdown of the electric power grid.

    Forget televisions. How do you recharge that cell phone when its lithium battery goes flat? How do make your way at night when you've used up your last saved alkaline cell? If you have to order some necessity from a delivery-based reorganized retailer, you'ld better hope the land lines are working, because otherwise, absent a cell phone, you are S.O.L.

  • Shutdown of the public water utilities.

    There is your hot water tank. Given the metal that has to leach into the water, this will not likely be potable over the long term. But given its finite capacity, "long term" isn't really an issue, is it? So how many gallons of water do you have on hand? And just how well-wrapped are you going to be after three or four weeks without a real bath?

  • Shutdown of the sewers.

    Cholera? Unlikely in the short term, from what we've been told during the NOLA disaster. The vibrio has to be endemic in the area first. But when your toilet no longer disposes of human waste, you've got a real problem nevertheless.

  • Shutdown of the network of supply that sends sacks of grain or milk or battery hens from agrobusinesses in Minnesota or Mexico through the Interstate Highway system to your local grocer to your dinner plate.

    Food riots within a week. Tops.

    If you're diabetic, you've got a real problem, over and above that last.

    If you are on some sort of prescription med on a permanent basis, same deal.

    "Lifeline" animals who need such inputs are also at risk. This is not as trivial as it first seems. More than one NOLA resident was discovered drowned simply because he or she point-blank refused to abandon an animal, and stayed behind to die.

  
  

The Pandemic's Aftershocks

I can think of one extremely ugly kind of possibility, immediately and at once. As, I think, can everyone who has at all closely studied the careers of "fringe" politicians like David Duke, and/or the rise to power of much more effective monsters like Adolf Hitler.

When bad things happen to an entire population, a good many members of said population will start looking for somebody to blame.

If it were not for the beginning of America's slide into a rather nasty recession in 1991, I rather doubt that David Duke would have even garnered the one wretched miserable electoral vote that I hear he managed to get during the 1992 Presidential election. As it was, he was front-page news. The recession over and his cover, such as it was, completely blown, he then retreated to his own little sewer, stormfront.org, where he continues to receive the homage that is his due. To wit, hysterical laughter from all but the looniest of the lunatic fringe.

But during the Great Depression, the common anguish created more enduring careers for hate-mongers. Father Charles Coughlin made quite a thing of preaching antisemitism over the radio. A real pioneer, he was, anticipating Rush Limbaugh by more than 50 years. More obscurely, the Silver Legion and the German-American Bund set up shop. One can only wonder what the Ku Klux Klan might have "accomplished", had they not, temporarily, taken themselves out of play when Grand Dragon David Stephenson was convicted of rape and murder in 1925.

Adolf Hitler made rather more successful use of the Depression. The Great Depression made Hitler and the Nazis, if my memory is not (yet again) failing me. As I recall, they set up soup kitchens, among other things. The working men who sat down to eat got a dose of propaganda with their soup, and their circumstances predisposed many to listen.

Correct me if I am wrong, but my memory seems to inform me that the Nazi share of the German popular vote grew something like sixfold between 1928 and 1932. In 1928, Hitler was just one nut, albeit an important one, in a much larger Bavarian fruitcake. By 1932, he was much more, and anybody who wanted to last very long in German politics had to take account of him.

Given the present popular mood in much of America right now, particularly subsequent to five years of a rather nasty recession, which is over only in newspaper headlines, I think we are ripe for this sort of phenomenon once again. I draw a veil over our recent re-election of George W. Bush in 2004, after a record of military adventurism, incompetence, mendacity, profligacy, and human rights abuses up to and including frank torture and murder of helpless detainees, rarely if ever paralleled in American history.

There are many ways in which a completely unscrupulous organization might take advantage of a public in an ugly and hate-prone mood.

One comes to mind right away.

We have calls for "preventive detention" of people of Middle-Eastern descent taking place right now.

Given more than a million fresh new graves with more on the horizon, I think it will be quite easy to whip up frightened people into a froth of nativist hatred against "disease carrying" Asians. After all, it worked once before. And cleared all those pesky Japanese immigrants out of a fine piece of prime commercial real estate like Bellevue.

The Real Cost of War

Via Friendly Fire at Today in Iraq, here is Italian Public Television (RAI)'s documentary on Fallujah and the use of white phosphorus to melt the city down. The video is horrific. This is Not Work Safe, not Human Safe.

Re-Inventing the Old Standby

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 cup whole, pitted kalamata olives
* 1 tablespoon garlic, minced
* 1 tablespoon capers, drained
* 3 tablespoons olive oil
* 1 (6 ounce) can water-packed tuna, drained
* 1/2 one lemon, juiced

DIRECTIONS:

1. Combine the olives, garlic and capers in an electric food processor, and process to form a paste. With the motor still running, slowly add the olive oil through the feed tube and blend thoroughly. Then add the tuna and lemon juice, and continue processing until smooth.

2. Butter on both sides eight slices of baguette and fry them gently in a skillet to just barely brown. Drain them on a paper towel for a few minutes and then arrange two slices a piece on four plates. On each of the slices of bread arrange an eigth cup (a couple of tablespoons) of the tuna mixture and dress it out with fresh watercress and a ton of chopped parsley. On the edges of the bread and tuna mixture, and some half-slices of cucumber with the peel half removed in slivers. Add radish hearts to the sandwiches, and slices of fresh tomato with oil, garlic and basil.

This is a late summer recipe. Enjoy while the sun is still shining.

Once you've tasted this, you'll never eat tuna salad your old way. Trust me on this.

License to kill

A DEADLY INTERROGATION

Can the C.I.A. legally kill a prisoner?
by JANE MAYER
Issue of 2005-11-14
Posted 2005-11-07

After September 11th, the Justice Department fashioned secret legal guidelines that appear to indemnify C.I.A. officials who perform aggressive, even violent interrogations outside the United States. Techniques such as waterboarding - the near-drowning of a suspect - have been implicitly authorized by an Administration that feels that such methods may be necessary to win the war on terrorism. (In 2001, Vice-President Dick Cheney, in an interview on "Meet the Press," said that the government might have to go to "the dark side" in handling terrorist suspects, adding, "It's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal.") The harsh treatment of Jamadi and other prisoners in C.I.A. custody, however, has inspired an emotional debate in Washington, raising questions about what limits should be placed on agency officials who interrogate foreign terrorist suspects outside U.S. territory.

This fall, in response to the exposure of widespread prisoner abuse at American detention facilities abroad - among them Abu Ghraib; Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba; and Bagram Air Base, in Afghanistan - John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, introduced a bill in Congress that would require Americans holding prisoners abroad to follow the same standards of humane treatment required at home by the U.S. Constitution. Prisoners must not be brutalized, the bill states, regardless of their "nationality or physical location." On October 5th, in a rebuke to President Bush, who strongly opposed McCain's proposal, the Senate voted 90–9 in favor of it.

Senior Administration officials have led a fierce, and increasingly visible, fight to protect the C.I.A.'s classified interrogation protocol. Late last month, Cheney and Porter Goss, the C.I.A. director, had an unusual forty-five-minute private meeting on Capitol Hill with Senator McCain, who was tortured as a P.O.W. during the Vietnam War. They argued that the C.I.A. sometimes needs the "flexibility" to treat detainees in the war on terrorism in "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" ways. Cheney sought to add an exemption to McCain's bill, permitting brutal methods when "such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack." A Washington Post editorial decried Cheney's visit, calling him the "Vice-President for Torture." In the coming weeks, a conference committee of the House and the Senate will decide whether McCain's proposal becomes law; three of the nine senators who voted against the measure are on the committee.

They kill with impunity. Who will hold them to account?

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

U.S. and Iraqi Forces Battle Insurgents at Border Town

By KIRK SEMPLE and SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: November 7, 2005

HUSAYBA, Iraq, Nov. 7 - American and Iraqi forces battled insurgents in the streets of this western border town today, and Al Qaeda in Iraq threatened to stage major attacks if the offensive continued.

American and Iraqi troops moved through the city on foot for a third day, exchanging fire with insurgents who had taken up positions in mosques and schools.

Three insurgents dressed as women near the entrance of a building for displaced persons were killed by Iraqi soldiers.

In all, 36 insurgents have been killed in three days of fighting, the military said in a statement. One marine has been killed.

South of Baghdad, four American soldiers were killed when a suicide car bomber attacked their checkpoint, the military said in a statement.

In the capital, five American soldiers were charged with abusing prisoners. The military said they kicked and punched three detainees waiting to be moved to a detention facility on Sept. 7.

The American-led operation in Husayba is one in a series of sweeps in the area over the past six months that are intended to curb the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq. Marine commanders say the operations put insurgents on the defensive, but success has been spotty.

In early October, similar numbers of American troops moved through the area, along the Euphrates River valley, but far fewer Iraqi soldiers fought in that offensive, making the Husayba operation the first serious test of new Iraqi Army troops in Anbar Province.

The latest sweeps provoked Al Qaeda, which expressed anger in a Web posting signed by the spokesman for Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Maisra al-Iraqi. It set a 24-hour ultimatum for troops to stop the operation or "they will face everything bad from us, and the Mesopotamia ground will shake under their legs."

"They should know that the price of blood that was spent will be very expensive," the warning declared.

Violence rose slightly in Baghdad today, breaking a relative lull in attacks that had continued for several weeks.

You've already seen this story a dozen times in the last two and a half years with different names. We do the same thing over and over again, and get the same results. The Army sweeps an area but doesn't have the troops to hold it, leaves, and the area fills back up again with the entire population angry. I guess all the competent generals retired or were pushed out.

The Cost

This is the first piece I've seen in the US press which really initiates the conversation on the economic and social cost of a pandemic flu. This is excellent, read the whole thing, and then call your local governments and school systems and ask to see their plan.

Leaders Share Flu Pandemic Concerns
Federal Plan Prompts a Deeper Look Into Worst-Case Health, Business Scenarios

By Susan Levine
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 7, 2005; Page B01

When the flu pandemic is here and the hospitals begin to overflow and there is not near enough staff or medicine or ventilators for every acutely ill patient, who will be treated?

"Are we going to do our best to save the next generation?" Diane Helentjaris, a health director in a Virginia community, wondered aloud. "Or are we going to do our best to prevent deaths?"

Her question hung for a moment in a room of health officials who had before them a 19-page grid titled "Pandemic Influenza Issues and Options." The group was assembled on a beautiful morning last month in a quiet conference center just north of Richmond. The setting, and their dispassionate discussion, made the issues and the options seem chillingly surreal.

There were medically and ethically thorny questions. Beyond the doctors, nurses and other medical staff striving to keep people alive through the pandemic, which hospital workers should get a vaccine, if one exists? The cafeteria cooks needed to feed caregivers and patients? The housekeeping staff keeping beds changed and wards cleaned?

And what about the perils in the community? Should the utility employees, sanitation crews and grocery-store truck drivers critical for maintaining everyday services and order get preference? Should schools be closed to try to contain the outbreak? Gymnasiums claimed for makeshift quarantine units? Or would that further strip the workforce because parents would stay home with their children?

"The decisions," Diane Woolard of Virginia's Health Department said, "are not going to be easy."

The intensity of such discussions probably will deepen now that the Bush administration has released its 396-page plan for what many scientists believe is inevitable: the mutation of today's avian flu into a new, virulent strain that it says could cause as many as 1.9 million deaths in the United States and a far greater toll worldwide.

"Communities as we know them will not exist during the pandemic," Woolard told her audience.

In this region, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments estimates that hundreds of thousands of people could become sick in the absence of a vaccine or with inadequate supplies of antiviral drugs. Thousands would die.

Whose Rights?

Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Military Tribunals

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 7, 2005

Filed at 10:20 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider a challenge to the Bush administration's military tribunals for foreign terror suspects, a major test of the government's wartime powers and a case presenting the first conflict for new Chief Justice John Roberts.

Justices will decide whether Osama bin Laden's driver can be tried for war crimes before military officers in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Roberts, as an appeals court judge, joined a summer ruling against Salim Ahmed Hamdan.

He did not participate in Monday's action, which put him in the difficult situation of sitting in judgment of one of his own rulings. Lawyers for Hamdan were expected to ask Roberts to participate in the case, to avoid a 4-4 tie.

The court's intervention was a surprise. In 2004 justices took the first round of cases stemming from the government's war on terrorism. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who is retiring, wrote in one case that ''a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens.''

The announcement of the court's move came shortly after President Bush, asked about reports of secret U.S. prisons in Eastern Europe for terrorism suspects, declared anew that his administration does not torture suspects.

''There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again,'' Bush said during a joint news conference in Panama City with President Martin Torrijos. ''So you bet we will aggressively pursue them but we will do so under the law.''

Hamdan's case brought a new issue to the court -- the rights of foreigners who have been charged and face a military trial in a type of proceeding resurrected from World War II. Trials of Hamdan and three other low-level suspects were interrupted last fall when a judge in Washington said the proper process had not been followed.

The men are among about 500 foreigners, many swept up in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, who have been held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba. The government had planned to proceed with a military trial for another foreigner, Australian David M. Hicks, with a pretrial hearing later this month, but that will likely be stalled now.

Guantanamo Bay has become a flash point for criticism of America overseas and by civil libertarians. Initially, the Bush administration refused to let the men see attorneys or challenge their imprisonment. The high court in 2004 said U.S. courts were open to filings from the men, who had been designated enemy combatants.

This is why who gets to appoint Supreme Court judges matters. This is a basic civil liberties case. Roberts has already come down against civil liberties. Confirming Alito is going to give us a very conservative court which bows to the Executive Branch, currently run by a neo-con cabal.

PETTY TYRANNY VERSUS FAITH

This is an outrage.

Steve Clemons at The Washington Note was the first place in the blogosphere that I noticed to have commented on this act of state-sponsored petty tyranny.

Impeach Bush? No.

We no longer should accept making them whine when they get smacked back for their bullying tactics.

We need to give them fear-based diarrhea.

Every single day.

On A01

Long-Predicted Flu Finally Tops Agenda

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 7, 2005; Page A01

Tommy G. Thompson's schedule for Sept. 11, 2001, had penciled into the 9:30 a.m. slot: "flu vaccine briefing."

Experts from several federal agencies were going to tell the new secretary of Health and Human Services what to expect in the upcoming flu season -- and give him a status report on preparations for a possible worldwide outbreak of influenza, a pandemic.

"He wanted to know why the pandemic plan wasn't finished," a person who was there recalled recently. "He was very annoyed -- having been convinced pandemic flu was a danger -- that it had been allowed to languish." Another participant remembers Thompson as "livid."

As the news of that morning's terrorist attacks trickled in, Thompson at first insisted the meeting proceed before dismissing the group, saying they would meet later.

The aborted briefing that morning symbolizes the tortuous route that the issue of pandemic influenza has taken as it has ascended the national agenda -- a place it occupies today in a way few health issues ever do.

Last week, President Bush asked Congress for $7.1 billion to confront the threat, and the administration released a massive and long-awaited flu preparedness plan. Today, U.S. health officials and experts are in Geneva for a three-day international meeting on how to stop the spread of a potential pandemic virus that has begun spreading around the world.

But it took more than an earnest and angry Cabinet secretary to get the country's attention. It took four more years of cajoling, the reappearance of "bird flu" in Asia with a chilling trickle of human deaths, a vaccine debacle, Bush's summer reading, migrating birds and a hurricane. Ironically, the events of Sept. 11 may also have prompted action.

Whatever the reasons, pandemic flu has now arrived -- not the disease, but the issue. The latest milestone in its march into the public eye was last week's release of the "pandemic influenza plan" -- 396 pages of dire prediction and advice. It is the plan Thompson was asking about four years ago.

"There is no question that the tipping point has finally arrived," Thompson, now a private consultant, said recently. "I'm sorry it wasn't two years ago."

But the seemingly overnight appearance of worries about pandemic flu on the front pages and in water-cooler conversations is misleading. The subject has been evolving out of sight for years -- much like the virus itself.

"I think there was always rather intense interest at the level of the [HHS] department," said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a chief adviser of the past two secretaries. "Influenza has always been at the very top of my short list of things to be concerned about."

"The idea that pandemic flu has just gotten traction is not strictly accurate," said Martin G. Myers, former head of the National Vaccine Program Office and now a professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He said a draft was presented in 1998 to Donna E. Shalala, HHS secretary in the Clinton administration.

An influenza pandemic occurs when a strain of flu virus emerges that has the capacity to be transmitted easily from person to person but is so different from previously circulating strains that just about everyone is susceptible to it. It occurred only three times in the 20th century -- 1918, 1957 and 1968.

Over a long enough period of time, a flu pandemic is inevitable. But the intervals can be long enough that an entire generation reaches maturity with no recollection of one.

"Flu people have a saying: 'The clock is ticking. We just don't know what time it is,'" Myers said.

The media coverage is improving, but still woefully shortsighted. There are things you need to do to protect yourself and your family and you should be starting those things now.

You are going to need 6-8 weeks of food and water for your family. You need to start training yourself now to be a compulsive, obsessive hand washer. You may want to investigate Nanomasks. Talk to your doctor about a dual course of Tamiflu and probenecid, even though my wiki partners are unconvinced by this. Information and planning are the tools to prevent panic. The Flu Wiki is there for you and has more information than the new CDC site (but read that, too.)

Moral Wasteland

Tortured justifications

Last week's disclosure by the Washington Post that the CIA runs secret prisons in several Eastern European nations — sites where men can disappear indefinitely without charges or legal protection — provides more evidence that our nation's leaders are mocking our ideals.

The bar on cruel and inhumane treatment is part of the Geneva Convention, which the U.S. signed but which President Bush determined did not apply to terrorists, who wear no uniform and fight for no country. Alberto R. Gonzales, formerly Bush's legal counsel and now attorney general, soon after 9/11 derided the Geneva Convention as "quaint" and "obsolete." Although Bush has said detainees will not be tortured and will be treated humanely, the administration's definitions of those terms keep changing.

That's unacceptable. Military and CIA interrogators must be told what is allowed and what is not. Without clear guidelines, mistreatment or torture will continue. The rules should be the same at home and abroad, for soldiers and spies.

The argument that the U.S. should not heed the Geneva Convention because its enemies do not sets the stage for a race to the barbaric bottom. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was tortured during his 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, spoke eloquently on the fallacy of the "we'll do what they do" argument last month. He said all American POWs "knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them."

McCain engineered a 90-9 endorsement of his proposed law barring "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment" of any detainee held by the U.S. government. The law also would make interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual the standard for handling detainees in Defense Department custody. That would provide needed clarity to soldiers, who have seen colleagues mistreating inmates at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere.

The House has not yet approved the bill, but it should. The Senate attached McCain's anti-torture amendment to another bill on Friday, and McCain has vowed to keep attaching it to every piece of Senate legislation until it becomes law. If the president follows through on his threatened veto — which would be his first — the House and Senate should override him.

John Yoo, who served in the Justice Department's office of legal counsel when it produced its 2002 memo discussing how to define torture, wrote on the Op-Ed page of The Times last year: "Our system has a place for the discussion of morality and policy. Our elected and appointed officials must weigh these issues in deciding on how it will conduct interrogations. Ultimately, they must answer to the American people for their choices."

Those sentiments are even more valid a year later. It's now clear our leaders made some appalling choices. It's time they started answering for them.

What I want to know is, how did we come to this? And why isn't there generalized outrage among the public?

Peering into the Future

The New Yorker’s Guide to Surviving Alito
How Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito might reshape the law, and how to protect yourself.

By Dahlia Lithwick

Cops Alito’s appeals-court decisions show he would uphold the strip search of a suspect’s wife—and 10-year-old daughter—even though the search warrant didn’t name them. And he saw no problem with an eviction carried out by police officers waving a sawed-off shotgun around a family living room. Who cares? You can correct for this imbalance of power with the cops by buying yourself a machine gun!

Guns
Alito wrote a dissent arguing that Congress doesn’t have the power to restrict possession of machine guns. This legal philosophy has sweeping implications for gun laws, of course—but also many other acts of Congress, including civil rights and environmental legislation. But remember, owning an Uzi means never waiting in line for Odd Couple tickets again.

Church-State
Alito voted to uphold a crèche scene at a municipal building, arguing there was no state endorsement of religion since it included secular and Kwanzaa symbols. The good news for New Yorkers? There can finally be an official state Greek Orthodox priest and rebbe, as long as both agree to wear Frosty the Snowman pins in their beards.

Discrimination
Alito’s rulings show that he’d raise the barriers for victims of sex and race discrimination seeking redress in the courts, demanding a heightened standard of proof some critics deem almost impossible to meet. Avert future headaches by having your employer fill out forms indicating that he (1) fired you for refusing to have sex with him or (2) refuses to promote you because you’re Hispanic. If you can get him to notarize both, Alito would be grateful.

Abortion
Alito sees no problem with regulations that would require a grown woman in most circumstances to notify her husband before getting an abortion. Take heart, ladies: If you divorce your husbands now, the rule won’t apply to you later.

Lily Livers

I wish Joe Biden (D-MBNA) would just cross the aisle and put the rest of the Democratic Party out of its misery.

Senate Dems: Wait and see on Alito filibuster

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

November 7, 2005

WASHINGTON - Samuel Alito should get an up-or-down vote on his Supreme Court nomination, a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee said yesterday, playing down the chances of a filibuster.

"My instinct is we should commit," said Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), minimizing prospects of the Senate maneuver that would prevent final action on President George W. Bush's choice to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

"I think that judgment won't be made until the bulk of us have had a chance to actually see him and speak to him. But I think the probability is that [a vote] will happen," Biden said on ABC's "This Week."

Other committee Democrats, however, said it was too soon to tell whether a filibuster might be necessary, citing initial concerns about Alito's conservative record from the bench.

Alito's confirmation hearings begin in the committee on Jan. 9.

Some Democrats have raised the prospect of a filibuster until they get a fuller sense of his views on abortion and other social issues on which O'Connor has been a swing vote.

One instance about which senators have expressed concern is Alito's 1991 dissent in a case in which the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he is currently a judge, struck down a Pennsylvania law that included a provision requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses. O'Connor was an author of the Supreme Court ruling that found the notification unconstitutional.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), noting that senators still must review more than 300 of Alito's opinions, said the time to decide whether to filibuster should come after Alito addresses questions during the confirmation hearings.

Get a spine, Dems. This nominee has a troubling record and you shouldn't be hesitant to talk about it.

And No One Cares

Tortured justifications

Last week's disclosure by the Washington Post that the CIA runs secret prisons in several Eastern European nations — sites where men can disappear indefinitely without charges or legal protection — provides more evidence that our nation's leaders are mocking our ideals.

The bar on cruel and inhumane treatment is part of the Geneva Convention, which the U.S. signed but which President Bush determined did not apply to terrorists, who wear no uniform and fight for no country. Alberto R. Gonzales, formerly Bush's legal counsel and now attorney general, soon after 9/11 derided the Geneva Convention as "quaint" and "obsolete." Although Bush has said detainees will not be tortured and will be treated humanely, the administration's definitions of those terms keep changing.

That's unacceptable. Military and CIA interrogators must be told what is allowed and what is not. Without clear guidelines, mistreatment or torture will continue. The rules should be the same at home and abroad, for soldiers and spies.

The argument that the U.S. should not heed the Geneva Convention because its enemies do not sets the stage for a race to the barbaric bottom. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was tortured during his 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, spoke eloquently on the fallacy of the "we'll do what they do" argument last month. He said all American POWs "knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them."

McCain engineered a 90-9 endorsement of his proposed law barring "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment" of any detainee held by the U.S. government. The law also would make interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual the standard for handling detainees in Defense Department custody. That would provide needed clarity to soldiers, who have seen colleagues mistreating inmates at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere.

The House has not yet approved the bill, but it should. The Senate attached McCain's anti-torture amendment to another bill on Friday, and McCain has vowed to keep attaching it to every piece of Senate legislation until it becomes law. If the president follows through on his threatened veto — which would be his first — the House and Senate should override him.

John Yoo, who served in the Justice Department's office of legal counsel when it produced its 2002 memo discussing how to define torture, wrote on the Op-Ed page of The Times last year: "Our system has a place for the discussion of morality and policy. Our elected and appointed officials must weigh these issues in deciding on how it will conduct interrogations. Ultimately, they must answer to the American people for their choices."

Those sentiments are even more valid a year later. It's now clear our leaders made some appalling choices. It's time they started answering for them.

That's all well and good, but if the Congress is unwilling to enforce the laws which are already on the books (like the fact that the US is signatory to the Geneva conventions) this is nothing more than an exercise. The Bush administration tortured people in Iraq, Gitmo and Afghanistan and in their black book prisons in Eastern Europe and with their "extraordinary renditions." Until they are held accountable for what they have already done, passing another unenforcable law is just a PR stunt. I have a hard time taking Sen. McCain and the rest of Congress seriously. There hasn't been a Congressional investigation, and there won't be as long as the Republicans hold the majority. They are cowards and moral midgets.

We'll All Be Dead When History Comes Around

Blair's litany of failures on Iraq - ambassador's damning verdict

Meyer says PM failed to exert any leverage on Bush and was seduced by US power

Julian Glover and Ewen MacAskill
Monday November 7, 2005
The Guardian

Tony Blair repeatedly passed up opportunities to put a brake on the rush to war in Iraq, a failure that may have contributed to the country's present anarchy, according to Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's ambassador to Washington at the time, in his book DC Confidential, serialised in the Guardian from today.

Sir Christopher, highly critical of Mr Blair's performance in the run-up to the war, argues the prime minister and his team were "seduced" by the proximity and glamour of US power and reluctant to negotiate conditions with George Bush for Britain's support for the war.

He says Mr Blair failed to exploit his enormous leverage with Mr Bush not only to secure a precious delay but to plan for postwar Iraq. "We may have been the junior partner in the enterprise but the ace up our sleeve was that America did not want to go it alone. Had Britain so insisted, Iraq after Saddam might have avoided the violence that may yet prove fatal to the entire enterprise."

But Mr Blair did not have any appetite for bargaining with Mr Bush, according to Sir Christopher: "Tony Blair chose to take his stand against Saddam and alongside President Bush from the highest of high moral ground. It is the definitive riposte to Blair the Poodle, seduced though he and his team always appeared to be by the proximity and glamour of American power.

"But the high moral ground, and the pure white flame of unconditional support to an ally in service of an idea, have their disadvantages. They place your destiny in the hands of an ally. They fly above the tangled history of Sunni, Shia, Kurd, Turkomen and Assyrian. They discourage descent into the dull detail of tough and necessary bargaining: meat and drink to Margaret Thatcher but, so it seemed, uncongenial to Tony Blair."

The former diplomat accuses Mr Blair of weakness in failing to engage Mr Bush in the "plain-speaking conversation" that needed to take place. "Had Blair told Bush in clear and explicit terms that he would be unable to support a war unless British wishes were met? I doubted it."

The Washington embassy repeatedly advised Downing Street to use its leverage, but was ignored.

Delaying the invasion from March to the autumn would have allowed the United Nations weapons inspectors extra months to establish whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, enabled the US and Britain to reach an understanding with France and Russia, two of the biggest sceptics about war, and increased international support, instead of going to war "in the company of a motley ad hoc coalition of allies".

The former diplomat, who enjoyed unparalleled access to all the key members of Mr Bush's administration and supported the war, provides the most detailed account yet of the thinking inside the White House and Downing Street in the 18 months running up to the invasion in March 2003. He says of the war now: "History's verdict looks likely to be that it was terminally flawed both in conception and execution."

Not to mention that it was illegal and immoral.

Cheney Likes Torture as Policy

Cheney Fights for Detainee Policy
As Pressure Mounts to Limit Handling Of Terror Suspects, He Holds Hard Line

By Dana Priest and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 7, 2005; Page A01

Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects, according to defense, state, intelligence and congressional officials.

Last winter, when Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, began pushing to have the full committee briefed on the CIA's interrogation practices, Cheney called him to the White House to urge that he drop the matter, said three U.S. officials.

Vice President Cheney has fought restrictions on handling of terrorism suspects, rules favored by other administration officials and senators.
Vice President Cheney has fought restrictions on handling of terrorism suspects, rules favored by other administration officials and senators. (By Stephen Morton -- Associated Press)

In recent months, Cheney has been the force against adding safeguards to the Defense Department's rules on treatment of military prisoners, putting him at odds with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon R. England. On a trip to Canada last month, Rice interrupted a packed itinerary to hold a secure video-teleconference with Cheney on detainee policy to make sure no decisions were made without her input.

Just last week, Cheney showed up at a Republican senatorial luncheon to lobby lawmakers for a CIA exemption to an amendment by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The exemption would cover the CIA's covert "black sites" in several Eastern European democracies and other countries where key al Qaeda captives are being kept.

Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt declined to comment on the vice president's interventions or to elaborate on his positions. "The vice president's views are certainly reflected in the administration's policy," he said.

Increasingly, however, Cheney's positions are being opposed by other administration officials, including Cabinet members, political appointees and Republican lawmakers who once stood firmly behind the administration on all matters concerning terrorism.

Personnel changes in President Bush's second term have added to the isolation of Cheney, who previously had been able to prevail in part because other key parties to the debate -- including Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and White House counsel Harriet Miers -- continued to sit on the fence.

But in a reflection of how many within the administration now favor changing the rules, Elliot Abrams, traditionally one of the most hawkish voices in internal debates, is among the most persistent advocates of changing detainee policy in his role as the deputy national security adviser for democracy, according to officials familiar with his role.

At the same time Rice has emerged as an advocate for changing the rules to "get out of the detainee mess," said one senior U.S. official familiar with discussions. Her top advisers, along with their Pentagon counterparts, are working on a package of proposals designed to address all controversial detainee issues at once, instead of dealing with them on a piecemeal basis.

Cheney's camp is a "shrinking island," said one State Department official who, like other administration officials quoted in this article, asked not to be identified because public dissent is strongly discouraged by the White House.

This asshole LIKES torture. I don't know there is a whole lot to say about him besides that. Here is a rich white guy who favors putting your arms in shackles behind you and hanging you from them.

While the ineffectual Rice and her camp are working to get out of the torture policy, is anyone actually working to change what is going on in the camps? No? Everyone is just running while the policies remain the same.

Bastards.

A Little Dab Will Do Ya

Dense with fruit and nuts, this makes an elegant finger sandwich with a layer of cream cheese and is dense enough to get your blood sugar back up during a long afternoon at the office.

PUMPKIN BREAD

Makes 2 loaves.

•3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

•2 tsp. baking soda

•1 1/2 tsp. salt

•2 tsp. cinnamon

•2 tsp. nutmeg

1 tsp. allspice

•3 cups sugar

•4 eggs, beaten

•2 cups of fresh pumpkin --> 16 ounces if using canned pumpkin

•2/3 cup water --> if pumpkin is canned

•1/2 cup water --> if pumpkin is fresh or frozen

•1 cup vegetable oil •1 cup chopped walnuts

* I cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine flour, soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar in large mixing bowl. Add eggs, water, oil, raisins and pumpkin. Stir until blended. Add nuts. Mix well. Pour into two 9x5" loaf pans. Bake 1 hour. Cool slightly and take out of pans to let cool on a rack. This tastes best if you wrap, refrigerate and wait a day to eat it. It keeps well in the refrigerator and can be frozen. It will smell so good that keeping your mitts off of it will be nearly impossible.

Slice it thinly to make finger sandwiches, no more than a quarter inch thick (the bread is moist and will hold up to this kind of treatment.) For finger sandwhiches, take two slices and spread one thinly with devon cream or cream cheese. Slice the bread into four fingers on a high tea tower along with all the goodies you've prepared for your high tea, like cucumber and watercress finger sandwiches.

The combination of these elements together, along with an egg salad tea sandwich on a sturdier baguette (sliced VERY thin), gives you all the fixings for an elegant high tea, which is a very fun way to throw an afternoon party that you don't really want to rage into the evening. A sip of sherry wouldn't be out of line, but everyone goes home before dinner. High tea is usually at around 4. Make sure you have a flowing pot of good black tea, I'm partial to Assam teas at that hour of the day.

Finger sandwiches and high teas are an art which should be more widely distributed. This is good food, served at the low point of the afternoon blood sugar and I like it a lot. It is also a social habit which re-distributes the colleagues at near the end of the day to share what they learned that day. That is precious social capital.

If I were going to design a big capitalist organization (actually, I'm doing that right now and it might become real in the next couple of weeks) I'd build high tea into the organization. It works for the Brits for a very good reason, and happy hour and the Russian temptation to the bottle hit at about the same hour. I go with tea, better blood sugar and finger sandwiches. And they are good, too. I'm thinking about your workplace and your kitchen. You can stash these in the fridge in plastic bags. And be enormously popular with our colleagues.

Thought for Food

As I've said before, I came to the love of seafood relatively late in life, the product of an upper Midwest 1950's childhood which didn't have the advantage of fresh, iced seafood flown in to Byerly's Markets every morning. I think we had canned salmon as our major exposure to seafood, along with tinned cocktail shrimp at the odd grown-up party a couple of time per year.

These days, I enthusiastically consume the raw stuff as sushi, sashimi and ceviche. This recipe, however is one of my favorite and it is cooked here to this day. I didn't learn about scallops until I was an adult and starting my first experiments in cooking as a young ('way too young) wife. It's easy and elegant. If, due to the season, all you can find are Gulf scallops, halve them. This recipe assumes the smaller (and better, to this pallette, Bay scallops.)

COQUILLES ST. JACQUES

1/2 c. French bread crumbs
5 tbsp. butter
1 chopped garlic clove
1/12 c. Gruyere cheese (6 oz.)
1 c. mayonnaise
1/4 c. dry white wine
2 tbs. sherry
1 tbsp. chopped parsley
1 lb. scallops
1/2 lb. mushrooms, sliced
1/2 c. chopped onion

Toss bread crumbs with 1 tablespoon butter. Set aside. Stir together next 5 ingredients. Set aside.

In medium skillet, cook scallops in 2 tablespoons butter until opaque. Remove from heat. Drain well. Cook mushrooms and onions in 2 tablespoons butter 3 minutes or until tender. Add to cheese mixture with scallops. Spoon into 6 individual dishes. Sprinkle with crumbs. broil 2-4 minutes until brown.

This serves six as a first course, four as a main course. It is easy elegance. As a main course, you can make this in a skillet and then plate it with steamed asparagus with lemon butter and plain steamed rice with parsley. The classic presentation is to serve the scallops and sauce on a scallop shell on the plate and you can buy these cheaply at cooking stores. An alternative presentation is to brown the finished scallops and gruyere in a phyllo pastry shell, which you can find in the freezer case at your grocery. They'll only need a minute to brown under the broiler.

If you are serving this as one course of a multi-course meal, you can do everything before the broiling in advance, but don't use phyllo, it will get soggy. The scallops have to be broiled just before you bring them to the table, so make sure your guests have their salads or soup to finish while you are completing the cooking. Serve with a hearty bread to mop up the sauce if you aren't using phyllo shells. An excellent side is orzo with browned butter sauce (clarify the butter and then scatter the skillet with seasoned bread crumbs and saute for about a minute) and broiled tomatoes covered with freshly snipped herbs, salt and pepper. We haven't had a killing freeze here, yet, and my basil would nearly do for a christmas tree. I'd snip it onto the broiled tomatoes (were I making this tonight) along with a little rosemary and oregano. Salt and pepper to taste.

This doesn't even take 20 minutes. Elegance on the cheap, timewise.

Creative Thinking

A Hospital Plan for Pandemics
Don't Close Walter Reed and Other 'Obsolete' Facilities

By Phillip Longman

Sunday, November 6, 2005; Page B07

Got your Tamiflu yet? How about a home respirator and a live-in nurse? If expert predictions of a coming flu pandemic prove right, there's little chance you'll be able to find a hospital bed in which to recover.

Here in Washington, for example, after a long series of hospital closures, there are only 4,346 hospital beds left -- a number that will soon go lower with the closing of Walter Reed Army Medical Center's main facilities. Yet projections show that even a moderately severe strain of a pandemic flu virus would require some 5,000 people to be hospitalized in the District alone. Even if we discharged every patient in Washington's hospitals -- including all the mental patients in St. Elizabeths, all the frail elderly in Hadley Memorial's long-term acute care facility and all the veterans in Veterans Affairs Medical Center -- there still would not be enough hospital beds available to care for, or even to quarantine, highly infectious flu patients.

The same is true nationally. Since 1980 the number of hospital beds available per U.S. resident has declined by roughly 40 percent. Today the United States has only about 965,000 staffed hospital beds. Yet Trust for America's Health, a nonprofit group committed to promoting public health, estimates that the emergence of a pandemic flu virus like the one of 1918 would require hospitalization of 2.3 million people in this country.

There are many sound reasons why the number of hospital beds has been declining. New technology allows for much greater use of outpatient facilities. Galloping medical inflation demands more cost-effective care. But the result is a health care system that is perpetually running at or above 100 percent capacity, and that will be overwhelmed by a pandemic, major terrorism attack or natural disaster.

Fortunately, there is a way to help solve this problem and many others that plague our health care system.

Let's start with the example of Walter Reed. Located just 5 1/2 miles from the White House, 6 1/2 miles from the Capitol and six miles from the Washington Convention Center, its facilities, including a hospital built in 1972, are an integral component of the District's emergency preparedness plan. In the event of a mass casualty terrorist attack or other public health emergency, the plan calls for Walter Reed to discharge its noncritical patients and begin treating civilian victims within as little as three hours. Walter Reed is particularly well equipped and well situated to treat not only victims of a flu pandemic but also those wounded by a nuclear or biological attack in downtown Washington. But maintaining this capacity is expensive, and right now Congress is poised to accept the recommendation of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission that the main hospital and most other buildings on the 113-acre campus be razed.

It may well be appropriate for the military to reorganize and rationalize the way it delivers care in the Washington area and many other parts of the country, just as it is for the private sector. Across the Northeast and Midwest, for example, many VA hospitals have lost their patient base because so many aging veterans have retired elsewhere. The Department of Veterans Affairs has announced that it is closing hospitals in Pittsburgh and in Brecksville, Ohio, and it is threatening to close facilities in Brooklyn and Manhattan. But rather than abandon these and other "obsolete" hospitals -- including many shuttered public hospitals such as D.C. General -- we should turn at least some of them into facilities that will stand ready to serve the public in the event of disasters and that between disasters will serve the uninsured and those on Medicaid.

Private health care providers are under such enormous pressures to contain costs that they cannot begin to afford to keep wards open that aren't filled nearly every day. This makes it the proper role of government to ensure we have surge capacity that the private sector cannot deliver. Literally every American, including those with gold-plated health insurance plans, stands to benefit from a health care system built to handle such increasing risks as a flu pandemic, another Katrina, a major earthquake or a terrorist attack.

There is no one, perfect solution, but this sure would help for "surge capacity."

Blabbermouth

Rove's Security Clearance Widely Questioned
# Federal workers under suspicion of smaller lapses have had access to classified data yanked.

By Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — An intelligence analyst temporarily lost his top-secret security clearance because he faxed his resume using a commercial machine.

An employee of the Defense Department had her clearance suspended for months because a jilted boyfriend called to say she might not be reliable.

An Army officer who spoke publicly about intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks had his clearance revoked over questions about $67 in personal charges to a military cellphone.

But in the White House, where Karl Rove is under federal investigation for his role in the exposure of a covert CIA officer, the longtime advisor to President Bush continues to enjoy full access to government secrets.

That is drawing the attention of intelligence experts and prominent conservatives as a debate brews over whether Rove should retain his top-secret clearance and remain in his post as White House deputy chief of staff — even as Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald mulls over whether to charge him with a crime in connection with the operative's exposure.

"The agencies can move without hesitating when they even suspect a breach of the rules has occurred, much less an actual breach of information," said Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney who has represented more than three dozen intelligence officers in security clearance cases, including those cited above.

If Rove's access to classified information were taken away, it would prevent him from doing much of his job. His wide portfolio includes domestic policy and national security issues, and he is at the president's side often during the day.

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) joined Democrats last week in questioning whether the advisor should retain his policymaking post.

This is a no-brainer. His clearance should be yanked now.

Avian Influenza and Media

Via Crawford Killian:

Pandemic planning advocates fear blowback from tsunami of recent coverage

Helen Branswell
Canadian Press

Sunday, November 06, 2005

TORONTO (CP) - When freelance journalist Steve Burgess starts talking about pandemic influenza - especially the recent tsunami of media coverage of pandemic influenza - the anger starts to mount in his voice.

"It is a crying wolf situation," Burgess will tell you with a vehemence that rises as he warms to his topic, echoing a view he voiced in a recent column on the Vancouver-aimed Westender.com website.

The annoyance Dr. Allison McGeer hears is of the softer, under-the-breath sort, with colleagues who specialize in chronic ailments grumbling the pandemic spotlight is crowding out the diseases that are killing Canadians to favour one that will take an undefinable number of lives at some unknowable point in the future.

McGeer and others who've been leading the long and, until recently, lonely charge for pandemic preparedness are nervously taking note of both the sotto and not-so-sotto voce criticisms these days.

They are worried the way the threat of a pandemic exploded onto TV newscasts and across the front pages of newspapers in the last month or so is giving rise to a backlash. And that, they fear, could erode public and political willingness to fund preparations for an inevitable - but impossible to time - pandemic.

"I think we might be in some trouble already. I'm not sure it (the coverage) is having the impact that I'd like in terms of pressuring people to keep planning. I think it might have gone over the top," says McGeer, one of Canada's leading infectious disease experts and a long-time proponent of pandemic preparedness.

"It is, I think, inducing a split between the communicable disease people and the non-communicable disease people," she adds, referring to medical and public health professionals.

If McGeer is right, Dr. David Boyd is on the other side of the divide.

"I think a certain amount of that is self-serving scaremongering," Boyd, a specialist in internal medicine in London, Ont., says of the warnings the world may be watching the unfolding of the first flu pandemic in 37 years.

"It makes it sound when you listen to the news like it's imminent and everybody better get their mask fitted," Boyd says. "There's an awful lot of hype about it. So far, there isn't a pandemic."

Therein lies the problem for pandemic planners and society as a whole, though many people may not have grasped it yet.

The only time governments, hospitals, municipalities and companies can plan for a pandemic - whether by laying in drugs, signing vaccine contracts, stockpiling syringes and medical masks or preparing business contingency plans - is before such an event starts.

Once the tidal wave of disease is launched, it'll be all about getting through with what's available, not making sure that what's needed is at hand.

Experts readily acknowledge they can't say whether the H5N1 avian flu virus causing so much trouble in Southeast Asia will become a pandemic strain. But they believe the world's not ready for a pandemic of any stripe, let alone one that might be as worrisome as H5N1 has been so far.

"The problem we have today is that everything we see in Asia with H5N1 screams 'Perfect Storm.' And in that regard we are in the public health community across the board issuing some very dire predictions," admits Dr. Michael Osterholm, the U.S. infectious disease expert who has taken a lead role globally in pushing for pandemic planning.

Osterholm, who heads the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Prevention at the University of Minnesota, says the inability to predict the timing or the strain of the next pandemic shouldn't deter governments, communities and companies from urgently improving their state of readiness.

"No matter how much lead time we have, we'll never be prepared enough."

This article echoes concerns I've heard out of the epidemiology community with which I'm in touch: that the media will move on to the next disaster and fear fatigue will overtake the public if this pandemic doesn't happen on a short term schedule. In reality, the conditions are now such that it could take place in a couple of week or it might be years down the road. Some of the doctors with whom I'm in touch were not concerned that it took so long for the media to begin paying attention, prefering that the story break on the cable channels closer to the arrival of the illness. Well, we work with what we've got.

Hypocrisy

Bush administration's moral compass is lost

November 4, 2005

BY CATHLEEN FALSANI RELIGION WRITER

The morning after George W. Bush won his second term in office and many of his Republican colleagues also claimed victory last year, I received an e-mail from one of my dearest friends, Amanda.

It's a note that has haunted me since, a niggling at the back of my mind like an overdue library book or an insult hurled in anger that can't ever be taken back properly.

Amanda is one of the most moral, ethical, intelligent and kind people I know. She also happens to be a Jewish atheist, more or less.

We've known each other since we were teenagers, and the subject of faith -- the peculiarity of my born-again-ness and the absence of her faith in any religious way -- had been a perennial topic of discussion. I respect her deeply and care about what she thinks, particularly about spiritual matters.

"Help!" was the title of Amanda's e-mail. "I'm sad and angry today," she began. "Given your profession and your personal belief system, I am genuinely hoping you have something to say on this: How can people who claim to be voting on religious and moral values vote for a man who . . ."

Then she listed what she believed were President Bush's offenses:

# He supports the death penalty. He claims to be humble and ask for God's guidance, yet seemingly refuses to admit his fallibility or take advice from those who might have helped him avoid dragging us into an unjust war.

# He reversed the civilized world's abhorrence of preemptive war. He sold Americans a war based on lies. He willingly started an unnecessary war that has resulted in the deaths of (now more than 2,000) American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

# He, at least tacitly, condones torture. (Guantanamo Bay. Abu Ghraib. And, we learned earlier this week, perhaps a number of secret CIA-run locations in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and elsewhere.) He ignores the human race's responsibility for preserving the Earth and its creatures.

# He is against stem cell research. He accuses dissenters of degrading the U.S. troops but does not push to fully fund Veterans Administration hospitals or health insurance for veterans. And he allowed the automatic assault weapons ban to lapse.

"How are these things reflective of a man with strong 'morals?' " Amanda asked. "How does 'morals' get to be defined as the things the right wants it to be? . . . Why isn't being anti-death penalty a moral issue? Why isn't being anti-war a moral issue? Why isn't being supportive of civil unions so that gay couples can, for example, obtain health insurance for each other and their children a moral issue?

"Please help me understand!" she pleaded.

For a year, I've not been able to bring myself to respond in any substantive way.

I'm reluctant to appear unduly partisan, at least not in print.

I don't want to paint one political ideology or another with a broad brush, and I am reticent always to judge the quality of anyone's faith (or heart), that of a president or anyone else.

But there comes a time when silence is immoral. Now, I believe, is that time.

Lost voice

While surely it is not solely Bush's doing, the moral morass facing (and, arguably, created by) his administration is as profound as any in our history.

Mired in political corruption of one variety or another, hamstrung (economically and spiritually) by an unjust war, and publicly shamed by the most despicable display of institutionalized racism since the slave era, as demonstrated in the unforgivably inept early response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration has lost whatever moral voice it might have had.

And this week, as Republican leaders try to force a monstrous $50 billion budget cut designed allegedly to offset the mounting costs (currently in excess of $62 billion) of hurricane-related aid through Congress, it is clear that its moral compass also has been lost.

The proposed budget cuts, part of the so-called "budget reconciliation," would have devastating effects on the poorest, most vulnerable Americans, while allowing tax relief for the rich.

'Moral values'

The massive budget reductions would include billions of dollars from pension protection and student loan programs, Medicaid and child support enforcement, as well as millions from the food stamp program, Supplemental Security Income (read: senior citizens and the disabled) and foster care. Also attached to the "reconciliation" proposal is a plan that would allow oil drilling in Alaska's pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Nice.

Maybe Republican leaders should consider proposing an open season on the homeless or the resurrection of debtors' prisons while they're at it?

Is this the kind of leadership the majority of voters who, according to pollsters at the time, cast their ballots in 2004 based on "moral values," had in mind?

Is this what faith-based "compassionate conservatism" looks like? Is our nation more moral, more secure or spiritually healthier than it was a year ago?

And, to address my fellow Christian voters specifically, has the Good News been advanced in any way?

No. Absolutely not.

Next

I tend to listen to a man who knows something about indictments:

A Cheney-Libby Conspiracy, Or Worse? Reading Between the Lines of the Libby Indictment By JOHN W. DEAN ---- Friday, Nov. 04, 2005

In my last column, I tried to deflate expectations a bit about the likely consequences of the work of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald; to bring them down to the realistic level at which he was likely to proceed. I warned, for instance, that there might not be any indictments, and Fitzgerald might close up shop as the last days of the grand jury's term elapsed. And I was certain he would only indict if he had a patently clear case.

Now, however, one indictment has been issued -- naming Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby as the defendant, and charging false statements, perjury and obstruction of justice. If the indictment is to be believed, the case against Libby is, indeed, a clear one.
Click here to find out more!

Having read the indictment against Libby, I am inclined to believe more will be issued. In fact, I will be stunned if no one else is indicted.

Indeed, when one studies the indictment, and carefully reads the transcript of the press conference, it appears Libby's saga may be only Act Two in a three-act play. And in my view, the person who should be tossing and turning at night, in anticipation of the last act, is the Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney.

This believable. It's impossible to think that Libby did something that a control freak like Cheney didn't know about. Bring it on, Fitz.

What Democracy?

The FBI's Secret Scrutiny
In Hunt for Terrorists, Bureau Examines Records of Ordinary Americans

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 6, 2005; Page A01

The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it said.

Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.

Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities -- still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit -- by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI demand.

The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.

Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.

The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.

How about those ethics briefings?

In the Streets

Via Juan Cole:

Darkening mood overtakes Baghdad bookstore

By HAMZA HENDAWI
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Through war, sanctions, invasion and insurgency, the two men who own the Iqra'a bookstore in Baghdad's old quarter have clung to an optimism that was often surprising and refreshing.

But lately that optimism has begun to show cracks.

Mohammed Hanash Abbas and Attallah Zeidan have spoken to The Associated Press of their dreams and confidence in the future in a dozen interviews since May 2003.

This time, however, they grumbled, spoke in unusually harsh language, and indeed seemed embarrassed when reminded of the positive glow they had radiated previously.

"People are worried sick," Zeidan said. "Death now comes on very, very short notice."

Neither has given up on Iraq. They remain excited by the political empowerment of their long-oppressed Shiite community following Saddam Hussein's overthrow in 2003. They believe fears of a Shiite-Sunni civil war are groundless, that Iraq will remain one nation and will ultimately see better days.

But there are many Iraqis who rejoiced at Saddam's overthrow only to descend quickly into despair as electricity failed, crime soared and the Sunni-led insurgency became a daily slaughter of fellow Iraqis. And the mood of Abbas and Zeidan has darkened too.

They complain that business is worse than they had expected. They say Baghdadis prefer to shop in their neighborhoods rather than make a dangerous trip to their bookstore. In recent months, getting there has become harder because of gridlock and the closure of the northern end of their street for security reasons.

"I want to collect all the terrorists in one place and kill them like insects," Abbas said in a rare flash of downright anger.

Yet the two men's store, whose name is the Arabic imperative for "read," is still a sanctuary of sorts - a tiny establishment in a dusty mall on a street strewn with trash, where college students, lecturers and regular readers can get a break from the mayhem.

For one thing, there are more books, with Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats and Hemingway taking pride of place. Under the U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, most of Iqra'a's books came from Iraqi families selling them off to make ends meet.

Now textbooks for teaching English come from Iran while novels left by U.S. soldiers at their bases are collected by cleaners and find their way to shops.

Students too poor to buy textbooks can borrow them for 20 cents each.

Sitting in their store, fingering identical strings of black worry beads, Zeidan and Abbas would muse about politics, ethnic relationships, business plans, personal dreams and everyday problems. The background noise might be gunfire and explosions, the BBC news in Arabic, the sputter of their electricity generator or Quranic verses blaring from a mosque's loudspeakers.

In the most recent interviews, Abbas, 41, and Zeidan, 40, for the first time appeared weighed down by worries. They looked weary, their hair flecked with gray.

Each grumbled that politics had split along sectarian lines, and that Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's Shiite-led government had failed to improve security or services. Before the Oct. 15 referendum on adopting Iraq's new constitution, Abbas had enthused that "I will vote yes a thousand times." But now that the votes were counted and the Shiite majority had given the constitution its resounding approval, he sounded less excited about it.

Still, the two men were keeping faith with democracy. They had voted for al-Jaafari in the Jan. 30 election, and would vote again in the Dec. 15 parliament election, though perhaps not for al-Jaafari's Shiite alliance.

Abbas had become something that never existed in the days of Saddam-vs.-nobody elections - a swing voter. "I have not made up my mind yet on who I will vote for," he said.

"We still need time to mature politically. It will take time," said Zeidan, a philosophy graduate.

"The electoral blocs contesting the next election are formed along sectarian lines: Shiites, Sunni Arabs, Kurds and secularists with communists," he complained.

Yet the two men suggest Sunni-Shiite tensions are more political than sectarian.

"All the talk about civil war is meaningless. We live in a homogenous society despite everything that's being said and done," said Zeidan. "When I take a seat in the service taxi that brings me here from home every morning, do I turn to the guy seated next to me and ask him, 'are you Sunni or Shiite?' I never asked my wife before I married her whether she was Sunni or Shiite."

Hendawi is one of the best US reporters in Baghdad. This is a "slice of life" story that can't be reported by non-Arabic speakers.

The Great Flu

Bumper Sal sent me this. I read The Toronto Star most days, but she got me to this a lot earlier than I would have on my own. Thanks.

Remembering the epidemic of 1918

LOUISA TAYLOR

By the time the Spanish flu had come and gone in the fall of 1918, more than half of the city of Toronto had been ill, and more than 2,000 died. But there is no photographic record of the crisis — the death toll on the battlefields of World War I looms far larger in the city's collective history. Last week, the Sunday Star chronicled the flu's journey of destruction through the city, and asked readers to send in their stories of the period. This week, a sampling of the responses.

When I was a child, my grandmother, Clara Brooks, often told me of the time her mother fell gravely ill with the Spanish influenza. In the fall of 1918, Clara was a young woman and lived with her mother in a small apartment near the Danforth and Jones Ave. When her mother became sick, the doctor was summoned.

"It's the flu," he said after a brief examination. "She's in God's hands."

Coughing and shaking from fever and chills, her mother grew weaker with every passing hour. Nothing Clara did seemed to help. Worried and frightened, she kept glancing out the bedroom window of their second-floor apartment, watching the endless line of hearses and carts that wheeled up the puddles and ruts of Danforth, then a dirt road. As far as you could see, nothing but mourners and their sad processions.

It had been days and days of families bringing their dead to the cemeteries on the outskirts of Toronto. It seemed to Clara that the flu was killing everyone it touched. As she sat there worrying and listening to her mother's raspy breaths, she noticed a big barrel of oranges in front of the corner grocery across the street. She didn't know whether it would help or not, but she just had to get some oranges.

Pocketing a few coins, Clara threaded her way through the endless line of mourners jamming the street, and marched up to the grocer's store.

She had enough money for nearly a dozen oranges, and she spent every cent. One by one, the grocer dropped them into a paper bag.

Clara raced back across the street and up the stairs to her mother. She sliced open each orange, and squeezed all the juice into a cup. Teaspoon by teaspoon, she held them to her mother's lips. It took hours to finish all the juice.

By morning, her mother's fever had all but disappeared, and in a few days, was gone. And the Spanish flu that only days before had been taking the lives of young and old seemed to just fade away. Fewer and fewer mourners trudged along the Danforth. Soon enough, they stopped.

Sometimes, when I visit my grandmother's old neighbourhood, I think back to when the Danforth was just a dirt road with mud and messy cart ruts. I think about that endless line of hearses and carts and wagons. And I think about little groceries and oranges, and the love of a daughter that was strong enough to pull back her mother from the grip of the Spanish flu.

Ruth Walker, Whitby

My grandmother, Bedina Chianelli, is now 91 years old. She was 4 years old when the epidemic swept Toronto. She lived in the east end with her parents, Sebastiano (Sam) and Josephine Leo, who owned a fruit and vegetable store. Her mother gave birth to her younger brother, then died four days later from the flu.

Sam was left with three small children, but relatives were unable to help, as they were busy nursing others with the flu. Sam remarried very soon after. The woman he married was the great-grandma I fondly remember as a child.

My grandmother remembers being sick, and then everything changing drastically.

Cathy Lawn, London, Ont. The Spanish flu of 1918 was referred to often during my youth. All of us kids knew that our mother, Isabella Linton, was a flu survivor.

Born in 1897, Isabella was the oldest child of George and Christina Brown. In 1918 she was single, working in an office, and living at home with her family on Harbord St.

After work she devoted many hours to volunteering, as did other young women of her generation. They often visited servicemen at Chorley Park Hospital. The patients had been wounded in World War I.

When she became sick in 1918, Isabella had three brothers also living at home, but no one else in the family got the flu. I never heard that she was hospitalized, so I assume that she was cared for by her mother at home. Grandma Brown had no formal nursing training.

George Brown worked as a typesetter at The Toronto Daily Star until his retirement in the 1940s. The Browns were not wealthy people, but when Bella was recuperating in 1919, her mother took her north for the summer months, at considerable expense, to vacation at a lodge in Muskoka. There she received excellent meals, rest, fresh air and sunshine. It turned out to be the correct prescription. Isabella married, had five children and lived to 99.

Eileen Wood, London, Ont.

I have often heard stories from my mother, Grace Jones, about this horrible pandemic.

She is 97 years old and living in a retirement home. In 1918, she was living with her parents and eight siblings on Thornton Ave., between St. Clair and Eglinton, very close to Prospect Cemetery.

She was 10 years old, no longer in school. She vividly remembers a large truck driving around the neighbourhood, going from house to house picking up bodies.

She and her friends used to play in Prospect Cemetery, much of which was an open field back then. They watched as men dug huge pits, which they were told were for mass graves. Coffins were not used as they could not build them fast enough. They knew of entire families wiped out by the flu, but luckily, not one person in her family fell ill.

Bonnie Lund, Kingston

My father, the late Sam Levine, and his sister Laura were orphaned by the Spanish flu. My father was 3 years old, his sister aged 2. Their parents, Russian-Jewish immigrants Morris and Annie Levine, were young entrepreneurs who owned a dress factory in Toronto.

To the rescue came a spinster aunt, Dora Nepom, who was Annie's sister. Dora became foster mother to the two orphans.

Auntie Dora's example was one of great courage, love and duty to family. She never married and always put the children's interests ahead of her own.

Her foster children always treated her as their true mother and cared for her in return.

My father graduated from Harbord Collegiate and the Royal Conservatory of Music. He became a professional musician, played the double bass in the Toronto Symphony, and is a past president of the Toronto Musicians' Association. He was a great raconteur who often told us humorous stories of things that happened in his childhood, but if you scratched a little deeper you could see that he always regretted not knowing his real parents except through photographs. He made an extra effort to be an exceptional father to my brother, Mike Levine, and me.

Anita Levine Dahlin, Brechin

In 1918 my grandfather Dr. Charles W. L. Clark was a doctor in Toronto. He was one of the few ear, nose and throat specialists in this city but during the flu epidemic everybody with any kind of medical background was pressed into service.

He was seeing patients day and night in their homes. He often spoke of how terrible it was to answer those house calls only to find that his patients had died.

He described one particularly tragic incident when he arrived at a patient's home late in the evening, his last call of the day.

No one answered the front door, but it was open, so he went in. He found two children dead in the living room, then went upstairs and found the mother dead in the bedroom with her baby dead in the bassinette beside her.

That was the worst story that he told, and it stayed with him, that feeling of not being able to save anybody.

Christine A. Featherstone,

Toronto

The Toronto Star is soliciting stories about the 1918 flu. If you have one: contact them at Remembering the epidemic of 1918

LOUISA TAYLOR

By the time the Spanish flu had come and gone in the fall of 1918, more than half of the city of Toronto had been ill, and more than 2,000 died. But there is no photographic record of the crisis — the death toll on the battlefields of World War I looms far larger in the city's collective history. Last week, the Sunday Star chronicled the flu's journey of destruction through the city, and asked readers to send in their stories of the period. This week, a sampling of the responses.

When I was a child, my grandmother, Clara Brooks, often told me of the time her mother fell gravely ill with the Spanish influenza. In the fall of 1918, Clara was a young woman and lived with her mother in a small apartment near the Danforth and Jones Ave. When her mother became sick, the doctor was summoned.

"It's the flu," he said after a brief examination. "She's in God's hands."

Coughing and shaking from fever and chills, her mother grew weaker with every passing hour. Nothing Clara did seemed to help. Worried and frightened, she kept glancing out the bedroom window of their second-floor apartment, watching the endless line of hearses and carts that wheeled up the puddles and ruts of Danforth, then a dirt road. As far as you could see, nothing but mourners and their sad processions.

It had been days and days of families bringing their dead to the cemeteries on the outskirts of Toronto. It seemed to Clara that the flu was killing everyone it touched. As she sat there worrying and listening to her mother's raspy breaths, she noticed a big barrel of oranges in front of the corner grocery across the street. She didn't know whether it would help or not, but she just had to get some oranges.

Pocketing a few coins, Clara threaded her way through the endless line of mourners jamming the street, and marched up to the grocer's store.

She had enough money for nearly a dozen oranges, and she spent every cent. One by one, the grocer dropped them into a paper bag.

Clara raced back across the street and up the stairs to her mother. She sliced open each orange, and squeezed all the juice into a cup. Teaspoon by teaspoon, she held them to her mother's lips. It took hours to finish all the juice.

By morning, her mother's fever had all but disappeared, and in a few days, was gone. And the Spanish flu that only days before had been taking the lives of young and old seemed to just fade away. Fewer and fewer mourners trudged along the Danforth. Soon enough, they stopped.

Sometimes, when I visit my grandmother's old neighbourhood, I think back to when the Danforth was just a dirt road with mud and messy cart ruts. I think about that endless line of hearses and carts and wagons. And I think about little groceries and oranges, and the love of a daughter that was strong enough to pull back her mother from the grip of the Spanish flu.

Ruth Walker, Whitby

My grandmother, Bedina Chianelli, is now 91 years old. She was 4 years old when the epidemic swept Toronto. She lived in the east end with her parents, Sebastiano (Sam) and Josephine Leo, who owned a fruit and vegetable store. Her mother gave birth to her younger brother, then died four days later from the flu.

Sam was left with three small children, but relatives were unable to help, as they were busy nursing others with the flu. Sam remarried very soon after. The woman he married was the great-grandma I fondly remember as a child.

My grandmother remembers being sick, and then everything changing drastically.

Cathy Lawn, London, Ont. The Spanish flu of 1918 was referred to often during my youth. All of us kids knew that our mother, Isabella Linton, was a flu survivor.

Born in 1897, Isabella was the oldest child of George and Christina Brown. In 1918 she was single, working in an office, and living at home with her family on Harbord St.

After work she devoted many hours to volunteering, as did other young women of her generation. They often visited servicemen at Chorley Park Hospital. The patients had been wounded in World War I.

When she became sick in 1918, Isabella had three brothers also living at home, but no one else in the family got the flu. I never heard that she was hospitalized, so I assume that she was cared for by her mother at home. Grandma Brown had no formal nursing training.

George Brown worked as a typesetter at The Toronto Daily Star until his retirement in the 1940s. The Browns were not wealthy people, but when Bella was recuperating in 1919, her mother took her north for the summer months, at considerable expense, to vacation at a lodge in Muskoka. There she received excellent meals, rest, fresh air and sunshine. It turned out to be the correct prescription. Isabella married, had five children and lived to 99.

Eileen Wood, London, Ont.

I have often heard stories from my mother, Grace Jones, about this horrible pandemic.

She is 97 years old and living in a retirement home. In 1918, she was living with her parents and eight siblings on Thornton Ave., between St. Clair and Eglinton, very close to Prospect Cemetery.

She was 10 years old, no longer in school. She vividly remembers a large truck driving around the neighbourhood, going from house to house picking up bodies.

She and her friends used to play in Prospect Cemetery, much of which was an open field back then. They watched as men dug huge pits, which they were told were for mass graves. Coffins were not used as they could not build them fast enough. They knew of entire families wiped out by the flu, but luckily, not one person in her family fell ill.

Bonnie Lund, Kingston

My father, the late Sam Levine, and his sister Laura were orphaned by the Spanish flu. My father was 3 years old, his sister aged 2. Their parents, Russian-Jewish immigrants Morris and Annie Levine, were young entrepreneurs who owned a dress factory in Toronto.

To the rescue came a spinster aunt, Dora Nepom, who was Annie's sister. Dora became foster mother to the two orphans.

Auntie Dora's example was one of great courage, love and duty to family. She never married and always put the children's interests ahead of her own.

Her foster children always treated her as their true mother and cared for her in return.

My father graduated from Harbord Collegiate and the Royal Conservatory of Music. He became a professional musician, played the double bass in the Toronto Symphony, and is a past president of the Toronto Musicians' Association. He was a great raconteur who often told us humorous stories of things that happened in his childhood, but if you scratched a little deeper you could see that he always regretted not knowing his real parents except through photographs. He made an extra effort to be an exceptional father to my brother, Mike Levine, and me.

Anita Levine Dahlin, Brechin

In 1918 my grandfather Dr. Charles W. L. Clark was a doctor in Toronto. He was one of the few ear, nose and throat specialists in this city but during the flu epidemic everybody with any kind of medical background was pressed into service.

He was seeing patients day and night in their homes. He often spoke of how terrible it was to answer those house calls only to find that his patients had died.

He described one particularly tragic incident when he arrived at a patient's home late in the evening, his last call of the day.

No one answered the front door, but it was open, so he went in. He found two children dead in the living room, then went upstairs and found the mother dead in the bedroom with her baby dead in the bassinette beside her.

That was the worst story that he told, and it stayed with him, that feeling of not being able to save anybody.

Christine A. Featherstone,

Toronto

Yes, *Of Course* Bush Lied

There are several big stories this morning. One of them, as Melanie has noted, further documents what the Administration knew to be the dodgy nature of the intel that supposedly supported their claims of a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda.

While it's good to have more of the details on this, I'm not sure it matters that much. Saddam was a secularist who didn't trust religious nuts, and was a control freak. The idea that he'd risk turning over dangerous weapons to fanatics he couldn't control, as anything other than a desperation measure when cornered, could only be believed, even in the run-up to war, by people who either (a) really wanted to believe it, come hell or high water, (b) were decent Americans who couldn't believe Bush would lie to us about something this important, or (c) were just plain ignorant.

Which brings me to recent pieces by Jonathan Chait and Marshall Wittman.

Chait, who should know better, says that Bush didn't deliberately mislead us into war; his administration made "honest mistakes" about the intel. Wittman, of the Bull Moose blog, is even more dismissive of the idea that the Bushies deliberately lied to us on this score; he derides that belief as "Michael Moore territory." Wittman points out that if Bush did lie us into war, we should be pushing for impeachment. I completely agree with him there; it drives me a bit nuts that no significant Democrat is advocating impeachment.

It's really simple, guys:

1) The case for war was that Saddam had WMDs that he might give to terrorists who would use them against us.

Sure, there were other reasons given here and there. But that's the nub of what the Bush Administration sold the Congress, the UN, and the American people as the justification for war. If you don't believe me, check out the Congressional resolution authorizing Bush to use force in Iraq, or UN Resolution 1441, or Bush's speech to the American people on the eve of war.

2) The Saddam-terrorist connection was a bunch of bullcrap, and the Bush Administration knew it.

See above.

3) The WMD case can be broken down into: (a) the nukes, and (b) everything else.

There's a big gap between biological and chemical weapons, with which one might be able to kill hundreds or thousands of people (but more likely ones or tens of them) and nuclear weapons, which can easily kill hundreds of thousands of people. You don't go to war on an off-chance that your enemy will some day kill hundreds of your citizens. So the case for nukes was important, in generating public support for the war.

4) The case for Saddam's nuclear program was also a bunch of bullcrap, and the Bush Administration knew it.

This was obvious even before the war. But Bart Gellman's piece last Sunday reviews much of the bidding.

5) So we're down to the biological and chemical weapons. These can be divided into (a) those that the Bush Administration regarded as a threat - those that when we invaded, we'd have to do our utmost to secure, to make sure they weren't stolen by people who would sell or give them to the terrorists, and (b) those that the Bush Administration didn't regard as worth worrying about in that manner.

But as Bart Gellman reported two and a half years ago, the Iraqi WMDs all fell into that second category.

When our advancing troops, during the initial invasion, came across prospective WMD sites, did they secure them? No - they headed on towards Baghdad. As soon as they did so, the locals would loot the sites to the ground.

In other words, the Bush administration got us into this war on the basis of the WMD threat, but conducted the war as if no such threat existed.

And what's more, knowing that the prospective WMD sites were looted to the ground before our troops had a chance to ascertain whether the sites had actually contained WMDs, was the Bush administration concerned? If so, they have never once shown it.

If the Bush administration believed that Iraq really had WMDs that would represent a threat to us if terrorists obtained them, wouldn't this be, how you say, a "hair on fire" moment? Apparently not. The WMDs were only the excuse, the justification.

Either Bush knowingly lied, or he was Cheney's sock puppet, and Cheney was the witting liar. Either one's reason to remove him, and Cheney, from office. There's no way out of this particular corner.

Falling Apart

The great unravelling of the Bushlies begins now.

Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Doubts

By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: November 6, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.

The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, “was intentionally misleading the debriefers’’ in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda’s work with illicit weapons.

The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi’s credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi’s information as “credible’’ evidence that Iraq was training Al 8Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.’’

The newly declassified portions of the document were made available by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Levin said the new evidence of early doubts about Mr. Libi’s statements dramatized what he called the Bush administration’s misuse of prewar intelligence to try to justify the war in Iraq. That is an issue that Mr. Levin and other Senate Democrats have been seeking to emphasize, in part by calling attention to the fact that the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee has yet to deliver a promised report, first sought more than two years ago, on the use of prewar intelligence.

An administration official declined to comment on the D.I.A. report on Mr. Libi. But Senate Republicans, put on the defensive when Democrats forced a closed session of the Senate this week to discuss the issue, have been arguing that Republicans were not alone in making prewar assertions about Iraq, illicit weapons and terrorism that have since been discredited.

Mr. Libi, who was captured in Pakistan at the end of 2001, recanted his claims in January 2004. That prompted the C.I.A., a month later, to recall all intelligence reports based on his statements, a fact recorded in a footnote to the report issued by the Sept. 11 commission.

Mr. Libi was not alone among intelligence sources later determined to have been fabricating accounts. Among others, an Iraqi exile whose code name was Curveball was the primary source for what proved to be false information about Iraq and mobile biological weapons labs. And American military officials cultivated ties with Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group, who has been accused of feeding the Pentagon misleading information in urging war.

The report issued by the Senate intelligence committee in July 2004 questioned whether some versions of intelligence report prepared by the C.I.A. in late 2002 and early 2003 raised sufficient questions about the reliability of Mr. Libi’s claims.

But neither that report nor another issued by the Sept. 11 commission made any reference to the existence of the earlier and more skeptical 2002 report by the D.I.A., which supplies intelligence to military commanders and national security policy makers. As an official intelligence report, labeled DITSUM No. 044-02, the document would have circulated widely within the government, and it would have been available to the C.I.A., the White House, the Pentagon and other agencies. It remains unclear whether the D.I.A. document was provided to the Senate panel.

It was his DIA, if W chose not to listen to them, that was his decision. What Jehl doesn't tell you:

Bush Says Election Ratified Iraq Policy
No U.S. Troop Withdrawal Date Is Set

By Jim VandeHei and Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 16, 2005; Page A01

President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

With the Iraq elections two weeks away and no signs of the deadly insurgency abating, Bush set no timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops and twice declined to endorse Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's recent statement that the number of Americans serving in Iraq could be reduced by year's end. Bush said he will not ask Congress to expand the size of the National Guard or regular Army, as some lawmakers and military experts have proposed.