"Committed to the Highest Ethical Standards"

>Money Talks, Arnall Walks

Ambassadorships are getting costly indeed. Roland E. Arnall , founder of Ameriquest Mortgage Co., reportedly gave or helped raise more than $12 million for President Bush and the GOP in recent election cycles. But that wasn't enough to get him a fine posting in the Netherlands.

Senate Democrats, with some support from Republicans, questioned whether he should be confirmed as ambassador when state regulators were suing his company for bad lending practices. The nomination languished for months.

Three weeks ago, the company agreed to pay $325 million and change the way it lent money to settle. The Senate last week confirmed Arnall by voice vote.

The Southern California billionaire should still have enough left over to live in style.

Context

Oliver Willis:

So here’s a legitimate question: do you think that if Al Gore had shot someone that the media wouldn’t hear/report it for 24 hours? And were the police called - is there a police report of this incident of the Vice President shooting someone? Questions swirl.

Lest we forget what this is about: the vice president of the United States shot somebody.

I've been hunting since about age 4. It's up to the shooter to make sure that there is no one in harms' way.

WaPo or Waffles?

Video Appears to Show Britons Abusing Young Iraqis

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 13, 2006; Page A15

BAGHDAD, Feb. 12 -- A video released Sunday by a London tabloid shows what appear to be British soldiers head-butting, kicking and clubbing unarmed Iraqi teenagers as an off-camera voice laughs and taunts the victims.

The footage, described by the News of the World in its Sunday edition and linked to the paper's Web site, was shot from the observation tower of a compound in southern Iraq during a series of street demonstrations in early 2004, the newspaper reported.

Eight soldiers in riot gear and army uniforms can be seen dragging four boys or young men into the courtyard of a walled compound, wrestling them to the ground and battering them with more than 40 blows over a two-minute period. The teenagers offer little resistance and occasionally cry out, "No, please!"

As the beatings escalate, a man with a British accent can be heard urging the soldiers on, yelling, "Oh, yes! Oh, yes! You're gonna get it. Yes! Naughty little boys," then laughing and uttering expletives.

If determined to be authentic, the footage would be the most graphic visual depiction of abuse by coalition forces since the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal, when photographs taken the previous year by American soldiers at a prison west of Baghdad showed detainees stripped naked, forced to assume degrading positions and being terrorized by German shepherds.

A British military spokesman in the southern city of Basra said the tape had prompted the country's Defense Ministry to order an "urgent investigation" by the Royal Military Police.

"We are aware of the very serious allegations and obviously condemn all acts of abuse and brutality," said Maj. Peter Cripps, a British military spokesman in Basra. "British troops are not above the law."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is traveling in South Africa, said, "We take seriously any allegation of mistreatment, and these will be investigated very fully indeed," the BBC reported. "The overwhelming majority of British troops in Iraq, as elsewhere, behave properly and are doing a great job for our country and for the wider world," Blair said.

Mr. Blair, why are your troops there? Doing what great job?

The New Court

Roberts off to quiet start at Court
GINA HOLLAND
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - So far, Chief Justice John Roberts has led a harmonious Supreme Court, rallying colleagues to settle cases in the most limited, least controversial way. The question is whether that will last or has been just a short-term necessity for a changing court.

The first few months of Roberts' tenure have not been short on divisive issues: assisted suicide, abortion, capital punishment.

But cases decided so far have broken little new ground, and there have been no bitter dissents.

Of the court's 18 authored opinions so far, only two came from 5-4 votes. And three cases that were expected to split the court - on abortion, campaign finance and the rights of disabled inmates - were resolved unanimously without setting important precedent.

"One almost wonders why the court took the cases in the first place," Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University, wrote online as he and other court watchers struggled over what to make of the early days of the Roberts era.

One explanation is the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, who was replaced Jan. 31 by Samuel Alito. The timing of the transition is awkward, because justices are nearly midway through a term and have heard arguments in more than half the cases they will rule on this year.

Alito may have to break ties in some pending cases, because whatever positions O'Connor took do not count anymore. It's not clear if any appeals have been deliberately held up to give Alito a chance to change the outcome.

"No court is going to reach out with huge decisions when it is quite clearly in transition," said Dennis Hutchinson, an expert on the Supreme Court at the University of Chicago.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, predicted that the cautious decisions will continue even with Alito on the bench.

"This is a court that's going to move incrementally. That seems to be John Roberts' style," Sekulow said.
.....
"This is an even more extreme form of the kind of modest style of decision-making that Roberts had when he was on the D.C. Circuit," Pildes said in an interview. "One of the interesting issues to watch for now is whether this pattern will continue, or whether (now that) the court has a stable complement of justices it will shift back into issuing more sweeping opinions."

We'll find out, won't we?

The Shooting Party

More Questions Raised About Delay in Reporting Cheney Misfire

By Greg Mitchell

Published: February 12, 2006 10:20 PM ET updated Monday

NEW YORK The more than 18-hour delay in news emerging that the Vice President of the United States had shot a man, sending him to an intensive care unit with his wounds, grew even more curious late Sunday. E&P; has learned that the official confirmation of the shooting came about only after a local reporter in Corpus Christi, Texas, received a tip from the owner of the property where the shooting occured and called Vice President Cheney's office for confirmation.

The confirmation was made but it is not known for certain that Cheney's office, the White House, or anyone else intended to announce the shooting if the reporter, Jaime Powell of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, had not received word from the ranch owner.

One of Powell's colleagues at paper, Beth Francesco, told E&P; that Powell had built up a strong source relationship with the prominent ranch owner, Katharine Armstrong, which led to the tip. Powell is chief political reporter for the paper and also covers the area where the ranch is located south of Sarita, about 60 miles from Corpus Christi. Armstrong did not notify reporters at larger papers in Dallas, Houston, Austin or other cities.

Armstrong called the paper Sunday morning looking for Powell, who was not at work. When they did talk, Armstrong revealed the shooting of prominent Austin attorney Harry Whittington, who is now in stable condition in a hospital. Powell then called Cheney's office for the confirmation around midday. The newspaper broke the story at mid-afternoon--not a word about it had appeared before then.

The Cheney spokesman Powell spoke with, Lea Anne McBride, would not comment on whether the Cheney office or the White House would have ever released the information had the Caller-Times not contacted them.

"I’m not going to speculate," McBride said, according to Powell. "When you put the call into me, I was able to confirm that account."

Francesco, at the Corpus Christi paper, said she felt it was a bit odd that her newsroom had not received any information about the shooting since "we often call law enforcement in area, even on weekends. We checked in and didn’t hear anything about it." In some states, all serious shooting incidents must be immediately reported to police.

Hopsital officials on Monday continued to offer few details on the victim's condition, but said he was "very stable" and that pellets were possibly still being removed. Sally Whittington told The Dallas Morning News her father was being observed because of swelling from some of the welts on his neck. His face "looks like chicken pox, kind of," she said.

A hospital spokesman said Whittington was in the intensive care unit because his condition warranted it, but he didn't elaborate. Whittington sent word that he would have no comment on the incident out of respect for Cheney.

While E&P; was first to raise questions about the delay Sunday afternoon, Frank James, reporter in the Chicago Tribune's Washington bureau, put his own spin on it later in the day, asking, "How is it that Vice President Cheney can shoot a man, albeit accidentally, on Saturday during a hunting trip and the American public not be informed of it until today?"

Indeed, others raised questions as well. "There was no immediate reason given as to why the incident wasn't reported until Sunday," The Dallas Morning News observed. "The sheriff's office in Kenedy County did not respond to phone calls Sunday."

The president, who was at the White House over the weekend, was informed about the incident in Texas after it happened Saturday by Chief of Staff Andrew Card and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and was updated on Sunday, press secretary Scott McClellan said.

But neither the White House nor the vice president's staff announced the shooting. The Washington Post reported late Sunday that Cheney's office did not make a public announcement.

Asked by The New York Times why it did not make the news known, Cheney spokeswoman McBride said, "We deferred to the Armstrongs regarding what had taken place at their ranch."

Armstrong said later, according to The Associated Press, that everyone at the ranch was so "focused" on Whittington's health Saturday that it wasn't until Sunday she called the Caller-Times to report the accident.

In an odd disparity, Armstrong told the Houston Chronicle that Whittington, 78, was "bruised more than bloodied" in the incident and "his pride was hurt more than anything else." Yet he was airlifted to a hospital and has spent more than a day in an intensive care unit.

The story broke on the AP and CNN at about 4 yesterday afternoon. When has Cheney ever come clean on anything?

The Gulf in the Gulf

Republicans' Report on Katrina Assails Response

By ERIC LIPTON
Published: February 13, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 — House Republicans plan to issue a blistering report on Wednesday that says the Bush administration delayed the evacuation of thousands of New Orleans residents by failing to act quickly on early reports that the levees had broken during

A draft of the report, to be issued by an 11-member, all-Republican committee, says the Bush administration was informed on the day Hurricane Katrina hit that the levees had been breached, even though the president and other top administration officials earlier said that they had learned of the breach the next day.

That delay was significant, the report says, rejecting the defense given by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security that the time it took to recognize the breach did not significantly affect the response.

"If the levees breached and flooded a large portion of the city, then the flooded city would have to be completely evacuated," the draft report says. "Any delay in confirming the breaches would result in a delay in the post-landfall evacuation of the city." It adds that the White House itself discounted damage reports that later proved true.

The report, by the select House committee examining the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, is the first of three major investigations into the subject; the others, for which reports are expected within one or two months, are being conducted by a Senate committee and by the White House.

The House report blames all levels of government, from the White House to Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana to Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans, for the delayed response to the storm.

"Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare," the draft says. "At every level — individual, corporate, philanthropic and governmental — we failed to meet the challenge that was Katrina. In this cautionary tale, all the little pigs built houses of straw."

A White House spokesman said that President Bush was now focused on the future, not the past. A Department of Homeland Security spokesman said that Michael D. Brown, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was partly to blame for failing to make timely reports to his superiors.

Right. When you don't like the news, change the subject and blame somebody else. But there are real problems.

Alabama seafood industry's Katrina losses over $112 million

BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. Getting shrimp nets and oyster boats back into coastal waters was only one step in the storm-battered Alabama seafood industry's recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

A new Mobile study says the industry's storm losses in the state exceed 112 (m) million dollars.

Also, the report estimated potential loss from loans at 61-point-135 (m) million dollars as some borrowers will be unable to repay them.

A spokesman for seafood processors in Bayou La Batre says the next step is regaining market share and luring back displaced workers.

Economist Semoon Chang, a co-author of the report and director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, says the damages and losses are divided into five groups:

--damages on boats and facilities excluding insurance coverage;

--costs of vessel removal;

--value of lost inventories;

--unpaid wages and invoices;

--and past and future lost sales.

Sales collapsed when the bayou's processing plants shut down because of Katrina damage and power outages, idling plants with a 2004 value for processed seafood at nearly 136 (m) million dollars in crabs, oysters, shrimp and fish.

The industry had gross sales revenues in 2004 of 398-point-three (m) million dollars, compared to 480-point-four (m) million the previous year.

Google "katrina" and follow the links. It isn't over and the news isn't good.

Update: Preempting Katrina Study

Facing the release Wednesday of a House report on Hurricane Katrina that is reported to be unflattering, the White House is following a policy of preemption.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend will speak today at the National Emergency Management Association's mid-year conference and are expected to announce conclusions of the White House's own report on its Katrina response. Tomorrow, Chertoff makes the case before the Senate panel that just heard from ex-FEMA chief Michael Brown.

Divine Right

Report: U.S. Is Abusing Captives
# A U.N. inquiry says the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay at times amounts to torture and violates international law.

By Maggie Farley, Times Staff Writer

NEW YORK — A draft United Nations report on the detainees at Guantanamo Bay concludes that the U.S. treatment of them violates their rights to physical and mental health and, in some cases, constitutes torture.

It also urges the United States to close the military prison in Cuba and bring the captives to trial on U.S. territory, charging that Washington's justification for the continued detention is a distortion of international law.

The report, compiled by five U.N. envoys who interviewed former prisoners, detainees' lawyers and families, and U.S. officials, is the product of an 18-month investigation ordered by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. The team did not have access to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Nonetheless, its findings — notably a conclusion that the violent force-feeding of hunger strikers, incidents of excessive violence used in transporting prisoners and combinations of interrogation techniques "must be assessed as amounting to torture" — are likely to stoke U.S. and international criticism of the prison.

Nearly 500 people captured abroad since 2002 in Afghanistan and elsewhere and described by the U.S. as "enemy combatants" are being held at Guantanamo Bay.

"We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the U.S. government," said Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture and one of the envoys. "There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture."

The draft report, reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, has not been officially released. U.N. officials are in the process of incorporating comments and clarifications from the U.S. government.

In November, the Bush administration offered the U.N. team the same tour of the prison given to journalists and members of Congress, but refused the envoys access to prisoners. Because of that, the U.N. group declined the visit.

Nowak said he did not expect major changes to the report's conclusions and recommendations as a result of the U.S. government's response, though there would be amendments on minor issues.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said the Defense Department did not comment about U.N. matters.

The report is not legally binding. But human rights and legal advocates hope the U.N.'s conclusions will add weight to similar findings by rights groups and the European Parliament.

"I think the effect of this will be to revive concern about the government's mistreatment of detainees, and to get people to take another look at the legal basis," said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. "There are lots of lingering questions about how do you justify holding these people."

The report focuses on the U.S. government's legal basis for the detentions as described in its formal response to the U.N. inquiry: "The law of war allows the United States — and any other country engaged in combat — to hold enemy combatants without charges or access to counsel for the duration of hostilities. Detention is not an act of punishment, but of security and military necessity. It serves the purpose of preventing combatants from continuing to take up arms against the United States."

But the U.N. team concluded that there had been insufficient due process to determine whether the more than 750 people who had been detained at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002 were "enemy combatants," and determined that the primary purpose of their confinement was for interrogation, not to prevent them from taking up arms. The U.S. has released or transferred more than 260 detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

It also rejected the premise that "the war on terrorism" exempted the U.S. from international conventions on torture and civil and political rights.

Oh, right, we're exceptional and gifted and have a special pass from God to do whatever we want. We are the greatest nation on earth and don't you forget it.

The Boots on the Ground

Avian flu outbreak in Nigeria yields worrisome scenario
- Elisabeth Rosenthal, Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times
Sunday, February 12, 2006

As epidemics go, it was a relatively small outbreak: 40,000 chickens died in mid-January on a commercial poultry farm in Nigeria. No humans, apparently, were infected. But it was the outbreak many experts on avian flu had been dreading for months.

It was the first time the fast-moving H5N1 virus had been reported in Africa. And while U.N. agencies are scrambling to form medical and veterinary response and surveillance teams, scientists say its appearance there is deeply worrisome for two reasons: First, the continent is ill prepared to deal with epidemics, whether human or animal. Second, the Nigerian outbreak comes only a month or two before birds begin migrating north from Africa to Europe, which had been largely untouched by the virus until Saturday, when Italy, Greece and Bulgaria reported its arrival.

"These are horrendous developments, whether you're a human or if you're a bird," said John Oxford, a professor of virology at Queen Mary College in London. "Everyone wondered what would happen if avian influenza came to Africa, but no one really prepared. They waited. Now it's there -- and this is not the most organized continent in the world."

To date, only about 160 people worldwide have become infected with the disease, through close contact with sick birds, and about half of them have died. While the H5N1 virus does not readily spread to humans or among them, scientists worry that it could acquire that ability through naturally occurring biological processes, setting off a devastating worldwide pandemic.

World health officials say they have not had the cooperation they need from many poor countries, even those on the flight paths of migrating birds known to carry flu. They got lab samples weeks or months after problems began, so they worry that the disease is already much more widespread.

As late as Monday, Nigerian veterinary officials were assuring the nation that the disease was not in their country. But Juan Lubroth, a senior veterinarian at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, said there was strong evidence bird flu took root in Nigeria "a few months ago."

While the outbreak took place on a commercial poultry farm, he said, the virus may have been percolating for months in backyard flocks. "How long has it been trickling around, with five deaths here and five deaths there, and owners would possibly not be aware of the problem?" he asked.

The problem of sluggish reporting is not limited to Africa. It was common in the early months of the outbreaks in Asia, in 2003. In Azerbaijan, which reported its first cases on Friday, bird flu was "picked up because of international pressure to come clean," Lubroth said, adding: "We've been repeating over and over to countries that they have to be vigilant, but in most countries it's business as usual."

Maria Cheng, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, said her agency suspected that there might be human cases of H5N1 flu in Africa but had no way to confirm that yet. "We're getting a team ready to go," she said, "but we're waiting to get the invitation from Nigeria."

Even when scattered U.N. teams are in place, the disease could spread faster than they can track it. The health care systems of most of Africa's 52 countries are so broken down that most are unable to vaccinate children or distribute AIDS drugs without Western financial aid and technical advice.

On Friday, a BBC News reporter visited one of the northern Nigeria farms where 20,000 birds had died. Although the Health Ministry had announced that the farms were quarantined and being disinfected, he reported that basic safety measures were being ignored. Carcasses were being burned in the open, letting infectious feathers and dander spread downwind. The farm workers doing the culling had no protective gear. Villagers were still entering the property to draw well water.

Northern Nigeria is one of the world's last outposts of endemic polio, in part because local leaders said the vaccine was unsafe. The eradication drive going on now could be a boon in the effort to counter avian flu. Dr. David Heymann, who is in charge of the World Health Organization's anti-polio campaign, said the 300 Nigerian health workers there could be retrained to look for cases of flu and possibly collect nasal swabs.

"They have vehicles and cell phones," he said, "so they're a valuable resource."

I won't put up with a lot of nonsense on this score. Cheng and Heymann are colleagues of mine doing impossibly hard work with almost no resources. Criticise WHO and the way it is funded, but don't slandar the good names of the people who are on the ground doing the work.

Streetwalker's Pasta

I got this recipe from Sean Burke, a cook with attitude. It's a favorite of mine. Sean is an acquired taste, however.

Pasta alla puttanesca

Pasta alla puttanesca, or, pasta with harlot's sauce. This recipe comes from Sean Burke, , with annotations and historical additions by Chuck.

* 4 quarts water, for boiling pasta
* 7 tablespoons olive oil
* 1 large onion, medium dice
* 2 garlic cloves, minced (Sean says make it at least 5 if you're Italian!)
* 4 tablespoons tomato paste
* 1 cup water
* 6 Roma tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced
* 20 Italian OR Greek oil-cured olives, pitted and sliced
* 1-1/2 tablespoons capers, drained
* 1 tablespoon fresh oregano
* 2 tablespoons fresh basil
* 1/2 to 1 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
* Salt and pepper to taste
* 3 slices good Italian or white bread, crusts trimmed and discarded, diced. (Sean says, "Don't you dare use fucking Wonder Bread!")
* 1 pound spaghettini, or your favorite pasta
* Fresh parsley, minced

Heat water for pasta. Put 4 tablespoons olive oil in a saucepan and sautee onions and garlic over medium heat until onions wilt. Add tomato paste, 1 cup water, olives, oregano, basil and red pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Heat remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil in a skillet and sautee bread cubes over medium heat, tossing until crisp and golden. Lift onto paper towels and sprinkle with salt; keep warm.

Cook pasta until al dente; drain and toss with sauce. Divide into serving portions and sprinkle with croutons and parsley. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese if desired. Makes 4 servings.

Nutritional info: 684 calories; 16g protein; 27g fat; 1 mg cholesterol; 94g complex carbs.; 2 grams dietary fiber; 631 mg sodium; 35% of calories from fat.

Sean's note: "Parmesan cheese is a pathetic, definitely non-Sicilian touch to what is clearly a Sicilian dish. Use cheese only if you are in fact a whore who has no sense of good taste.

"Also note that, aside from the possibility of eggs in the bread, this is a completely vegan dish. Whores couldn't afford meat, get it?"

He gets points for entertainment value.

Welcome Back

One night, an old friend I hadn't seen in years was in town and called me out of the clear blue. She caught a ride to my house and we decided to make dinner. I wasn't expecting company, so had to make do with what I could find in the house. This is what we came up with and it is a light and refreshing dinner.

Pasta with Tuna, Garlic, Capers, and Olives

1 pound pasta noodles such as: penne, farfalle, rigatoni
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
6 medium garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons capers rinsed
1/2 cup pitted black olives such as kalamata, roughly chopped
1/2 cup loosely packed, roughly chopped parsley or basil leaves
1 can rinsed and drained, white albacore tuna
1 teaspoon salt
Cracked black pepper
Finely ground parmesan cheese to pass at the table

Cook pasta in large pot of rapidly boiling water until al dente or done to your liking.

Meanwhile, prepare the sauce. Place olive oil and the garlic in a large saute pan and turn heat to medium. Cook until the garlic is fragrant and lightly golden. Add capers and olives. Cook until they are heated through and begin to fragrance the oil. Toss with cooked pasta. Add parsley and tuna and season, to taste, with salt and pepper. Serve immediately, add pepper and cheese to taste. For those who like it, a shake of red pepper flakes would be welcome.

This will serve 6 as a first course, 3-4 as a main course. Serve with a crusty bread with herbed olive oil dipping sauce and a salad of Italian mixed greens, pear halves lightly poached in white wine, dates and blue cheese vinaigrette. Yum.

Willful Indifference

Still Drowning in New Orleans

By Jennifer Moses
Sunday, February 12, 2006; Page B07

BATON ROUGE -- Though most of New Orleans resembles Nagasaki after the bomb, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress appear to have all but forgotten about it. In his State of the Union address, the president mentioned New Orleans only briefly, and at a news conference five days earlier, he declared in reference to promised federal reconstruction funds, "I want to remind the people in that part of the world, $85 billion is a lot."

Unfortunately, nothing close to $85 billion has been spent, and that's because most of it is tied up with something called the Stafford Act, which restricts the use of federal money for precisely the kind of things that Louisiana needs to recover, particularly housing relief. It's like giving a kid a dollar to spend on anything he likes as long as it's broccoli. In the meantime, most members of Congress -- 87 percent of the House and 70 percent of the Senate -- haven't bothered to come on down to the Big Easy at all.

The devastation isn't about race, either: Though the Lower Ninth Ward, a largely low-income African American neighborhood, was a favorite among the national press, every other area that wasn't on "high ground" got devastated as well. Pick any subgroup: White yuppies? Immigrant Asians? Wealthy blacks? Their former neighborhoods are now piles of rubble and mud, too.

With hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Mother Nature wiped out or critically damaged 45 percent of Louisiana's housing. As the president might say: "Forty-five percent is a lot."

At the same time -- and this is so pathetic that it makes you want to weep -- those residents who have returned to New Orleans are agonizing over the question of how best to project the city's image to strike a balance between begging mode (and declaring, quite rightly, that the city is a disaster area) and presenting their city as a place that's worth coming back to, investing in and visiting.

My opinion is that it doesn't much matter what image the city tries to project, because the Bush administration has largely written New Orleans off. It's not big news in Washington, but here in Louisiana, where the state is not only penniless but in hock to the feds to the tune of some $4 billion for hurricane-related expenses, the president's rejection of the bipartisan Baker plan, which hoped to create a federal agency that would use a $30 billion line of credit through Treasury bonds to buy back damaged property, was tantamount to a death sentence. The Baker plan remains the only viable recovery plan on the table, and yet Bush said that its price tag, $30 billion, is too high. Unlike, say, the cost of the war in Iraq, $250 billion so far, and the White House just asked for $120 billion more.

Just run the numbers. This isn't about racial politics, it's about the fact that they just don't care.

Doing the Bump

Wow, flu news is all over the papers today. We must have hit some sort of tipping point for the MSM.

The topic of "social distancing" is one that I deal with professionally. This article does a good job of laying out the societal dimensions of an infectious disease pandemic. Read the whole thing.

Greetings Kill: Primer for a Pandemic

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: February 12, 2006

TO the pantheon of social arbiters who came up with the firm handshake, the formal bow and the air kiss, get ready to add a new fashion god: the World Health Organization, chief advocate of the "elbow bump."

If the avian flu goes pandemic while Tamiflu and vaccines are still in short supply, experts say, the only protection most Americans will have is "social distancing," which is the new politically correct way of saying "quarantine."

But distancing also encompasses less drastic measures, like wearing face masks, staying out of elevators — and the bump. Such stratagems, those experts say, will rewrite the ways we interact, at least during the weeks when the waves of influenza are washing over us.

It has happened before, and not just in medieval Europe, where plague killed a third of the continent's serfs, creating labor shortages that shook the social order. In the United States, the norms of casual sex, which loosened considerably in the 1960's with penicillin and the pill, tightened up again in the 1980's after AIDS raised the penalty.

But influenza is more easily transmitted than AIDS, SARS or even bubonic plague, so the social revolution is likely to focus on the most basic goal of all: keeping other people's cooties at arm's length. The bump, a simple touching of elbows, is a substitute for the filthy practice of shaking hands, in which a person who has politely sneezed into a palm then passes a virus to other hands, whose owners then put a finger in an eye or a pen in a mouth. The bump breaks that chain. Only a contortionist can sneeze on his elbow.

Dr. Michael Bell, associate director for infection control at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has done the bump a few times already. When Ebola breaks out in Africa, he's usually on the team sent to fight it.

"I'll arrive on the tarmac and stick out a hand to say hello," Dr. Bell said, "and someone from the W.H.O. team will say: 'No, no, no, we don't do that. We do the elbow bump now.' "

In truth, he said, they do it mostly to set a good example. To stop an Ebola outbreak, visiting doctors must persuade villagers in Angola or the Congo basin to refrain from washing dead bodies and using their bare hands when nursing family members dying of hemorrhagic bleeding.

Those distancing measures would be easy to enforce in a pandemic in New York City. But other likely steps will strike at things New Yorkers are loath to give up. Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, the deputy city health commissioner in charge of avian flu preparation, said his first move would probably be to ban Major League Baseball games, Broadway shows, movies, parades and other large gatherings.

Closing schools or shutting the subways might be even more effective, because children are much more efficient than adults at spreading flu, and subways are enclosed spaces where sneezes linger in the air — but doing that would be harder to pull off, Dr. Weisfuse said. "People talk about 'flu days' like snow days," he said, "and if it was just days or a week, that would be simple. But if it's weeks or months, that becomes another matter." Without mass transit, no one gets to work and the economy collapses, he pointed out, and many poor children depend on the free breakfasts and lunches they get at school.

Rummy Broke the Army

Army Offers Incentives to Try to Retain Officers
Data Project Shortage of 3,500 Experienced Leaders Mostly in Active-Duty Units

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 12, 2006; Page A12

The Army, forecasting a shortage of several thousand officers as wartime demands grow, is boosting the incentives it offers to try to hold on to experienced commanders.

By 2007, the Army projects it will be short 3,500 active-duty officers, primarily captains and majors -- positions that are needed for new combat brigades and other units that are critical to plans for expanding and reorganizing the nation's ground forces. One factor in the shortfall is that the Army took in too few officers in the 1990s, personnel officials say.

The need for officers is expected to be acute in career fields strained by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as transportation, aviation, Special Forces and military intelligence, Army personnel statistics show. Demand is also high for skills concentrated in Army Reserve units heavily deployed in Iraq, such as military police and civil affairs. The Army projects it will fall 7 percent short of the number of active-duty officers it needs with ranks from captain to colonel, with shortages rising to 15 to 50 percent for dozens of specific ranks and skills.

In another sign of the pressing demand for officers, the Army is recalling hundreds of officers who had returned to civilian life but who are still subject to call-up, sparking protests from some who have already served in Iraq and now face more than a year of extended war-zone duty.

The looming officer shortage is part of a wider manpower crunch the Army faces stemming from the surge in demand for U.S. ground forces at home and overseas since the 2001 terrorist attacks. But it is distinct from the Army's recruiting difficulties, reflecting less a problem with signing up new officers than one of promoting and retaining experienced officers.

The shortfall could worsen if the number of officers leaving the force continues to grow. The percentage of officers -- from lieutenants to colonels -- who leave the Army each year has been rising since 2004. And while those rates are still broadly in line with 10-year averages, officials are concerned that the rates could continue to creep upward. Many junior officers -- in particular, those who have served two tours in Iraq -- now plan to get out, according to recent interviews with dozens of Army officers in Iraq and the United States.

"I want to have a normal life with my wife," said Capt. Adam M. Smith, an intelligence officer with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which after two Iraq rotations since 2003 is having difficulty retaining experienced junior officers. "I have spent two years in Iraq with about ten months [at home] in between," Smith wrote in a recent e-mail from Iraq. "We all joke that we live in Iraq and were deployed to Fort Carson for ten months." Deciding to leave the Army was hard, Smith said, but he estimated 40 percent of officers in his unit are making the same choice.

Sometime this week Rummy will give another of his fairy tale pressers and he will be asked about this and he will say for the thousandth time that the Army is just fine and not stretched too thin. If we had a real press corps, at that point they would all get up and walk out.

There Are Some Stupid Questions

Tutor Program Offered by Law Is Going Unused

By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: February 12, 2006

Four years after President Bush signed the landmark No Child Left Behind education law, vast numbers of students are not getting the tutoring that the law offers as one of its hallmarks.

Ninoska Valverde, 13, who goes to a junior high school in Brooklyn that is classified as failing, said she did not know about the free tutoring program. "I'm interested in anything that would help me," she said.

In the nation's largest school district, New York City, fewer than half of the 215,000 eligible students sought the free tutoring, according to figures from the city's Department of Education for the school year that ended in June 2005.

In one area of the city, District 19 in eastern Brooklyn, about 3,700 students completed a tutoring program last year, even though more than 13,000 students qualified.

Yet New York's participation rate is better than the national average: across the country, roughly two million public school students were eligible for free tutoring in the school year that ended in 2004, according to the most recent data from the Department of Education, yet only 226,000 — or nearly 12 percent — received help.

In California in the last school year, 95,500 of 800,000 eligible students were tutored. In Maryland, just over a quarter of those who were eligible — 5,580 of 19,520 students — actually enrolled in the last school year. And in Louisiana, despite aggressive marketing by the state, only about 5,000 of 50,000 eligible students took part in the program last year.

The No Child Left Behind law requires consistently failing schools that serve mostly poor children to offer their students a choice if they want it: a new school or tutoring from private companies or other groups, paid for with federal money — typically more than $1,800 a child in big cities. In the past the schools would have been under no obligation to use that Title I federal poverty grant to pay for outside tutoring.

City and state education officials and tutoring company executives disagree on the reasons for the low participation and cast blame on each other. But they agree that the numbers show that states and school districts have not smoothed out the difficulties that have plagued the tutoring — known as the supplemental educational services program — from its start as a novel experiment in educational entrepreneurship: largely private tutoring paid for with federal money.

Officials give multiple reasons for the problems: that the program is allotted too little federal money, is poorly advertised to parents, has too much complicated paperwork for signing up, and that it has not fully penetrated the most difficult neighborhoods, where there are high concentrations of poor, failing students.

"I think there's a real learning curve on this because it's so different from what has come before," said Jane Hannaway, the director of the Education Policy Center at the Urban Institute, which is in the early stage of conducting studies on the tutoring program for the United States Department of Education.

"At this point, policy analysts are trying to figure out what's working well and what may not be working well and what needs to be changed," Ms. Hannaway added.

Because the initiative is but a few years old, and many districts are only now starting tutoring programs, experts say their effort to pinpoint the hurdles to the initiative's success is also suffering from a lack of data.

Even for those students who are getting tutored, there has yet to be a scientific national study judging whether students in failing schools are receiving any academic benefit. And there is no consensus on how that progress should be judged.

In addition, it is not entirely clear why so many students do not complete tutoring programs once they have enrolled. In New York City, 34,055 schoolchildren did not successfully complete the terms of their tutoring contracts last year after signing up. Most seemed to attend a few sessions and then never returned.

I've been teaching for 30 years. What percentage of would-be music students show up for a few lessons and then never return? About 80%. This is human nature. Most people don't want to work that hard. That the NYT finds all this confusing and difficult is silly. Talk to a teacher.

Intelligence Bass-ackwards

Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq

Paul R. Pillar
From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006

A MODEL UPENDED

The proper relationship between intelligence gathering and policymaking sharply separates the two functions. The intelligence community collects information, evaluates its credibility, and combines it with other information to help make sense of situations abroad that could affect U.S. interests. Intelligence officers decide which topics should get their limited collection and analytic resources according to both their own judgments and the concerns of policymakers. Policymakers thus influence which topics intelligence agencies address but not the conclusions that they reach. The intelligence community, meanwhile, limits its judgments to what is happening or what might happen overseas, avoiding policy judgments about what the United States should do in response.

In practice, this distinction is often blurred, especially because analytic projections may have policy implications even if they are not explicitly stated. But the distinction is still important. National security abounds with problems that are clearer than the solutions to them; the case of Iraq is hardly a unique example of how similar perceptions of a threat can lead people to recommend very different policy responses. Accordingly, it is critical that the intelligence community not advocate policy, especially not openly. If it does, it loses the most important basis for its credibility and its claims to objectivity. When intelligence analysts critique one another's work, they use the phrase "policy prescriptive" as a pejorative, and rightly so.

The Bush administration's use of intelligence on Iraq did not just blur this distinction; it turned the entire model upside down. The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq. (The military made extensive use of intelligence in its war planning, although much of it was of a more tactical nature.) Congress, not the administration, asked for the now-infamous October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's unconventional weapons programs, although few members of Congress actually read it. (According to several congressional aides responsible for safeguarding the classified material, no more than six senators and only a handful of House members got beyond the five-page executive summary.) As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community's assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war.

Important stuff from an insider. Please read the whole article. Here is the point: the Iraq War was NOT based on "faulty intelligence". It was based on "willfully ignoring accurate intelligence" in order to "fix the intelligence around the policy".

Avian Flu: A Read-Around

Bird Flu Detected in Greece, Italy and Bulgaria

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: February 12, 2006

The lethal A(H5N1) bird flu virus has been detected in wild birds in Italy and Greece, European officials announced yesterday, the first time its presence has been detected in the European Union. It was also detected in Bulgaria.

"The bird flu virus has arrived in Italy," said Francesco Storace, the Italian health minister, at a news conference, announcing that 17 swans had been found dead in three southern regions, Calabria, Sicily, and Puglia.

Testing at the National Avian Influenza Lab in Padua determined the cause to be the A(H5N1) virus, he said, although it was not clear if all 17 swans had been tested.

The arrival of bird flu in Western Europe had been predicted for some months, since the virus has marched steadily from China, to Russia, to the Balkans and, in the last week, to West Africa. It is being carried by migrating birds, so all countries on their flight paths are vulnerable.

"In some ways we would have expected it earlier in Italy," said Dr. Juan Lubroth, a senior veterinarian at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.

The Italian outbreak seems to have been a model of early detection, underlining how bird flu can be controlled in countries that have the money and the scientific resources to do it.

Recent outbreaks in poor countries like Nigeria, Turkey and Iraq have percolated for months before they were discovered, allowing the virus to spread widely to commercial chicken flocks and even to humans.

While the A(H5N1) virus currently does not readily spread from human to human, scientists worry that it will mutate into a form that can, setting off a devastating worldwide human pandemic.

Only about 160 people have become infected with the disease, mostly through close contact with sick birds, and about half of them have died. In Italy, police officers near Messina, in Sicily, found two dead swans on Thursday and performed rapid screening tests on them in the wild, which suggested that the swans had a flu virus, according to ANSA, the official Italian news agency. Such simple tests are not specific enough to indicate a particular virus or strain, like A(H5N1).

A Worrisome New Front

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: February 12, 2006

As epidemics go, it was a relatively small outbreak: 40,000 chickens died in mid-January on a commercial poultry farm in Nigeria. No humans seemed to have been infected. But to many experts on avian flu, it was the outbreak they had been dreading for months.

It was the first time the fast-moving A(H5N1) virus had been reported in Africa. And while United Nations agencies are now scrambling to form medical and veterinary response and surveillance teams, scientists say its appearance there is deeply worrisome for two reasons.

First, the continent is ill prepared to deal with epidemics, whether human or animal. Second, the Nigerian outbreak comes only a month or two before birds begin migrating north from Africa to Europe, which has so far been largely untouched by the virus.

"These are horrendous developments, whether you're a human or if you're a bird," said John Oxford, a professor of virology at Queen Mary's College in London. "Everyone wondered what would happen if avian influenza came to Africa, but no one really prepared. They waited. Now it's there — and this is not the most organized continent in the world."

World health officials say they have not had the cooperation they needed from many poor countries, even those on the flight paths of migrating birds known to carry flu. They got lab samples weeks or months after problems began — and for that reason, they worry that the disease is already much more widespread.

As late as Monday, Nigerian veterinary officials were assuring the nation that the disease was not in their country. But Juan Lubroth, a senior veterinarian at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, said in an interview that there was strong evidence that bird flu took root in Nigeria "a few months ago." While the outbreak took place on a commercial poultry farm, he said, the virus may well have been percolating for months in backyard flocks.

"How long has it been trickling around, with five deaths here and five deaths there, and owners would possibly not be aware of the problem?" he asked.

The problem of sluggish reporting is not limited to Africa. It was common in the early months of the outbreaks in Asia, in 2003. In Azerbaijan, which reported its first cases last week, bird flu was only "picked up because of international pressure to come clean," Dr. Lubroth said, adding: "We've been repeating over and over to countries that they have to be vigilant, but in most countries, it's business as usual. They say, 'Avian influenza isn't here now — we'll deal with it when it arrives.' But then it's too late."

Maria Cheng, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, said her agency suspected that there might be human cases of A(H5N1) flu in Africa, but had no way to confirm that yet.

"We're getting a team ready to go," she said, "but we're waiting to get the invitation from Nigeria."

And even when scattered United Nations teams are in place, the disease could spread faster than they can track it. The health care systems of most of the continent's 52 countries are so broken down that most are unable to vaccinate children or distribute AIDS drugs without Western financial aid and technical advice.

Researchers Race to Boost Supply of Bird Flu Vaccine
Additives Studied as Way to Help Fight Potential Pandemic

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 12, 2006; A03

Medical researchers bracing for a global influenza epidemic are in frantic search of a way to perform a loaves-and-fishes miracle with the world's skimpy annual production of flu vaccine.

That production -- about 300 million flu shots a year -- cannot be increased quickly or easily, no matter how dire the circumstances. If the supply is going to protect more than a tiny fraction of the world's 6.5 billion people, some way has to be found to stretch it.

Nearly all the experts believe that a vaccine is the only tool capable of stopping a flu pandemic. They also agree the world is closer today to that potentially calamitous event than it has been in decades.

In the last six months, the H5N1 strain of "bird flu" that first caused human deaths in Hong Kong in 1997 has moved across Central Asia into Eastern Europe and Africa. Just in the last month, it has appeared in three new places: Iraq, Cyprus and Nigeria. Of the 150 confirmed human victims worldwide, 85 have died. All the virus needs to trigger a pandemic is the capacity to spread easily among humans.

To prepare for that -- to try to work the miracle -- biologists have turned to "adjuvants," substances added to conventional vaccines to increase their potency.

Adjuvants make small doses of vaccine act big. They focus the immune system's attention on the "antigen" -- the substance that stimulates the protective effect. Some adjuvants even broaden immunity and make it longer-lasting. Scientists do not know exactly how adjuvants do all this. But they do know they make it possible to dilute a vaccine with no loss of effect.

"The global demand for pandemic vaccines will be immense," said David S. Fedson, a physician, epidemiologist and former consultant to the World Health Organization. The only way to meet the demand, he believes, "is to use an adjuvant."

To pharmaceutical companies, these peculiar substances are hot properties.

"We are in possession of one of the key ingredients of a potential solution to the pandemic threat," said Howard Pien, president of Chiron Corp. The California biotech firm has an adjuvant, an emulsion called MF59 whose main constituent is shark-liver oil. It is already in use in a flu vaccine in Europe.

"We believe that the adjuvant may become the holy grail of vaccines," Chrystyna Bedrij, an analyst with Griffin Securities, wrote in November in a review of avian flu-related business.

Lots of avian flu news today, most of it not good. Adding to the bad facts is WaPo's David Brown basically shilling for Big Pharma. There isn't going to be a vaccine for years. Period. Adjuvents for the existing vaccine, which don't do anything for H5N1 are throwing good money after bad. We need a new technology for making vaccines, the scientists at Pitt are working on it, but results are years down the road. Brown is blowing smoke. He's an MD and ought to know better, but this pleases his corporate masters at the Post and he gets a front page story out of it. I'm sure that all are happy in WaPo land this morning.

Here's my advice: my colleagues at The Flu Wiki and I don't agree on much other than that you should be paying attention to the news about avian influenza. Is a human virus likely to pop up out of this mess? Yes, but I can't tell you what the probability is or when it will happen. I'm more pessimistic than DemfromCT or the reveres, but I'm more pessimistic about nearly everything than they are. The reveres say "who knows?" and that is the correct answer based on the data we have right now (which is diddly squat.) Am I preparing for the possibility of loss of power, services and a breakdown in the supply chain for vital services? You bet your sweet ass I am. I live in a hurricane zone where it just makes sense to have at least a couple of weeks of non-perishables on hand if the power goes out for a while. Katrina, anyone? Extending that supply for something greater in the disaster department doesn't take a lot of deep thought.

My own life has been a study in the wisdom of Murphy's Law. I see little reason for optimism.

Snowed in Sunday

I'm planning to take a long hot bath with stinky suds and read a book. What about you? I may order in later.

Cradle of Humanity

The cooking of the Mediterranean basin is probably my favorite. From Gibralter and Spain and Portugal in the Northwest to to Morocco on the Southwest, it is my dream to eat my way around the Mediterranean shoreline some day. These are also the foods I love to cook and it is one of my joys of living here that most of these cuisines are represented by restaurants in the ethnic communities they serve in my area.

One of the most nuanced cuisines of North Africa is that of Morocco. Many of the spices which make the cuisine distinctive can be purchased on line. This is not an endorsement, where I live I can buy most of the herbs and spices I need in local shops. There are a couple of restaurants which serve Moroccan cooking, but it is very similar to Persian, if you familiar with that. There is a large Iranian expat community here, so there are restaurants which serve them.

This part of the world bases its meal planning on different proteins and starches than we do, and different from most of the rest of Europe. The best lamb cooking in the western world comes from the Middle East and North Africa (we'll deal with New Zealand another time.) Here is a recipe in the Morrocan tradition that I love to serve, guests find it a bit different. You can do it easily on the grill in the summer, but don't wait until then. Use the broiler in your oven. If you have a professional grill stove at home, well, I just hate you.

Moroccan Lamb Kabobs

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 pounds boneless leg of lamb, cut into 1-inch cubes
Mint-Parsley Yogurt Sauce, recipe follows

Special Equipment: 1 package wooden skewers, soaked in water for 30 minutes

Combine all spices and seasonings in a small bowl. Place lamb cubes in a shallow baking dish or large bowl. Rub spice mixture into lamb with hands. Thread lamb cubes onto skewers, about 3 per skewer.

Preheat a grill or grill pan to high heat. Grill kabobs for 3 minutes per side, or until cooked to desired doneness. Transfer to a serving platter and serve with Mint-Parsley Yogurt Sauce for dipping.

Mint-Parsley Yogurt Sauce:
1 cup plain yogurt (2 percent or whole is best)
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, pressed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parlsey leaves

Stir together the yogurt, mayonnaise, lemon juice, and garlic in a medium bowl. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Add the chopped fresh herbs and gently stir to combine. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Yield: about 1 1/4 cups

At the table, serve this with a shaker of summaq, which has a flavor hard to describe, both smokey and lemony. If you can't buy it in a local middle eastern market, you can order it by mail from the firm on the link above. I buy it at my local Lebanese deli and market.

Serve this with couscous and a little salad of cucumbers, grape tomatoes (sliced in half) and bibb lettuce, all dressed with a mixture of olive oil, white wine vinegar, finely chopped shallots, oregano and summaq, which reveals other flavors when dissolved in vinegar.

This is good enough for company, easy enough for a family meal on a week night.

UPDATE: Here is an excellent link to a page on the food and culture of Morocco that will whet your appetite, I think. I'm going to look for events at the Moroccan embassy where I can sharpen my appreciation of the country and its people and cuisine and bring them back home to you. Hey, living in DC has few perks, let me enjoy one of them. The embassies all hold events open to the public to introduce themselves to Americans. I've been to a number of them. Let me tell you, the Netherlands embassy has a chef to die for and the Danish embassy is no slouch, either.

Versatility Vegified

Here are a couple of side dish recipes that I love because they are so versatile. They'll work with steaks, roast turkey or a delicate poached fish. Ah, yes, these dishes are great generalists in an age which prizes specialists.

Hasselback Potatoes

2 small baking potatoes, about 3/4-pound total
2 tablespoons melted butter
1/3 cup chicken stock
1/4 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
11/2 tablespoons finely grated hard cheese, such as Parmesan
1 tablespoon fine dry bread crumbs

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Peel potatoes. Cut each potato not quite through in a series of crosswise slices about 1/4-inch apart or closer so that they are still joined together at the bottom. Brush the potatoes with the melted butter and place in a small baking pan. Pour the chicken stock around the potatoes and sprinkle with the thyme leaves. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast until the potatoes are half cooked, 25 to 30 minutes, basting every 5 minutes with the butter-chicken stock mixture.

In a small bowl combine the grated cheese and bread crumbs and divide the mixture evenly between the tops of the 2 potatoes. Continue roasting without any further basting until the potatoes are crispy on the outside and cooked through, about 30 minutes.

*Note: Exact cooking time will depend on the size of the potatoes.

Lemon-Butter Green Beans with Pine nuts

1/3 pound fresh green beans, ends trimmed, blanched in boiling salted water
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon minced shallots
1 tablespoon pine nuts
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Pinch salt
Pinch freshly ground black pepper

Drain green beans well and pat dry.

Heat the butter in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly to keep from burning. Add the pine nuts and cook, stirring, for an additional minute. Add the green beans and toss to coat evenly. Cook just enough to warm through, about 1 minute. Add the lemon juice, salt, and pepper and toss to combine. Remove from the heat and serve immediately.

These two dishes are both simple treatments which honor the ingredients. They will go with anything as a result.

From the Blue Ridge

My ex and I liked to grab the odd long weekend touring the B&B;'s of the Shenandoah Valley, some of the most beautiful territory in the eastern US. I picked up this recipe on one of those stays and wish I could remember which so I could properly credit the innkeeper/chef who was so willing to share his recipe with me. This is an unusual take on your morning scramble:

EGGS CARBONARA WITH BASIL AND PARMESAN

6 bacon slices
12 large eggs
1 oz finely grated parmesan (1/2 cup)
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons chopped scallions

Cook bacon in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over moderate heat, turning over occasionally, until crisp, then transfer with tongs to paper towels to drain. Reserve 2 tablespoons bacon fat in a small bowl and discard remainder. Wipe skillet clean with paper towels and reserve. When cool, finely crumble bacon.

While bacon cools, vigorously whisk together eggs, parmesan, cream, basil, salt, and pepper in a bowl until foamy.

Cook garlic and parsley in reserved bacon fat in skillet over moderate heat, stirring, 1 minute (do not brown garlic). Add scallions and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 3 minutes. Add egg mixture and cook, stirring occasionally to scramble eggs and form large curds, lifting up cooked egg around edge with a heatproof rubber spatula to let raw egg flow underneath, until eggs are just set. Stir in crumbled bacon, top with chopped scallions and basil, and serve immediately. Garnish with melon slices.

Makes 6 servings.

Inns which don't offer full meal service have gotten very creative with what they do for breakfasts, they are specialists. Some of the best breakfasts I've ever eaten have been in Virginia inns.

Eating the Big Easy

Mardi Gras is right around the corner, and that got me to thinking about southern fried chicken. I remember the first time I had it at the home of a friend when I was about 8 or 9 years old. His mom was from New Orleans and like many women raised in that city was justifiably proud of her cooking. I love chicken almost any way it is prepared, but southern fried isn't in my fat or calorie budget very often. This is a splurge I save up for, cuz it has to have the trimmings: mashed potatoes and steamed green beans dressed in a vinaigrette with sliced olives.

There are as many southern fried chicken recipes as there are cooks, but this is the one I'm using these days.

1 3-lb. fryer
1 tbsp. salt
1 tbsp. black pepper
2 eggs (beaten)
1/2 cup Pet milk
1/2 cup water
2 cups flour
1 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. ground thyme
1/2 tsp. granulated garlic
1 qt. oil for frying
Cut chicken in eight pieces. Season well with salt and pepper. Set aside. Mix eggs, milk, and water. Pour mixture over chicken. Let sit for 5 minutes.

In a heavy paper bag, mix flour, paprika, ground thyme, and granulated garlic. Place chicken in bag with flour mixture. Shake until chicken is well coated. Let it dry for 10 minutes.

Heat oil in a cast iron fryer — oil should reach 350°F. Place chicken in hot oil. Fry, turning as chicken browns. Heavy parts such as breast, thighs, and legs will take 15 to 20 minutes, wings about 10 to 15 minutes. Drain chicken on paper towels.

Pet is a brand of evaporated mild, probably the best tasting, but any brand will do if you can't find it. You can't use regular milk, it isn't thick enough to coat the chicken properly. I like canola oil for frying these days, but any oil with a high burn point will work (back in the day, we used melted crisco....)

The trick to a good coating which doesn't come off in the oil: the chicken must be absolutely dry before you put it in the egg mixture and the flour coating must be well dried before the chicken goes into the oil.

Serve with iced tea and a cole slaw and you could be in the Crescent City.

Change of Tone

Pogge's cable is down this afternoon, so I've been minding the shop over at The Flu Wiki this afternoon. Frankly, reading the paper for news, most of it various shades of awful and spending hours contemplating Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza makes pretty depressing duty. I'm moving to recipes and so forth a few hours earlier than usually just to lighten my own mood.

It's finally starting to snow here in earnest and the air temperature is down to 33 degrees, according to The Weather Channel bug in my task tray, so it will be starting to stick soon. This snowstorm is going to be an overnight event. I'm glad to be sitting in front of a warm laptop tonight. From looking at the forecasts, my wiki partners, the Reveres and DemfromCT are going to catch it a whole lot worse than we have: they have blizzard warnings. Ick. But it looks like we're going to get a foot tonight. At least when I talked to pogge in Ontario when he called this afternoon, the sun was shining.

Battleground Grease

Via Philocrites, I found this NYT story that speaks to Matt's post below:

In Small Town, 'Grease' Ignites a Culture War

By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
Published: February 11, 2006

FULTON, Mo. — When Wendy DeVore, the drama teacher at Fulton High here, staged the musical "Grease," about high school students in the 1950's, she carefully changed the script to avoid causing offense in this small town.

She softened the language, substituting slang for profanity in places. Instead of smoking "weed," the teenagers duck out for a cigarette. She rated the production PG-13, advising parents it was not suitable for small children.

But a month after the performances in November, three letters arrived on the desk of Mark Enderle, Fulton's superintendent of schools. Although the letters did not say so, the three writers were members of a small group linked by e-mail, all members of the same congregation, Callaway Christian Church.

Each criticized the show, complaining that scenes of drinking, smoking and a couple kissing went too far, and glorified conduct that the community tries to discourage. One letter, from someone who had not seen the show but only heard about it, criticized "immoral behavior veiled behind the excuse of acting out a play."

Dr. Enderle watched a video of the play, ultimately agreeing that "Grease" was unsuitable for the high school, despite his having approved it beforehand, without looking at the script. Hoping to avoid similar complaints in the future, he decided to ban the scheduled spring play, "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller.

"That was me in my worst Joe McCarthy moment, to some," Dr. Enderle said.

He called "The Crucible" "a fine play," but said he dropped it to keep the school from being "mired in controversy" all spring.
....
The complaints here, which were never debated in a public forum, have spread a sense of uncertainty about the shifting terrain as parents, teachers and students have struggled to understand what happened. Among teenagers who were once thrilled to have worked on the production, "Grease" became "the play they'd rather not talk about," said Teri Arms, their principal, who had also approved the play before it was presented.

"Grease" and "The Crucible" are hardly unfamiliar; they are standard fare on the high school drama circuit, the second-most-frequently-performed musical and drama on school stages, according to the Educational Theater Association, a nonprofit group. The most performed now are "Seussical" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

Dr. Enderle had his "find a spine" moment and blew it. He had a choice to be a prophet and chose not to take it. What he has done, essentially, is to allow one congregation in his town to have veto power over his educational judgement.

Some of the irony here is that "The Crucible" is a play which critiques McCarthyism.

The Prophetic Voice: Starting From Scratch

It's as though we in America have to start from scratch these days.

Even before I saw the piece on Bob Barr--and Melanie's accurate journalistic deconstruction of Dana Milbank's crappy work--I had intended to write something about the prophetic voice this morning.

You might have noticed that a man named Dale commented this week on Bump. That would be Dale Wright, a faith-filled force who does an extraordinary amount of activism in his church community, and throughout Portland and the Columbia River Valley as well. Dale--along with myself and Melanie, among others--helped comprise a community blogging circle at a now-defunct and dearly missed site, the Village Gate (originally incarnated as The Right Christians), where I cut my teeth as a politico-religious conversationalist and debater. It was at Village Gate where I received my first dose of real and sustained exposure to the rifts in this country (noted in an essay earlier this week on Bump).

One of those rifts exists between Christians of progressive and fundamentalist leanings, and Dale's remark on Bump is what has spurred me to write this essay.

Dale commented on the story that emerged from Coretta Scott King's funeral, in which Joseph Lowery (and Jimmy Carter, but Lowery is the focal point here), the co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (along with Martin Luther King), spoke powerfully to President Bush, demanding that more money be given to the poor, and not to bombs. It was a classic prophetic call as old as the scriptures. The Book of Amos came alive once again, as a dedicated servant of the Lord spoke truth to power, not engaging in ad hominem attacks but simply lifting up the cry of the poor to a person in a position of influence and leverage.

But somehow, the Christian Right doesn't see Lowery--a preacher and, moreover, an exemplar, of justice--in that light. Apparently, George Bush can--in the eyes of evangelical Christians--be appointed and ordained by God to lead America at this point in history, but it's simply out of line to ever criticize him for not being good news to the poor... especially not at a funeral.

What have we lost or forgotten here? Who said there were certain rules about what you say at a funeral? Is there a manual or handbook on when it's okay to make a prophetic call to truth and justice? Or is the prophet Amos somehow not so important to the Christian Right? If a godly man can call for greater sexual morality, can't another godly man call for responsiveness to the plight of the most broken among us? If a leader can be elevated to elected office twice, largely on the strength of a lot of religious vocabulary and phrasings, why can't that leader also be challenged and confronted with spiritual, moral and ethical questions that cut to the soul of a man, a presidency, a country?

America doesn't like prophets. We refuse to travel uncomfortable terrain or seek the difficult answer. We crucify those who tell inconvenient truths and unmask not-so-pleasant realities.

We all need to be prophetic--not insulting George Bush, but simply reminding him that if Jesus is his North Star, that compass better start pointing in some different directions.

Slap Upside the Head

Two Immigrants, Two Standards

By Stacy Caplow and Lauren Kosseff
Saturday, February 11, 2006; Page A19

We recently learned that U.S. immigration policy is, in fact, capable of fast action and flexibility. It just depends on who the immigrant is.

In December Congress speedily passed special immigration legislation to benefit just one person: an ice dancer. As a Canadian, she couldn't join the 2006 U.S. Olympics team. But a law was written that lasted exactly two days, long enough for her to be fast-tracked for citizenship and sent to compete for the United States.

Around the same time, we at the Safe Harbor Project at Brooklyn Law School received notice that the U.S. immigration system had denied entry to Teresa, a 14-year-old African girl who has been stranded as a refugee in Guinea almost all her life. She is trying to join her adoptive mother, Momara (no real names are used here, as is generally practiced with asylum), a refugee from Sierra Leone who was granted asylum in the United States. But in this girl's case, there is no fast track, only the rigid application of a procedural rule.

Teresa's harrowing story began when she was born in the bush, where everyone from her town had fled to escape rampaging rebel forces threatening to kill them. Her birth mother died giving birth to her. Without a second thought, Momara scooped up the infant and from that moment on considered Teresa her own. She, Teresa and her other young children went to a refugee camp and remained there until the rebel forces struck again, robbing the refugees and stabbing Momara. Somehow the family made its way to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, but they were still not safe. Rebels beheaded Momara's husband before their eyes, gang-raped and beat Momara, and stabbed her sons. Miraculously, they escaped and, without husband and father, fled to Guinea.

With our legal representation Momara received asylum in 2004. She now lives with her grown son in Queens. An uneducated woman with few personal belongings, she has great dignity and endless hope for her future in the United States. Yet her worries have not ended, because she has not yet been reunited with all her children.
....
As Momara's lawyers, we explained to DHS that Sierra Leone was devastated by a 10-year civil war. Many children have been orphaned in the war, and it is customary for other families to adopt and raise them, albeit without official adoption papers. The country does not have a functioning government, much less a formalized adoption procedure.

Momara is pleading to be reunited with all of her children and to know that they are finally out of harm's way. But the DHS stated in its denial of Teresa's visa application that "[s]ince there are no formal adoption decrees in Sierra Leone then you are unable to provide a copy of the final adoption decree . . . which has been registered with the proper civil authorities." This is a new version of Catch-22: We know it's impossible for you to get the proof we request; nevertheless we will withhold the relief you seek because you cannot obtain the proof.

The DHS's flat denial shows an all-too-familiar inflexibility in the administration of U.S. immigration policy and frustrates one of its most fundamental stated goals: family unification. Our nation's consensus, derived from international norms, is that innocent families, survivors of terrorism and brutality elsewhere in the world, be granted asylum here. Yet the DHS has chosen to bar a victimized and vulnerable girl from rejoining her family for the flimsiest of reasons -- lack of an unobtainable document.

The reason why the novel "Catch-22" remains a perennial classic is that we've all run into it.

Disaster Response

Katrina's Unclaimed to Get Hometown Burial
City to Take Custody of Unclaimed Storm Victims

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 11, 2006; Page A04

NEW ORLEANS -- Inside a fleet of refrigerated trucks parked an hour west of here lie the bodies of more than 200 unidentified or unclaimed victims of Hurricane Katrina.

"Some, we don't know who they are," said Chuck Smith, leader of the federal mortuary effort in Carville, La. "And with some, we can't locate the families, or the families are unable to make provisions."

The question now, five months after the storm, is what to do with the dead.

The makeshift morgue, a joint federal and state effort, is scheduled to close by the end of the month. And like virtually every other challenge facing this flooded metropolis, the funeral tasks have been complicated by the vast scale of the disaster and the difficulties of coordinating local, state and federal efforts.

Initially, state authorities had selected a four-acre cemetery site in Carville, and in preparation for the burials, had graded and planted the ground. A memorial was envisioned there.

But that did not sit well with many in New Orleans who argued that a proper burial includes the sense, spiritual and geographical, of "going home." Most of the dead come from the city.

"I told them we cannot be burying New Orleanians outside of New Orleans," Mayor C. Ray Nagin said of his protests to state officials.

The mayor said he also objected to the proposed use of wooden caskets, which "over time would have disintegrated into the earth," making it difficult to relocate remains if more identifications are made later.

So now the city will take custody of the dead. The trouble is that the city, already struggling with the burdens of hurricane recovery, must now scramble to build a mausoleum for the Katrina victims.

New Orleans officials met last week with FEMA officials to discuss the city's request for financial help to build the mausoleum, which is expected to cost about $400,000. A Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman said FEMA is prepared to reimburse the city for at least some of the mausoleum expense.

It would be built at a publicly owned cemetery here, said the city's health director, Kevin Stephens, and made of some appropriate material, such as granite. The bodies will be held in metal caskets, and if one of the unidentified bodies within the mausoleum is later identified, it can easily be removed and placed elsewhere for burial.

I read stories like this through the lens of John Barry's The Great Influenza. In the pandemic of 1918-19, the bodies of the dead were stacked up like cordwood and there weren't enough coffins for burial. Katrina and it's aftermath are a frightening dress rehearsal which demonstrates how fragile and dysfunctional our emergency preparedness and response systems are. As my Flu Wiki colleagues the reveres like to say, pandemic influenza will be 50 Katrinas in this country, with no outside help available because every other jurisdiction in the world will be having their own Katrina.

Postie Spin

Bob Barr, Bane of the Right?

By Dana Milbank
Saturday, February 11, 2006; A02

You could find just about everything at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference this week: the bumper sticker that says "Happiness is Hillary's face on a milk carton," the "Straight Pride" T-shirt, a ride on an F-22 Raptor simulator at the Lockheed exhibit, and beans from the Contra Cafe coffee company (slogan: "Wake up with freedom fighters").

As of midday yesterday, a silent auction netted $300 for lunch with activist Grover Norquist, $275 for a meal with the Heritage Foundation president and $1,000 for a hunting trip with the American Conservative Union chairman. But lunch with former congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.), with an "estimated value" of $500, had a top bid of only $75 -- even with a signed copy of Barr's book, "The Meaning of Is," thrown in.

No surprise there. The former Clinton impeachment manager is the skunk at CPAC's party this year. He says President Bush is breaking the law by eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants. And fellow conservatives, for the most part, don't want to hear it.

"You've heard of bear baiting? We're going to have, today, Barr baiting," R. Emmet Tyrell, a conservative publisher, announced as he introduced a debate Thursday between Barr and Viet Dinh, one of the authors of the USA Patriot Act.

"Are we losing our lodestar, which is the Bill of Rights?" Barr beseeched the several hundred conservatives at the Omni Shoreham in Woodley Park. "Are we in danger of putting allegiance to party ahead of allegiance to principle?"

Barr answered in the affirmative. "Do we truly remain a society that believes that . . . every president must abide by the law of this country?" he posed. "I, as a conservative, say yes. I hope you as conservatives say yes."

But nobody said anything in the deathly quiet audience. Barr merited only polite applause when he finished, and one man, Richard Sorcinelli, booed him loudly. "I can't believe I'm in a conservative hall listening to him say [Bush] is off course trying to defend the United States," Sorcinelli fumed.

Milbank makes me nuts. He gets to do these "analysis" pieces which are really toeing the edge of punditry rather than news. I wish he had done straight reporting on this story, which is an important one: the conflict here is an important split in "movement" conservatism, which Milbank treats as a personality conflict rather than the serious philosophical/ideological conflict which it is. This is WaPo playing an important political story for entertainment value. And the newspapers wonder why they are losing readers?

I may disagree with Bob Barr on a lot of things, but he is a principled conservative whom I can respect. Viet Dinh is part of the Bush cult of personality.

Because We Can

More Medicines From Abroad Seized
By Lisa Girion, Times Staff Writer

The U.S. government apparently is stepping up seizures of cheap drugs ordered by Americans — mainly seniors — from abroad, Canadian pharmacies say.

The pharmacies, which sell drugs by mail and over the Internet, say their shipments are being intercepted by U.S. Customs officials around the country where foreign mail is handled.

"It's huge — we've had over 800 seizures in January," up from 15 in a typical month, said Barney Britton, president of Calgary-based MinitDrugs.

Other pharmacies reported four- to five-fold increases. An informal survey of 30 Canadian pharmacies that cater to American customers, conducted by a senior-citizen advocacy website, showed that the rise began in November, doubled in December and doubled again in January.

Health officials in Minnesota, the first of several states to make cheaper Canadian drugs more readily available to its residents, echoed the reports from north of the border. They said seizures increased in late December from less than 1% to about 4% of shipments, said Brian McClung, a spokesman for Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Ordering drugs from abroad is illegal. But U.S. Customs and Food and Drug Administration officials have generally allowed the practice, apart from occasional seizures designed to publicize potential risks.

Federal regulators say that policy hasn't changed — and there is no crackdown.

"It's not a special effort other than our normal enforcement," said Lynn Hollinger, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

People whose drugs are seized are not cited and generally are able to get them replaced free of charge by the foreign pharmacy. But many customers are infuriated.

"It's despicable," said Samuel Robert Greenberg, a Laguna Niguel retiree who lost a package of anti-cholesterol pills and glaucoma eyedrops late last month. "They are playing with people's lives."

Greenberg, 73, said he and his wife had bought drugs from Canadian pharmacies for years without incident.

But if replacements for his Lipitor pills don't arrive by next week, Greenberg said, he will have to buy from a local pharmacy at a cost of about $3 a pill — a third more than he pays through the mail.

Greenberg said such seizures were a waste of government resources. "Forget about the heroin," Greenberg said. "They are going to stop the Lipitor."

Although the FDA has never taken enforcement action against an individual for ordering prescription drugs from abroad, it has conducted a handful of what it calls "blitzes" over the last five years in cooperation with the Customs Service at international mail centers.

It appears to me that this is one of those "we're doing this because we can" moves on the part of the Feds. It isn't like there is a problem they are trying to solve here.

Economy Spin

Trade Gap Hits Record For 4th Year In a Row

By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 11, 2006; Page A01

The U.S. trade deficit soared to a record in 2005 for the fourth year in a row, according to a government report released yesterday that provided a reminder of the dangers hovering over a generally robust economy.

The United States imported $725.8 billion more in goods and services than it exported last year, the Commerce Department said. That is up 17.5 percent from last year, and it is an all-time high not only in dollar terms but as a proportion of the economy; the figure is equal to 5.8 percent of gross domestic product.

For December alone, the trade gap increased to $65.7 billion from a revised $64.7 billion in November. That is the third-highest monthly deficit ever.

In some respects, the trade deficit reflects the strength of the U.S. economy, at least relative to other major trading partners.

Because U.S. economic growth has been rapid in recent years, American consumers are snapping up foreign goods of all kinds -- autos, electronics and clothing being some of the biggest categories. At the same time, relatively sluggish growth in economies such as the European Union and Japan has dampened demand for goods made in the United States. Thus even though U.S. exports rose 10.4 percent last year to $1.27 trillion, imports surged 12.9 percent to nearly $2 trillion.

But the gap worries many economists because it means the United States must borrow heavily from overseas. The dollars that Americans spend on imports are often invested by foreigners in the bonds of the U.S. Treasury and mortgage agencies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so the more the trade deficit widens and the longer it persists, the greater U.S. indebtedness becomes. That is why some analysts fret about a scenario in which foreigners would sell off U.S. securities en masse, causing interest rates to soar and the global economy to fall into recession.

Nothing of the sort has materialized so far. On the contrary, overseas demand for U.S. investments last year was powerful enough to drive up the dollar against most major currencies.

"It's true that many of us have been concerned that foreigners will grow tired of financing these ever larger trade deficits, and so far there hasn't been much sign of that," said Jeffrey A. Frankel, a Harvard University economist who served on President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers.

"But there are plenty of reasons to be concerned," Frankel said. "We know [the trade deficit] means we're borrowing against the future, and that our children will have lower standards of living than they would otherwise. And just because a 'hard landing' hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't."

Furthermore, Frankel added, a big trade deficit generates pressure for protectionism. The report yesterday prompted many members of Congress and labor groups to step up their calls for a tougher U.S. trade policy and rollbacks in the free-trade deals negotiated in recent years.

"This trade deficit is unsustainable -- we cannot sit back as other nations produce the world's goods and we continue to lose family-supporting, middle class jobs," said Richard L. Trumka, the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, in a statement calling for Congress to "reject the flawed trade agreements" such as NAFTA and CAFTA.

Critics of the Bush administration's trade policies drew special attention to the mounting U.S. deficit with China, which rose 24.5 percent to $201.6 billion last year, the biggest gap the United States has ever posted with a single country. Lawmakers have been accusing China for some time of playing unfairly in global markets, especially by keeping the value of the Chinese currency, the yuan, at an artificially cheap level.

"Particularly disturbing is the news that our trade deficit with China is two and a half times bigger than it was when we signed a trade agreement with them in 2000," said Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) in a statement, referring to the accord allowing Beijing to join the World Trade Organization. "That's pretty compelling evidence something has to change."

Although the gap with China accounts for more than a quarter of the total deficit, the imbalance is spread across a wide variety of trading partners.

The U.S. trade deficit with the European Union was $122.4 billion last year; with Japan, it was $82.7 billion; with Canada, $76.5 billion; with Mexico, $50.1 billion; and with nations belonging to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, it was $92.7 billion.

The imbalances reinforce the view held by many economists that the widening trade deficit stems primarily from a reduction in U.S. national savings in recent years, including the deterioration in the federal budget deficit.

Because the budget deficit requires the government to borrow, it counts as a decline in national savings.

One important factor fueling the rise in last year's deficit was the rise in the price of imported oil. Imports of petroleum products rose 39 percent, to $251.6 billion.

That was by no means the whole story. Christian E. Weller, senior economist at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank, calculated that even if the deficit in petroleum had not increased, the overall gap still would have totaled a record $660 billion.

Again, clueless and credulous WaPo reporters who know nothing about economics repeat the Bush spin point about our wonderful economy. It's not. Wages are flat and job creation is historically poor compared with other recovery cycles. Energy and health insurance prices have created net wage loss conditions for the last year. If an individual were living with the debt and trade imbalances we've had for the last five years, they would already have been in bankruptcy for a while now.

I Hate Chicken

Every time I call up the WaPo main page, this chicken thing coasts across the screen. Are they trying to tell us something?

East Coast Madness

Here is where NOAA sees your storm tonight. I know from years of forecasting these monsters that this one is going to be an absolute bitch for the entire east coast and I'm really glad I don't live in Atlantic Canada right now. Stow in some good groceries, prepare to wait it out. Carolina piedmont is going to miss this one, but the mountains are already getting their first taste.

The low will redevelop off the Virginia capes in the morning, with energy from another, smaller system captured in the Mid-west overnight. This will be a classic nor'easter. Don't expect to move on Sunday or Monday in the 95 corridor.

Low pressure systems are crafty thieves and the high atmosphere currents are setting the storm systems up into a classic pattern. We've all been through it before and it ain't pretty.

From the Country

I'm a sucker for a well made country style pate. If you have a Trader Joe's near you (also very helpful for flu preps) you can buy what I think is the best commercially made pate available in the States for the consumer (there are others available to the restaurant trade, not you or me.) If you are in France, of course you can buy this at the local grocery, but, this isn't France (or Montreal for that matter.) To really discover the potential of a terrine, you need to make it yourself. With modern tools, this is not difficult.

1 cup finely chopped onion (1 large)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried, crumbled
1 tablespoon kosher salt or 1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon whole allspice or 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 Turkish or 1/2 California bay leaf
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons Cognac or other brandy
1/2 lb chicken livers, trimmed
1 lb ground fatty pork shoulder or half lean pork and half fresh pork fatback (without rind)
1/2 lb ground fatty veal (preferably veal breast)
1/2 lb baked ham (1/2-inch slice), cut into 1/2-inch cubes
12 bacon slices (about 3/4 lb)

Special equipment: an electric coffee/spice grinder; a 6-cup terrine mold or loaf pan; an instant-read thermometer
Accompaniments: cornichons; mustard; bread or crackers

Assemble and marinate terrine:
Cook onion in butter in a 10-inch heavy skillet, covered, over moderately low heat, stirring frequently, until soft, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and thyme and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Transfer to a large bowl set in a bowl of ice.

While onion cools, pulse salt, peppercorns, allspice, nutmeg, and bay leaf in grinder until finely ground. Add to onion mixture and whisk in cream, eggs, and brandy until combined well.

Pulse chicken livers in a food processor until finely chopped, then add to onion mixture along with ground pork and veal and mix together well with your hands or a wooden spoon. Stir in ham cubes.

Line bottom and long sides of terrine mold crosswise with about 6 to 9 strips of bacon, arranging them close together (but not overlapping) and leaving a 1/2- to 2-inch overhang. Fill terrine evenly with ground-meat mixture, rapping terrine on counter to compact it (it will mound slightly above edge). Cover top of terrine lengthwise with 2 or 3 more bacon slices if necessary to cover completely, and fold overhanging ends of bacon back over these. Cover terrine with plastic wrap and chill at least 8 hours to marinate meats.

Bake terrine:
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 325°F.

Discard plastic wrap and cover terrine tightly with a double layer of foil.

Bake terrine in a water bath until thermometer inserted diagonally through foil at least 2 inches into center of terrine registers 155 to 160°F, 1 3/4 to 2 hours. Remove foil and let terrine stand in mold on a rack, 30 minutes.

Weight terrine:
Put terrine in mold in a cleaned baking pan. Put a piece of parchment or wax paper over top of terrine, then place on top of parchment another same-size terrine mold or a piece of wood or heavy cardboard cut to fit inside mold and wrapped in foil. Put 2 to 3 (1-pound) cans on terrine or on wood or cardboard to weight cooked terrine. Chill terrine in pan with weights until completely cold, at least 4 hours. Continue to chill terrine, with or without weights, at least 24 hours to allow flavors to develop.

To serve:
Run a knife around inside edge of terrine and let stand in mold in a pan with 1 inch of hot water (to loosen bottom) 2 minutes. Tip terrine mold (holding terrine) to drain excess liquid, then invert a cutting board over terrine, reinvert terrine onto cutting board, and gently wipe outside of terrine (bacon strips) with a paper towel. Let terrine stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before serving, then transfer to a platter if desired and cut, as needed, into 1/2-inch-thick slices.

Cooks' notes:
• Terrine can be marinated (before baking) up to 24 hours.
• Terrine keeps, wrapped in plastic wrap and chilled, 2 weeks.

Makes 12 to 14 servings. (but this is so good expect 5-6 to eat the whole thing.)

Serve with toasted baguette slices, cornichons, mustards, herbed mayonaisse and the wine-baked olives two posts below.

Your guests will ask which store you bought your pate at.

Great Beginnings

I was in Italy for the first time in 1980, touring the country with a festival orchestra out of the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. I later became a resident of that city, but at the time I was a recent Master's grad of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, which I was already missing desperately (I loved my years in Boston. Great restaurant town.) The orchestra spent a couple of months touring North Carolina, Germany and Italy and I discovered that the Mediterannean countries are really my spiritual home. I fell deeply in love with Umbria. We lived with families in Spoleto and Assisi, which is certainly the best way to learn a country. The festival had arranged meals for us in a couple of the local osterias in each city, but our host families invariably served one home-cooked meal before we departed their city. I must tell you that your ordinary Italian home cook is a very accomplished critter. We'd been eating very simply for the entire tour, osterias are where Italian families eat when they go out and stay when they travel, these are the local version of the pensione. The dinners with our host families were a place to try out our budding skills in Italian and profusely thank our hosts for all the hospitality they had shown us. It was at the meal with my hosts in Spoleto that I learned this dish. This recipe will make 12 appetizer servings and is easy to scale.

Antipasti de Salumi

16 slices prosciutto di Parma or prosciutto San Daniele
16 slices Bresaola con Olio, Limone e Parmigino, recipe follows
16 slices imported mortadella
16 slices imported sopressata
1/4 pound fontina, thinly sliced and cut into decorative Christmas tree shapes
1/3 pound mozzarella, sliced 1/4-inch thick and cut into decorative star shapes
1 cantaloupe, for garnish
1 honeydew, for garnish

Arrange all ingredients decoratively on platter.

Bresaola con Olio, Limone e Parmigiano:
5 ounces imported bresaola, sliced paper thin
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 large lemon, juiced
Freshly ground black pepper
1-ounce Parmesan, thinly shaved

Arrange the bresaola on serving platter or on individual dishes. Drizzle with the olive oil, and sprinkle with lemon juice and several grindings of black pepper. Top with Parmesan.

This is an absolutely classical Italian appetizer and looks spectacular arrayed on an attractive serving plate. This is something which can be passed for a seated dinner, or put out as one part of a buffet. Take this to a pot luck and be the hit of the evening.

Gift of February

I guess I'm on kind of an appetizer/hors d'ouvre mood tonight, which probably means that it is time for me throw a dinner party. These little deals are a real change of pace. I've never had leftovers.

ASPARAGUS CIGARS

24 medium asparagus (1 lb)
12 (7-inch) flour tortillas (not low-fat)
1 large egg, beaten with a pinch of salt
2 tablespoons white sesame seeds
About 2 cups vegetable oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon sugar
1 scallion, finely chopped

Special equipment: wooden picks; a deep-fat thermometer

Trim asparagus to 6-inch lengths.

Halve tortillas. Brush 1 half with some of egg mixture and place 1 piece asparagus along cut side. Tightly roll up tortilla. Insert 1 pick crosswise to secure. Brush outside of roll with more of egg and sprinkle with some sesame seeds. Make 23 more rolls in same manner.

Heat 1/2 inch oil in a 10-inch heavy skillet to 350°F.

Fry rolls in batches of 3, turning over once, until golden brown, about 3 minutes per batch, returning oil to 350°F between batches. Transfer to paper towels to drain.

Stir together remaining ingredients until sugar is dissolved. Serve with rolls.

Cooks' note:
To take the temperature of a shallow amount of oil with a metal flat-framed deep-fat thermometer, put bulb of thermometer in skillet. Turn thermometer facedown, resting other end (not plastic handle) against rim of skillet. Check temperature frequently.

Makes 24 hors d'oeuvres.

Little Bites

This is a different and very good variation on a familiar theme.

OLIVES BAKED IN RED WINE
Black olives absorb the flavor of red wine and fennel in this warm appetizer.

1 cup unpitted Kalamata olives or other brine-cured black olives
1/2 cup dry red wine
1/4 teaspoon fennel seeds, coarsely crushed
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons olive oil

Preheat oven to 325°F. Combine olives, wine, fennel seeds, sliced garlic and olive oil in small baking dish. Bake uncovered until olives are heated through, about 20 minutes. Cool slightly. Serve olives warm.

Strain the sauce and puree it with breadcrumbs to make a sauce to serve with your entree, over pasta or on rice.

Olives prepared this way are a natural accompaniment to a predinner cheese plate and cruditees.

Warmth on a Cold Day

Like me, probably, you are going to be making your snow cocoa from a Swiss Miss envelope, but here is the classic recipe for from-scratch cocoa and, yes, it does taste a lot better.

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup hot water
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
4 cups milk
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Mix cocoa, sugar, water and salt in a saucepan. Over medium heat, stir constantly until mixture boils. Cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute.
2. Stir in the milk and heat, but do not boil. Remove from heat and add vanilla; blend well. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings.

For me, the perfect accompaniment is peanut butter sandwiches (I never eat butter on sandwiches except for peanut butter) made with super-chunk peanut butter, unsalted butter on old fashioned multigrain bread, the artisanal type. Really chewy bread keeps the peanut butter from sticking to the roof of your mouth. I also like left-over roast chicken sandwiches with just a leaf of bibb lettuce and some good old French's mustard with cocoa. We used to have those with a thermos of cocoa when we went sledding in the winter when I was a child. Back in the days when the introduction of Roman Meal bread was a big deal. Yeah, I'm old.

Damn, I do need to go out tomorrow morning. I want some Roman Meal bread.

Let It Snow

I got my pre-snow shopping done--what a freakin' zoo at the graocery. They had some great deals on canned goods as well, so I made some inroads into my flu preps. It's a good thing I really, really like black bean soup. The snow isn't supposed to start here until the afternoon tomorrow, so I've got the morning for any last minute errands I need to run, but I think I'm all set. This is the first storm of the winter here--February and March are our snowiest months--and this is real late for it. I like being snowed in. There's something cozy about knowing that I really can't do anything but stay home and drink cocoa. I haven't had a fire in ages, but I have enough wood that I should be able to keep one going through the teeth of the storm tomorrow night. Add a good book (not hard to find around here) and that's the formula for a very successful weekend.

Search for Truth

Former FEMA Chief Blames DHS

By Daniela Deane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 10, 2006; 2:30 PM

Michael Brown, the embattled former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, testified before a Senate committee today that he told a top White House official on the day Hurricane Katrina struck that "our worst nightmares" had come true in New Orleans.

In an often tense exchange, Brown told the committee that he wasn't exactly sure who he talked to from the White House staff that night, but said it was probably Deputy Chief of Staff Joseph Hagin, who he said was in Crawford, Tex., with President Bush.

Asked if he told the White House staffer specifically that the New Orleans levees had been breached, Brown said he couldn't recall, but said he informed him that "everything we had planned about, worried about, was coming true." He said that talking to Hagin was like "speaking to the president."

Brown's testimony was significant because White House officials have said that the levee breach caught them by surprise.

The breaching of the levees caused large parts of New Orleans to be inundated in water in the wake of the devastating hurricane. Brown was later removed as FEMA director after bitter criticism of the federal response to the hurricane.

Brown said not only did he inform the White House, but he also informed top Homeland Security officials about the situation on the same day. His comments contradicted previous statements by agency officials, who said they did not know the levees had been breached until the following day.

"For them to claim that we didn't have awareness of it is just baloney," Brown said.

At the same time, Brown said that he thought that talking to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was a "waste of time" and that it was easier and more effective to go straight to the White House.

How much of this is real and how much is CYA we won't know until we hear more testimoney by others.

Here's a wrinkle Orwell missed

Just when I was beginning to think nothing I read in the news could creep me out any further, I ran across this next little gem.

Company requires RFID injection

Published: 2006-02-10

Two employees have been injected with RFID chips this week as part of a new requirement to access their company's datacenter.

Cincinnati based surveillance company CityWatcher.com created the policy with the hopes of increasing security in the datacenter where video surveillance tapes are stored. In the past, employees accessed the room with an RFID tag which hung from their keychains, however under the new regulations an implantable, glass encapsulated RFID tag from VeriChip must be injected into the bicep to gain access, a release from spychips.com said on Thursday.

Although the company does not require the microchips be implanted to maintain employment, anyone without one will not be able to access the datacenter, according to a Register article.

Ironically, the extra security sought may be offset by a recent discovery of Jonathan Westhues, where the security researcher showed the VeriChip can be skimmed and cloned, duplicating an implant's authentication. When contacted, those at CityWatcher were unaware of the chip's security issue, according to the spychips.com release.

Posted by: Peter Laborge

So what's next, Corporate America?

Neck numbers, perhaps? Perhaps alleviate absenteeism and the stressful commutes by housing the "employees" in ergastula built conveniently close to their assigned labor campsworkplaces?

The world wonders what new amazements will unfold, as America continues its bold cultural march into the Second Century BC.

Playing the Market

Barry Ritholtz has an important post up today for those of you with assets in the equity markets:

"In my opinion, the majority of economists, strategists and financial media -- the full "punditocracy" -- are exactly wrong on inflation. Indeed, I am hard pressed to think of another item of such grave economic consequence that most of the Street has so backwards.

The problem is, they are looking for inflation in all the wrong places. The inflation (ex-inflation) crowd has managed to ignore robust price increases across a variety of goods and services. Yet somehow they seem to have found inflation in the one part of the economy where there is almost none: wages.

One only had to see the market reaction to last week's data on non-farm payrolls, hourly wages and unemployment rate to realize how much the Street has gotten its panties in a bunch.

The Federal Reserve is acutely sensitive to wage pressure -- much more so than to the commodity price increases we have seen over the past five years. Maybe that's why the FOMC quietly announced that the upcoming meeting, previously planned for March 28, has been expanded to two days. It will now begin on March 27. (I'm sure the extra day isn't for more time to welcome aboard Ben Bernanke.)

If the Fed falls prey to the erroneous interpretation of wages and jobs, we could see a tightening cycle that goes far beyond what many on Wall Street currently expect. And that would bode extremely poorly for market prospects, both this year and next."

There are good, solid reasons to be out of equities right now (avian influenza is one of them) and Barry just adds to my concerns. If you have significant exposure to equities, it's not too soon to be moving to your safe harbor strategy now, particularly if you are planning to begin taking distributions (retirement income or college expenses) in the near future.

We Can Dream, Can't We?

Earlier this week, WaPo's Dan Froomkin invited readers to submit the questions they would like to hear W asked at a press conference. In every case, they are far better than the questions I've actually heard asked at any of his rare pressers. Here's one I really like:

"You pride yourself on your leadership abilities, but in moments of national crises you present yourself as just an ordinary guy wondering what the hell is going on. On 9/11 you wandered around the country in an airplane because that's what someone told you to do. Your administration's position on the attack was this: Who could have known someone would hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings?

"During Katrina, you sat on vacation and then said, who could have known those levees would break?

"On our failures in Iraq: I'm just giving the generals whatever they ask for. You know, I'm not on the ground. What do I know?

"On torture: What torture? We don't torture. Whatever it is we're dong, I asked Gonzales and he says it's ok.

"On the Plame leak: Hey, I'd like to know who did it as much as the next guy. I understand there's an investigation underway. . . .

"On invading Iraq on misinformation: Hey, I was just acting on what they told me. I didn't know the information was bad.

"My question is, isn't it your job as president to be prepared for these things? Isn't it your job to know that your intelligence is trustworthy, to know that disaster preparedness is in place, to understand the limitations of the law, to know that the White House is being run efficiently and legally? Isn't it your job to have a thorough understanding of the conduct of the war? If it's not your job, then whose job is it?"

If you got a chance to ask a question, what would you ask?

Politics and SCOTUS

Alito on the Bench, Dems on the Fence
Myerson on the state of the party
BY JESSE MYERSON

42 senators (one Independent, one Republican and the rest Democrats) voted against confirming Sam Alito as an Associate Justice to the Supreme Court, but, in the debate over his nomination, only 25 senators voted against cloture (cloture ends debate and moves to an up-and-down vote). Had the 42 who voted against his confirmation likewise voted against cloture, they would have blocked him from gaining a seat on the highest court in the most powerful nation in the world. Now, a radical rightward shift of that body is all but inevitable.

If those 42 senators actually do oppose Sam Alito for the reasons listed in their offices’ press releases regarding their votes against his confirmation—namely that he will legitimate crimes the Bush administration has committed, that he supports revolutionary consolidation of executive powers, that he is biased in favor of corporations and Christian groups, and against workers and minorities—why did they not do all that they could to ensure blocking him?

The answer is indicative of a much larger problem within the Democratic Party: that it is an opposition Party whose oppositional strategy, counter-intuitively, is triangulation. By contrast, they oppose a majority party whose majority strategy is to fight like hell for an extremely radical cause and never give up an inch. Those who voted “aye” on cloture but “nay” on confirmation wanted to appear principled by actually eschewing principle. They cast a symbolic vote for justice while casting a meaningful vote for just the opposite.

Conventional wisdom holds that had those “aye-but-nay” Democrats filibustered Alito (filibuster means to prevent cloture), they would have been labeled “obstructionists” and defeated in their upcoming elections. The same “conventional wisdom” is present here that makes Massachusetts Senator John Kerry vote for the war in Iraq so he does not seem “soft” on “National Security;” and New York Senator Hillary Clinton oppose single-payer health care to avoid being considered socialistic. To their credit, both Mr. Kerry and Ms. Clinton voted against cloture, but again, the cloture vote is not the disease, merely a symptom.

I say that the lives and well being of the American people are worth some senators appearing “soft” on “National Security,” or being socialistic; because as the late Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota said, “Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives. It’s about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people.”

The irony of it all is that triangulation (read: taking the base for granted, while pandering to Independents and right-wingers), which “conventional wisdom” maintains is the key to Democratic success, is the catalyst for Democratic demise. It was during the Clinton era of triangulation, when the government was trying to be all things to all people, that the Democrats lost one house of Congress and then the other. Finally, the Republican majority in those chambers increased and the Democrats lost (debatably) two presidential elections along the way.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold, the closest current Senator to the aforementioned Mr. Wellstone, both in electoral strategy and political position, manages to remain quite popular in a rather centrist state. Senator Feingold was the one senator to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act (this was when Wellstone was still in office). Feingold remains the only senator to propose a concrete timeline for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq; he recently led the charge to prevent drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Despite being the most progressive member of the Senate, Feingold managed to win many Wisconsin counties that went to President Bush in 2004. Conventional wisdom, it seems, is wrong.

Here is a much wiser wisdom: that Americans like it if leaders stand up for what they say they believe in. The Gang of 14 chose to filibuster judges who they said must not be allowed to judge? Good. Then they ought not to have compromised and allowed those judges to be confirmed. John Edwards promised hundreds of people in Copley Square on November 2 that he and John Kerry wouldn’t concede until all the ballots were counted? Good. Then they should not have conceded the next day, as massive reports of voting irregularities were surfacing. Somehow the Republicans seem to win without seeming like Democrats. Shouldn’t then, in a country that is roughly as progressive as it is conservative, the Democrats be able to win without seeming like Republicans? It is time to look to the Republicans for tips on winning.

There is some genuine wisdom in this student publication, something I don't hear often enough.

A River in Egypt

Lobbyist Told Reporter of Nearly a Dozen Contacts With Bush

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 10, 2006; Page A08

President Bush met lobbyist Jack Abramoff almost a dozen times over the past five years and invited him to Crawford, Tex., in the summer of 2003, according to an e-mail Abramoff wrote to a reporter last month.

Bush "has one of the best memories of any politicians I have ever met," Abramoff wrote to Kim Eisler of Washingtonian magazine. "The guys saw me in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids."

In an interview last night, Eisler confirmed the contents of the e-mail and said he recently provided portions of it to the liberal Web log ThinkProgress because he thought he was dealing with a fellow reporter. The blog posted the contents of the Abramoff-Eisler communication.

In the e-mail, Abramoff scoffs at Bush's public statements that he does not recall ever meeting the disgraced lobbyist and former top Bush fundraiser. "Of course he can't recall that he has a great memory!" Abramoff wrote. Eisler, an editor for Washingtonian, said in the interview that the lobbyist was the source of his exclusive report last month that at least five photographs of Bush with Abramoff exist. Abramoff showed him the pictures, Eisler said. Abramoff has told others he will not release them publicly.

Bush has said he does not recall ever meeting Abramoff or posing for pictures with the Republican lobbyist at official events or parties. The White House has refused to release the pictures or detail Abramoff's contacts with top White House officials over the past five years.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday that "what the president said still stands."

Bushco raises the concept of "denial" to a whole new order of magnitude. Since neither Congress nor the press are holding him to account, they continue to get away with this shit.

Snow Days

...WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM SATURDAY MORNING THROUGH LATE SATURDAY NIGHT...

AN INTENSE LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM WILL DEVELOP IN THE DEEP SOUTH ON
FRIDAY...AND MOVE NORTHEAST TO THE MID-ATLANTIC ON SATURDAY. WITH
COLD AIR IN PLACE ACROSS THE MID ATLANTIC...THE FIRST SNOWSTORM OF
THE NEW YEAR COULD IMPACT THE REGION THIS WEEKEND.

A BAND OF MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOW IS LIKELY TO DEVELOP ACROSS THE
REGION SATURDAY AFTERNOON AND SATURDAY NIGHT. AT THIS TIME...A
SWATH OF SNOWFALL OF 5 INCHES OR MORE IS LIKELY ACROSS THE AREA...
WITH ACCUMULATIONS UP TO TEN INCHES POSSIBLE.

NORTHEAST WINDS AT 15 TO 25 MPH SATURDAY WILL SHIFT TO THE NORTH
SATURDAY NIGHT. THE COMBINATION OF MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOW AND WIND
HAS THE POTENTIAL TO REDUCE VISIBILITY TO BELOW ONE HALF OF A MILE.
PLEASE BE PREPARED FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF HAZARDOUS WINTER WEATHER
SATURDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHT. A WINTER STORM WARNING MAY NEED TO BE
ISSUED LATER TODAY OR TONIGHT.

This is not going to make my life any simpler. 10 inches is crippling in this part of the world.

Profound Disinterest

I've been waiting for this story to break for months.

White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm

By ERIC LIPTON
Published: February 10, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.

Investigators have found evidence that federal officials at the White House and elsewhere learned of the levee break in New Orleans earlier than was first suggested.

But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.

"FYI from FEMA," said an e-mail message from the agency's public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators. Conditions, the message said, "are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought — also a number of fires."

Michael D. Brown, who was the director of FEMA until he resigned under pressure on Sept. 12, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he personally notified the White House of this news that night, though he declined to identify the official he spoke to.

White House officials have confirmed to Congressional investigators that the report of the levee break arrived there at midnight, and Trent Duffy, the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much in an interview this week, though he said it was surrounded with conflicting reports.

But the alert did not seem to register. Even the next morning, President Bush, on vacation in Texas, was feeling relieved that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet," he later recalled. Mr. Chertoff, similarly confident, flew Tuesday to Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu. With power out from the high winds and movement limited, even news reporters in New Orleans remained unaware of the full extent of the levee breaches until Tuesday.

The federal government let out a sigh of relief when in fact it should have been sounding an "all hands on deck" alarm, the investigators have found.

This chain of events, along with dozens of other critical flashpoints in the Hurricane Katrina saga, has for the first time been laid out in detail following five months of work by two Congressional committees that have assembled nearly 800,000 pages of documents, testimony and interviews from more than 250 witnesses. Investigators now have the documentation to pinpoint some of the fundamental errors and oversights that combined to produce what is universally agreed to be a flawed government response to the worst natural disaster in modern American history.

On Friday, Mr. Brown, the former FEMA director, is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He is expected to confirm that he notified the White House on that Monday, the day the hurricane hit, that the levee had given way, the city was flooding and his crews were overwhelmed.

About the only conclusion I can come to is that they really just didn't give a damn.

Brownie's testimony starts at 9:30 AM EST this morning. You can watch in on C-Span or here.

Musical Chair

Libby Testified He Was Told To Leak Data About Iraq

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 10, 2006; Page A08

Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff testified that his bosses instructed him to leak information to reporters from a high-level intelligence report that suggested Iraq was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction, according to court records in the CIA leak case.

Cheney was one of the "superiors" I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said had authorized him to make the disclosures, according to sources familiar with the investigation into Libby's discussions with reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame.

But it is unclear whether Cheney instructed his former top aide to release classified information, because parts of the National Intelligence Estimate were previously declassified.

The disclosure in a legal document written by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald demonstrates one way in which Cheney was involved in responding to public allegations by Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, that the administration had exaggerated questionable intelligence to justify war with Iraq.

In a letter written in January and released in court papers filed by Libby's defense Monday, Fitzgerald wrote that Libby testified that his "superiors" authorized him to disclose information from the National Intelligence Estimate to reporters in the summer of 2003.

The National Journal first reported on its Web site yesterday that Cheney had provided the authorization.

Oh, please. Scooter was Cheney's chief of staff, Carol. Who is his boss?

Faith-based Policy

Air Force Eases Rules on Religion

New Guidelines Reflect Evangelicals' Criticism, General Says

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 10, 2006; Page A05

The Air Force, under pressure from evangelical Christian groups and members of Congress, softened its guidelines on religious expression yesterday to emphasize that superior officers may discuss their faith with subordinates and that chaplains will not be required to offer nonsectarian prayers.

"This does affirm every airman's right, even the commanders' right, to free exercise of religion, and that means sharing your faith," said Maj. Gen. Charles C. Baldwin, the Air Force's chief of chaplains.

The guidelines were first issued in late August after allegations that evangelical Christian commanders, coaches and cadets at the Air Force Academy had pressured cadets of other faiths. The original wording sought to tamp down religious fervor and to foster tolerance throughout the Air Force. It discouraged public prayers at routine events and warned superior officers that personal expressions of faith could be misunderstood as official statements.

But evangelical groups, such as the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, saw the guidelines as overly restrictive. They launched a nationwide petition drive, sounded alarms on Christian radio stations, and deluged the White House and Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne's office with e-mails calling the guidelines an infringement of the Constitution's guarantees of free speech and free exercise of religion.

Seventy-two members of Congress also signed a letter to President Bush criticizing the guidelines and urging him to issue an executive order guaranteeing the right of military chaplains to pray "in Jesus' name" rather than being forced to offer nonsectarian prayers at public ceremonies.

The revised guidelines are considerably shorter than the original, filling one page instead of four. They place more emphasis on the Constitution's free exercise clause, which is mentioned four times, than on its prohibition on any government establishment of religion, which is mentioned twice.

The guidelines still warn superior officers to be "sensitive to the potential" that personal expressions of faith may appear to be official statements. But they say that, "subject to these sensitivities, superiors enjoy the same free exercise rights as all other airmen." They now add that there are no restrictions in situations "where it is reasonably clear that the discussions are personal, not official, and they can be reasonably free of the potential for, or appearance of, coercion."

Coercion? "The Air Force, under pressure from evangelical Christian groups and members of Congress..."

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington-based group whose investigation of the Air Force Academy helped spark the controversy last year, said the revisions "focus heavily on protecting the rights of chaplains, while ignoring the rights of nonbelievers and minority faiths."

Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, an Albuquerque lawyer who is suing the Air Force over its policy on religion, questioned the sentence allowing commanders to share their faith when it is "reasonably clear" that they are speaking personally, not officially.

"Reasonably clear from whose perspective, the superior's or the subordinate's?" asked Weinstein, a 1977 Air Force Academy graduate. "When a senior member of your chain of command wants to speak to you 'reasonably' about religion, saying 'Get out of my face, sir!' is not an option."

These issues are never easy. The previous guidelines were designed to discourage the sort of overt proselytising that non-believers, non-Christians or even non-evangelicals may see as coercive. The Air Force will find the new guidelines even more controversial.

Bird Flu Breaking

EU deals with suspected avian influenza in Greece
www.chinaview.cn 2006-02-10 04:01:43

BRUSSELS, Feb. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- The European Commission took some precautionary measures on Thursday after it was informed by the Greek government that suspected avian influenza founded in dead wild swans.

Earlier on Thursday, the National Reference Laboratory in Greece found an avian influenza virus H5 in samples taken from three swans found dead in the Prefectures of Thessaloniki and Pieria.

Samples are now being dispatched to the Community Reference Laboratory so that further tests can be conducted to establish if this H5N1 avian influenza virus has spread to Eastern Europe in recent months.

Meanwhile, the Commission, the executive arm of the European Union (EU), is due to adopt on Friday a safeguard measure to ensure increased bio-security on poultry farms in the concerned areas.

Movements of poultry from the affected area to other holdings or for slaughter will be subjected to rigorous additional controls, said the Commission in a statement.

The World Health Organization released this:

Avian influenza in Africa: statement by the Director-General of WHO

The confirmation of H5N1 avian influenza in poultry in Africa is a cause for great concern and demands immediate action. This is the first reported incidence of this highly pathogenic virus on the continent, where people are already enduring the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other serious infectious diseases. The H5N1 virus now confirmed in Nigeria poses a risk to human health and livelihood.

The single most important public health priority at this stage is to warn people about the dangers of close contact with sick or dead birds infected with H5N1. The vast majority of all human cases and deaths from H5N1 have occurred in previously healthy children and young adults.

Experience in Asian countries and most recently in Turkey underscores the fact that immediate, clear public information is critical to help protect human health. Slaughtering, defeathering or butchering infected, sick or dead birds can put people at risk. The home slaughter and consumption of birds which appear to be sick is high-risk behaviour. Ideally, people culling and disposing of birds should have protective equipment.

WHO is offering support to the Government of Nigeria's national public information campaign. This campaign may include delivery of messages to communities during the nationwide house-to-house polio immunization campaign beginning on Saturday. The polio eradication infrastructure in Nigeria is also being mobilized to support other essential surveillance and protective measures, such as monitoring for human cases, support for "early warning systems", and logistic support for containment, treatment, and laboratory functions.

This latest outbreak confirms that no country is immune to H5N1. Every country is at risk. Every country must prepare. There is a risk that outbreaks of H5N1 infection in birds could spread within Nigeria and into neighbouring countries. Nigeria is one of several African countries located on the Black Sea-Mediterranean flyway used by migratory birds. Human and animal health services must be on high alert, sharing information and quickly reporting any signs of disease in birds or humans that could be due to H5N1 avian influenza.

If I were you, I'd be prepping like mad.

Unacceptable

Report: White House Knew About Levees

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The earliest official report of a New Orleans levee breach came at 8:30 a.m., hours after Hurricane Katrina roared ashore. Word of the possible breach surfaced at the White House less than three hours later, at 11:13 a.m.

In all, 28 federal, state and local agencies reported levee failures on Aug. 29, according to a timeline of e-mails, situation updates and weather reports that Senate Democrats say raise questions about whether the government moved quickly enough to rescue storm victims from massive flooding.

The documents were released in advance of a Senate hearing Friday at which Michael Brown, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was set to testify.

Brown is widely considered the public face of the government's sluggish response to Katrina. But he signaled earlier this week that he was prepared to discuss his storm communications with President Bush and other top White House officials — a possible signal that his testimony would assign blame elsewhere.

The White House has barred some top advisers and staffers from answering Senate investigators' questions about the administration's response, saying that certain discussions and documents must remain confidential. But Brown, who quit FEMA shortly after the storm and left the federal payroll Nov. 2, is no longer covered by that confidentiality protection.

Between this and the "Bin Laden Targets America" warning that they ignored, I don't see how anyone can defend this Administration. The media should hold them accountable NOW and demand to know why tax cuts are more important than rebuilding a region that has been ignored or spat upon up to now.

Democrats need to use these e-mails front and center in the fall as they run for Congress. If the Republicans in Congress don't want a full blown investigation with ALL officials involved, then we have a campaign issue here.

Katrina isn't some existential exercise in policy wonkery. Your average redneck and clueless citizen understands at a fundamental level how badly the response to this disaster was bungled at the Federal level (heck even Inspector Clouseau could have done a better job) and that it was bungled by the incompents appointed by Bush.

V-day Delight

Load this into a carved baguette and enjoy.

INGREDIENTS:

* 3 rock lobster tails, 6 to 8 ounces each, cooked, cut in chunks, chilled
* 1 cup diced celery
* 1/4 cup slivered almonds
* 1 tablespoon chopped green onion
* .
* Dressing:
* 3/4 cup mayonnaise
* 2 tablespoons heavy cream
* 2 tablespoons lemon juice
* 1/4 teaspoon sugar
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon dried leaf tarragon, crushed
* 1/8 teaspoon white or black pepper

PREPARATION:
Put chilled lobster, celery, almonds, and green onion in a salad bowl. Combine dressing ingredients; blend well. Toss lobster mixture gently with dressing. Garnish with sliced green onions and sliced almonds, if desired. Serves 6.

Place into sliced baguettes that have been sliced and toasted briefly in the oven if you want a slice of paradise.

Slice baguettes the long way and broil the slices briefly, less than five minutes. Coat the bread with the mayonaise mixture, fill with the remainder and pass out "Lobster bibs."

Eat hearty.

Gifts from the Sea

Oysters are "hot" for V-day, but trust one who knows, they are not fun to shuck at home. You need special equipment to do this, and time in training to not tear up your hands. Go out or buy shucked oysters. You can prepare them like this if you want to serve them at home:

INGREDIENTS:

* 24 to 36 oysters, raw
* 2 eggs, beaten
* 2 cups cornmeal
* 1 teaspoon sugar
* 2 teaspoons salt
* 1 teaspoon pepper
* 2 tablespoons flour

PREPARATION:
Drain oysters. In a bowl, beat eggs; add drained oysters and let stand for 10 minutes. Mix cornmeal, sugar, salt, pepper and flour. Dip oysters in cornmeal mixture and fry in batches in deep hot oil or shortening -- at about 370° -- until golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Serves 4 to 6.

Yum. Serve with a salad that includes lobster, homemade rye bread and a decent tartar sauce, and you have a feast on your hands.

Soak up the accolades.

I remember the first time I met an oyster. I assumed that it would be slimey and icky seafood (which I didn't really like) and showed up at my friend's try-out for the new restaurant where he'd be working. The new joint invited the local foodies to try them out at a free dinner hosted by the owner. Before the night was over (this was a seafood place) I'd been through three rounds of oysters on the half shell. To this day, my favorite birthday dinner is to sample all of the oysters coming through Seattle (oy, those little Japanese jobs are good) mixed with some domestic champagne and a classic Ceasar salad.

Waiter, could you bring those iced oysters over here? Waiter? Waiter, could you grate some more Parmigiano-Reggiano on my salad? Waiter?

Here is a recipe for good Rye bread. Enjoy.

Brownie Comes Home to Roost

Brown May Reveal White House Katrina Communications

February 9, 2006 12:31 p.m. EST

Andrea Moore - All Headline News Staff Reporter

Washington, DC (AHN) - Former disaster agency chief Michael Brown is suggesting he may reveal his correspondence with President Bush and other officials during Hurricane Katrina unless the White House forbids it and offers legal support.

Brown quit under fire as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency days after Katrina struck. He left the federal payroll November 2.

In a February 6 letter to White House counsel Harriet Miers, Brown's lawyer, Andrew W. Lester, wrote, "Unless there is specific direction otherwise from the president, including an assurance the president will provide a legal defense to Mr. Brown if he refuses to testify as to these matters, Mr. Brown will testify if asked about particular communications."

White House spokesman Trent Duffy has declined to comment on the letter and instead points to remarks two weeks ago in which Bush avoided directly including Brown among his advisers.

Brown is set to testify Friday at a Senate inquiry about the government's inept response to Katrina.

Senator Joe Lieberman, D-Connecticut., blasted the White House last month for what he called attempts to stonewall the Senate inquiry and says he expects Brown, now a private citizen, "to answer every question the committee puts to him truthfully."

Whichever way this goes, it is going to be delicious.

Make Tinkerbell Well

White House to give House committee information on spy program
By James Kuhnhenn and Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The White House reversed course Wednesday and agreed to provide the House Intelligence Committee with some information about its secret program to intercept U.S.-foreign communications without court approval.

The decision came as Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, began drafting legislation that would require a special federal court that ordinarily grants warrants for such eavesdropping to determine whether the program is constitutional.

Wednesday's developments illustrated the growing bipartisan pressure from Congress on the Bush administration to address the civil liberties questions raised by its efforts to spy on U.S. residents suspected of terrorist contacts. The White House decision appeared designed to forestall calls for a more aggressive congressional investigation.

The House Intelligence Committee received a closed-door briefing on the program from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Gen. Michael Hayden, the deputy director of national intelligence. A similar briefing is scheduled on Thursday for the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Until now, the administration had briefed only the so-called Gang of Eight - the speaker of the House of Representatives, the House Democratic leader, the Senate majority and minority leaders, the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the top Democrats on each committee. Wednesday's briefing was for the full House committee.

It was evident that several Republicans as well as most Democrats were apprehensive about the program when Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday about the president's rationale for conducting the program without judicial review, in possible violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Republican objections gained greater political weight when they were raised Wednesday by Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., a member of the House Intelligence Committee and the chair of its Technical and Tactical Intelligence Subcommittee. Wilson told The New York Times that the eavesdropping program by the National Security Agency needed a full congressional review. In response, the White House agreed to be more open with the intelligence committees.

"The checks and balances in our system of government are very important, and it's those checks and balances that are going on and are being executed now," Wilson said after the White House relented.

As recently as Tuesday night, Vice President Dick Cheney had strongly defended the administration's practice of informing only the eight senior lawmakers.

"You can't take 535 members of Congress and tell them everything and protect the nation's secrets," Cheney said on "The NewsHour" on PBS. He said there have been 70 members of the two congressional intelligence panels during the four years that the secret eavesdropping program has been operating and that sharing the secret with so many lawmakers would have endangered security.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino denied Wednesday that the decision to talk more about the program with the full membership of both intelligence committees was a change in policy.

That's right, when it is an obvious change in policy, just deny it. Wishing makes it so.

Focus and Fellowship Along With the Fire

Occasional essays here over the past month and a half have pointed the way to the need for the kind of fire and spirit that drive a sustained countercultural movement, a path of resistance to the large cultural currents that are swallowing us up. In many ways, we do need to swim against the tide that carries other people along, and the community of Bumpers is, in many ways, devoted to furthering a way of life that counters what other people (especially in places of entrenched power and leverage) are doing. After all, if "WE" are all on our own, that means "THEY" are causing us to be all on our own. There is an inevitable awareness of segregation that comes from apprehending the reality of the world today, and moreover, there is--to a certain extent and in a very particular sense--a need to further this segregation by making our lives different from "THEIRS."

Ah, but in these troubling and overwhelmingly complex times, there must be balance in all things, and so today, one must make a plea for consensus-building, for making a connection in which "WE" can meet "THEM" halfway.

I had a post-Super Bowl commentary in mind--not the football kind, but the sociological kind--on Monday. I was ready to comment on the absurdity Detroit experienced amidst its staging of the Big Game: tens of thousands of homeless people living but five minutes from jaw-droppingly lavish and bacchanalian bashes involving crowds whose collective net wealth--from their possessions to their clothing to their contracts to the food and drink they consumed--had to be in the billions, if not the TENS of billions.

But the gulf that existed in Detroit last week--and which demanded exposure--was a gulf whose sickening width suddenly seemed to pale in comparison to the breach that was revealed not just between Western Europe and the extremist (not authentically) Muslim world, but between Scandinavian Europe, that seemingly most sensitive of places, and a community that responded to a caricature of violence with.... what else?.... violence.

Norway and Denmark put the U.S. to shame in terms of the percentage of GDP they donate to global relief. Norway donates a higher percentage of its dollars to global relief than any other donor nation.

And yet, we have the sorry spectacle of Norwegian outposts (along with Danish ones) being damaged by religious extremists who, while legitimately upset over caricatures of the prophet Muhammad that were in poor taste, have--in their violence--legitimized the very same fears, criticisms and suspicions that Western Europeans have voiced toward them over the years... years in which Muslims have migrated to Europe in search of a better life, yet have simultaneously been rather unwilling to assimilate to the larger culture.

Beyond this violence, though, lies the point that seems to lose traction with each outbreak of hostility: Islam doesn't promote violence, doesn't promote vile behavior. It's simply a religion that has too many leaders who are hijacking its principles and manipulating its values for personal power and worldwide influence. Extremist leaders with names like Bin Laden and Al-Sadr have created fertile places where violence can sprout from the minds of people who, in their world-weariness and vulnerability, feel there is no other answer.

But that's not all in the world of very wide, wickedly wide, gulfs.

There was the whole Joseph Lowery/Jimmy Carter - George Bush controversy from the Coretta Scott King funeral, which unleashed a huge and fundamental conflict that was sadly partisan in tone and tenor, an easy excuse to duck and hide from the tougher but profoundly more substantial business of, indeed, giving more money to the poor than to bombs. The furor from conservatives and Republicans about this incident was more over the forum in which Lowery and Carter made their remarks, than about the veracity or legitimacy of the claims themselves. Yet, the anger will be sustained so consistently that it will become the main issue of debate, an outcome that the Right will welcome--given that it will take the focus (once more) off the poor, and our collective polity's neglect of the least among us... in the Gulf Coast, or anywhere else.

And finally, courtesy of Sojourners magazine, I found out this morning that Bruce Wilkinson, the author of "The Prayer of Jabez," a classic Gospel Of Prosperity text, has both:

A) been doing mission work in Africa for the past four years, with some questionable motivations but with a genuinely sincere heart in many respects;

B) recently pulled himself out of Africa because, in his own words, his Jabez prayer simply "did not work."

Wilkinson's earnest desire to use his wealth on the improvement of others' lives, combined with his shortsighted evangelical understanding of the mystery of God and the complexity of life--over and beyond easy prayer mantras and black-and-white ideological views--shows, once again, how good and bad, the marvelous and the messy, coexist in each one of us. Wilkinson learned that he couldn't impose his will--or his Jabez prayer--on African governments and a foreign culture; at the same time, though, it is a loss that Wilkinson abruptly backed out of his venture, because he's left so many African pastors and individuals spiritually and programmatically stranded. Wilkinson's desire and its lack of fulfillment offer further proof of the gulfs that exist--not just between peoples and cultures, but within the competing dimensions of our own hearts and spirits.

These are troubling times for so many reasons, but at the heart of everything is how utterly divided we all are, even (especially?) within ourselves.

Surely, we can find a way to be countercultural but, at the same time, people who can affirm the life story of anyone, especially the kind of person we'd be inclined to detest. This is the mark of great and beautiful humanity, and we simply have to have it if we want to sew meaningful wide-scale improvements on this terrain that has been entrusted to us for 80-100 years.

We have to find some greater focus and fellowship along with the fire in the belly. Too many gulfs exist in the world, and the more we allow our own selves to get sucked into fear-based, wedge-creating politics, the more we truly lose ground.

Wireless World

BlackBerry Maker Develops Workaround

The Associated Press
Thursday, February 9, 2006; 8:39 AM

WATERLOO, Ontario -- Research In Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry handheld device, said Thursday it has developed software "workaround" designs for its popular handsets in case a court bars the use of current software due to a pending patent dispute.

Although there is currently no injunction in place regarding the patent litigation with NTP Inc., RIM said it developed the workaround software as a contingency to allow BlackBerry service to continue should the court declare an injunction.

I dread the day when I have to start carrying one of these things, but friends who use them tell me they save a lot of time at the keyboard. Anyway, DCists are breathing a little easier this morning.

Winter Wonderland

I spoke too soon about the lack of winter this winter. The Weather Channel bug in my task tray just lit up to warn me that a winter storm watch for the weekend might be posted later today. Oh, well.

Media Question

I have a question for those of you with a better memory than mine and access to Lexis-Nexis. I've been a pretty steady observer of CNN for at least a dozen years. I don't remember Clinton's speeches being covered in the slavish fashion that the network covers Bush's, where his every word begs for live coverage, it seems. Am I guilty of selective vision?

The King Has Spoken

Bucking Bush on Spying

By David S. Broder
Thursday, February 9, 2006; Page A23

No member of the Senate is more conservative than Sam Brownback of Kansas -- a loyal Republican, an ardent opponent of abortion and, not coincidentally, a presidential hopeful for 2008.

As a member of the Judiciary Committee, he has supported President Bush on every one of his court appointments. He is not one to find fault with the administration.

And that is why the misgivings he expressed Monday about the surveillance policies Bush has employed in the war on terrorism are so striking. Along with three other Republicans and all eight of the committee Democrats, Brownback emerged as part of a potential majority that could insist that Bush come back to Congress for authority to continue the wiretaps -- but under court supervision.

In questioning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Brownback said, "It strikes me that we're going to be in this war on terrorism possibly for decades . . . [and] to have another set of eyes also looking at this surveillance technique is an important thing in maintaining the public's support for this."

What Brownback put in gentle terms is exactly the issue that clearly troubled all but six of the 18 senators in the hearing -- the absence of any external checks on the secret wiretapping the president ordered after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Gonzales, in his testimony, made an effective rhetorical point by citing examples going back to Washington, Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt of presidents ordering interception of wartime communications -- on their own authority. But as several senators pointed out, those actions all came before the Supreme Court applied the Fourth Amendment ban on "unreasonable searches" to telephone calls and before Congress in 1978 responded to the scandals of secret FBI wiretapping by enacting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), declaring such intercepts illegal except as approved by a specially constituted court.

Gonzales argued that the FISA process is too slow and cumbersome to cope with al Qaeda, but he was noncommittal or chilly to the many suggestions that the administration ask Congress for changes that would facilitate its use. When Brownback pointed out that after Sept. 11, Congress had extended the "grace period" for the government coming back to the FISA court for retroactive authorization of a wiretap from 24 hours to 72 hours and asked Gonzales whether he would like an even longer time, he replied, "It's hard to say" whether that would help.

The obduracy of the administration in continuing to refuse such open invitations to seek a clear statutory authority for this electronic monitoring is almost impossible to understand -- unless Bush and Vice President Cheney are simply trying to establish the precedent that they can wage this war on terrorism without any recourse to Congress.

David, David, you just don't get it. The King doesn't make compromises. He doesn't have to.

Grammer Lesson

I'm listening to God only knows what iteration of Bush's war speech on CNN and I'm struck, as I have so often been, by the way he toggles between the use of the first and third person. I don't know that I've ever heard so much presidential speech in which the executive identified the office with his own person. Bush's use of the word "I" is unique in presidential speech. Previous incumbents preferred a more democratic "we," identifying the office with the people. Bush has no such qualms.

Missing Pieces

Secret Court's Judges Were Warned About NSA Spy Data
Program May Have Led Improperly to Warrants

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 9, 2006; Page A01

Twice in the past four years, a top Justice Department lawyer warned the presiding judge of a secret surveillance court that information overheard in President Bush's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to obtain wiretap warrants in the court, according to two sources with knowledge of those events.

The revelations infuriated U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly -- who, like her predecessor, Royce C. Lamberth, had expressed serious doubts about whether the warrantless monitoring of phone calls and e-mails ordered by Bush was legal. Both judges had insisted that no information obtained this way be used to gain warrants from their court, according to government sources, and both had been assured by administration officials it would never happen.

The two heads of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court were the only judges in the country briefed by the administration on Bush's program. The president's secret order, issued sometime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, allows the National Security Agency to monitor telephone calls and e-mails between people in the United States and contacts overseas.

James A. Baker, the counsel for intelligence policy in the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, discovered in 2004 that the government's failure to share information about its spying program had rendered useless a federal screening system that the judges had insisted upon to shield the court from tainted information. He alerted Kollar-Kotelly, who complained to Justice, prompting a temporary suspension of the NSA spying program, the sources said.

Yet another problem in a 2005 warrant application prompted Kollar-Kotelly to issue a stern order to government lawyers to create a better firewall or face more difficulty obtaining warrants.

The two judges' discomfort with the NSA spying program was previously known. But this new account reveals the depth of their doubts about its legality and their behind-the-scenes efforts to protect the court from what they considered potentially tainted evidence. The new accounts also show the degree to which Baker, a top intelligence expert at Justice, shared their reservations and aided the judges.

Both judges expressed concern to senior officials that the president's program, if ever made public and challenged in court, ran a significant risk of being declared unconstitutional, according to sources familiar with their actions. Yet the judges believed they did not have the authority to rule on the president's power to order the eavesdropping, government sources said, and focused instead on protecting the integrity of the FISA process.

It was an odd position for the presiding judges of the FISA court, the secret panel created in 1978 in response to a public outcry over warrantless domestic spying by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. The court's appointees, chosen by then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, were generally veteran jurists with a pro-government bent, and their classified work is considered a powerful tool for catching spies and terrorists.

I have a boxfull of questions, of course. Where are all the prosecutions which flowed from this surveillance? How effective is it?

Then we have the constitutional questions, which have yet to see appellate challenge. There are a whole lot of things to wonder about here.

The Future

Storm Victims Face Big Delay to Get Trailers

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and ERIC LIPTON
Published: February 9, 2006

SLIDELL, La., Feb. 6 — Nearly six months after two hurricanes ripped apart communities across the Gulf Coast, tens of thousands of residents remain without trailers promised by the federal government for use as temporary shelter while they rebuild.

Daryl Cleworth, clearing debris from his house in Slidell, La., said he had made dozens of calls about a trailer. "We'll take anything," he said.

Of the 135,000 requests for trailers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has received from families, slightly more than half have been filled. The delays have left families holed up with relatives or stranded out of state, stalled local economies and infuriated state and local officials, who criticize how the program has been managed. Further, officials and residents complain about problems with quality, like poor plumbing and electrical shorts, with the trailers they have received.

"The trailer problem is an individual human tragedy," said Reinhard J. Dearing, the chief administrative officer of Slidell, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. Several city officials, including police officers, are still without trailers or just received them this week, and have been sleeping with friends or neighbors, and in one case, under a desk in a government office.

On Monday, frustrated by the delays, four members of the St. Bernard Parish Council performed what they called a symbolic act, taking three trailers from a local stockpile of about 275 and delivering them to residents.

"If this happened with any other business, you would find another purveyor," said Councilman Mark Madary, who represents a parish where 6,000 families are waiting for trailers and about 2,000 have received them.

The problems in administering the $4 billion trailer program mirror those of other major recovery efforts undertaken since the hurricanes crippled the region, and appear to be a result of failures at all levels of government. Local officials, contractors and residents say that some of the delays seem to stem from the federal government's poor planning and its frustrating layers of subcontractors and bureaucracy.

For example, trailers are often sent to two different holding areas before they are distributed, and sit collecting dust while families wait.

"It is so disheartening to see people living in houses with water pouring through the roof," said James M. McGehee, the mayor of Bogalusa, a small Louisiana city near the Mississippi border. Across the state line, Mr. McGehee said, are "acres and acres" of trailers in holding areas.

If you think the "government" is going to get you out of the bird flu hole or take care of you in the upcoming hurricane season (I'll post Colorado State's team's prediction later today) I think you are sadly mistaken. We are going to have to prepare in community for what is to come, and disasters will always be with us.

The WaPo reports:

The Big Easy? Now It's Limbo Land
Slow-Moving Bureaucracy Leaves New Orleans Stuck in a Cycle of Waiting

By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 9, 2006; Page A01

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 8 -- When Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco told a special legislative session Monday night that "It's time to play hardball, as I believe it's the only game that Washington understands," she was speaking with the fervor and frustration of someone living in Limbo Land.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin has also been wrestling with ways to break the bureaucratic logjams that he says are preventing New Orleans from rebuilding. He recently met with officials from foreign countries, including France and Jordan, looking for help. "We had a little disappointment earlier from some signals that we're getting from Washington," Nagin told a local television station, "but the international community may be able to fill the gap."

Officials here are resorting to strong words -- Blanco is threatening to try to block federal sales of leases for gas and oil off the Louisiana coast -- and pleas to foreign nations because they say they need more money to rebuild New Orleans. They are trying to appeal to the federal government and also minister to impatient constituents. New Orleanians are angry that President Bush did not devote more of his State of the Union speech to the city and are concerned that Washington's attention is no longer trained on them. They feel as though they are living in the mean in-between.

You hear some version of that everywhere in New Orleans. You can't do this till that happens, and you can't do that till this happens. In the air there is a scent of temporariness. Gone is the putrid aroma of post-Katrina mud and sludge, yet the sour stench of stale French Quarter libations has not fully returned. On the calendar, the city sits at a midway point between hurricane seasons.

And so do the rest of us.

Old Time Religion

In the cold winter months (not that we are really having winter this year) I like hot punches like Swedish Glogg. Mulled wine punches are among my favorite things and this is an ancient English recipe which seems to have fallen out of favor with the Martini-swilling crowd here in DC. This is old fashioned, comforting, soothing and fruity.

Bishop

1 navel orange (if you can find blood oranges, use 2 and double the cloves)
8 whole cloves
1 (750-ml) bottle Ruby Port

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 400°F.

Stud orange with cloves and roast in a small shallow ceramic or glass baking dish until browned and soft, about 1 1/2 hours.

Carefully quarter orange, then bring orange quarters and Port just to a simmer in a 2- to 2 1/2-quart saucepan. Remove from heat and serve warm.

Makes 4 drinks.

An Old French Heart for Valentine's

I had one of the great meals of my life at The Inn at Little Washington in Washington, Virginia. It is one of the great kitchens (and great inns) of the US. Head chef Patrick O'Connell has created a marvelous cookbook for those who may never be in these parts to sample his creative French-American cuisine. My spectacular evening meal there was capped by this, which is not difficult to make at home, easier with the classic molds, but you can approximate the same thing with cheesecloth and heart-shaped cookie cutters, the old-fashioned tin ones.

COEUR A LA CREME WITH RASPBERRY SAUCE

8 ounces mascarpone cheese, softened
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon Chambord or other raspberry liqueur
1/2 cup sifted confectioners' sugar

For raspberry sauce
1 pint fresh raspberries
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Garnishes
fresh raspberries
mint leaves

Cut a piece of cheesecloth into four 6-inch squares. Dampen and wring out lightly. Press one square into each of four perforated heart-shaped ceramic molds and set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, whip the mascarpone cheese, 1/4 cup of the cream, the vanilla, the 1 tablespoon lemon juice and the Chambord until thoroughly blended. Refrigerate.

In a small bowl, whip the remaining 1 cup cream and the confectioners' sugar until the cream forms stiff peaks. With a rubber spatula, fold the whipped cream into the chilled cheese mixture in three batches. Spoon the finished mixture into the prepared molds and fold the edges of the cheesecloth over the tops. Lightly tap at the bottoms of the molds on the counter to remove and air spaces between the mixture and the molds. Refrigerate on a tray or baking sheet a minimum of 2 to 3 hours.

Meanwhile, make raspberry sauce:
In a blender or food processor, purée the raspberries, granulated sugar and 1 teaspoon lemon juice. Taste the sauce for sweetness and adjust the sugar or lemon juice as needed. Strain and refrigerate.

Assemble and serve:
Unfold the cheesecloth and drape it over the sides of the molds. Invert each mold onto a serving plate. While pressing down on the corners of the cheesecloth carefully lift off the mold. Smooth the top with the back of a spoon and remove the cheesecloth slowly.

Spoon raspberry sauce onto the plate around the heart and garnish with fresh berries and mint leaves.

Serves 4.

This is an elegant way to finish a Valentine's dinner.

Banh Mi

One of the great and wonderful surprises about moving to the DC area was the cooking of Viet Nam. The best Vietnamese restaurant in the area is just blocks from me. It's a white tablecloth kind of place (at oilcloth prices) with upscale cooking, but the same owners operate a Vietnamese deli in the same shopping center. That's where I learned about banh mi, the French-influenced sandwich of Viet Nam. These come in as many different renditions as there are cooks that make them. Here's one common treatment:

Slaw:
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
1/2 cup julienned carrot
1/2 cup julienned daikon radish
Kosher salt

Seasoned Pork:
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon finely chopped onion
6 ounces ground pork
1 tablespoon roast pork seasoning mix, available in Asian markets
Pinch garlic powder
Pinch ground black pepper

Sandwiches:
4 (10-inch) baguettes
Mayonnaise, as needed
8 thin slices Vietnamese-style pork roll (cha lua), or bologna
8 slices Vietnamese-style salami, or ham or turkey
4 teaspoons soy sauce
1/2 cup fresh cilantro sprigs
1/4 medium English cucumber, cut lengthwise into 4 slices
Freshly ground black pepper
Asian-style chili oil, to taste, optional

Make the slaw: In a small saucepan, combine the water, sugar, and vinegar and bring to a boil. Transfer the vinegar mixture to a bowl and cool. Add the carrot and daikon, mix well, and season with salt. Set aside to marinate for 30 minutes or store in the refrigerator up to overnight.

Meanwhile, make the seasoned pork: Heat the oil in small nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until soft. Add the pork, seasoning, garlic, and pepper and cook, stirring, until just cooked through, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the heat and set aside covered with foil to keep warm.

Make the sandwiches: Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Slice the baguettes open lengthwise, and slather the insides with mayonnaise. Arrange the baguettes on a baking sheet and bake until hot and crusty about 5 minutes. Remove the baguettes from the oven and immediately fill each with some of the seasoned pork. In each sandwich, arrange 2 slices each of the pork roll and salami, 1 teaspoon soy sauce, 1/2 tablespoon cilantro, 1 slice cucumber, ground pepper, and chili oil, if using. Serve immediately.

These are addictive.

Bite Size Treat

You know of my affection for tea sandwiches. I usually think of them as light bites, but I found something more substantial in one of my cookbooks.

Roast Beef and Bleu Cheese Tea Sandwiches

1/3 cup crumbled bleu cheese
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
6 slices whole wheat bread
6 slices white bread
1 bunch watercress
1/2-pound sliced roast beef from deli

In a small bowl, stir together crumbled bleu cheese, mayonnaise, and lemon juice. Set aside.

To make sandwiches, spread bleu cheese mayonnaise on bread slices. Add watercress and roast beef. Place another slice of bread on top. Trim the crusts, cut into quarters and serve.

Use Pepperidge Farm's sandwich loaf (both white and wheat) to get bread which is the perfect consistency for these little sandwiches.

Blogging Results

UPDATE: Story on Wounded Soldier Who Had to Pay for Body Armor Gets Results

By E&P; Staff

Published: February 08, 2006 2:15 PM ET

NEW YORK A story in the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette yesterday, later featured in an E&P; article, stirred up a hornet's nest -- as well as thousands of dollars in donations.

West Virginia's two U.S. senators, Jay Rockefeller and Robert Byrd, asked top military leaders Tuesday to explain why 1st Lt. William "Eddie" Rebrook IV apparently had to reimburse the U.S. Army $700 last week for body armor and other gear damaged after he was seriously wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq. The military officials said it sounded like an unusual case, but they would look into it.

More than 200 people donated at least $5,700 to Rebrook after reading about his body armor payment to the Army in an article by Eric Eyre. The vast majority of it came after a popular blog, AmericaBlog, called for and collected funds, but others also contributed via the newspaper and a local radio station.

Rebrook, 25, who attended West Point and was medically discharged from the Army last week, said he wouldn't keep the donations. He's paying back the people he borrowed from to take care of the $700 bill, and also passing along the money to charity and a Louisiana woman who lost her home in Hurricane Katrina -- the woman's son helped save his life in Iraq, he said.

Who says the blogs aren't effective?

Bird Flu Breaking

Bird Flu Virus Is Confirmed in Birds in Africa

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: February 8, 2006

The H5N1 bird flu virus was confirmed today for the first time in birds in Africa, a continent that is ill prepared to contain its spread, international health authorities said.

Nigerian health authorities reported the continent's first outbreak to the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris, which tracks the spread of veterinary diseases.

More than 40,000 chickens have died since Jan. 10 at a commercial laying farm in Kaduna State in northern Nigeria, according to the report. A United Nations laboratory in Padua, Italy, confirmed late Tuesday that the cause was H5N1.

Perhaps equally alarming, United Nations veterinary officials said today they are currently investigating similar rumors of bird deaths in a number of other African countries.

While international health officials had long girded themselves for the possibility that migratory birds passing through Asia and the Danube Delta region might well bring bird flu to Africa, today's confirmation that it had actually arrived nonetheless set off new waves of alarm.

The outbreak "proves that no country is risk-free and that we are facing a serious international crisis," said Samuel Jutzi, Director of the Animal Production and Health Division at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.

Bird flu is normally controlled by quick detection of the virus, quarantine, and massive culling of birds in the affected area — strategies that are extremely difficult to carry out in poor countries like Nigeria that have limited laboratory capability and where farmers are reluctant to kill birds that are their only source of protein or income.

The delay of nearly a month between the first bird deaths in Nigeria on Jan. 10 and today's report has given the virus plentiful opportunities to spread unchecked in the interim. Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, has about 140 million poultry.

The Food and Agriculture Organization has been tracking rumors of bird deaths in Nigeria for several weeks, said Juan Lubroth a senior veterinarian at the agency, and is currently investigating similar rumors in a handful of other African nations including Mali, Egypt, Malawi and Libya.

This was anticipated, but it is bad news all the same. Veterinary care and surveillance is all but unknown in large portions of the continent, and the same could be said of human health. The additional worry is the large number of HIV positive people on the continent providing a sink of immunocompromised people who could become a sink of viral recombination. I'll be following this carefully, but Africa is going to be a hard place to get news. This may make Indonesia look like a piece of cake.

Lectured to by Pros

The Captive President

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, February 8, 2006; 1:18 PM

President Bush almost never hears criticism to his face. Certainly not in public.

But yesterday, at the widely-watched funeral of civil rights icon Coretta Scott King, a fidgety president had no choice but to sit quietly and listen as several speakers reproached him for not having learned the lessons that King and her martyred husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., spent their lives teaching.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King's husband, opened his eulogy with this question: "How marvelous presidents and governors come to mourn and praise, but in the morning, will words become deeds that meet needs?"

Then he read a poem about King: "She extended Martin's message against poverty, racism and war. She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor."

Former President Jimmy Carter, who has emerged as one of Bush's harshest scolds, called attention to the "secret government wiretapping" of Rev. King, in what the cheering audience recognized as a reference to the current domestic spying controversy.

Carter added: "The struggle for equal rights is not over. We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, those who are most devastated by Katrina to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans."

Bush and his aides are known for going to great lengths to avoid such public confrontations.

Bush has broken with presidential tradition by boycotting the annual NAACP convention. After his administration came under fire for its bungling response to Hurricane Katrina, Bush reached out to black leaders -- but only in closed-door meetings cloaked in secrecy. (See my December 9 and December 22 columns.)

And while Bush trumpets his new-found closeness with former President Bill Clinton, who never criticizes him to his face, he has until now scrupulously avoided giving Carter any opportunity to lecture him about morality.

So it was truly an unprecedented moment for the president.

But was it appropriate to take advantage of Bush's attempt to reach out to the African-American community to publicly berate him? Bush, after all, changed his schedule to attend and deliver his own gracious, if bland, tribute .

"I've come today to offer the sympathy of our entire nation at the passing of a woman who worked to make our nation whole," Bush said, before sitting down and getting his ears boxed.

A debate about the more political eulogies is raging across the blogosphere and the talk shows today.

Coretta Scott King's life speaks to the political process and I thought Carter and Lowery's remarks were completely appropriate. But, I must admit that it was a spectacle that caught me by surprise.

Through Eastern Eyes

This makes sense to me. Perhaps it takes an actual middle easterner to explain things past our western prejudices.

The Danish cartoons: a neo-colonial slap

By Rami G. Khouri
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Many have been surprised by the scope and intensity of angry crowds throughout the Islamic world demonstrating against the offensive cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammad that were published last year in a small, right-wing Danish newspaper. It is perhaps time that we stopped being surprised by a routine phenomenon: the affirmation of Islamic identity as the dominant form of national self-assertion in developing societies whose citizens hold major grievances against the quality of their own statehood and governance, as well as against Western and Israeli policies.

The cartoons, including one depicting the prophet's headdress as a bomb, were only the fuse setting off a combustible mixture of pressures and tensions anchored in a much wider array of problems. These include the cartoons themselves; provocative and arrogant European disdain for Muslim sensitivities about the prophet Mohammad; attempts by some Islamist extremists and criminal-political elements to stir up troubles; the Europeans' clear message that their values count more than the values of Muslims; and, a wider sense by many citizens of Islamic societies that the West in general seeks to weaken and subjugate the Muslim world.

The Danish cartoons only sparked some mild complaints when they first appeared last September. The current wave of intense protests was sparked when half a dozen other newspapers throughout Europe provocatively reprinted the cartoons last month. This was coupled with European political and press leaders flat out telling the Islamic world that Western freedom of press was a higher moral value and a greater political priority than Muslims' concern that their leading prophet not be subjected to blasphemy and insult.

Clearly, some troublemakers in Europe and the Islamic world stirred up Muslims' anger and provoked some of the destructive protests, especially burning embassies and offices in Damascus and Beirut. This is the political equivalent of football hooliganism in Europe - a small minority of unruly criminal thugs that preys on the legitimate sentiments of otherwise peaceful crowds that take to the streets in orderly if lively protests. It would be a huge mistake to focus mainly on the few violent political skinheads, and to ignore the meaning of the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of protestors who marched in earnest and in an orderly way.

This occurs at a time when Islamist political movements throughout the region are winning election after election. Islamist identity repeatedly triumphs where traditional ruling elites have had to open up and make space for others to contest political power democratically and peacefully, in Arab states, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and others. The most consistent source of Arab-Islamic angst in the past two centuries - Western colonialism - has now run up against the resistance of the single most consistent form of indigenous identity and anti-imperial opposition - cultural and political Islam.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb

It is too simplistic and easy to categorize this as a clash of civilizations, a very Western perspective that explains political tensions primarily through the lens of cultural and values differences. Most Muslims (and non-Muslim Middle Easterners, including several million Christians) probably see the current tensions as a political battle, not a cultural one. This is not primarily an argument about freedom of press in Europe, much as our European friends would like to believe it is. It is about Arab-Islamic societies' desire to enjoy freedom from Western and Israeli subjugation, diplomatic double-standards and predatory neo-colonial policies.

It seems to me that this western sense of inherent superiority is something we need to get over. It certainly paved our way into the Iraq war.

Hat-tip Paul Woodward.

They don't send us flowers anymore

Senators rap White House on Iraq's economy

By Vicki Allen
Reuters
Tuesday, February 7, 2006

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday it will take decades to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure as senators charged the Bush administration had fumbled reconstruction efforts, slowing a U.S. military withdrawal.

Rumsfeld was defending the Pentagon's $439 billion budget request for next year before senators on the Armed Services Committee

Contrary to forecasts of administration officials before the March 2003 invasion, Rumsfeld said, "It's going to take decades" for Iraq "to get the infrastructure back to where a modern country would have it."

The senators also questioned Pentagon officials on progress in training Iraqi forces, which the administration says is key for withdrawing U.S. troops.

Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there still is just one battalion able to operate independently, and 60 capable of taking the lead in operations, with support of U.S. forces.

Senators generally backed the plan to boost the Pentagon's budget by nearly 7 percent to $439 billion. In addition, the White House said it will seek another $70 billion this year for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and $50 billion early next year. That would bring the wars' cost to $440 billion, with costs expected near $500 billion by next year's end.

In unusually harsh criticism, Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, the committee chairman, said the White House has "failed to bring together all of the resources necessary" to improve Iraq's economy and stem the joblessness that he said is fueling the rampant violence and corruption.

Warner said former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz "opined at one time" that Iraq's oil production would pay for most of its rebuilding costs, but instead Warner noted that Iraq's "oil production is slipping."

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, said he was "troubled by the suggestions" that the White House would not seek new rebuilding money for Iraq on top of the $20 billion so far. "You can cut and run economically as well as you can militarily," he said.

Warner said living conditions must improve through a better infrastructure to stabilize the country, or "it's going to obscure the gains that have been made."

But Rumsfeld said it was up to Iraqis to rebuild their own country to avoid "creating a dependency."

I'll give Rummy credit... he's got a way with words. I just wish he was that talented in running the military. Still, it's not the rose petals and quick exit we were promised at the start of this fiasco. It's a pitty no one held those clowns responsible during the 2004 election.

Here is a hint: it's not dependency if we told them we would fix it and then embezzled the money that was allocated to fix things. If we don't fix things, that will hurt our international reputation far more than "cutting and running" will.

The Studies are In

The University of Houston has been paying attention:

BUSH-APPOINTED JUDGES MOST CONSERVATIVE ON RECORD, NEW UH STUDY FINDS
Lead Investigator Robert Carp Says Slant Most Evident in Civil Rights, Liberties Decisions

HOUSTON, Feb. 6, 2006 – Judges appointed by President George W. Bush are the most conservative on record when it comes to civil rights and liberties, according to a new study by a political science professor at the University of Houston.

Bush judicial appointees are significantly more conservative than even the very conservative voting record of jurists appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr. in the realm of civil rights and liberties, said Robert Carp, professor of political science at UH. When it comes to these decisions, the Bush team is a full 5 percentage points more conservative than even the trial judges appointed by Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr.

“Liberal” judges would generally seek in their rulings to extend the freedoms of abortion, gay rights, the rights of women and minorities and freedom of speech, Carp explained. “Conservative” jurists, by contrast, would prefer to limit such rights.

In a previous study that was released in August 2004, Carp and his team of researchers predicted that if Bush was re-elected that year, the federal judiciary could take on an even sharper conservative slant. At the time, Bush’s judicial appointees delivered liberal decisions 27.9 percent of the time in cases involving civil liberties and rights. For this latest study, researchers analyzed more data, and the figure has dropped to 27.2 percent.

“Our findings are significant because the general consensus is that President Reagan is the most modern conservative president on record, and yet the judges appointed by George W. Bush are even more conservative than the Reagan judges,” said Carp, the study’s lead investigator.

The new study, “The Voting Behavior of George W. Bush’s Judges: How Sharp a Turn to the Right?,” also found that only 33 percent of decisions handed down by Bush jurists were liberal. Presidents Johnson, Carter, and Clinton, scored 52, 51, and 44 percent, respectively. His GOP predecessors, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr., ranked 38, 43, 36, and 37 percent, respectively. The overall scores of the Bush judges are not “off the charts” in their level of conservatism, but they are sharply right of center.

“As the Supreme Court becomes somewhat more conservative with the appointment of Justice Alito and as more Bush judges are appointed to the policy-making appellate courts, the overall tone of the judiciary should be more conservative three years from now than it is today,” he speculated.

Carp’s research also found that the minorities and women whom Bush has appointed to the bench are somewhat more liberal in their voting patterns than the white males he has appointed to the bench.

In the earlier study, the voting record of the Bush judges in the area of Labor and Economic regulation was fairly moderate. The latest study that relies on a larger data set indicates that the Bush judges are very conservative in this issue area as well and could not be called “moderate” in their voting behavior.

Just so's you know.

Revoking Science

A Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: February 8, 2006

George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.

Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M; University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.

Officials at NASA headquarters declined to discuss the reason for the resignation.

"Under NASA policy, it is inappropriate to discuss personnel matters," said Dean Acosta, the deputy assistant administrator for public affairs and Mr. Deutsch's boss.

The resignation came as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was preparing to review its policies for communicating science to the public. The review was ordered Friday by Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, after a week in which many agency scientists and midlevel public affairs officials described to The New York Times instances in which they said political pressure was applied to limit or flavor discussions of topics uncomfortable to the Bush administration, particularly global warming.

"As we have stated in the past, NASA is in the process of revising our public affairs policies across the agency to ensure our commitment to open and full communications," the statement from Mr. Acosta said.

The statement said the resignation of Mr. Deutsch was "a separate matter."

Mr. Deutsch, 24, was offered a job as a writer and editor in NASA's public affairs office in Washington last year after working on President Bush's re-election campaign and inaugural committee, according to his résumé. No one has disputed those parts of the document.

According to his résumé, Mr. Deutsch received a "Bachelor of Arts in journalism, Class of 2003."

Yesterday, officials at Texas A&M; said that was not the case.
....
A copy of Mr. Deutsch's résumé was provided to The Times by someone working in NASA headquarters who, along with many other NASA employees, said Mr. Deutsch played a small but significant role in an intensifying effort at the agency to exert political control over the flow of information to the public.

Such complaints came to the fore starting in late January, when James E. Hansen, the climate scientist, and several midlevel public affairs officers told The Times that political appointees, including Mr. Deutsch, were pressing to limit Dr. Hansen's speaking and interviews on the threats posed by global warming.

Yesterday, Dr. Hansen said that the questions about Mr. Deutsch's credentials were important, but were a distraction from the broader issue of political control of scientific information.

"He's only a bit player," Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Deutsch. " The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That's what I'm really concerned about."

"On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed," he said. "The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That's the big issue here."

Yes, these folks are fundamentalist crazies who don't just deny evolution but foundational principles of modern cosmology.

Verify First, Trust Later

Trust the Professionals?
The Bush administration's credibility problem on eavesdropping.
By Patrick Radden Keefe
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006, at 2:37 PM ET

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy lost his patience during [Monday's] Senate hearings on NSA wiretapping after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said, for the umpteenth time, that he would not be able to answer a question because he didn't want to get into "operational details." "Oh, I'm sorry," Leahy said. "I forgot—you can't answer any questions that might be relevant." Leahy had seemed grouchy from the start. But after a marathon session that was long on theories of statutory interpretation and short on specifics about the wiretapping program itself—much less reliable assurances that the program is not being abused—it was hard not to sympathize with the senior senator from Vermont and detect in Gonzales' rote evasions and implacable smile a faint note of smugness.

Throughout the day, Gonzales did not stray from the explanations of the intelligence program already enunciated in the Justice Department's White Paper on the subject. The program targets terrorists and protects civil liberties. How does it select those targets, the senators wondered. Gonzales didn't want to get into specifics. How does it protect civil liberties? "There are guidelines, minimization procedures," he said vaguely. Could he make available those guidelines and procedures? Nope. "They're classified."

After outlining an expansive interpretation of presidential power, Gonzales suggested that in practice the best check on the executive is … the executive. When questioned about what, if anything, the president could not do, he refused to get into "hypotheticals." The problem for the administration is that without specifics about targeting procedures and safeguards, any defense of the legality of the NSA's program is itself hypothetical. In a rare revealing moment, Gonzales said that the people who make the determination about whom to listen in on are "career professionals" at the NSA—eavesdroppers, in other words. They know better who should be targeted, he said—"certainly than any lawyer." But as Durbin pointed out, alluding to the Japanese internment camps set up during World War II, historically "career professionals" have made some pretty bad decisions about who presents a security threat. With the administration refusing to furnish Congress with any set of guidelines that eavesdroppers must adhere to, Gonzales' "trust us" assurances demand an inordinate amount of trust from Americans and from their elected representatives.
....
The committee did not subpoena the CEOs of any private telephone companies, and Gonzales dodged one question about cooperation from the private sector. But on the morning of the hearings, USA Today revealed that AT&T;, MCI, and Sprint are among the private corporations that provide NSA eavesdroppers with a back door into America's communications switches. "Thank God we have a press to tell us what you guys are doing," Leahy said to Gonzales. "Because you're obviously not telling us."

Gonzales' refusal to confront any of this did nothing to enhance the administration's credibility. On the contrary, by stonewalling so adamantly he gave tyranny-fearing Americans something to be concerned about and increased the growing suspicion that the White House and the NSA are up to no good. "I can only believe … that this program is much bigger, and much broader, than you want anyone to know," Feinstein concluded. Given that so much of what we are learning from the press conflicts with the cant offered by the administration, it's hard to argue with her. The whole spectacle raises this question: Why, exactly, should we trust these guys again?

Constitutionally, we aren't supposed to trust them, that's the whole point of the separation-of-powers-three-co-equal-branches-of-government thing.

Escape from Planet Zed

Via Juan Cole:

Senators rap White House on Iraq's economy

Tue Feb 7, 2006 4:54 PM ET166
By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday it will take decades to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure as senators charged the Bush administration had fumbled reconstruction efforts, slowing a U.S. military withdrawal. .... In unusually harsh criticism, Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, the committee chairman, said the White House has "failed to bring together all of the resources necessary" to improve Iraq's economy and stem the joblessness that he said is fueling the rampant violence and corruption.

Warner said former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz "opined at one time" that Iraq's oil production would pay for most of its rebuilding costs, but instead Warner noted that Iraq's "oil production is slipping."

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, said he was "troubled by the suggestions" that the White House would not seek new rebuilding money for Iraq on top of the $20 billion so far. "You can cut and run economically as well as you can militarily," he said.

Warner said living conditions must improve through a better infrastructure to stabilize the country, or "it's going to obscure the gains that have been made."

But Rumsfeld said it was up to Iraqis to rebuild their own country to avoid "creating a dependency."

Where to begin...Let's see, we bomb them and invade their country, wage war on them for three years and Rummy's worried about "creating a dependency"? What planet does he live on?

Cozy

Boehner Rents Apartment Owned by Lobbyist in D.C.

By Thomas B. Edsall and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 8, 2006; Page A03

Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who was elected House majority leader last week, is renting his Capitol Hill apartment from a veteran lobbyist whose clients have direct stakes in legislation Boehner has co-written and that he has overseen as chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee.

The relationship between Boehner, John D. Milne and Milne's wife, Debra R. Anderson, underscores how intertwined senior lawmakers have become with the lobbyists paid to influence legislation. Boehner's primary residence is in West Chester, Ohio, but for $1,600 a month, he rents a two-bedroom basement apartment near the House office buildings on Capitol Hill owned by Milne, Boehner spokesman Don Seymour said yesterday. Boehner's monthly rent appears to be similar to other rentals of two-bedroom English basement apartments close to the House side of the Capitol in Southeast, based on a review of apartment listings.

Milne's clients -- including restaurant chains and health insurance companies -- hired him to lobby on issues at the heart of Boehner's work, including minimum-wage increases, small-business tax breaks and tax-free savings accounts to help cover insurance costs, congressional lobbying records show.

In the weeks preceding last week's GOP leadership elections, Boehner acknowledged his close ties to the lobbying community, but he assured Republican lawmakers that all of his relationships were ethical and he campaigned on a platform of change and reform. Seymour reiterated that message last night.

"John Milne does not lobby John Boehner on any issue and has not lobbied him on any issue during the time period in which John has been renting the property," he said.

Seymour added that he does not know if other members of Milne's mCapitol Management firm have lobbied Boehner. "We really have no idea on this one," he said. "We'd have to know who else works for those firms, which we don't offhand. It's possible the answer is yes, but we don't know."

House members may not accept anything from lobbyists worth more than $50. If Boehner is paying market-rate rent, it would appear he is not violating that rule.

There was a day, now long gone, when avoiding even the appearance of misconduct was part of the whole ethics thing. By the way, the rent in question is for the very low side of the neighborhood in question. Very low.

Plain Truth

NAFTA and Nativism

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, February 8, 2006; Page A19

The North American Free Trade Agreement was sold, of course, as a boon to the citizens of the United States, Canada and Mexico -- guaranteed both to raise incomes and lower prices, however improbably, throughout the continent. Bipartisan elites promised that it would stanch the flow of illegal immigrants, too. "There will be less illegal immigration because more Mexicans will be able to support their children by staying home," said President Bill Clinton as he was building support for the measure in the spring of 1993.

But NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, could not have been more precisely crafted to increase immigration -- chiefly because of its devastating effect on Mexican agriculture. As liberal economist Jeff Faux points out in "The Global Class War," his just-published indictment of the actual workings of the new economy, Mexico had been home to a poor agrarian sector for generations, which the government helped sustain through price supports on corn and beans. NAFTA, though, put those farmers in direct competition with incomparably more efficient U.S. agribusinesses. It proved to be no contest: From 1993 through 2002, at least 2 million Mexican farmers were driven off their land.

The experience of Mexican industrial workers under NAFTA hasn't been a whole lot better. With the passage of NAFTA, the maquiladoras on the border boomed. But the raison d'etre for these factories was to produce exports at the lowest wages possible, and with the Mexican government determined to keep its workers from unionizing, the NAFTA boom for Mexican workers never materialized. In the pre-NAFTA days of 1975, Faux documents, Mexican wages came to 23 percent of U.S. wages; in 1993-94, just before NAFTA, they amounted to 15 percent; and by 2002 they had sunk to a mere 12 percent.

The official Mexican poverty rate rose from 45.6 percent in 1994 to 50.3 percent in 2000. And that was before competition from China began to shutter the maquiladoras and reduce Mexican wages even more.

So if Sensenbrenner wants to identify a responsible party for the immigration he so deplores, he might take a peek in the mirror. In the winter of '93, he voted for NAFTA. He helped establish a system that increased investment opportunities for major corporations and diminished the rights, power and, in many instances, living standards of workers on both sides of the border. Now he and his Republican colleagues are stirring the resentments of the same American workers they placed in jeopardy by supporting the corporate trade agenda.

Walls on the border won't fix this problem, nor will forcing cops to arrest entire barrios. So long as the global economy is designed, as NAFTA was, to keep workers powerless, Mexican desperation and American anger will only grow. Forget the fence. We need a new rulebook for the world.

The day NAFTA passed Congress, I was sitting in the apartment of a fellow Union organizer in New York, looking at the videos of anti union campaigns created by some Fortune 500 companies which were blatantly illegal, but none of the relevant laws are ever enforced. We watched the vote in Congress that afternoon with more resignation than anger. Labor is used to getting it in the chops. We'd both been through more strikes than I really want to think about. You use the tools you have when you can.

Clueless

Some Democrats Are Sensing Missed Opportunities

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: February 8, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 — Democrats are heading into this year's elections in a position weaker than they had hoped for, party leaders say, stirring concern that they are letting pass an opportunity to exploit what they see as widespread Republican vulnerabilities.

In interviews, senior Democrats said they were optimistic about significant gains in Congressional elections this fall, calling this the best political environment they have faced since President Bush took office.

But Democrats described a growing sense that they had failed to take full advantage of the troubles that have plagued Mr. Bush and his party since the middle of last year, driving down the president's approval ratings, opening divisions among Republicans in Congress over policy and potentially putting control of the House and Senate into play in November.

Asked to describe the health of the Democratic Party, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said: "A lot worse than it should be. This has not been a very good two months."

"We seem to be losing our voice when it comes to the basic things people worry about," Mr. Dodd said.

Democrats said they had not yet figured out how to counter the White House's long assault on their national security credentials. And they said their opportunities to break through to voters with a coherent message on domestic and foreign policy — should they settle on one — were restricted by the lack of an established, nationally known leader to carry their message this fall.

As a result, some Democrats said, their party could lose its chance to do to Republicans this year what the Republicans did to them in 1994: make the midterm election, normally dominated by regional and local concerns, a national referendum on the party in power.

"I think that two-thirds of the American people think the country is going in the wrong direction," " said Senator Barack Obama, the first-term Illinois Democrat who is widely viewed as one of the party's promising stars. "They're not sure yet whether Democrats can move it in the right direction."

Mr. Obama said the Democratic Party had not seized the moment, adding: "We have been in a reactive posture for too long. I think we have been very good at saying no, but not good enough at saying yes."

Some Democrats said they favored remaining largely on the sidelines while Republicans struggled under the glare of a corruption inquiry. And some said there was still time for the party to get its act together. But many others said the party needed to move quickly to offer a comprehensive governing agenda, even as they expressed concern about who could make the case.

They are screwing up the easy stuff. Where to begin....

Simple Elegance

After a day of bad news, it's time for some good tidings: flavorful meals you can cook for your family and friends. After dark, the Bump becomes a supper club.

I'm starting off tonight with an old friend, but it is a heart attack on a plate and should be served rarely. It hurts to say that because I think I could eat it twice a day if I didn't have to think about cholesterol and tri-glycerides. But like nearly every other non-vegan boomer, I do. This is a "splurge" dish and worth every precious fat gram.

Steaks laced with Blue Cheese Butter

For four, you'll need about a pound and a half of steak. There are a number of different cuts you can use here depending on what's on sale at your grocery this week. Among the candidates: strip steaks, skirt steaks, top round london broil, all are relatively affordable when they are the specials. Beef cuts are regional, so there may be other specialties in your area. Here are the particulars:

1 1/2 to 2 pounds skirt steaks (or the others mentioned above)
Extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling
Red Wine Vinegar, likewise
Steak seasoning blend (make your own and leave the MSG out)
4 tablespoons butter, softened
1/2 cup blue cheese crumbles
2 tablespoons chopped chives

Heat a grill pan over high heat. Drizzle meat with oil and vinegar and season with steak or grill seasoning blend. Grill meat 3 to 4 minutes on each side. Remove meat and let it rest 5 minutes to allow juices to redistribute.

Mix butter with cheese and chives.

Slice meat very thin on a heavy angle. Place the meat on a plate and top with small scoops of blue cheese butter. Butter and cheese will melt down over the meat and you will be very happy. Decorate with chives.

Serve this with a spicy Merlot, broiled tomatoes topped with salt, pepper, oil and minced fresh basil before cooking and hearty bread for soaking up the juices, which is all the starch you need. The au jus mixed with blue cheese butter sitting on the bottom of your plate when the main course is gone doesn't need a whole lot of interpretation. If you want to get fancy, you can make dinner rolls, but I'd refer you back to the virtues of the hearty baguette. You really don't need more.

I've made this on my camping stove in the middle of the woods with nothing more complicated in my equipment than a cooler and a set of camping pans. It's that easy.

A Bird Flu Moment

The regulars around here know that I've been talking about and reporting on a possible developing pandemic strain of avian influenza. The news I've read in the last week or ten days has caused me to begin stepping up my own preparations: a stockpile of food and water to keep me going for 6-8 weeks (12 is better, but I don't have room.) How about you? Have you hit your personal "tipping point" yet? Was there anything or piece of news which pushed you over the edge to action? If it hasn't happened yet, what will it take?

It's not surprising that I spend a fair amount of time on the flu boards around the Internet, since I'm one of the moderators on the Flu Wiki Forum and I check out the other discussion boards to make sure that I'm getting a broad sense of what matters to people right now. I'm seeing a lot of discussion that people are getting a lot of guff back from friends and family for their preparations and treated like they are loony. What about you? What are you hearing?

Since I'm in the "flu biz" now professionally, it's part of my ethical responsibility to help you prepare and make sure you have the information you need. What more information can I find you? There are any number of studies and articles I can get you to help you prepare and try to get the attention of your family and friends.

Bill of Rights Talk

Activists on Right, GOP Lawmakers Divided on Spying
Privacy Concerns, Terror Fight at Odds

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; Page A04

Despite President Bush's warnings that public challenges to his domestic surveillance program could help terrorists, congressional Republicans and conservative activists are split on the issue and are showing no signs of reconciling soon.

GOP lawmakers and political activists were nearly unanimous in backing Bush on his Supreme Court nominations and Iraq war policy, but they are divided on how to resolve the tension between two principles they hold dear: avoiding government intrusion into private lives, and combating terrorism. The rift became evident at yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing into the surveillance program, and it may reemerge at Thursday's intelligence committee hearing.

Bush and his allies have tried to squelch criticisms by suggesting that it is virtually unpatriotic to question the program's legality.

"Our enemy is listening," Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told the Judiciary Committee at the start of a day-long hearing into the National Security Agency's warrantless monitoring of Americans' phone calls and e-mails with foreign-based people suspected of terrorist ties. "And I cannot help but wonder if they aren't . . . smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more, or perhaps even unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the war on terror."

Several Republican committee members joined Democrats in pressing Gonzales to explain how the recently revealed surveillance program complies with the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provides for secret warrants to monitor communications involving terrorism suspects.

"There are a lot of people who think you're wrong," the committee chairman, Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), told Gonzales. Specter asked why surveillance requests were not taken to the FISA court "as matter of public confidence."

Gonzales doggedly defended the NSA program, but Specter said in a late-afternoon interview that public uneasiness may force the administration to give ground.

"The whole history of America is a history of balance," Specter said, referring to security and civil liberties. "I think there's a chance the administration might take up the idea of putting this whole issue before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. . . . I think they are seeing concerns in a lot of directions from all segments: Democrats and Republicans in all shades of the political spectrum."

When Gonzales argues that the Constitution gives the president undisputable powers to conduct warrantless surveillance despite a statute aimed at requiring him to seek court approval, such an interpretation "is not sound," Specter said in the interview. ". . . He's smoking Dutch Cleanser."

This is going to wind up in the newly Alito-ized Supreme Court, a thought which gives me little comfort.

So Wrong

Soldier pays for armor
# Army demanded $700 from city man who was wounded

By Eric Eyre
Staff writer

The last time 1st Lt. William “Eddie” Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood.

A field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook’s right arm to stanch the bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Soldiers yanked off his blood-soaked body armor. He never saw it again.

But last week, Rebrook was forced to pay $700 for that body armor, blown up by a roadside bomb more than a year ago.

He was leaving the Army for good because of his injuries. He turned in his gear at his base in Fort Hood, Texas. He was informed there was no record that the body armor had been stripped from him in battle.

He was told to pay nearly $700 or face not being discharged for weeks, perhaps months.

Rebrook, 25, scrounged up the cash from his Army buddies and returned home to Charleston last Friday.

“I last saw the [body armor] when it was pulled off my bleeding body while I was being evacuated in a helicopter,” Rebrook said. “They took it off me and burned it.”

But no one documented that he lost his Kevlar body armor during battle, he said. No one wrote down that armor had apparently been incinerated as a biohazard.

Drastic Measures

GM Cuts Dividend, Benefits

By Sholnn Freeman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; 11:21 AM

General Motors Corp., reeling from an $8.6 billion loss in 2005, took new steps today to repair its slumping North American operations.

GM said it was capping costs in its retiree health care program in 2007, slashing its quarterly dividend and cutting by half the salaries of senior executives, including the pay of GM chairman and chief executive G. Richard Wagoner. Compensation for GM's board of directors will also be cut by half.

GM Critic Named to Board of Carmaker
General Motors Corp. yesterday elected Jerome B. York, top lieutenant to billionaire GM investor Kirk Kerkorian, to its board of directors, adding a critic who has challenged the automaker to speed up its U.S. turnaround.

The moves come a day after GM gave a board seat to Jerome B. York, senior adviser to billionaire GM investor Kirk Kerkorian. York has called on GM to quicken the pace of its turnaround and demanded an "equality of sacrifice" plan that more fairly distributed the pain of GM's turnaround.

The announcement today comes four months after Wagoner detailed a restructuring plan for GM, which included eliminating 30,000 jobs and cutting some or all operations at 12 plants. Wagoner said GM was spreading the pain of the turnaround but he said he wasn't keeping score on a "big scoreboard" in his office.

"The whole family is participating," Wagoner said.

GM sliced its annual dividend by half to $1 per share. Since 1997, GM had been paying $2 per year. Analysts say that dividend was too generous given GM's poor financial results.

"Right now you can't be losing the amount of money they are losing and paying out a dividend equal to 9 percent of share value," said Dan Genter, chief executive and chief investment officer of RNC Genter Capital Management LLC, a Los Angeles investment firm that owns short-term GM bonds.

Genter said GM had one of the highest dividend payments of any major U.S. company. He said other so-called high-dividend stocks are paying 3.5 percent to 4 percent.

"GM can cut the dividend in half and [the stock] will still qualify as a high dividend stock and people will want it for the dividend," Genter said.

Starting in 2007, GM will cap salaried retiree health care costs at the 2006 levels, the company said today. Once costs exceed the 2006 limit, GM said cost-sharing features will kick in, such as higher monthly contributions, deductibles, coinsurance and prescription drug payments. GM said the move will reduce pre-tax expenses by $900 million per year. Additionally, GM said it is looking for ways to restructure its pension plans for salaried workers to cut costs.

GM said Wagoner will take a 50 percent reduction in pay for an unspecified period of time.

Vice chairmen John Devine, Robert A. Lutz and Frederick "Fritz" A. Henderson will take 30 percent cuts in pay; Thomas A. Gottschalk, GM's executive vice president and general counsel, will earn 10 percent less. Other executives will receive no annual or long-term cash incentive awards based on 2005 performance, although they will not receive pay cuts, GM said.

At least they are spreading the pain around.

Be Warned

Rare Chlamydia Strain Infecting Gay Men

By LAURAN NEERGAARD
The Associated Press
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; 9:46 AM

WASHINGTON -- A particularly bad strain of chlamydia not usually seen in this country appears to be slowly spreading among gay and bisexual men, an infection that can increase their chances of getting or spreading the AIDS virus.

Called LGV chlamydia, this sexually transmitted disease has caused a worrisome outbreak in Europe, where some countries have confirmed dozens of cases. Diagnoses confirmed by U.S. health officials still are low, just 27 since they warned a year ago that the strain was headed here.

But specialists say that's undoubtedly a fraction of the infections, because this illness is incredibly hard to diagnose: Few U.S. clinics and laboratories can test for it. Painful symptoms can be mistaken for other illnesses, such as irritable bowel syndrome.

And because LGV chlamydia doesn't always cause noticeable symptoms _ right away, at least _ an unknown number of people may silently harbor and spread it, along with an increased risk of HIV transmission.

"My feeling is that what we're seeing now is still the tip of the iceberg," says Dr. Philippe Chiliade of the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, D.C., which diagnosed its first few cases of LGV last month and is beginning to push for asymptomatic men to be screened.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already was counting an 8 percent increase in HIV among gay and bisexual men between 2003 and 2004, before LGV's arrival was recognized.

"We are really concerned about this," says Dr. Catherine McLean of CDC's HIV and STD prevention program.

Increasing the ability to test for LGV is "what's really critically important," she adds. "The prevalence of the disease is probably quite a bit higher than the reported cases indicate, either here or in Europe, but we don't yet know that."

Three weeks of the antibiotic doxycycline effectively treats LGV. But patients have to know they're at risk, and then find a test.

Chlamydia, caused by bacteria, is among the most common sexually transmitted diseases. As many as 3 million Americans a year may become infected with common strains, best known for causing infertility in women if left untreated.

This more virulent strain is called "lymphogranuloma venereum," or LGV. It's not a new form, but one rarely seen outside of Africa or Southeast Asia. So STD specialists were stunned in late 2004, when the Netherlands announced an outbreak that reached over 100 cases; last summer, one clinic there reported seeing one to two new patients a week. Cases also have surfaced in much of Western Europe and Britain. As with the U.S. cases, many also have HIV.

Doxycycline isn't a lot of fun to take. Better to not catch it in the first place.

Mirrors and Blue Smoke

Why, oh why can't we have better economic reporters?

Analysis
Budget Plan Assumes Too Much, Demands Too Little

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; Page A10

President Bush's budget blueprint would bring the federal government's budget deficit under control by decade's end. But to do that without raising taxes, the White House would need a sweeping tax reform that it has avoided proposing and a swift end to the war in Iraq.

The budget plan for fiscal 2007 underscores what budget analysts of all political stripes have been saying for years: The goals of balancing the budget, waging a global fight against terrorism and making Bush's first-term tax cuts permanent may be fundamentally at odds.

Under the budget plan, the deficit would jump from $318 billion last year to $423 billion in 2006, then slide back down to $183 billion in 2010. In 2011, the last year of the White House's projection, the deficit would again begin to rise, to $205 billion, reflecting the cost of extending Bush's tax cuts beyond their 2010 expiration date and enacting a proposed Social Security restructuring that would cost $57 billion in that year alone.

But even getting there requires some heroic assumptions.

The president's budget acknowledges the cost of Bush's call to make his tax cuts permanent -- $1.35 trillion over the next decade and nearly $120 billion in 2011 alone. But beyond 2007, the budget assumes no military expenditures in Iraq or Afghanistan and no effort to address the unintended effects of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax system that was designed to hit the rich but has instead increasingly pinched the middle class. It also assumes Congress will cut domestic spending every year after 2007.

Those factors led Goldman Sachs economists to tell clients yesterday that the deficit forecasts are "unrealistic."

Wiseman must have flunked arithmetic.

It Takes a Lawyer

Jack Balkin sums it all up:

Shorter Attorney General Gonzales

What we did was legal, or, in our opinion, could have been legal. Since there are arguments on both sides, we will rely on our opinion. However, we won't let a court decide the question, because then we wouldn't be able to rely on our own opinion.

We won't answer hypothetical questions about what we can do legally or constitutionally. We also won't tell you what we've actually done or plan to do; hence every question you ask will about legality be in effect a hypothetical, and therefore we can refuse to answer it.

Congressional Kabuki

Cowardly Lions
Congress talks tough to Gonzales—and then turns and runs.
By Emily Bazelon
Posted Monday, Feb. 6, 2006, at 8:10 PM ET

"This is really not a good way to begin these hearings," Senate judiciary committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., sighed this morning, only a few minutes after he opened them. Specter was talking about the kerfuffle over whether to swear in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before his testimony. But he could have been talking about the parameters he had agreed to for the hearing: No witnesses other than Gonzales. No new details of the National Security Agency spying program that the committee was supposed to be inquiring about. No request for the Justice Department's internal legal memorandums about the legality of the NSA program. .... The Democrats wanted Gonzales sworn in. They made Specter take a roll-call vote, and he had to vote on behalf of two absent Republican senators to break a tie. "Mr. Chairman, I request to see the proxies given by the Republican senators," Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., piped up. That led to Specter's hand-wringing and a speech by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., about "propriety and good taste and due respect from one branch to the other." Everyone seemed to be rolling up their sleeves for a partisan square-off.

But then some of the Republicans changed their stance. They seemed more worried about a loss of senatorial power than about fighting with the Democrats. And that meant taking issue with Gonzales' theory of executive authority. According to the Justice Department, the specifics of FISA are trumped by the generality of the Authorization to Use Military Force. After Sept. 11, Congress said the president should "use all necessary and appropriate force" against al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations, and that includes warrantless eavesdropping at home as well as abroad. As the president reads it, the AUMF is a bad deal for Congress. It takes Congress out of the war on terror, perhaps forevermore.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was one of the Republicans who wasn't going for it. "When I voted for [the AUMF], I never envisioned that I was giving to this president or any other president the ability to go around FISA carte blanche," he said. "I would suggest to you, Mr. Attorney General, it would be harder for the next president to get a force resolution if we take this too far." Gonzales said he understood Graham's concern. But he didn't budge—how could he? Specter also had a question that Gonzales didn't want to answer. "Why not take your entire program to the FISA court within the broad parameters of what is reasonable and constitutional and ask the FISA court to approve it or disapprove it?" Specter asked. Gonzales muttered something about commending the FISA court for its service. "Now on to my question," Specter prodded. "What do you have to lose if you're right?" Gonzales promised that the administration is "continually looking at ways that we can work with the FISA court in being more efficient and more effective in fighting the war on terror." And then Specter let him off the hook. There was a time—remember when Anita Hill was in the witness chair?—Specter loved to strut his prosecutorial stuff. But now he's got a president who doesn't like him much and a chairmanship to protect.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, like other Democrats, took the tack of a spurned lover. He spoke longingly of the Republican administration that was in office when Congress drafted and passed FISA in the late 1970s and then said plaintively, "They came down and worked with us on FISA. … Why didn't you follow that kind of pathway, which was so successful?"

Gonzales' answer wasn't what most of the senators wanted to hear. "We didn't think we needed to, quite frankly," the attorney general said. Take that, co-equal branch. Then Gonzales treated his audience to the odd sight of the administration as FISA champion. The FISA statute has been a "wonderful tool," Gonzales said fervently. So wonderful, in fact, that not one hair on its legal head should be touched. "I don't know that FISA needs to be amended per se," Gonzales told Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. At another point, the attorney general stressed the importance of FISA's "peacetime safeguards." The statute as a means of law enforcement? "I don't want these hearings to conclude with the idea that FISA hasn't been effective." The judges on the special FISA court? "Heroes who are killing themselves, quite frankly, to make themselves available to us." And so "when you're talking about amending FISA because FISA's broke, well, the procedures in FISA under certain circumstances I think seem quite reasonable."

Except, apparently, when they're not. Gonzales also called the law "cumbersome and burdensome," as the administration has many times previously. "Layers of lawyers" have to sign off on a warrant application. "But even this is not the end of the story." The government also has to put up with that annoyance, judicial review. Sure, the law gives the president 72 hours after conducting a search to apply for a warrant. But the lawyers still have to write up all those tedious legal briefs. "All of these steps take time. Al-Qaida, however, does not wait." To do what exactly—keep talking on phone lines that have already been tapped?

Abu Gonzalez contradicted himself so many times yesterday that he wasn't just shifting in his seat, he was turning himself into a human pretzel. Not that this will matter. It's pretty clear to me that Bushco has already acquired a laundry list of impeachable offenses, not that it matters.

It's Broken

One Ambulance Per Minute Diverted in U.S., Study Finds
Overcrowded Emergency Rooms Send Arriving Patients to Other Hospitals; Elderly Most Affected

By Mike Stobbe
Associated Press
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; Page A08

ATLANTA, Feb. 6 -- An ambulance is diverted to a different hospital every minute, on average, because emergency rooms in the United States are so overcrowded, suggests one of the first national studies of the issue.

The study did not measure how the delays in getting to hospitals affected patients' survival, but the study's lead author said it could not have been for the better.

"Most of the people that arrive by ambulance are older, and they have more serious medical conditions," said Catharine Burt of the National Center for Health Statistics.

"So the fact that they're being delayed . . . whether it's two minutes or five minutes or 15 . . . I can only assume that's going to have some impact," she said.

About half a million ambulances were diverted from their original destinations because the receiving hospitals' emergency departments were too crowded, the survey data from 2003 indicated. The study, released Monday, is being published in the journal Annals of Emergency Medicine.

An ambulance diversion occurs when a hospital emergency department closes its doors to incoming ambulances and directs traffic to other hospitals. Often, diversions occur because a hospital's ER is overcrowded or the hospital has a shortage of critical-care beds.

The problem is not new. But most previous reports were "based on just a few cities complaining bitterly about the problem. We didn't know the national impact," Burt said.

The findings come from responses from 405 U.S. hospital emergency departments, about 10 percent of U.S. hospital ERs, Burt said.

These statistics are your canary in the mineshaft when it comes to our health care infrastructure. It's already broken.

Here's the CDC's latest flu report which tells us we are below epidemic levels (aren't you glad to hear THAT) but the ER's are already maxed out. Bird flu pandemic, anyone?

Facts on the Ground

IRAQ: Severe water shortage hits Baghdad suburbs
06 Feb 2006 18:28:47 GMT
Source: IRIN

BAGHDAD, 6 February (IRIN) - Residents of Baghdad's suburbs have been experiencing serious water shortages for a month due to poor infrastructure, leaking pipes and wastage, according to experts.

"Water wastage in the capital, along with bad infrastructure, has increased," said Saleh Ra'ad, a senior official at the Ministry of Water Resources.

"Now Iraqis are suffering the consequences and have only a few hours of water daily."

Nearly half a million people have been affected by the scarcity. In some areas, water is available for only a few hours at night and for less than two hours during the day in other areas.

Nearly 300 water tanks have been distributed by the government and the Iraqi Red Crescent Society in various areas of the capital. Some residents, however, must walk large distances to reach them.

"I have to walk almost 6 km to get clean water when the improvised tanks are empty," said Safwat Ali, a resident of the Sadr suburb. "It's a shame for a country surrounded by two of the biggest rivers in the Middle East."

Observers say the Baghdad water purifying plant, which supplies the capital, is simply unable to meet local demand.

"We're trying to expand the old water plant by building new projects to cover 40 percent of the capital's water supply," said Abdul Kareem Abbas, technical director at Baghdad's municipal Water Directorate.

Officials, however, are quick to point out that water wastage is rife.

"We're trying to raise awareness on television about the costs of wasting water in houses, car washes and factories," said Abbas. "We're also asking religious leaders at the mosques to urge people to stop wasting clean water."

Water shortages have traditionally occurred in Baghdad during the summer months, due to the intensive use of air conditioning, public swimming pools and increased washing activity. This year, however, marks the first time shortages have been recorded in the winter months.

"It's the first time we don't have water during winter," said Jawad Hakeem, resident of a Baghdad suburb. "They say it's a problem with the pipes, but I believe that careless maintenance and corruption are the main factors behind the shortage."

Every time you hear some Pentagon talking head tell you how much better things are in Iraq, pay attention to things like this, instead.

The Brookings Institution updates their Iraq Index every Monday and Thursday. If you want to know how things are really going in Iraq, read that.

Rule of Law

Buzzflash asks:

Why should anyone have to testify under oath in a United States court room when the Attorney General of the United States won't? And the President and Vice-President wouldn't before the 9/11 Commission (when Bush wouldn't even talk with them without Dick Cheney by his side)? And Condoleezza Rice wouldn't be sworn in before the 9/11 Commission?

Oh, we could go on, but we won't. The Bush Administration knows that once they have to tell the truth, their goose is cooked.

Strange Tales

The president's mouthpiece

WHAT A DIFFERENCE eight years makes. In 1998, then-Atty. Gen. Janet Reno was repeatedly battered by Congress for showing insufficient independence from President Clinton (by naming only seven independent counsels instead of nine to investigate his administration). Republicans in one House committee issued Reno a rare contempt citation for refusing to cough up internal memos, while U.S. Circuit Judge Laurence H. Silberman opined that she was "in effect acting as the president's counsel under the false guise of representing the United States."

In 2006, the independent counsel law is gone, many Republicans have rediscovered the joys of White House secrecy, and the attorney general not only acts like the president's counsel, he was the president's counsel for four critical years. So it should come as no great surprise that Alberto R. Gonzales sounded more like a White House spokesman on Monday than the country's chief law enforcement officer. But that doesn't make the attorney general's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens any less disappointing.

Gonzales' case for ignoring the judicial oversight mandated by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act rests on three wobbly pillars. First is the bizarre notion that Congress' Sept. 14, 2001, resolution authorizing force against Al Qaeda also covered the domestic spying program. To which committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) gave the correct response: "The president does not have a blank check."

Strange, too, was Gonzales' repeated insistence that past chief executives, going all the way back to George Washington, had the specific power that President Bush seeks to exercise. The first president had many talents, but time travel to 1978 wasn't one of them. And the relevance of that specific law is one of the main subjects of these hearings.

The administration continues to confuse Article II of the Constitution — which enumerates the president's duties as commander in chief — with justification for disregarding the other two branches of government. Article II does give the president power, but the Constitution also has a couple of other articles — the first and third, if anyone from the administration feels like looking them up — outlining the powers of Congress and the judiciary, respectively.

It's hard to say what's more disturbing: the attorney general's unsound legal reasoning or his transparent efforts to avoid a legal conversation altogether in favor of emotional appeals aimed squarely at the court of public opinion. Practically the first words of his opening statement were: "Al Qaeda and its affiliates remain deadly dangerous."

As several senators reminded him, the hearings are not a contest to see who hates Al Qaeda more. They're to find out about the NSA's secret program and to see whether the White House accepts any restraints on its power. If the attorney general can't be independent, the least he can do is explain the law.

I listened to the hearing all day yesterday and noted that, like so many other parts of the current administration, it really requires a trip to some part of Oz I've never visited in order for Abu Gonzalez's testimony to be believable. Will there be any consequences? See above.

In the British Style

I attended my first real high tea while still in high school and traveling abroad for the first time as a guest of the BBC's Transworld Top Team, a high school game show rather like College Bowl. Each year, the Beeb invited a country with similar game show formats to send teams and in 1971, the US was chosen and my team was one of the winners of a national competition. We spent a month touring England and Scotland and taping shows in various cities we visited. It was my first time on an airplane, my first time out of North America and I was young enough to be in awe of all of it, not yet having acquired that veneer of college cynacism. I had the first Indian food of my life, learned about pub grub and had my first grown up alcoholic drink (the drinking age then was 16) and my first hangover. We were routinely served wine at the parties we were invited to and expected to act responsibly. I had my first sherry at a giant wrap party for the series at Broadcasting House, the Beeb's headquarters in London. Heady stuff for a naive blue collar girl with very limited experience outside her blue collar suburb, learning that the rest of the world doesn't live just like us.

Let's say I came home a little changed, and charged with that interest in the worlds' cuisines that I've been sharing with you here for months. I'd lead a pretty sheltered existence and it was a shock to find out that the rest of the world didn't eat just like Minnesota did. I had authentic French food for the first time and walked the streets of London looking for the landmarks my guidebooks recommended, accompanied by the odors of curry and unfamiliar spices and vegetables. It was a sort of awakening of the culinary me.

If you've never been to high tea, you must go. If your location doesn't have a hotel which sponsors them (ask around, they are popular but if you aren't part of the high end hotel culture, you won't know about them) or throw one yourself. This is a low key social occasion which allows people to get to meet under highly civilized circustances with low-risk foods and beverages. Never fear, I'll give you some recipes. You need to own a good tea pot that will hold at least six tea cups of hot water and a good tea strainer. That's all. I've served high teas on picnic benches in national parks, on my dining table, my coffee table and on sleeping bags in a tent. Don't worry about the silver service trappings.

Use excellent loose Engish tea, a teaspoon per cup and let it steep in water just off the boil for 3-5 minutes, depending on flavor. I like the black Indian teas, but try enough different kinds to learn to find your own favorites. Serve with milk in your cream pitcher, cream overpowers the delicate flavor of tea and offer lemon slices (never wedges) and sugar cubes off to the side. Google "tea" and learn about this wonderful and interesting story which spans the globe and much of human history.

Why do I bring this up now? Two reasons: crummy February is a great time for a break in habits (including grousing about February), tea is a day brightener, and I'm having tea with my new boss this week to talk over our new responsibilities and it just occured to me that I've neither been to one of these nor thrown one in years and it is past time to rectify the situation.

Besides an excellent cuppa and a civilized environment for a conversation, the other draw of afternoon tea are the finger sandwiches. This may be a girl thing, but I love them. They are light, easy to make and slide down without creating a huge calorie burden. Here are a few of my favorites. The best commercial bread I've found is Pepperidge Farm's "White Sandwich" bread, but if your local baker has a good brioche, have her slice it thin, the tender crumb is a great foil for these mild treats. Read the link above to learn how to serve a proper finger sandwich.

Cucumber mint Tea Sandwiches

1/2 seedless cucumber, peeled and very thinly sliced (about 32 slices)
1/4 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves, rinsed, spun dry, and chopped fine
1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup cream cheese, room temperature
16 slices best-quality white bread
Salt to taste

Place cucumber slices between layers of paper towels to remove excess moisture.

In a small bowl, combine mint, butter, and cream cheese; spread on one side of each slice of bread. Lay cucumber slices onto the buttered side of 8 slices of bread. Sprinkle with salt. Top with the remaining slices of bread, buttered side down.

Carefully cut the crusts from each sandwich with a sharp knife. Cut the sandwiches in half diagonally and then cut in half again.

Yields 8 whole sandwiches or 16 halves or 32 fourths.

Putting on the Ritz Egg Salad Tea Sandwiches

8 hard-cooked eggs
1/2 cup mayonnaise
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh dill
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
20 slices best-quality white bread

Peel eggs and place into a medium bowl. Slice eggs and then coarsely mash them with the back of a fork. Add mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and dill; stir until well blended. NOTE: This mixture can be refrigerated, covered, up to two days.

Spread butter onto one side of each slice of bread. Spread the buttered side of 10 slices of bread with 2 tablespoons egg mixture. Top with remaining slices of bread, buttered side down.

Carefully cut the crusts from sandwich with a sharp knife. Cut in half diagonally, then cut in half again.

Yields 10 whole sandwiches or 20 halves or 40 fourths.

Now we are getting really Brit:

Spring Radish Tea Sandwiches

Thinly sliced radishes
16 slices best-quality white bread
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

Spread one side of each piece of bread lightly with butter. Top the buttered side of 8 slices of bread with the sliced radishes and top with the remaining bread slices, buttered side down.

Carefully cut the crusts from each sandwich with a sharp knife. Cut the sandwiches in half diagonally and then cut in half again.

Yields 8 whole sandwiches or 16 halves or 32 fourths.

And the most quintessentially British tea sandwich of all:

Cucumber and Watercress Tea Sandwiches

This will make 20

INGREDIENTS:

* 8 cups cucumber, peeled and finely chopped
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
* 1/4 cup chopped fresh chives
* 2/3 cup butter, softened
* 20 pieces of Pepperidge Farm Sandwich bread, buttered on half the slices, all crusts trimmed
* 1/3 cup mayonaisse
* 2 cups of rinsed and dried fresh watercress.

DIRECTIONS:

1. Place cucumber in a medium bowl. Mix in salt. Cover and set aside for approximately 30 minutes.
2. Mix ground black pepper, chives and butter into the bowl with the cucumber.
3. Spread sandwich slices with butter. Dry the cucumber slices and mix with the mayonaisse. Top 10 slices with equal portions of the cucumber mixture, then with equal portions watercress. Cover with remaining 10 slices of bread. Cut into triangles and serve.

I fell head over heals for the peppery green and grow watercress in my own garden for garnishes and sandwiches every spring. To this day, with cucumber I either want to herb it with cress and fly to London, or with cilantro and fly to Bangkok. You can do some very evocative things with a simple cucumber.

When I hear from a man who offers me a high tea as a first meeting, my guess will be that he gets a second date. My mother drilled me on high tea manners before she let me go to England, and that's not a bad standard to start with.

Guys, are you wracking your brain for something different to do for Valentine's Day? Get a clue, take her to tea, or throw one at your place. If you really want to knock her off her feet, invite a couple of her best female friends, or another couple, which shows that you really honor this meal. She WILL be swept away. You've got a week to get your act together.

Reading and Doing

One of the things I do while traveling is look for the local charity cookbooks put out by organizations like Junior League cookbooks, those published by hospital auxiliaries, Scout troops and museum guilds. The single best cookbook I own (and you've seen more than a few of my versions of the recipes) is the Metropolitan Museum of Art cookbook, with recipes contributed by members of the auxiliary and the curators, about as well traveled a group of pros as I can think of. This one was a gift from an ex-boyfriend on returning home from an orchestra tour. I still haven't been to the Met, but my cookbook collection has been enriched by friends who travel and know that's what I want if they feel like bringing a present home for me. Sadly, this incredible collection is now out of print, but if you click on the link you'll go to one of the used book sites which have copies. The other cookbooks I used the most: everything Julia of course, especially "Mastering the Art...," "Joy of Cooking" is my bible, I have too many Italian cookbooks to count but the one with the most stains on the pages is Lidia Bastianich's "Cucina de Lidia". Julia, Lidia, Emeril and the other authors and chefs I like have one thing in common, they are passionate cooks. I don't believe in doing anything you aren't passionate about. Life is too damn short to eat bad food and I'd rather miss a meal than eat badly. I want to be joined at the table with people who love good food as much as I do. The folks who eat to live probably won't be regular guests at my place. Truly delicious food presented artfully is a gift of love and I want the people who can appreciate it around me.

And while I'm thinking about it, New Orleans Chef Paul Prudhomme, one of my favorites for his great good sense of humor, has put together a relief site for the devestated restauranteurs and restaurant workers of New Orleans. If you can help, even a little, click the link. Just because NOLA has disappeared from the TV screens it doesn't mean the emergency is over. Far from it, this is going to take decades. Get your mind around that. Here's his famous turducken which has been a running joke on Morning Edition's Thanksgiving show for ten years or more. I don't care for his seasoning blends, I prefer to make my own, but he's a fixture in the community and working to help pull NOLA back together and I can get behind that.

Update: Here is the Junior League of NOLA's legendary cookbook, which you can buy directly from them so the money goes directly back into that community.

Lovers of the Stinking Rose

I'm a big fan of Emeril Lagasse, given how much I like garlic that's not much of a surprise. He's doing a garlic show tonight (I'm in heaven.) Here are a couple of things I'm dying to try:

Creamy Garlic Dressing

For the Creamy Garlic Dressing:
1/2 cup homemade or store bought mayonnaise
1/4 cup reserved Roasted Garlic Puree (see below)
3 tablespoons freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
2 tablespoons buttermilk
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

To prepare the Dressing:
Mix the mayonnaise, remaining 1/4 cup of garlic puree, cheese, buttermilk, and lemon juice in a medium bowl with a rubber spatula. Season the dressing with salt and pepper. (The dressing will keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 24 hours.)

I eat a lot of salads and love experimenting with different combinations of lettuces and greens. This will be fabulous on mixed wild field greens with a lot of arugala. And will make a potato, tuna or chicken salad to die for.

For the Roasted Garlic Puree:
10 heads garlic (about 1 1/2 pounds)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

To prepare the Roasted Garlic Puree:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil.

Cut the top quarter off each garlic head so the cloves are exposed. Place cut side up on the prepared baking sheet. Drizzle the oil over the garlic and season lightly with the salt and pepper. Turn the garlic cut side down. Roast until the cloves are soft and golden brown, 1 to 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Let the garlic cool. Squeeze the soft garlic flesh from each head into a bowl. Mash the flesh with a fork to blend it into a puree. (The puree can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.) Reserve 1/4 cup of the puree for the croutons and 1/4 cup of the puree to make the dressing.

Roasting the garlic makes it sweet. I have a little clay garlic roaster I bought at some home store, they aren't hard to find, you can roast one head with it and serve the head at the table for your guests to squeeze out their own cloves to spread on good bread at the dinner table. Even the people who hate garlic love roasted garlic when they discover it for the first time.

You can use the puree as a base for a delicious soup:

1/4 cup virgin or extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup pressed or minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper, or to taste
3 quarts chicken stock
1 (2-inch) piece baguette, torn into small pieces
4 green onions, thinly sliced on the diagonal
1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 large egg yolks
6 tablespoons crumbled or finely grated queso anejo, for garnish
Cilantro sprigs, for garnish

In a heavy, 4-quart saucepan, heat the oil over low heat. Add the garlic and red pepper and saute for 1 minute, just until soft and fragrant. Take care not to scorch the garlic, as this will produce a bitter flavor.

Add the chicken stock, increase the heat, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, uncovered, for 1 1/2 hours, or until the garlic flavor has sweetened and mellowed. If at the end of simmering, too much liquid has evaporated, add enough water to bring the level up to at least 8 cups. Towards the end of the cooking time, whisk in the little pieces of bread for thickening, if using (the egg will also thicken the soup, so the bread step is not necessary, just optional).

Add the green onions and cilantro and continue to simmer until the green onions have wilted, 1 to 2 minutes. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper, to taste, and remove from the heat. Place the egg yolks in a small bowl and whisking constantly, slowly add 1/4 cup of the hot broth to the egg yolks. Continue whisking the egg mixture while slowly pouring 3/4 cup more of the hot broth into the egg mixture. Whisk the entire egg mixture slowly into the hot soup, until fully incorporated.

Ladle the soup into 6 bowls and serve immediately. Garnish each bowl with 1 tablespoon of the crumbled cheese and a cilantro sprig.

I like to serve this with Lebanese food, like stuffed grape leaves, tabulleh and a particular favorite of mine, "pleasure of the chef" or mjadra. Any of these combinations will give you a low-cal, low fat healthy meal loaded with complex carbs and all the vitamins and minerals that fresh veggies bring. And a dining room full of very happy people.

Hmmm. Maybe I'll head for the Gilroy Garlic Festival next summer in California. Can anybody tell me if it is temporally proximate to the Artichoke Festival in Castroville? Maybe I can hit them both.

UPDATE: Not even close. I'll have to choose.

The Gilroy Garlic Festival is established to provide benefits to local worthy charities and non-profit groups by promoting the community of Gilroy through a quality celebration of Garlic.

Please join our 2006 President Micki Pirozzoli for fabulous food and fun...

July 28, 29 & 30, 2006

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ARTICHOKE FESTIVAL
CASTROVILLE, CALIFORNIA
MAY 20 & 21, 2006
Saturday 10 am to 6 pm • Sunday 10 am to 5 pm

Lighting up February

I have Februaryitis. This feels like the longest month of the year to me with the gray skies and cold drizzle that marks the month here in the Mid-Atlantic. It's the time of year when I starting missing the good fresh fruits and veggies from the farmers' market down the street and fresh herbs from my own garden. I will not eat the tasteless corn and tomatoes I can buy (for a small fortune) at the grocery. The little cherry and the new grape tomatoes aren't bad, but they just don't taste like a tomato that was on a local vine this morning. One of my favorite summertime soups is gazpacho, but even that doesn't hack it in the winter, the tomatoes are mealy and dry. So, I found another variation with a fruit that ripens all year long. This is my winter gazpacho.

Avocado Gazpacho with Spiced Croutons (serves 4)

Spiced Croutons, recipe follows
2 cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and diced
2 limes, juiced
1/2 to 1 cup vegetable or chicken broth
1/2-cup fresh cilantro leaves, plus additional, for garnish
1 small jalapeno, stemmed, seeded, and chopped
2 green onions, sliced (including green tops)
2 ripe avocadoes
Salt

Make spiced croutons up to 2 days ahead. Store in an airtight container.
In a blender, puree cucumbers, lime juice, 1/2 cup broth, 1/2 cup cilantro leaves, jalapeno, green onions, and 1 of the avocadoes, diced. Season, to taste, with salt. Cover and refrigerate for about 2 hours or until next day.

To serve, thin gazpacho with additional broth if desired. Dice remaining avocado finely and add to gazpacho base. Pour into bowls and garnish with cilantro leaves and croutons.

Spiced Croutons
1/2 loaf (8 ounces) crusty bread
2 ounces (1/2 stick) butter
2 teaspoons ground chile powder, such as ancho
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried thyme
Freshly ground pepper

Preheat an oven to 450 degrees F. Cut bread into small cubes and spread on a baking sheet. Toast in oven until crisp and golden, about 10 minutes. Melt butter and stir in ground chile powder, salt, ground cumin, thyme, and pepper to taste. Pour over bread cubes and toss to coat. Return to oven and toast 5 minutes more.

I prefer to use the food processor to the blender as I like a chunkier texture than I can get out of my blender. Vary the amount of broth to the consistency you prefer.

With this I like to serve those tiny nicoise olives, a sliver of a potato frittata served at room temperature and a few slices of manchego cheese with the ubiquitous baguette. That's lunch or dinner tapas style. Add a pitcher of sangria and you've got a party.

If you haven't worked with avocados before, you need to know that they are not ripe at the grocery, they are shipped in their unripenned, hard state for easier shipping. They will need to ripen at least a couple of day in your kitchen. They are ready to use when the skin yields easily when you push it with a finger. To peal and seed an avocado: run a knife around the fruit, circumnavigate it, along the long axis. Pry the halves apart (a ripe avocado will yield easily) and remove the large seed in the middle, then scoop out the fruit with a spoon. Since this recipe puts the fruit immediately into an acidulated mixture, you don't need to worry about it further. If you want to use neatly sliced avocado on a salad or as a garnish, you'll need to sprinkle the fruit with a little lemon or lime juice to keep the cut surfaces from oxidizing to an unattractive brown.

Not for Summer Only

Don't restrict this to the grilling months. This goes quickly in the broiler, and it is easy to toss together after marinading overnight in the fridge. It's a lean cut of beef that is tender cooked medium rare or less and sliced on the bias.

Grilled Marinated London Broil

For marinade
5 large garlic cloves
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup dry red wine
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon honey
A 1 1/2 pound top-round London broil (about 1 1/4 inches thick)
Accompaniment: Sliced vine-ripened tomatoes

Make marinade: Mince and mash garlic to a paste with salt and in a blender blend with remaining marinade ingredients.

In a heavy-duty sealable plastic bag combine London broil with marinade. Seal bag, pressing out excess air, and put in a shallow baking dish. Marinate steak, chilled, turning occasionally, at least 4 hours and up to 24.

Prepare grill.

Bring steak to room temperature (which should take about 1 hour) before grilling. Remove steak from marinade, letting excess drip off, and grill on an oiled rack set 5 to 6 inches over glowing coals 7 to 9 minutes on each side for medium-rare. Transfer steak to a cutting board and let stand 10 minutes.

Holding a knife at 45 degrees angle, cut steak across grain into thin slices and serve with tomatoes.

I like a salad of mixed lettuces sprinkled with a little crumbled feta and pine nuts with this, and I've never met a baked potato I didn't like. Hint for a quick baked. Pierce first, then put good sized russet in the mike for ten minutes. Finish up with 20 minutes on high in the toaster oven.

Theocracy Watch

More Froomkin:

In the New Yorker, Jeffrey Goldberg profiles Michael Gerson, the former speechwriter now senior policy adviser to Bush.

"Unlike most speechwriters, who tend to be segregated from policymaking, Gerson has always been an influential figure in the White House, in part because he shares Bush's belief in the power of faith -- both men are evangelical Christians -- and because he possesses a preternatural ability, his friends say, to anticipate Bush's thinking. There is a 'mind meld' between the two men, Bush's counsellor Dan Bartlett told me, adding, 'When you bring a West Texas approach to the heavy debates of the world, there has to be a translator, and Mike is the translator.' "

Speaking to a group of ex-White House speechwriters, Gerson was reportedly asked to tell the gathering something it didn't know about Bush.

"Gerson, in a quavering voice, responded with a story that left some of his audience nonplussed. He described a call that he got moments after Bush finished addressing a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001. Bush thanked Gerson for his work on the speech, to which Gerson replied, 'Mr. President, this is why God wants you here.' Gerson then related Bush's response, as evidence of his thoughtfulness. 'The President said, 'No, this is why God wants us here.' '

"An uncomfortable silence filled the room, and then one of Bill Clinton's speechwriters said, in a stage whisper, 'God must really hate Al Gore.' "

Finding Spine

Gonzalez is going to have another long day tomorrow. Pat Leahy is seriously annoyed, sarcastic and he not the only testy Dem. Where were these guys during the Alito hearing?

Burning Straw

WaPo's Dan Froomkin makes a nice catch:

Cheney's Latest Interview

I wrote in Friday's column about how Cheney these days is only agreeing to interviews from right-wing talk-show hosts, where he predictably is getting some outrageous softballs.

Just as I was filing, along came a new transcript -- from an interview with Laura Ingraham .

Sample question: "Q What are you doing, the elliptical trainer? What's your exercise?"

But wait. Ingraham actually challenged Cheney on one of the White House straw men! Bravo.

"Q I noticed that the President, Vice President Cheney, in the State of the Union speech used the word isolationist several times, and then in his speeches across the country after the State of the Union, he also used the isolationist word: 'We cannot be isolationist . . . there used to be isolationism in the United States,' and so forth. About whom is he speaking when he refers to isolationists today?"

Cheney was flummoxed. And, not surprisingly, unable to name a single person.

"THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think -- I don't know that I want to put my finger on any one particular individual. Let me just describe a category. I would argue that people who want to deal with the terrorist threat, if you will, the way we dealt with it prior to 9/11 fall into that category. That is folks who feel that we can sort of retreat behind our oceans and everything will be okay, folks who believe that our involvement from a military perspective in the Middle East is somehow an 'optional war, optional conflict.' That's not true after 9/11."

Too bad Ingraham didn't follow up on that one.

Tunnel Vision

Canada Thriving as New Leader Steps In
Harper and Fellow Conservatives Inherit Strong Economy, Vast Oil Deposits

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 6, 2006; Page A12

OTTAWA, Feb. 5 -- The conservative Canadian government to be sworn in Monday will take the reins of a country that is economically flush, newly confident and ready to reap the benefits of one of the largest supplies of oil in the world.

Stephen Harper, 46, will become prime minister of the thriving country as it shows signs of continuing success and follows a path determinedly different from that of its southern neighbor.

"It's a great country. It has a lot to offer," said Jon Paton, 46, listing Canada's attributes as he took a smoking break from his work as a bartender in an Ottawa hotel. "Besides the natural beauty. We are at peace. The economy is strong."

One of Canada's most striking features is its diverse immigrant community. Philosopher John Ralston Saul calls Canada "on the cutting edge, the most experimental country in the world on immigration and citizenship" for its open-door policy on immigration. Mostly, the experiment is working.

"It's a welcoming country," said David Frederick, 51, who emigrated from Trinidad with his parents 30 years ago and works for the federal government. "I've never been exposed to racism, at least not directly."

For four decades, Canadians have been concerned about a separatist movement in the French-speaking province of Quebec. The threat still exists, but Harper's Conservative Party made an unprecedented incursion into the strength of the secessionist Bloc Quebecois in last month's elections. Many Canadians view the secessionist issue as having helped shape their national identity.

"I think all of the stuff that we went through about Quebec has made us think about the unthinkable, about what it would be like not to be Canadian," said William Warrender, 62, a federal civil servant who was inspecting hydraulic systems on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa.

Canadians see the United States as consumed with war, weighed down with massive and growing national debt and divided by intolerance. Recent polls have shown deep antipathy among Canadians toward the Bush administration and general anti-Americanism.

"Canadians have looked more closely at the differences between Canada and the United States and have become more confident in ourselves," said Mel Hurtig, founder of the Canadian Encyclopedia and a noted nationalist.

I had an interesting conversation with my Toronto realtor last week about Canadian and American attitudes toward each other. Canadians also see Americans as narcissistic and uncurious or apathetic about events which happen outside of our borders and dangerously ignorant about the rest of the world. This is reflected in our media, particularly TV, which have virtually no foreign coverage. Americans are barely aware that there is a whole big wide world with its own concerns beyond our shores, and that the needs and aspirations of those billions have significance for us. Like, for example, the clusters of avian influenza brewing in Indonesia, Turkey and the new case of an Indian worker who fell ill in Lithuania over the weekend

Reading Between the Lines

Katrina Index: Tracking Variables of Post-Katrina Reconstruction

by Bruce Katz, Matt Fellowes, and Mia Mabanta
February 2006

FINDINGS
Days Since Katrina Made Landfall: 156

Now over five months since Katrina made landfall, New Orleans is home to over 130,000 people, including a much larger than expected population of college students. But, the city lacks enough essential services to support all of these returning residents, and the area continues to hemorrhage workers. What key trends were available this month for the states suggest little progress in both Louisiana and Mississippi. In particular, we find:

* Demand for essential services in New Orleans continues to overwhelm the supply. Only 32 percent of the city's hospitals are open, and waits for emergency room visits have exceeded six hours. Over 9,000 children have now enrolled in the city's schools but only 15 percent have reopened and some of those are reporting difficulty accommodating demand. Electricity has been restored to about 95 percent of former customers, but power is only being used by 30-35 percent of the former customers, as many customers have either not returned or wait for the city to certify the safety of their electricity connections.

* The dramatic drop in the unemployment rate is almost entirely due to a decrease in the size of the labor force in New Orleans and Louisiana. In particular, the metro area lost 42,000 people in its labor force between November and December, while the state of Louisiana lost over 100,000 people.

* Louisiana created over 11,000 jobs between November and December, but lost over 100,000 people in its labor force. Mississippi, on the other hand, lost 2,000 jobs and about 2,000 of its labor force.

* Hundreds of thousands of households continue to face major obstacles restarting their lives. Nearly 750,000 households remain displaced by Katrina, of which about 650,000 are receiving rental assistance, or about $800 a month. Mortgage delinquency rates skyrocketed between the second and third quarter of the calendar year. In the state of Louisiana, for instance, nearly one out of every four loans is now 30 or more days past due.

* Traffic in and out of the city continues to increase, along with the number of people flying in and out of New Orleans' airport. In particular, over 47,000 cars now make there way across the Huey P. Long Bridge on a typical day, and nearly 174,000 people arrived at the city's airport in December.

The slow pace of recovery on fundamentals strongly suggests that the city and state will be unable to restore essential services on their own, and require direct federal assistance to do so. Meanwhile, the well being of the nearly 750,000 households that remain displaced by Katrina is essentially not known. With New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mississippi still facing massive economic and infrastructural challenges, it is likely that many of these households will need federal assistance for many months to come.

As you will recall, the recovery (or lack thereof) in the Gulf went completely unremarked by Preznit in the SOTU. My new boss was down there over the holidays and said that the devestation was almost unbelievable. Brookings may be right, but the boss's assessment is that governmental infrastructure is inherently fragile (all top-down structures are) and that we need robust and resilient horizontal networks to respond to risk and disaster mitigation and recovery. These networks don't really exist anywhere in the country yet: even the CERT program program in the Pacific West exists more as theory than reality. Americans generally have lousy situational awareness with regard to their own risks, and, because of an exceptionally poor grasp of mathematics in general and statistics in specific, can't perform a risk assessment that comports with reality.

All of the above, both the Brookings report and my own remarks, have great significance for planning for an infectious disease pandemic. I do not like what I see at all.

The Muslim Street

Beirut Rioters Attack Church
# Muslims outraged over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad target a Christian community and Danish Consulate. Some see Syria's hand.

Read Juan Cole for context on this story. Prof. Cole is convinced that these are genuine expressions of outrage rather than something whipped up by the mullahs.

Below the Horizon

Stability of Mentally Ill Shaken By Medicare Drug Plan Problems
Some Prescription Denials Have Heightened Distress

By Susan Levine
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 6, 2006; Page A01

Even among the incident reports crossing Craig Knoll's desk weekly now, this one stood out: A 43-year-old client of Knoll's mental health agency, a man who suffers from bipolar disorder, had come from his pharmacy frustrated to the point of meltdown. There were snags in his new Medicare drug plan. Of his four medicines, it would fill only two.

"I'm not going to take any of them anymore," he yelled, according to the report by caseworkers. Before they could do anything, he grabbed the prescription bottles he'd just gotten, ran for the restroom and dumped both in the toilet.
offered.

"He flushed everything he had on hand," recounted Knoll, executive director of Threshold Services in Silver Spring, whose staff spent day after day last month grappling with the many ramifications of the government's troubled program. Threshold came to the rescue of clients who couldn't get any medications or who, despite their pills, were in increasing distress because of all the confusion. It reimbursed several who'd mistakenly paid hundreds of dollars for pills that should have cost them a few dollars -- and replenished the supply of the client who had thrown his away.

"I'm not saying it's the federal government's fault he flushed his meds," Knoll said. "I'm saying it's the federal government's fault he couldn't get his meds. It's not surprising that people with mental illness respond in ways that people with mental illness respond."

Since the prescription program made its debut Jan. 1, some of the estimated 2 million mentally ill Americans covered because they receive both Medicare and Medicaid have gone without the drugs that keep their delusions, paranoia, anxieties or stress in check. Mental health service providers and advocacy organizations nationwide say they worry that scores are at high risk of relapse. Numerous people have been hospitalized.

All of this was predictable. The mentally ill aren't on anybody's radar, and there is a huge amount of prejudice against them.

Tap-tap-wire-tapping

The Power of the President
# Bush says he has 'inherent authority' to act during wartime. A Senate hearing on domestic spying will debate that contention.

By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Ever since President Truman sent U.S. troops to fight in Korea in 1950, presidents have claimed broad wartime power to act without first seeking the approval of Congress. But they did so with the silence or implicit consent of lawmakers.

Senators will convene today to confront the fact that in combating terrorism, President Bush has gone a step further.

In the controversies over the use of torture, the detention of "enemy combatants" and wiretapping in the United States, he and his lawyers have maintained the commander in chief has an "inherent authority" to act regardless of the law.

That issue is the heart of the dispute between the White House and Congress over Bush's order authorizing the National Security Agency to listen in on international phone calls coming from people who are suspected of being terrorists or of having ties to terrorists.

"If there are people inside our country who are talking with Al Qaeda, we want to know about it," Bush said Tuesday in his State of the Union address.

Although virtually no one quarrels with the president's goal of trying to detect terrorists who might be hiding in this country, many legal experts — and even some Republicans in Congress — doubt he has the authority to order wiretapping in the United States without a judicial warrant, as the law requires.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings will weigh the administration's legal defense of the National Security Agency program. But the White House claims of expansive powers go beyond wiretaps.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush's lawyers set out a broad theory of presidential power that gave the commander in chief the right to override the law. Often the theory was spelled out in confidential legal memos prepared for the White House rather than in public pronouncements.

In 1994, Congress outlawed the use of torture by U.S. agents and made it a crime to "inflict severe physical or mental pain" on people held in U.S. custody. But in a Justice Department memo written for the White House in 2002, Bush's lawyers said the law did not prevent the president from ordering the use of severe and painful measures against captured terrorists.

"In order to respect the president's inherent authority to manage a military campaign against Al Qaeda and its allies, [the anti-torture law] must be construed as not applying to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander in chief authority," Bush's lawyers wrote. "Congress may no more regulate the president's authority to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield."

However, the Constitution gives Congress powers to set rules for prisoners.

Specifically, Article I says, "Congress shall have the power … to make rules for the … regulation of the land and naval forces," as well as "rules concerning captures on land and water." Article II says the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

The Supreme Court has rejected the notion that the president alone controls what happens during wartime.

When Democrat Truman seized the steel mills to keep them running during the Korean War, the high court — with nine Democratic appointees — ruled in 1952 that he had overstepped his power. Its opinion stressed that Congress, not the president, made the rules.

"The founders of this nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good times and bad times," Justice Hugo Black wrote. "The president's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker."

This is a pretty fair outline of the history and law which provide the framework against which this week's Judiciary Committee hearings play out.

The Road Ahead

States and Cities Lag in Bird Flu Readiness

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: February 6, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — The nation's 5,000 state and local health departments are rushing to plan for an epidemic of avian flu, but they say they are hobbled by a lack of money and guidance from the federal government.

Only a few places, particularly Seattle and New York City, have made significant progress, experts say. Most departments say they expect to be unprepared for at least a year.

"It's a depressing situation," said Jeffrey Levi, a flu expert at the Trust for America's Health, a nonpartisan health policy group. "We are way, way behind."

Under the response plan issued by the Bush administration on Nov. 2, the federal government has primary responsibility for creating stockpiles of vaccines and antiviral drugs, but the states and local governments are responsible for quarantines, delivering vaccinations and assuring that the sick get medical care.

Of the $7.1 billion President Bush requested for fighting avian flu, Congress provided only $3.3 billion for this year. On Monday, Mr. Bush is expected to ask for an additional $2.65 billion for 2007. The bulk is for vaccine and drug research, while only $350 million is for local health departments.

"That $350 million sounds like a lot, but divided among 5,000 health departments, it's only $70,000 each," said Dr. Jeffrey S. Duchin, chief of communicable diseases for the Seattle and King County health department.

Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledged at a conference of avian flu experts here this week that the nation's strategy was one of "buying time" until millions of doses of vaccines and antiviral drugs could be produced.

"If we prepare now," Dr. Gerberding said, "we may be able to decrease the death rate and keep society functioning."

Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine, the medical arm of the National Academy of Sciences, was more pessimistic. "We're completely unprepared," Dr. Fineberg said, adding that if an epidemic struck in the next year, the quarantine-based strategy called social distancing "is likely to be all we're going to have as a strategy."

Here is a way of thinking about this: as we learned from the aftermaths of hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year, the top-down, heirarchical structures like governments are fragile and they break in the wake of wide-spread natural disasters. Horizontal structures composed of colleagues and peers are much more likely to show resilience under such highly stressful circumstances. What this means for you is that organizing neighborhoods, social organizations, faith communities and the like to prepare for a pandemic and its consequences is much more likely to create a real network of help and recovery.

On C-Span

The Senate Judiciary Committee wiretapping hearings have started with a rules fight over whether or not to swear in Abu Gonzalez. This is not promising.

Secular Religion

As Roadside Memorials Multiply, a Second Look

By IAN URBINA
Published: February 6, 2006

HOCKESSIN, Del. — Once a week, Lyn Forester gets down on her knees, clears the cigarette butts, candy wrappers and beer cans away from the base of a stark wooden cross and holds a quiet vigil for her daughter, who was killed here in a car accident eight years ago.

Debby Lewkowitz's son, Adam, died in a car accident in Newark, Del., in 2004. To have the site unmarked "simply hurts too much," she said.

Her ankles dangling from the curb as tractor-trailers hurtle past just feet away, Mrs. Forester says she knows it is both dangerous and illegal to visit this three-foot-wide median along Highway 141 near Wilmington, Del. But she cannot stay away.

"This is where my daughter's spirit was last," Mrs. Forester said, straightening up the plastic flowers and Christmas tree cuttings potted at the base of the shrine for her daughter, Jenni. "I'm more drawn to this spot than I am even to the cemetery where we keep her remains."

Roadside memorials like Mrs. Forester's have become so numerous, and so distracting and dangerous, highway officials say, that more and more states are trying to regulate them. Some, like Montana and California, allow the memorials, but only if alcohol was a factor in the crash. Others, like Wisconsin and New Jersey, limit how long the memorials can remain in place.

Now, in a move that is being watched by other states, Delaware is taking a different approach, establishing a memorial park near a highway exit in hopes of discouraging the roadside shrines. The park will include a reflection pool and red bricks — provided free to the loved ones of highway accident victims — with names inscripted to honor the dead.

Just 20 years ago, such intervention by states was unheard of, said Arthur Jipson, who has studied laws governing the memorials and is director of the criminal justice studies program at the University of Dayton in Ohio. Now, Mr. Jipson said, 22 states have such legislation, and the number has more than doubled in the past five years.

The efforts, however, have forced local officials into a delicate balancing act.

"Governments are reluctant to tell people what to feel or how to mourn," Mr. Jipson said. "At the same time, it's their job to keep these spaces public."

The popularity of the memorials has spawned a cottage industry on the Internet, with Web sites like roadsidememorials.com selling mail-order crosses to families that do not want to construct their own. Roadside Memorials warns customers that it "will not be responsible for any accidents or injuries due to the placement of your cross."

For some, the markers are poignant reminders to drive slowly and a small price to pay to help ease the anguish of loss. But to others, they are macabre eyesores and dangerous distractions that invite rubbernecking and visitors to already hazardous roads.

Highway officials also say the memorials frequently get in the way of road crews cutting grass or clearing snow. Other critics challenge their legality.

"For us, the memorials raise serious church-state constitutional concerns because they usually feature religious symbols and are placed on state property," said Robert R. Tiernan, a lawyer with the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Madison, Wis., who successfully defended a Denver man arrested in 2001 after he removed a religious roadside memorial.

"I'm sympathetic to people who have faced this kind of grief," added Mr. Tiernan, whose 13-year-old son died after a car accident in 1981. "But the public space belongs to everyone, and I think it's important to honor that."

Debby Lewkowitz, whose 16-year old son, Adam, died in a car accident in January 2004, cites purely personal justification for her memorial.

"My daughter's school bus used to pass by this spot every day, and I still do when I drive to work," Ms. Lewkowitz said, standing beside the weathered bouquet of plastic flowers and silk butterflies she had attached to a wooden post and placed alongside an overpass of Interstate 95 in Newark, Del. "Unfortunately, the memory of my son is here, and to let it go unmarked simply hurts too much."

I'm not going to say too much about this right now, other than to mark the story for later comment. This phenomenon was one that came up for study in my course on sociology of religion while I was in school. This is one of those stories I want to think about some more.

Found in a Train Station in Denmark

Smorrebrod is the Danish word for open sandwiches. They are a major part of the Scandinavian diet but no where else as much as in Denmark. Danes often enjoy Smorrebrod for lunch but also hold smorrebrod parties instead of smorgasbords. Smorrebrod literally translates as buttered bread but this is an understatement as the bread is often hidden totally by the topping. This is not to say that the toppings are heavy in fact they should be light.

Smorrebrod when prepared should be attractive and tasty, the topping varies according to the occasion. Here are some suggestions which you can try out at a smorrebrod party, which is like a multiplate sandwhich party with the local firewater, akvavit, or Carlsberg Danish beer. Danish smorrebrod is all about presentation as much as it is about taste, and here is a small palette in which to work out some of your ideas about plating larger and more complex dishes. Smorrebrod starts with a piece of excellent dark rye bread on a plate and goes from there. You build the dish up from there. You can choose to start with an excellent mayonaisse as a base ( but a Danish chef would use a dab of it or a garnish on top of the plate) or butter the bread with unsalted sweet cream butter. There is very little but the bare ingredients so you want them to be the best, in both taste and appearance. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Gravalax

Gravalax can be purchased from many supermarkets and delicatessen or you can make your own. If you prefer smoked salmon simply use it instead of the gravalax.
1 Portion

Preparation Time: 5 minutes

Topping:

* 4-5 thin slices of gravalax
* 1 lemon wedge
* 1 dill sprig

Bread:

* 1 large slice of dark rye bread, buttered

Method:

1. Overlap the gravalax slices on the bread. Garnish the sandwiches with a lemon wedge and dill.
*************

Elemental
1 Portion

Preparation Time: 5 minutes

Topping:

* 2 thin slices of elemental cheese (emmenthaler, gruyere or swiss)
* 2 thin slices of cucumber
* 1 lambs lettuce or iceberg lettuce leaf
* 1 small pickled onion, sliced in half (optional)
* 1 cherry tomato, quartered

Bread:

* 1 large slice of dark rye bread, buttered

Method:

1. Place the lettuce leaf on the bread. Place the cherry tomatoes and pickled cucumber in one corner of the bread.
2. Place the elemental slices on the bread and garnish the cheese with the cucumber slices on the bottom corner of the smorrebrod.
*************************

Pate
1 Portion

Preparation Time: 5 minutes

Topping:

* pate
* 3 cucumber slices
* 1-2 red grapes, quartered

Bread:

* 1 large slice of dark rye bread, buttered

Method:

1. Spread an even layer of the pate on the bread. Overlap the cucumber slices in the centre of the bread. Garnish the pate with the grape quarters on the top right hand corner of the bread.
**************
Roast Beef

1 Portion

Preparation Time: 5 minutes

Topping:

* 3-4 slices of roast beef
* 3 small gherkins sliced in half
* small handful of mustard cress

Bread:

* 1 large slice of dark rye bread, buttered

Method:

1. Overlap the slices of the roast beef on the rye bread. Fan the gherkin slices in the centre of the roast beef. Garnish the smorrebrod with the cress on one corner of the bread.
*****************

Shrimp

Topping:

*5 large cooked shrimp
*1 tbsp dill mayonaisse
* 1 sprig fresh dill

Bread:

*1 large slice of dark rye bread, unbuttered

Method:

1. Use half of the mayonaisse to "butter" the bread.
2. Top with five cooked, shelled shrimp and decorate the top with the remaining mayonaisse and dill sprig.

These shrimp sandwiches are a particular specialty of the Danish table and frequently embellished with a radish rose garnish:

Use medium-size round radishes. Trim off the root ends, leaving small circles of white. Holding each radish, root side up, cut a thin rounded slice on one side of the radish, leaving it attached at the base. Cut 3 or 4 more petals, spacing them evenly around the radish. Cut a second thin slice behind the original petals. Chill, covered with ice water, for 30 minutes. Radish Roses add color to cold meat platters, salads and sandwiches, and as a crudite for dips.

Taken together, a smorrebrod meal adds up into something more than the sum of its parts. It is a gathering of small plates where attention to the detail of individual ingredients mean more than one big, impressive all-day cooking marathon

You can mix in Danish smorrebrod with a buffet of other appetizer type foods or serve it as a theme meal. Above are just some samples of how smorrebrod can be constructed. You can come up with your own favorites by making a petite salad nicoise of a sandwich or do something with thinly sliced ham and gruyere garnished with thinly sliced olives. The world of open faced Danish sandwiches is a playground where you can exercise your creativity and your artist's eye and both count. Play with your parsely and dill sprigs. It turns the sandwich world a couple of degrees on its head and you and your guests will be intrigued by the tasty results. Little dishes of thinly sliced stuffed olives, marinated mushrooms, artichoke hearts, several cheeses and whatnot invite your guests to play with the idea.

On the side of your smorrebrod presentation: have on hand: a couple of types of mustard that you haven't eaten before; some raw horseradish; some prepared horseradish; dishes of thinly sliced drained cooked beets and dishes of thinly sliced raw onions. Extra mayonaisse in as many flavors as you can tolerate making; all in small bowls with spoons available. Extra finely chopped dill, gherkins and chives, each in small bowls. You might want to mark all of these additional sauces and flavors with a place card which tells your guests what each of them are before they start piling things up on their "sandwich." In Scandavian cooking generally, less is more, and only one or two flavors will be presented in each dish. In Copenhagen and Stockholm, a little dab'll do ya. Present all of these on the side. If you can afford it, cavier is considered the final touch on a fish smorrebrod, with a touch of sour cream.

Smorrebrod are always eaten with a knife and fork. Most Europeans consider us barbarians for eating anything other than a burger and fries with our fingers.

Comfort Food Staple

I consider mac & cheese to have its own place in the "food pyramid," someplace near the top. A good mac & cheese is one part nutrition and one part comfort food. There are days when it is twelve parts comfort food, and it is then that it is especially important that it be REALLY good. This is my favorite recipe at the moment, but I'm forever tinking with this classic which is so amenable to variation. This one starts with a roux, so those of you who are violently anti-roux can skip down to other entries.

Macaroni with 4 Cheeses!

4 tablespoons butter, plus 2 tablespoons, plus 1 tablespoon
4 tablespoons flour
2 cups half and half
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/4 teaspoonTabasco
1/2 teaspoon dried red pepper
8 1/2 ounces grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, or other good-quality parmesan cheese (about 2 cups)
1 pound elbow macaroni
1 teaspoon minced garlic
4 ounces grated cheddar cheese
4 ounces grated fontina cheese
4 ounces grated gruyere cheese
1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs
1/2 teaspoon paprika

In a heavy, medium saucepan melt 4 tablespoons of the butter over low heat. Add the flour and stir to combine. Cook, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes. Increase the heat to medium and whisk in the half and half little by little. Cook until thickened, about 4 to 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from the heat, season with the salt, pepper, red pepper, hot sauce and 4 ounces of the grated parmesan. Stir until cheese is melted and sauce is smooth. Cover and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil over high heat. Add salt to taste and, while stirring, add the macaroni. Return to a boil, reduce the heat to a low boil and cook for about 5 minutes, or until macaroni is very al dente (slightly undercooked). Drain in a colander and return the macaroni to the pot. Add 2 tablespoons of the butter and the garlic and stir to combine. Add the bechamel sauce and stir until well combined. Set aside.

Using the remaining tablespoon of butter, grease a 3-quart baking dish or casserole and set aside.

In a large bowl combine 4 ounces of the remaining parmesan cheese, cheddar, fontina and gruyere cheeses. Toss to combine.

Place one-third of the macaroni in the bottom of the prepared baking dish. Top with one-third of the mixed cheeses. Top with another third of the macaroni and another third of the cheese mixture. Repeat with the remaining macaroni and cheese mixture. In a small bowl combine the bread crumbs, remaining 1/2 ounce of grated parmesan, and paprika and toss to combine. Sprinkle this over the top of the macaroni and cheese.

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the macaroni and cheese is bubbly and hot and the top is golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to sit for 5 minutes before serving.

Preserve the taste of the fifties by serving a salad of a wedge of iceberg lettuce and a sliced tomato topped with Wishbone Italian dressing to each diner. Vanilla ice cream topped with hot chocolate syrup for dessert completes this blast from my childhood.

Actually, this theme, the foods of our childhoods, is a neat one for a pot luck fundraiser: people are happy to re-experience the favorite foods of their childhoods and are a little competative about showing them in a good light. They'll work a little harder to do their best. This is important: at this point in my life, the number of dreadful church potlucks I've been through has put me off of them. I'm on a one woman crusade to improve the quality of church pot lucks.

The Working Girl's Staple

Since I suggest baguettes so often to serve with recipes, I should probably give you a recipe for baguettes you can make at home. Where I live, I have the choice of excellent bakeries in my neighborhood, and even my local grocery turns out a credible baguette. You may not be so fortunate. When I'm in one of my periodic baking rages, I make these almost every other day. It's not that I'm a big bread eater, I'm not, but baguettes stale pretty quickly and what I don't eat before they stale goes into the freezer for breadcrumbs, croutons and the like. Baguette has a fairly loose crumb, which makes it the go-to bread for dishes like stratas with eggs or french toast because it soaks up egg batters so well.

1 package active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 cups warm water (about 110 degrees)
2 teaspoons salt
3 1/2 cups bread flour, plus more for dusting
Cornmeal, for dusting
Milk, for brushing

In the bowl of a heavy-duty electric mixer fitted with a dough hook, combine the yeast, sugar, and warm water; stir to blend. Let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes.

Stir in the salt. Add the flour, a little at a time, mixing at the lowest speed until most of the flour has been incorporated and the dough forms a ball. Continue to mix at the lowest speed until the dough has become a sticky ball and pulls away from the sides of the bowl; about 4 to 5 minutes.

Dust the counter lightly with flour. Knead the dough by hand for a minute and form into a ball. Transfer the dough to a bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and let it sit in a warm spot for 2 hours to rise.

To form the baguettes: Cut the dough into 4 equal pieces. Press each piece of dough into a rectangle and fold the long sides up into the middle. Roll each into a log, taking care to close the seam. Taper the ends by gently rolling it back and forth. Lay the baguettes on a sheet pan that is dusted with cornmeal and cover with a towel. Let the baguettes rise for another 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

With sharp knife, make 4 or 5 diagonal slashes across the top of each loaf. Brush the tops of the loaves with milk. Bake for 40 minutes, until the bread is golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.

A trick I learned from Julia Child decades ago: to help the dough form the crispy crust which makes baguette distinctive, open the door of the oven at about the 30 minute mark of cooking and with a robust misting thingie, fill the oven with steam and quickly close the door so the moisture lingers a bit. Really push that mister hard and get the door quickly closed again, no more than a couple of seconds. This helps "seal" the dough and crisp the crust.

If you are a family of about three or four and you aren't on South Beach, you will find so many ways to use slices of baguettes beyond the humble sandwich that you'll be baking this easy bread several times a week. Sure, you could buy them at the store, but the store won't sell you the smell of a house filled with the aroma of baking bread.

If you don't own one, add a good bread knife to your batterie de cuisine. Knives aren't a place to get cheap, but a good Chicago Cutlery knife will do what you need without setting you back a week's pay. A bread knife is just that and don't use it for anything else.

BTW, bread baking is one of the finest mental health activities I can think of. I bake bread when I'm angry about something or chewing on a problem where physically kneading dough helps the mental process. It's worth learning for that reason alone.

I'm Back

Sorry, I've been tied up all afternoon with Panflu business. It's an odd thing, but this possible disaster (and others) have become my new career. I stand to profit from the suffering of others, which is a strange idea to contemplate.

That said, I hope to have some exciting news to announce here in the next few weeks as more of the details get pinned down. Now we can move into the dining and dancing portion of our program for the day, as I've had about all the bad news I can stand for one day.

How was your weekend. It was cold and rainy here and I didn't get out much.

What Liberal Media?

'Addiction to Oil' Calls For a More Direct Intervention

Ronald Brownstein:
Washington Outlook

Let's say the energy bills in your house are too high. One response might be to start saving for a new, more efficient house you could afford in 10 or 20 years.

Or you could replace the windows and improve the insulation today.

President Bush, in the energy plan he announced in his State of the Union speech last week, chose the first strategy. Bush promised more federal energy research, primarily into technologies that might reduce America's fossil fuel dependence years from now. But he rejected the common-sense measures that could bring immediate improvements and maximize the long-term benefits of the new research.

The Bush plan did contain environmentally friendly measures that Democrats have ignored in their shrill denunciations of it. The president moved toward them by proposing more federal research dollars for solar and wind energy and next-generation cars that could run on hydrogen fuel cells or "cellulosic ethanol" produced from agricultural waste. These are necessary steps for breaking what Bush called America's "addiction to oil."

But they are not sufficient — not even close. The big flaw is that Bush did not propose any new government action to accelerate the movement of ideas from the lab to the marketplace. The federal government has three principal tools to speed the deployment of new energy technologies. One is a carrot: its own massive purchases of vehicles and electric power. The next is a stick: regulations, such as automotive fuel-economy standards, that require private companies to produce more energy-efficient products or rely less on fossil fuels. The last can be either stick or carrot: tax hikes, or cuts, that steer energy use.

There goes Brownstein's remaining credability as an "objective" reporter. First he calls the Democratic critique of Bush's non-plan "shrill" and then he repeats it himself.

And Your Point Would Be?

Surveillance Net Yields Few Suspects
NSA's Hunt for Terrorists Scrutinizes Thousands of Americans, but Most Are Later Cleared

By Barton Gellman, Dafna Linzer and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 5, 2006; Page A01

Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.

Bush has recently described the warrantless operation as "terrorist surveillance" and summed it up by declaring that "if you're talking to a member of al Qaeda, we want to know why." But officials conversant with the program said a far more common question for eavesdroppers is whether, not why, a terrorist plotter is on either end of the call. The answer, they said, is usually no.

Fewer than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year, according to an authoritative account, have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls, as well. That step still requires a warrant from a federal judge, for which the government must supply evidence of probable cause.

The Bush administration refuses to say -- in public or in closed session of Congress -- how many Americans in the past four years have had their conversations recorded or their e-mails read by intelligence analysts without court authority. Two knowledgeable sources placed that number in the thousands; one of them, more specific, said about 5,000.

The program has touched many more Americans than that. Surveillance takes place in several stages, officials said, the earliest by machine. Computer-controlled systems collect and sift basic information about hundreds of thousands of faxes, e-mails and telephone calls into and out of the United States before selecting the ones for scrutiny by human eyes and ears.

Successive stages of filtering grow more intrusive as artificial intelligence systems rank voice and data traffic in order of likeliest interest to human analysts. But intelligence officers, who test the computer judgments by listening initially to brief fragments of conversation, "wash out" most of the leads within days or weeks.

Yet another stunning display of Bushco competence. For the purposes of argument, let's posit that there are some bad guys, either here in the US or talking to people in the US. Have we caught them? No?

The Gulf in the Gulf

New Orleans: Their Problem

By Jim Hoagland

Sunday, February 5, 2006; Page B07

President Bush's 2006 State of the Union message has been widely dismissed as an inconsequential affair already headed for history's ash heap. But the speech leaves an astringent aftertaste that brings it to mind days after its delivery.

The bitter aftertaste comes primarily from Bush's perfunctory treatment of reconstruction efforts for New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. It was a curiously missed opportunity for a president usually eager to spotlight stories of human valor and to promise disadvantaged citizens better tomorrows. Speeding past New Orleans verbally is unlikely to have been an accident.

And that suggests that another bit of journalistic conventional wisdom -- that Bush is out of touch and lives in a bubble through which he sees the world darkly, if at all -- is also deficient. My fear is more ominous. After a great deal of study and some polling, Bush is reflecting national opinion fairly well on the challenges still faced by the people of New Orleans: We wish them well, but it is their problem, not ours anymore.

Hoagland, I think you are the one in the Beltway Bubble.

By the Thousands, Faithful Toil to Resurrect Gulf Cities
Sojourners in the South Leave Behind Jobs, Schools, Lives

By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 5, 2006; A01

BILOXI, Miss. With drywall, two-by-fours and a patient faith in a sometimes-exasperating God, Burke resident Bart Tucker is trying to raise a small neighborhood from the dead.

But in this Gulf Coast city of 50,000, a slender thumb of land smashed by the winds and waters of Hurricane Katrina, nothing comes easy -- least of all miracles.

Since arriving in Biloxi with a convoy of supplies and volunteers from his Fairfax County church, Lord of Life Lutheran, shortly after Labor Day, Tucker has spent a total of eight weeks here. He goes home only to raise more money and recruit more volunteers.

His efforts have rippled across Northern Virginia. Other faith organizations have joined in -- churches, Habitat for Humanity, Bible study groups -- sending members and money, forming partnerships with Biloxi churches and adopting families.

But Tucker's crusade is hardly solitary. More than 10,000 religious people across the country have poured through the stricken Mississippi Gulf Coast in an unprecedented volunteer effort.

They sleep in church sanctuaries, RVs and tents. They leave behind jobs, schools and retirement for labor pilgrimages of days, weeks or months. Some have taken drastic measures, selling their homes and leaving family to move to the crushed Gulf Coast to devote themselves full time.

For Tucker, a lifelong Lutheran, his is a spiritual mission best described by the Biblical admonition by which he lives: "Faith by itself, if it is without works, is dead."

Beyond that, he doesn't question God's purpose for his presence.

"I'm just here," he said. "Whether I'm called in this direction, I'm not sure. I'm here."

The volunteers' focus: a seemingly endless horizon of destruction that stretches 70 miles. In Mississippi, 35,000 homes owned by residents who had no flood insurance were destroyed. Tens of thousands more were heavily damaged. Beyond this is Louisiana, where 77,000 homeowners with no flood insurance saw homes destroyed.

"We know that we will be there for a mini mum of five years," said Pamela Burdine, a spokeswoman for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, which has launched its largest response to a disaster -- more than 2,000 volunteers in weeklong shifts.

What's missing from this picture? The Feds. Hoagland's wrong. Maybe he's washed his hands of NOLA. Lots of other people haven't.

Details Matter

Tolerating Death in the Mines

Published: February 5, 2006

Federal safety officials, faced with the death of two more West Virginia miners, are asking the coal industry to "stand down for safety" tomorrow to check the nation's mines for lethal working conditions. This smacks of public relations more than worker protection. The safety agency, notorious for its political appointees from the coal industry, is also suddenly finding more inspectors for West Virginia, which has suffered 16 miner deaths recently.

The tragedies have laid bare the passivity and pro-industry bias in the Bush administration's stewardship of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Last month, the chief of the now-galvanized agency cavalierly announced more pressing business and walked out of a Congressional hearing into the initial West Virginia deaths, even as shocked lawmakers still had key questions unanswered.

Funny, this is the first I've heard of that. Lackey media, you aren't reporting on Bushco's failures, are you?

The Other Failure

'The new Afghanistan is a myth. It's time to go and get a job abroad'

As British troops prepare to tackle the Taliban's remnants, hundreds of thousands of jobless Afghan refugees who returned home to start a new life are queueing up to leave again

Dan McDougall in Kabul
Sunday February 5, 2006
The Observer

An unforgiving wind howls across the Shomali Plains from the distant snowcaps of the Hindu Kush. Overhead, a US Chinook helicopter disappears into the dark mass of clouds, an armoured Jeep dangling from its grey hull, straining against the winch cable. It's just past 5am and the roar of the rotors momentarily drowns out the first call to prayer of the day echoing from the minarets of Kabul's Ismailia mosque. Within minutes, other muezzins follow suit, in a bleary-eyed symphony across the city.

Outside the iron gates of the Iranian embassy, braced against the winter sleet in woollen caps and ankle-length chupans, hundreds of Afghan men roll out blankets and kneel towards Mecca. At each bow the men's noses merge with the slushy grey mixture of mud, snow and sewage that covers the rutted pavements and roads of Kabul. Their prayers are for a new life elsewhere and food for their starving families - they are queueing in the dawn's half light to leave Afghanistan.

'I wish I hadn't come back home from Iran after the Taliban left. I had a better life there, I had occasional work at least, so I am going back.' Zahair Mohammad stands in the line trying, with hundreds of others, to get an Iranian visa. 'I was thinking positively for a long time about rebuilding a life here in Kabul, where I was born, but I was wrong, very wrong. It's time to go. I need to work abroad, like most, as a cheap labourer and send money home. What we're hearing on the radio about a new Afghanistan is nothing but a dream.' He gestures at the kilometre-long queue. 'I was a refugee before and now I'm choosing to become one again. I'm not alone.'

Five years after the Taliban were deposed by a US-led military alliance, Afghanistan remains entrenched in poverty. Intense frustration with the government, particularly among refugees who returned amid promises of change, is growing. The Observer has learnt that such is the demand among ordinary Afghans to leave that this weekend the Interior Ministry has run out of the basic materials to make passports.

According to human rights watchdogs, the huge increase in economic migrants exposes the shortcomings of Western-led reconstruction, estimated to have cost $8bn (£4.5bn) so far, failures which are disturbingly apparent in the overflowing slums of the capital, Kabul. Hundreds of thousands may have returned from Pakistan and Iran, swelling the city's population to more than two million, but with local unemployment running at 70 per cent there is simply no future for them.

Bush was true to his word. We aren't doing any nation building. We just knock them down.

Cucina de Magre, the food of the poor

Before I hit the down comforter and kill the snooze alarm for the morning, I have to leave you with a classic favorite. The legend is that this was a dish designed to be cooked by the Italian civil guard, the Carabiniere, in their helmets on the streets over cooking fires at their posts. I don't know how true that is, but it is damn near easy enough to be made that way. This is one of those recipes for when you come home, don't have much in the house, too tired to go out or have to make another decision like "paper or plastic?" at the end of the day. You can toss this together, get decent nutrition and a comfort food hit at the end of a long day without extending your depleted energy very far, and you'll feel pretty good as it slides down. I always keep the ingredients for this around the house, as would any Roman householder (it is a Roman dish) and consider it emergency rations for the nights when I'm hungry as hell and too tired to cook.

Pasta all Carbonara

This will feed 4-6, figure one egg per person and you can cut it down nicely. For one or two, use four scallions sauteed very briefly in unsalted butter. And I don't bother sauteeing the prosciutto, add it in at the end and skip that step. It's cured and I don't like the crispy taste. You can use American bacon instead, but it will need to be rendered in a saucepan for ten minutes on medium heat. Discard the drippings and add the crushed bacon, drained, on top of the plates as you finish the dish for table presentation.

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 yellow onion, minced
4 ounces pancetta or prosciutto, diced (substitute bacon, fried and rested on paper towels to drain)
1 pound fresh pasta, linguine, spaghetti or any of the thin varieties work best
3 large egg yolks, at room temperature
1/2 cup heavy cream, at room temperature
3/4 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, at room temperature
Freshly ground black pepper, liberally applied
Lots of chopped parsley, a quarter cup per serving

Heat oil and butter in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the onion and pancetta and cook until the onions are translucent and the pancetta is beginning to crisp. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the linguine according to package directions until al dente, about 2 to 3 minutes. Drain pasta in a colander (reserve a small amount of the cooking liquid in a small bowl) and return pasta to the pot. Return the pot to the heat and add the reserved pancetta and onion mixture. Stir over high heat until pasta is coated with the pancetta mixture.

In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and heavy cream and add to the pasta, along with the Parmesan. Remove the pot from the heat and toss the pasta until it is well-coated. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste. If needed, add a bit of the reserved pasta cooking liquid to help toss the pasta if it is dry. Serve immediately.

The hot pasta cooks this sauce so it has to be done at the last minute. This is, to use an old word, toothsome.

I serve this all the time when I have to feed people at the last minute and don't have time to design a menu. This and a glass of wine and a good loaf of bread with some of my herbed olive oil have never gotten a complaint. If you've got time to add a salad, that's great, but this fills bellies in a way that they don't forget. If you have the time and the energy, add a little dish of chopped, seeded cucumbers that have sat in a dish of white wine vinegar to cover for an hour with a 1/4 tsp of sugar and a hearty grind of fresh pepper.

The eggs must be very fresh. And your friends and family will wonder how you whipped this together in under a half hour. Smile modestly and collect the compliments.

Always have fresh pasta in the freezer. Always have prosciutto or bacon in the meat drawer. Always have Parmaggiano/Reggiano in the cheese drawer. Always have onions someplace. Grow parsley and other herbs on your windowsill, you will find that they are quite forgiving. That's really all there is to it.

Serve it Forth

This makes a superlative breakfast or brunch dish.

I'm doubling this to bring to a pot luck this spring.

POTATO AND BOURSIN FRITTATA

8 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cups frozen shredded hash brown potatoes (from a 16-oz bag)
1 bunch scallions, chopped (2 cups)
2 gloves garlic, minced
1 (5-oz) package Boursin garlic-herb cheese, chilled

Accompaniment: sliced smoked salmon or prosciutto

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 375°F.

Whisk together eggs, salt, and pepper until just combined.

Heat oil in an ovenproof 9- to 10-inch heavy nonstick skillet over high heat until very hot but not smoking. Add potatoes, garlic and scallions to oil, stirring once, then cover and cook until beginning to brown, about 4 minutes. Stir potato mixture once, then cover and cook 3 minutes more.

Pour beaten eggs evenly over potato mixture and crumble cheese over eggs. Transfer skillet to oven and bake frittata, uncovered, until set and just cooked through, about 15 minutes. Invert a plate over skillet and, holding them together with oven mitts, invert frittata onto plate and serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings.

On the Shores of the Aegean

Here's a recipe for your "table for one," those like me who dine alone most nights with the proportions already fixed for a single serving. It's a delicious variation on Greek cuisine that's easy to make and allows you to fix a special meal for yourself without knocking yourself out. It's easy to multiply if your family is bigger and it is good enough to serve to company.

Lamb Chops with Olive Salsa

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano, crumbled
1/2 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon olive oil
two 1 inch thick rib lamb chops (about 1 pound total)
1/4 cup Kalamata or other brine cured black olives, pitted and chopped coarse
1 small plum tomato, seeded and diced
2 tablespoons diced red onion
1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley leaves
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest

Preheat broiler.

On a plate, stir together oregano, 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 1 teaspoon oil. Dip both sides of lamb chops in mixture to coat and put on rack of a broiling pan, seasoning both sides of chops with salt and pepper.

In a bowl, stir together olives, tomato, onion, parsley, zest, remaining teaspoon lemon juice, remaining teaspoon oil and salt and pepper to taste.

Broil lamb chops 2 inches from heat 4 to 5 minutes on each side for medium rare meat.

Spoon olive salsa over lamb chops

I like rice with this to soak up the olive sauce, but roasted, herbed potato wedges are good, too. Serve with a Greek salad (of course) and a glass of retsina.

Something Completely Different

I've spent most of the day dealing with H5N1 pandemic influenza, one way or the other. I started out the day on a long phone call with my new boss to talk about transitioning me into the system and pan flu generally, since we are going to be dealing with it a lot. Then, on to management of The Flu Wiki and talking with pogge about some of the problems we need to solve. In short, I'm ready for some cheering up. And for me, under the best of circumstances, I'd invite you all over for a party. Since that isn't practical, I'll give you a few things to help you make your own party.

I love Southwestern US style food (Bobby Flay is one of my favorite chefs on Food TV) so here's a little something that will make the centerpiece for a weeknight meal or an addition to your party food for the big game tomorrow.

Southwestern Black Bean Cakes with Salsa, Fresh Cilantro, and Key Lime Peppered Mayonnaise

2 (15-ounce) cans black beans, drained and rinsed well
2 tablespoons salsa, plus more for serving
2 tablespoons finely diced green onions
3/4 cup diced red bell peppers
1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro leaves, plus more for garnish
1 1/2 cups bread crumbs
3 large cloves garlic
2 teaspoons bacon chipotle sauce (recommended: Bob's Bacon Chipotle Sauce)
Tortilla Chip Breading:
2 teaspoons peanut oil, plus more as needed
1 1/2 cups finely crushed tortilla chips
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Store bought salsa
Key Lime Peppered Mayonnaise, recipe follows
Lime twists, for garnish

Coat pan with 2 teaspoons peanut oil.
Combine beans, salsa, green onions, peppers, cilantro, bread crumbs, garlic, and chipotle sauce in a large bowl and mix well, mashing up the beans. Form 12 small patties (about the diameter of a silver dollar and 3/4 to 1-inch thick) and roll in tortilla breading.
Heat 2 teaspoons peanut oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Fry patties, in batches as necessary, until golden brown and heated through.

Makes 12 bean cakes

Serve this for dinner with Southwestern style rice and a green salad dressed with a lime vinaigrette, and dinner is served.

Serve on bed of salsa or cover with salsa and fresh cilantro. Add a small dollop of Peppered Lime Mayonnaise on top and garnish with a twist on lime.

Key Lime Peppered Mayonnaise:
1 cup mayonnaise
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh key lime juice
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
Salt and pepper

Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Refrigerate if not using immediately.

Track Record

Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Contract to Add Temporary Immigration Detention Centers

By RACHEL L. SWARNS
Published: February 4, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.

KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. KBR, which announced the contract last month, had a similar contract with immigration agencies from 2000 to last year.

The contract with the Corps of Engineers runs one year, with four optional one-year extensions. Officials of the corps said that they had solicited bids and that KBR was the lone responder.

A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jamie Zuieback, said KBR would build the centers only in an emergency like the one when thousands of Cubans floated on rafts to the United States. She emphasized that the centers might never be built if such an emergency did not arise.

"It's the type of contract that could be used in some kind of mass migration," Ms. Zuieback said.

A spokesman for the corps, Clayton Church, said that the centers could be at unused military sites or temporary structures and that each one would hold up to 5,000 people.

"When there's a large influx of people into the United States, how are we going to feed, house and protect them?" Mr. Church asked. "That's why these kinds of contracts are there."
....
Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, who has monitored the company, called the contract worrisome.

"With Halliburton's ever expanding track record of overcharging, it's hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars," Mr. Waxman said. "With each new contract, the need for real oversight grows."
....
Halliburton executives, who announced the contract last week, said they were pleased.

"We are especially gratified to be awarded this contract," an executive vice president, Bruce Stanski, said in a statement, "because it builds on our extremely strong track record in the arena of emergency management support."

Track record=Katrina, Iraq overcharging, distributing contaminated water to soldiers, rotten food in base mess halls. This is right up there with "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie."

There is also something more than vaguely Orwellian about this with a possible pandemic influenza lurking.

Extortatory Education

There was a time when an education was its own reward. That seems to have landed on the ash-heap of history.

And for Perfect Attendance, Johnny Gets...a Car

By PAM BELLUCK
Published: February 5, 2006

CHELSEA, Mass. — Attendance at Chelsea High School had hovered at a disappointing 90 percent for years, and school officials were determined to turn things around. So, last fall they decided to give students in this poverty-stung city just north of Boston a little extra motivation: students would get $25 for every quarter they had perfect attendance and another $25 if they managed perfect attendance all year.

Mike Culberson, a principal in Rossville, Ga., greets students near a table with rewards for good attendance.

"I was at first taken a little aback by the idea: we're going to pay kids to come to school?" said the principal, Morton Orlov II. "But then I thought perfect attendance is not such a bad behavior to reward. We are sort of putting our money where our mouth is."

Chelsea High is not the only school trying to improve attendance with incentives for students. Across the country, schools have begun to offer cars, iPods — even a month's rent. Some of the prizes are paid for by local businesses or donors; others come out of school budgets.

In Hartford last year, 9-year-old Fernando Vazquez won a raffle for students with perfect attendance and was given the choice of a new Saturn Ion or $10,000. (His parents chose the money.) At Oldham County High School in Buckner, Ky., Krystal Brooks, 19, won a canary yellow Ford Mustang. In Temecula, Calif., the school district prizes can include iPods, DVD players and a trip to Disneyland.

Many schools have been galvanized by the federal No Child Left Behind law, which factors attendance into its evaluations. And schools, especially in poor districts, are motivated by money from state governments, which is often based on average daily attendance.

In the Chicago public schools, students with perfect attendance for the first three months of the year are eligible to win $500 worth of groceries or up to $1,000 toward a rent or mortgage payment. Joi Mecks, a spokeswoman for the district, said that for every 1 percent increase in its attendance rate, the district received $18 million more in state money.

Schools in Fort Worth had a budget shortfall of $15 million last year, said Beatriz Mince, assistant coordinator for the district's Office of Parent and Public Engagement. "The only way to get extra money is average daily attendance," Ms. Mince said, adding that if average attendance increased by one student, the district would receive an extra $4,700.

I have alarm bells ringing in at least five separate places in my head over all of this. What you are seeing right here is nearly everything that's wrong with the incentive/accountability system in public education. The problem with bribes is that any relatively intelligent fourth grade quickly figures out how to game the system. And school superintendents have additional incentive to provide fraudulent data. Therefore, this isn't going to work.

Email Changes

I'm not sure if this is good news or not.

Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail

By SAUL HANSELL
Published: February 5, 2006

Soon companies will have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers.

America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered.

The Internet companies say that this will help them identify legitimate mail and cut down on junk e-mail, identity-theft scams and other scourges that plague users of their services. The two companies also stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted.

AOL and Yahoo will still accept e-mail from senders who have not paid, but the paid messages will be given special treatment. On AOL, for example, they will go straight to users' main mailboxes, and will not have to pass the gauntlet of spam filters that could divert them to a special bulk e-mail box or strip them of images and Web links.

Yahoo and AOL say the new system is a way to restore some order to e-mail, which, because of spam and online scams, has become an increasingly unreliable mode of communication even as it has become more important in people's lives.

"The last time I checked, the postal service has a very similar system to provide different options," said Nicholas Graham, an AOL spokesman. He pointed to services like certified mail with return receipts, "where you really do get assurance that if what you send is important to you, it will be delivered, and delivered in a way that is different from other mail."

But critics of the plan say that the companies risk alienating both their users and the companies that send e-mail. The system will apply not only to mass mailings but also to individual messages like order confirmations from online stores and customized low-fare notices from airlines.

"AOL users will become dissatisfied when they don't receive the e-mail that they want, and when they complain to the senders, they'll be told, 'it's AOL's fault,' " said Richi Jennings, an analyst at Ferris Research, which specializes in e-mail.

As for companies that send e-mail, "some will pay, but others will object to being held to ransom," she said. "A big danger is that one of them will be big enough to encourage AOL users to use a different e-mail service."

Expecting the "invisible hand of the market" to sort things out seems naive to me. If there is a buck to be made, somebody will find a way to do it.

Early Warning

Senator Backs Bush On Domestic Spying

Chairman Pat Roberts of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said yesterday that the Bush administration's domestic spying is within the president's inherent power under the Constitution, and he rejected criticism that Congress was kept in the dark about it.

The program is "legal, necessary and reasonable," the Kansas Republican said in a 19-page letter, taking a particularly expansive view of the president's authority for warrantless surveillance.

"Congress, by statute, cannot extinguish a core constitutional authority of the president," Roberts said.

Presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush have intercepted communications to ascertain enemy threats to national security, Roberts told the chairman and ranking Democrat of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Roberts's letter came just three days before that panel is to question Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales about the surveillance.

All eight Judiciary Committee Democrats urged Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) to call more top Bush administration officials in for questioning, including former attorney general John D. Ashcroft and former deputy attorney general James B. Comey. Comey reportedly objected to parts of the program.

Roberts said the Bush administration's notification of eight members of Congress fulfilled the legal requirement that the legislative branch be kept fully and currently informed.

The truth is going to be sacrificed on the altar of partisanship. This is the opening shot across the bow.

The Rules of Another Game

When Two Worlds Collide: Rove v. Fitzgerald

By Elizabeth de la Vega
TomDispatch.com

Friday 03 February 2006

Over and over again, in that same press conference, Fitzgerald demonstrated his belief that if you sign onto a system that has certain rules, you have to follow those rules even if it might be personally advantageous to break them. Those who tuned in saw reporters repeatedly ask him about information he could not reveal without violating the rules of grand jury secrecy or prosecutorial ethics. He was asked, for example, whether other people might be charged. He declined to answer. He was asked to evaluate the strength of the case. He declined to answer. He acknowledged how frustrating his inability to answer undoubtedly was to the assembled media, but explained that he couldn't gather information according to the rules of grand jury secrecy - which prohibit talking about people who were investigated but not charged with a crime - and then afterwards reveal the information anyway because it was too "inconvenient" not to answer reporters' questions.

Later in the press conference, he said simply, "All I can do is make sure that myself and our team follow the rules."

Fitzgerald's world is far removed from the world of expediency and personal advantage in which Karl Rove operates. In his carefully crafted statements during the FBI interview on October 8, Rove indicated an obvious belief that he could get away with spreading information about government employees for political purposes as long as someone else had revealed that information first, regardless of whether or not the information was disparaging or classified. He did not appear to be concerned with where the information came from, or even whether it was true.

Although it is astounding that Rove would blatantly describe such a despicable ethos (if you can call it that), it should not have been unexpected. In the world of campaign politics that Rove has so long inhabited, smears and personal attacks are designed to seem as if they were spontaneously generated. They can then wander around, undirected, until they finally curl up in America's living rooms like so many mysterious, uninvited guests. These intruders may be rude and destructive, but no one is supposed to be able to get rid of them, in part because no one is supposed to be able to sort out or pinpoint how they got there in the first place. Thus, although Karl Rove has lurked in the background of an unprecedented number of whisper and smear campaigns - that, for instance, John McCain had an illegitimate child (a rumor spread during the Republican primaries that preceded the 2000 election), or that former Texas Governor Ann Richards was a lesbian (a persistent rumor that was spread during Bush's Texas gubernatorial campaign) - he has never been held accountable. And that is a state of affairs to which Rove became accustomed.

Rove has escaped responsibility for his sneaky campaign tricks because the candidates for whom he has worked - most prominently, George Bush - have had a stunning ability to accept, unquestioningly, the miraculous appearance of information that takes down their opponents. They had no problem about endorsing brazen dishonesty or the least interest in ferreting out bad actors in their camps. At the same time, opposing candidates have had neither the resources, nor the time to fully investigate the attacks before plummeting in the polls. Afterwards, of course, it was already far too late.

Unlike Rove's former adversaries in the political world, however, Fitzgerald has both the time and investigative resources. When Fitzgerald was appointed special prosecutor, all the known facts on the outing of Valerie Wilson indicated that government officials had broken the rules, if not the law. It's no surprise then that Fitzgerald has pursued the matter vigorously; nor should it be a surprise that Rove's statement to the FBI on October 8 would have raised some obvious red flags and caused Fitzgerald to become skeptical. Rove deliberately omitted key information about conversations with reporters that he could not possibly have forgotten; he claimed to have heard classified government information only from a reporter - despite the fact that he himself was one of the highest government officials in the nation; and then he admitted that he had no qualms about enlisting surrogates to betray government employees in order to achieve political gain.

Rove's statement raised more questions than answers. It also opened a window into the world of a President's key adviser who never left campaign mode and who had never before been tripped up, no matter what he did. Such a man would be quite unprepared for an investigator like Fitzgerald who operates under a very different timetable and in a world ordered by radically different rules.

Sports metaphor o' the day: home field advantage.

Mississippi of the North

It's amazing what kind of bad ideas people like to embrace for the sake of "progress". Last week, a paper was released by a group of businessmen and politicians on how North Carolina can "reform" it's tax structure. The article on it can be found here . This plan, if approved, would be a disaster for the majority of people in my home state. Why? Well, here are some of the specifics:

* Lower the top marginal rate for personal income tax, which is now 8.25 percent. The rationale is the high marginal rate is driving the wealthy, small-business owners and corporate headquarters from the state.

* Expand the sales tax base to include more services such as lawn care and haircuts. The rationale is that sales tax revenue is growing more slowly than income tax revenue in part because of out-of-state and Internet sales.

* Reduce or abolish the corporate income tax, which is now 6.9 percent. The tax could hurt business recruiting.

* Give local governments more power to tax. Enable the state to pay more of Medicaid costs. Encourage counties to develop more joint projects such as sewage systems.

* State should create an independent review process, similar to what Texas and Florida have, to reassess spending priorities and abolish programs that are no longer needed.

* State should consider accelerating plans for privatization, such as selling the government-owned ABC store system that sells liquor.

4 of the 6 suggestions highlighted by the paper are regressive in nature. Apprently, to solve the budget woes in this state, all you need to do is shift the tax burden on those who can pay the least. Of course, we know how well this works in other Southern States that follow such a strategy... tax receipts aren't what you expect so you have to reduce services.

What I want to know if how can these people argue with a straigth face that corporate taxes need to be zeroed out when many of the corporations in North Carolina are enjoying record profits? Obviously, the 6.9% they are paying isn't killing their businesses.

More to the point, it's not keeping other businesses from migrating to North Carolina, and they know it. Trust me, if a business didn't want to come to NC because of the tax rate, the local wingers would be on the televison 24/7 pounding away about the state rate. Everyone within an earshot of radio and television would know about it. How many cases have their been of this... not many if any.

As for the Medicaid costs, North Carolina could raise the cigarette tax again to help defer the costs of that program. Yes, I know it's a regressive tax, but we have an insanely low tax on tobacco (I can't imagine why....) and that's an easy source of revenue, especially if it's targetted to health care.

I think the Dems in North Carolina, even Conservative ones like the Once & Future Governor Hunt, can make a strong arguement against this plan. They need to get started now though otherwise the battle will be lost before they even realize there is one.

Paying to Play

It Takes More Than Free Trade to End Poverty

Mandelson treats the negotiations with impoverished African countries as a bargain between equals
by Joseph Stiglitz

Unfortunately, there are several reasons to be pessimistic. One is the increasingly hard-line approach taken by the European Union. The EU Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson, continues to demand that the developing countries make reciprocal concessions in return for access to the EU's market. He said last week that "Anyone coming to the negotiating table empty handed must expect to leave empty handed." Mandelson treats the negotiations as a bargain between equals, but impoverished African countries can hardly be expected to negotiate on equal terms with the giant advanced economies.

The second threat to the Doha round is the increasing detachment of the US, which continues to plough ahead with special trade agreements with its friends and allies outside the WTO. These bilateral agreements threaten to create a spaghetti-bowl of trade deals which hamper multilateral progress and leave the poorest countries out in the cold.

The main problem with the round is that whenever the negotiators from the rich countries reach a stalemate, they respond by taking issues off the agenda. One after another, thorny issues have been jettisoned or pushed into the background, so that the agenda is now so narrow that there is very little for anyone to object to and, unfortunately, very few areas in which real progress can be made.

As Andrew Charlton of the LSE and I point out in our recently published book Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development, there was in fact a broad agenda that could deliver benefits to the poorest countries, but which has been almost entirely ignored in the Doha round. For example, there is much that could be done to reduce tariffs on industrial goods. Rich countries collect tariffs four times higher on their imports from poor countries than imports from other rich countries. Similarly, some advances could quickly be made by liberalizing labor-intensive service sectors in which developing countries have genuine export interests.

Opening the door to trade is one thing, but the real challenge is to help developing countries go through it. Without assistance to build decent roads, efficient ports, and to produce goods of sufficient quality, new trading opportunities are meaningless. Aid and trade must go hand in hand if poverty is to be reduced.

Screwing the poor worldwide.

Football Food

There are a bazillion spinach and artichoke dip recipes out there (I know, I looked) but this is my favorite, it's a little spicier than the others. I don't serve this with chips, I like it spread on thin slices of fresh baguette, which you can serve as a fork substitute with nearly all my football recipes.

10 oz. frozen, chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 (14 oz.) can artichoke hearts, drained and rinsed to get rid of the extra sodium
1 c. mayonnaise
1-1/2 c. Parmesan cheese, shredded (fresh)
1 1/2 c. Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
Garlic salt to taste
2 tsp. Tabasco
1 tbsp. Worcestershire Sauce

Preheat oven to 350°

Squeeze water from spinach. Chop artichoke hearts well.

Combine all ingredients and mix well.

Pour in 1 1/2-quart dish, bake for 30 minutes. The top should be brown and bubbly.

This is easy and it is good with everything from chips to cruditees.

What You Need to Know Now

I just started reading Mike Davis' The Monster at Our Door (a Christmas present from a reader) and this is a great read. It's about pandemic influenza and if you are having trouble getting the point across to family and friends, this is the book to give them. Davis is a sprightly writer and he handles flu science deftly and accurately for the lay reader in way that won't make our eyes glaze over. It's also as scary as hell. Just when I think I have a handle on most of the social aspects of pandemic flu, along comes another thinker who has thought about things I missed. Davis' book is like that.

I spend some portion of everyday these days dealing with the doubters and the skeptics, the poorly informed and the opportunists looking to make a buck off the public's fears. I'm one of the moderators of the discussion at The Flu Wiki Forum and keeping that from turning into a food fight is a major project for all of the editors. Pogge has been doing particular yeoman's work beating back the spammers, the scammers and the trolls, all of which have been showing up in large numbers in recent weeks. Go over and say "hey" and give him some thanks. None of my Internet ventures would be possible without him. This has been a busy Flu Wiki week and the weekend looks to be the same (there is a lot going on right now) so I'll as those co-bloggers who can to pick up some of the slack here for me.

Oh, about that "a lot going on right now?" Yes, in Flu-land there is a lot of new news and things are starting to "interesting," and not in a good way. I'll keep bringing you the bird flu news here, as always, of course, but a lot more of my energy is going to be going into email with the scientists I keep in touch with and the Wiki. Here is what you need to know now: from my point of view, it is time to begin serious stockpiling of food, water, your household's prescription drugs, toilet paper, and all of the other things you wouldn't want to be without for 8 weeks or so. There are a boatload of lists on the Wiki to help you plan your trips to Costco or Ralphs or Albertsons or Peeples or Safeway or wherever you do your grocery shopping. If you've been buying an extra can of this or that on your regular grocery trips, now is the time to step it up and start buying in bulk. You know the stuff that your family likes. Prepare in that direction, if you can afford it. If pandemic flu comes and we are all in home isolation, we're going to be under enough stress without trying to live on rice and beans alone. Yes, if we have to go into these stores to live on, we are all going to need major chelation therapy and detox to get rid of the preservatives, salt, msg and God knows what other stuff is used in long term storage food, but I'll settle for not being hungry and thirsty in the middle of it all. Plan for recreation in case the power is out for extended periods and the computer and DVD player aren't among the options (you'll want heat and light for such periods, too. Plan for that.)

If you are a small business person, you have a whole other set of headaches. I'l let you work that out within the context of your own industry, but I do offer consulting services if you want some help thinking it through. Those of you with retail businesses are going to have some very fine calculations to make. If you don't yet have "key man" insurance on your principals, start there. Right now. I mean it. Look at all of your contracts and have them reviewed in light of a pandemic. This will probably be considered "an act of God" and know what your contracts say about that. Negotiate a better deal now.

I'll be writing more about this over the weekend, I'm nearly flu'd out right now, but this at least gives me a framework for further information. As we say at Flu Wiki, don't panic, prepare.

Wash Away a Bad Taste... With John Facenda

Very much off the beaten path here, but not entirely--it bears mentioning.

Here in Seattle, there's this matter of a football game that's been alternately consuming people's attentions and angering non-sports fans, and the way the Emerald City is responding to its first experience of a Super Bowl represents a unique social commentary in and of itself, and I'll have more to say about this next week, when Super Bowl XL is over.

But before addressing the deeper issues of pain, social justice and the well-lived life, there is the matter of the game itself, and of the sport of pro football.

I don't know about you, but the politics, health, journalism, security, and finance issues that are talked about here make me so numb with disappointment that I wonder if it's real sometimes. I stagger in the face of how far this country is falling, how Orwellian the American landscape is becoming. Everything in life seems to be decaying and losing its magic.

To an extent, this is true of any day and age, and of any young adult who grows into the world and begins to truly see imperfections and limitations for what they are. But then again, the depth of irony and the totality of the contradictions in so many Bump stories and reports are so overwhelming that it's hard not to feel that the bar for absurdity is being lowered by the second.

Pro football is not immune to this trend, and the Super Bowl is, in many ways, the cause of this. I've had my own thoughts about why pro football has become our nation's new sporting pastime--readily available sex (cheerleaders), violence, military analogies, spectacle, TV-friendliness, and Sunday prominence that allows disillusionment with a bad sermon/homily/church structure to be washed away.

But scouring hundreds of articles this past week--in the buildup to the Big Game--I was brought in touch with the best and most accurate reason of all for football's ascendancy: the shrinking American attention span. With a world championship that's decided in just over 3 hours (including the 30-minute halftime show, 2.5 times as long as a normal halftime) instead of a two-week playoff series, it's no wonder America gravitates to football.

But there has been a cost: the sport--on the field, and in its packaging--has become so testosterone-driven and oversized that its finer points and more humble origins (think young men rising from the coal mines of Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania to play in the frozen, mud-caked fields of a more innocent time) have fallen away. The romance that used to belong to pro football and the Super Bowl have vanished in contemporary times, and this loss of innocence--connected to a certain joyful yet spirit-filled and communal approach to this sacred journey called human life--is what's also missing from America's politics, its religion, its culture. A bad taste permeates the American landscape, a foul stench is breathed in every day. Yearnings for the finer pleasures and a more nuanced and richly artistic sensibility are acute and powerful.

Want to satisfy those longings? Want to wash a bad taste out of your mouth, at least for a day?

John Facenda could do that for you.

Football fan or not, the narrations of the "Voice of God" from NFL Films' documentaries of the first XVIII Super Bowls (18 if you're not counting Roman-style) reflect a time when football--even when played poorly--represented high art, cinema verite, passion play, and poignant storytelling. These highlight reels air chronologically beginning tonight at 3am Eastern/Midnight Pacific on ESPN Classic, and air in jumbled order beginning late Saturday night on ESPN2, continuing through Sunday until Super Bowl 40 kicks off.

Want to remove a bad taste? Want to see the only football this weekend that will truly satisfy the soul (and not the commercial-addled fluff-fest that airs live late in the evening on ABC)? Go back to 1967-1984, to NFL Films, and to John Facenda. It's a texture of life that will add beauty to the mosaic of your own experience.

Then go ahead and blow off the live game; you'll have already seen real sport, covered and captured at its best.

The Fallout

Activist sees Alito as wake-up call in fight
Friday, February 03, 2006
BY BRETT LIEBERMAN
Of Our Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - "It's over," Kate Michelman sighed in a tone that did little to hide her feelings about the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Alito and John Roberts' nominations to the court were supposed to lead to pitched battles with filibusters, "nuclear options" and millions spent waging election-style campaigns to win the public's support.

Michelman has been fighting such battles for three decades, first as head of Planned Parenthood of Harrisburg and then as president of NARAL Pro-Choice America for nearly 20 years.

The latest fight ended with little more than a whimper this week, as Democrats and moderate Republicans failed to mount a serious challenge to Alito's confirmation.

"It's just profound disappointment that we've arrived at this moment that the right wing has been dreaming of and planning for and working toward for 25 years," said Michelman, 63.

She said she's angry at conservative Republicans for trying to take away women's reproductive rights, at complacent abortion-rights supporters and at pro-choice lawmakers who didn't fight the nominations hard enough.

"It seems like there is always a trading off of principle for politics," Michelman said.

Michelman said she hopes Alito's confirmation will serve as a wake-up call on abortion, women's rights and privacy rights.

"If anything, I think this will be a moment where people will finally realize that having been complacent over the last few years in the belief that it couldn't happen, it's time," she said.

I wonder how much of the battle was lost because the Dem senators are wealthy white guys who don't "get it."

WMF Trojan with a "bird flu" come-on

This just in from Websense Security Labs.

Malicious Website / Malicious Code:   Trojan Horse / WMF
exploit : Fake Bird Flu Epidemic Email

February 02, 2006

Websense Security Labs has received reports of a Trojan horse that attempts to trick users into visiting a malicious website to run malicious code. Users receive an email with the subject "Attention Bird Flu in England." The body requests users to click on a link to go either of two websites to get more information. The email also claims the government is trying to hide the facts on the flu.

Upon clicking on a link, users are directed to a website which claims that you have been blocked from accessing it. This appears to be another trick by the attacker to make the user believe that the site has either been disabled or shutdown. However, within the HTML, an IFRAME is loaded that uses the recent WMF exploit to run code without user-intervention. The code is a Trojan horse downloader, which connects to another site to download new malicious code. The filename is "expl1.wmf," which downloads and runs "expl1.exe."

In the past, the same sites have been used for phishing, fraud, and distributing malicious code .

The sites are hosted in the .WS and .CC domains and were up and running at the time of this alert.

Email body:

Attention !!! Bird flu in England !!!

UK researchers reported to government that the H5N1 influenza virus was founded in some birds in the UK. Also, 35 yo man infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus hospitalized in UK hospital !

government trying to hide the true from people despite real facts.

All facts you can read here on our website...............

<URL removed>

Site screenshot:

Here is the screenshot of a malicious website running this exploit

If you have already immunized your Windows system against the WMF vulnerability, using a patch from Microsoft Security Advisory MS06-001 or the earlier "temporary patch" from Ilfak Guilfanov's Hex Blog, you shouldn't be vulnerable to this.

If your Windows system is still vulnerable, visit Microsoft Security Advisory MS06-001 soonest and patch your system.

Evil never sleeps.

Butter Stick

The WaPo has a wonderful Tai Shan video up on the front page today. There is no separate URL, so just go to the front page and scroll down. It definitely improved my mood.

Resisting Authority

When Trust in Doctors Erodes, Other Treatments Fill the Void

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: February 3, 2006

A few moments before boarding a plane from Los Angeles to New York in January, Charlene Solomon performed her usual preflight ritual: she chewed a small tablet that contained trace amounts of several herbs, including extracts from daisy and chamomile plants.

Ms. Solomon, 56, said she had no way to know whether the tablet, an herb-based remedy for jet lag, worked as advertised. Researchers have found no evidence that such preparations are effective, and Ms. Solomon knows that most doctors would scoff that she was wasting her money.

Yet she swears by the tablets, as well as other alternative remedies, for reasons she acknowledges are partly psychological.

"I guess I do believe in the power of simply paying attention to your health, which in a way is what I'm doing," said Ms. Solomon, who runs a Web consulting business in Los Angeles. "But I also believe there are simply a lot of unknowns when it comes to staying healthy, and if there's a possibility something will help I'm willing to try it."

Besides, she added, "whatever I'm doing is working, so I'm going to keep doing it."

The most telling evidence of Americans' dissatisfaction with traditional health care is the more than $27 billion they spend annually on alternative and complementary medicine, according to government estimates. In ways large and small, millions of people are taking active steps to venture outside the mainstream, whether by taking the herbal remedy echinacea for a cold or by placing their last hopes for cancer cure in alternative treatment, as did Coretta Scott King, who died this week at an alternative hospice clinic in Mexico.

They do not appear to care that there is little, if any, evidence that many of the therapies work. Nor do they seem to mind that alternative therapy practitioners have a fraction of the training mainstream doctors do or that vitamin and herb makers are as profit-driven as drug makers.

This straying from conventional medicine is often rooted in a sense of disappointment, even betrayal, many patients and experts say. When patients see conventional medicine's inadequacies up close — a misdiagnosis, an intolerable drug, failed surgery, even a dismissive doctor — many find the experience profoundly disillusioning, or at least eye-opening.

Haggles with insurance providers, conflicting findings from medical studies and news reports of drug makers' covering up product side effects all feed their disaffection, to the point where many people begin to question not only the health care system but also the science behind it. Soon, intuition and the personal experience of friends and family may seem as trustworthy as advice from a doctor in diagnosing an illness or judging a treatment.

What this does, of course, is make the snake oil salesmen wealthy. There is also a huge danger here with regard to infectious disease (yes, I'm thinking avian influenza) if people are headed for the naturopathic remedy aisle rather than getting vaccinated. That behavior endangers everybody else.

Teachable Moment

This circulated among all of the flu bloggers yesterday.

U.S. experts expect to be overwhelmed by bird flu
02 Feb 2006 22:53:15 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - U.S. flu experts are resigned to being overwhelmed by an avian flu pandemic, saying hospitals, schools, businesses and the general public are nowhere near ready to cope.

Money, equipment and staff are lacking and few states have even the most basic plans in place for dealing with an epidemic of any disease, let alone the possibly imminent pandemic of H5N1 avian influenza, they told a meeting on Thursday.

While a federal plan has been out for several weeks, it lacks essential details such as guidance on when hospitals should start to turn away all but the sickest patients and when schools should close, the experts complained.

"There is no way at this time that we can even plan for this epidemic," said Dr. Roger Baxter of the University of California San Francisco and associate director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center.

"We could be easily overwhelmed," Baxter told the meeting organized by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"A lot of our facilities are old, with no isolation facilities," Baxter said.

H5N1 avian influenza has swept through flocks across Asia and into Europe, killing or forcing the culling of 200 million birds. It sometimes infects people and has infected 161 documented patients, killing 86 of them.

Experts say the virus is mutating steadily and poses the biggest threat yet for a long-expected global influenza pandemic if it acquires the ability to pass from person to person.

The world has not seen a flu pandemic since 1968, and that one was mild by most measures. The global public health system has crumbled as people enjoyed the respite from disease, experts say.

Now they are scrambling to fix it up, but say it is too big a job to do it quickly.

None of this will come as news to those of you who have been following this story with me for the last year and a half. HHS Secretary Leavitt is doing a 50-state round robin tour to raise awareness, but I don't know how much good it is going to do: people don't want to hear it.

Those of you who are ready to move beyond your adjustment reactions and start to do some planning can take a look at pandemic preparation suggestions at The Flu Wiki. You should begin building a stockpile of food, water and prescription drugs you take which will last you for 8 weeks. This is common sense preparation for any kind of natural disaster. I live on the East Coast and last night took a look at the long range forecast for the coming hurricane season (pandemic or no pandemic, we will have hurricanes.) Yup, there is more than one risk to be prepared for.

Gang of 14 Politics

In yesterday's Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard:

Justice Alito

A Register-Guard Editorial
Published: Wednesday, February 1, 2006

With their votes these Democrats said that even though they opposed Alito, they did not believe his nomination presented "extraordinary circumstances" justifying a filibuster.

Just what kinds of circumstances are extraordinary has not been defined. The standard was devised by 14 senators - Democrats and Republicans - last year to avert an escalation of the partisan war over judicial nominations. The filibuster, which can be ended only by a vote of 60 senators, has become the Democratic minority's last resort in attempts to block judicial nominations. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist had threatened to deploy the "nuclear option" by changing the rules to prevent filibusters. The "gang of 14" averted the confrontation by agreeing to support filibusters only in extraordinary circumstances.

Alito's nomination presented the first big test of the agreement, and it passed. Alito didn't win 60 votes. But a third of the Senate's Democrats saw a crucial distinction: Alito was a nominee they did not support, but they were unwilling to prevent their colleagues from supporting him.

The failure of the Alito filibuster led some to declare the filibuster dead. In fact, it may be more useful than before. Democrats have proved they will allow a vote for a nominee that nearly all of them found objectionable. If and when a filibuster is next employed, the credibility of the minority's claim of extraordinary circumstances will be enhanced.

It's possible that Alito will surprise supporters and detractors alike - justices often display undetected leanings after joining the court, or their judicial philosophies evolve in unexpected directions. Yet the most likely result of Tuesday's vote is that Alito will join the conservative wing of the Supreme Court, providing a crucial fifth vote in many cases. With the substitution of Alito for retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the court's center of gravity will shift to the right.

Denying confirmation to Alito would not have prevented that shift. President Bush promised to appoint conservatives to the bench. If Alito had been rejected, the president would have forwarded another nominee with a similar perspective. Bush could not do otherwise without breaking faith with his supporters.

The filibuster vote showed that many Democratic senators understand that the direction of the court is decided in presidential elections, and that the power of the filibuster should be employed to block only the most disastrous of nominees. Alito's appointment will become part of the record of the president and his party, and if he tips the court's balance in ways people don't like, the remedy is at the ballot box.

I see this differently. The "extraordinary circumstances" agreement is proved to be meaningless and it is not at all clear to me what the Democrats stand for when it comes to judicial nominations.

Devolution

Surveillance Prompts a Suit: Police v. Police
By JIM DWYER

The demonstrators arrived angry, departed furious. The police had herded them into pens. Stopped them from handing out fliers. Threatened them with arrest for standing on public sidewalks. Made notes on which politicians they cheered and which ones they razzed.

Meanwhile, officers from a special unit videotaped their faces, evoking for one demonstrator the unblinking eye of George Orwell's "1984."

"That's Big Brother watching you," the demonstrator, Walter Liddy, said in a deposition.

Mr. Liddy's complaint about police tactics, while hardly novel from a big-city protester, stands out because of his job: He is a New York City police officer. The rallies he attended were organized in the summer of 2004 by his union, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, to protest the pace of contract talks with the city.

Now the officers, through their union, are suing the city, charging that the police procedures at their demonstrations — many of them routinely used at war protests, antipoverty marches and mass bike rides — were so heavy-handed and intimidating that their First Amendment rights were violated.

A lawyer for the city said the police union members were treated no differently than hundreds of thousands of people at other gatherings, with public safety and free speech both protected. The department observes all constitutional requirements, the city maintains.

The lawsuit by the police union brings a distinctive voice to the charged debate over how the city has monitored political protest since Sept. 11. The off-duty officers faced a "constant threat of arrest," Officer Liddy testified, all but echoing the complaint by activists for other causes that the city has effectively "criminalized dissent."

The lawsuit is one of three recent legal actions in which the city has been accused of abuses of power that the plaintiffs say crimped free expression, a charge that officials say is belied by the reality of noisy sidewalks and streets, crammed year-round with parades and rallies.

At the core of all three cases are questions about the expanded powers the police were granted after the 2001 attacks, and how much the department needs to know about the politics of people who are expressing their views.

In 2003, a federal judge eased longstanding and strict limits on surveillance of political activity at the request of lawyers from the city's corporation counsel office, who argued that the Police Department needed broader authority to use such tactics to fight terrorism.

Since then, police officers in disguise have taken part in demonstrations, an approach the Police Department says it used before receiving the expanded powers; other officers have made hundreds of hours of videotapes of people involved in protests and rallies, very few of whom were charged with breaking any law. Neither form of surveillance, the city argues, violates the Constitution.

The three pending cases — two of them brought by civil liberties lawyers and the third by the police union — are the first to demand judicial scrutiny of those tactics.

When the irony gets this thick, there isn't much more I can add.

Same Old

WaPo's Al Kamen checks in Inside the Beltway

More Outings on the Hill

It was said after the famous Tom DeLay - Bob Ney golf outings to Scotland that "golf" had become a four-letter word in Washington. Nonsense. There's a fine "Weekend Get-a-Way" at the elegant Ritz Carlton Naples golf resort in Florida, March 31 to April 2, for some sun and golf with Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.). And it's only $1,500 per PAC and $1,000 per person.

Closer to home -- and much pricier for cocktails at Democratic National Committee headquarters -- is a "Louisiana Seafood Festival" honoring Rep. William J. Jefferson (La.), who, we're reminded, is on the Ways and Means Committee.

Wait a minute. Jefferson? Didn't a former aide plead guilty last month to bribery counts involving an Internet and cable deal in Africa? And wasn't there a certain "Representative A" -- identified by the feds as Jefferson -- who allegedly solicited bribes?

Well, anyway, it's $5,000 if you want to be a patron, $2,500 if you just want to be a host. Wonder who will show.

You'd think these guys would be paying attention. You'd be wrong.

On What Planet?

The Lopsided Bush Health Plan

Published: February 3, 2006

The health care proposals put forth by President Bush in his State of the Union address this week will not make much of a dent in the two main problems plaguing the nation's health care system — the escalating costs and the growing legions of the uninsured. His proposals simply show where he and many conservatives want health care financing to go — toward a system where consumers will be expected to pay more of their care themselves, in the hope that they will therefore use medical services sparingly and shop for them more wisely.

Proponents believe this approach will wring unneeded expenditures out of the system, by lessening the likelihood that people will seek medical help for every minor ailment or by pushing people to visit a doctor's office rather than an expensive emergency room. But many low- and moderate-income people will most likely pass up care that they need until they become desperately sick and then encounter much higher costs down the line.

The president's key proposal calls for expanding the use of tax-free health savings accounts, where consumers who take out a high-deductible insurance policy can invest money in a tax-free savings account for routine medical expenses. The high-deductible policy would cost less than traditional comprehensive coverage, thus making insurance more affordable. Money spent from the savings accounts would escape taxation, thus providing a tax subsidy for all medical purchases.

Mr. Bush wants to make the accounts more attractive by increasing the amount that can be deposited in them and tweaking the tax advantages. The tax-free accounts have the virtue of making it possible for some low-income people and the companies that employ them to afford at least bare-bones insurance. Some coverage is clearly better than no coverage. But the accounts seem unlikely to attract more than a small portion of the 46 million people who lack health insurance.

Unsurprisingly, the accounts favor the healthy and wealthy at the expense of the poor and chronically sick. Those who are relatively well off get a bigger tax break and have more discretionary income to invest in an account and less need to withdraw money from the account, especially if they are healthy. Indeed, some informed estimates suggest that a substantial chunk of investors would never use the money for medical purposes but would instead treat the accounts as another tax-privileged retirement fund, like 401(k)'s.

Many people with low or moderate incomes, by contrast, would find it hard to deposit money in the accounts or allow any deposits to accumulate over the years. So far, the accounts seem to have attracted more interest from banks, which are salivating over the prospect of collecting management fees, and from health plans than they have from consumers, who have been slow to sign up for the accounts or to put money into them.

Let's see: people who already can't afford or aren't eligible for health insurance premiums are supposed to put additional money away to pay for high cost copays and deductibles? Yeah, right. What idiot came up with this?

You and Me and Rain on the Roof

It makes my life more complicated, but I love the sound of rain on my windows, it's "cozy, pull the covers up" kind of news and it makes the world smell good.

Supertramp - It's Raining Again Lyrics

It's raining again
Oh no, my love's at an end.
Oh no, it's raining again
and you know it's hard to pretend.
Oh no, it's raining again
Too bad I'm losing a friend.
Oh no, it's raining again
Oh will my heart ever mend.
Oh no, it's raining again
You're old enough some people say
To read the signs and walk away
It's only time that heals the pain
And makes the sun come out again
It's raining again
Oh no, my love's at an end.
Oh no, it's raining again
Too bad I'm losing a friend.
C'mon you little fighter
No need to get uptighter
C'mon you little fighter
And get back up again
Oh get back up again
Fill your heart again...

When you get a little older, you realize that shedding bad relationships is a gift.

For Football Sunday

Here's some finger food for Superbowl eating. This is actually good for you, in contrast to the junk most people will be consuming this weekend.

Southwestern Stuffed Peppers

2 cups vegetable broth
1 tablespoon butter
1 cup white rice
2 long mild chile peppers, red or green, cubanelle Italian peppers may be substituted
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, 1 turn of the pan
1 small onion, chopped

1 cup mild or medium prepared taco sauce
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro leaves or flat leaf parsley, for garnish
2 scallions, thinly sliced, for garnish
I thinly sliced jalapeno, for garnish

Preheat a grill pan over high heat.

Bring 2 cups vegetable broth and butter to a boil in a small covered pot. Add rice, reduce heat to low and cook 18 to 20 minutes, or until rice is tender and liquid is absorbed.

Split peppers lengthwise and remove seeds, leaving stems in tact. Grill peppers on hot grill pan for 3 to 5 minutes on each side. Remove from grill and let cool enough to handle.

To a medium skillet over moderate heat, add 1 tablespoon oil and onion. Saute onion 2 or 3 minutes. Add cooked rice to the pan and stir in taco sauce. Season rice with salt and pepper.

Load up pepper halves with seasoned rice. Top rice filled peppers with jalapeno, chopped cilantro or parsley and scallions.

This is also a fun first course for a Southwestern style dinner party for four.

Gifts from the Sea

BACON-WRAPPED SALMON WITH WILTED SPINACH

4 (5- to 6-oz) center-cut pieces skinless salmon fillet (about 1 1/2 inches thick)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
4 teaspoons whole-grain or coarse-grain Dijon mustard
4 bacon slices
2/3 cup sliced shallots (2 large)
2 tablespoons olive oil
10 oz baby spinach (16 cups packed), rinsed but not dried

Special equipment: 4 (10- to 12-inch) metal skewers

Preheat broiler and put broiler pan under broiler so that its rack is about 4 inches from heat.

Pat fish dry and sprinkle with salt and pepper, then spread curved sides with mustard. Lay 1 bacon slice lengthwise along top of each fillet, tucking ends of bacon under fillet (ends will not meet). Thread 1 skewer through length of each fillet, entering and exiting fish through bacon to secure it.

Arrange fish, bacon sides down, on preheated rack of broiler pan and broil 3 minutes, then turn over and broil until fish is just cooked through and bacon is crisp, 3 to 4 minutes more.

While salmon broils, cook shallots in oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until beginning to brown, 3 to 5 minutes. Add spinach and cook, covered, stirring occasionally, until spinach is just wilted, 1 to 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve salmon with spinach.

Makes 4 servings. This is very easy to cut down for one or two and is a pleasant variation on plain broiled salmon. I would like cous cous on the side with this. This is dinner in ten minutes.

Updating a Blast from the Past

This is the kind of curry that was made by home cooks back in the '50's and '60's, before the passion for authentic ethnic cooking (and the little ethnic markets with the goods) sprang up all over the country. It's still good, if not possessing a pedigree from Bangkok or Mumbai. Within minutes of my house, I have my choice of Latino, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Lebanese, African, Greek and Korean markets. Since it is so easy to get the iimported goods (and they are cheap) I usually go with authentic recipes. There is one entire (enormous) aisle of my local mega-grocery devoted to ethnic goods these days, so I rarely need to seek out the little markets, except for truly arcane fixin's. Now, if I could just find a source of decent beef without having to mortgage the house to buy it....

FRAGRANT BEEF CURRY WITH RICE

pounds well-trimmed boneless beef stew meat, cut into 1-inch pieces
3 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 large onions, sliced
6 whole cloves
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
2 cinnamon sticks
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
1 cups whole milk
1/2 cup coconut milk
3 large tomatoes, quartered
3 tablespoons Major Grey chutney
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger
1 1/2 tablespoons curry powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 tablespoons Thai red curry paste

Hot cooked rice

Sprinkle beef with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy large pot over high heat. Working in batches, add beef to pot and brown on all sides, about 7 minutes per batch. Using slotted spoon, transfer to plate.

Heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in same pot over medium-high heat. Add onions; sauté until tender and brown, about 7 minutes and add turmeric. Return beef to pot. Add cloves, garlic, cinnamon sticks, bay leaf and dried red pepper to pot; stir 1 minute. Stir in milks, tomatoes, chutney, lemon juice, ginger, curry powder, red curry paste and 1/2 teaspoon salt and bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until beef is tender, stirring occasionally, about 2 hours.

Uncover; increase heat to medium. Boil stew until juices are slightly thickened, about 10 minutes. Serve over rice.

Makes 6 servings. Serve over basmati or jasmine rice, with lemon and lime pickles on the side and coriander chutney. If you don't have time to make your own naan toast some papadum on the side. I can get the ready to toast ones at the Indian markets, but my mega-grocery has a mix if I want to make them from scratch.

CORIANDER CHUTNEY

8 cups firmly packed fresh coriander sprigs, washed well and spun dry
8 scallion greens, chopped coarse (about 1 cup)
2 2/3 cups sweetened flaked coconut (about 1 package), toasted lightly and cooled
4 fresh jalapeño chilies, seeded and chopped (wear rubber gloves)
6 tablespoons white-wine vinegar
1/4 cup grated peeled fresh gingerroot
1/2 cup vegetable oil

In a food processor coarsely puree chutney ingredients in 2 batches. Chutney may be made 2 days ahead and chilled, covered. Bring chutney to cool room temperature before serving.

Makes about 3 cups.

Warning: this stuff is addictive. I've been known to make breakfast out of leftover rice, naan, chutney and lime pickle. My favorite Indian restaurant IS my favorite Indian restaurant because they have the best coriander chutney in the metropolitan area. That, and the fact that the portions are so huge (and cheap) that I can get three meals out of one dinner.

Never Mind

What the President Meant to Say

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, February 2, 2006; 12:42 PM

The most memorable portion of President Bush's otherwise largely forgettable State of the Union address Tuesday night was his call for America to break its addiction to oil from the Middle East.

But it turns out maybe we should forget that, too.

Kevin G. Hall writes for Knight Ridder Newspapers: "One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

"What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025. . . .

"Asked why the president used the words 'the Middle East' when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that 'every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands.' The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble."

H. Josef Hebert writes for the Associated Press that Bodman and Hubbard "struggled Wednesday in an attempt to explain what Bush had meant by 'replacing' Middle East oil. . . .

"On Wednesday, Hubbard and Bodman acknowledged that Persian Gulf oil may, in fact,not be replaced at all, even if overall oil imports were to drop because of the increased availability of alternative motor fuels."

Just as I suspected, the entire thing was lies.

Making Shft Up

What isolationism?
# In his speech, the president presented a fiction to avoid a debate on tough policy questions.

ANDREW J. BACEVICH, ANDREW J. BACEVICH is a professor of international relations at Boston University and author of "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War."

IN HIS STATE of the Union address on Tuesday, President Bush worked himself into a lather about the dangers of "retreating within our borders." His speech bulged with ominous references to ostensibly resurgent isolationists hankering to "tie our hands" and leave "an assaulted world to fend for itself." Turning inward, the president cautioned, would provide "false comfort" because isolationism inevitably "ends in danger and decline."

But who exactly are these isolationists eager to pull up the drawbridges? What party do they control? What influential journals of opinion do they publish? Who are their leaders? Which foundations bankroll this isolationist cause?

The president provided no such details, and for good reason: They do not exist. Indeed, in present-day American politics, isolationism does not exist. It is a fiction, a fabrication and a smear imported from another era.

Isolationism survives in contemporary American political discourse because it retains utility as a cheap device employed to impose discipline. Think of it as akin to red-baiting — conjuring up bogus fears to enforce conformity in the realm of foreign policy. In that regard, the beleaguered Bush, his standing in public opinion polls tumbling, is by no means the first president to sound the alarm about supposed isolationists subverting American statecraft.

The problem is that scaremongering about nonexistent isolationists preempts a much-needed debate over the principles that ought to inform our behavior as a world power. Call that debate George Washington versus Woodrow Wilson.

After 9/11, Bush the born-again Christian became a born-again Wilsonian, embracing the American mission of spreading liberty around the world. In his State of the Union address, the president affirmed his commitment to that mission, vowing that his administration will "act boldly in freedom's cause" and "seek the end of tyranny in our world."

The Wilsonian project derives from two convictions: that history has an identifiable direction and purpose, and that providence calls upon Americans to fulfill that purpose, which is the triumph of liberty. On Tuesday, the president reaffirmed his adherence to those convictions, declaring, "we accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed."

Responding to these calls from above, Wilsonians tend to neglect mundane details about feasibility. Wilson had no patience with the idea of limits, and neither do his disciples. Thus Bush asserts that there is nothing a righteous America acting in pursuit of a righteous cause cannot accomplish. One will search Bush's speech in vain for any doubts regarding American omnipotence.

It was the Boy in the Bubble who showed up for the SOTU Tuesday night. We in the Reality Based Community see things rather differently.

Screw the Poor

Budget Cuts Pass By a Slim Margin
Poor, Elderly and Students to Feel Pinch

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 2, 2006; Page A01

The House yesterday narrowly approved a contentious budget-cutting package that would save nearly $40 billion over five years by imposing substantial changes on programs including Medicaid, welfare, child support and student lending.

With its presidential signature all but assured, the bill represents the first effort in nearly a decade to try to slow the growth of entitlement programs, one that will be felt by millions of Americans. Women on welfare are likely to face longer hours of work, education or community service to qualify for their checks. Recipients of Medicaid can expect to face higher co-payments and deductibles, especially on expensive prescription drugs and emergency room visits for non-emergency care. More affluent seniors will find it far more difficult to qualify for Medicaid-covered nursing care.

College students could face higher interest rates when their banks get squeezed by the federal government. And some cotton farmers will find support payments nicked. State-led efforts to force deadbeat parents to pay their child support may also have to be curtailed.

Yesterday's 216 to 214 vote, largely along party lines, gave a much-needed boost to President Bush, who is trying to reassert his control over domestic policy despite a series of legislative setbacks and near-record-low approval ratings. Bush had pushed many of the changes since he unveiled his 2006 budget proposal a year ago.

Thirteen Republicans joined 200 Democrats and one independent in voting against the measure. All Republican House members from Maryland and Virginia voted for the measure, while all Democrats voted against it.

Tax cuts for the wealthy, paid for by the poorest and most vulnerable. There should be a price paid for this in November.

Turning Back the Clock

A Court Remade in the Reagan Era's Image

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: February 2, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — Conservative lawyers in the administration of President Ronald Reagan had an ambitious agenda. They wanted the courts to pay closer attention to the Constitution's text, to fashion a more limited role for the federal government, to allow religion to have a larger presence in public life, to use skepticism in reviewing race-based classifications in the law and to stop the expansion of protections for criminal defendants.

Many of those ideas, considered bold, and even extreme, at the time, have entered the legal mainstream and now routinely serve as the basis for decisions of the Supreme Court. That means that the Supreme Court's two newest members, both alumni of the Justice Department in the Reagan years, will, if they follow the agenda they helped create back then, largely be consolidating a victory rather than breaking new ground.

Conservatives have high hopes for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was confirmed on Tuesday, and for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who joined the court in September. But their to-do list has shrunk.

Some large items, notably abortion, remain, though some conservative lawyers have reconciled themselves to trying to limit rather than overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that found a constitutional right to abortion.

Other items have emerged more recently.

"Judicial imposition of same-sex marriage seems to be on the horizon," said Edward Whelan, the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia. "We also oppose efforts to strip God out of the Pledge of Allegiance."

On the whole, though, veterans of the Reagan years expressed satisfaction about what they had achieved even before the two new justices arrived.

Someone is going to have to explain to me what good turning back the clock forty years is supposed to provide. I lived through those years. They weren't all that hot. Legal sexual discrimination and harrassment weren't all that much fun.

Asshole in Chief

The March of the Straw Soldiers

Published: February 2, 2006

President Bush is not giving up the battle over domestic spying. He's fighting it with an army of straw men and a fleet of red herrings.

In his State of the Union address and in a follow-up speech in Nashville yesterday, Mr. Bush threw out a dizzying array of misleading analogies, propaganda slogans and false choices: Congress authorized the president to spy on Americans and knew all about it ... 9/11 could have been prevented by warrantless spying ... you can't fight terrorism and also obey the law ... and Democrats are not just soft on national defense, they actually don't want to beat Al Qaeda.

"Let me put it to you in Texan," Mr. Bush drawled at the Grand Ole Opry House yesterday. "If Al Qaeda is calling into the United States, we want to know."

Yes, and so does every American. But that has nothing to do with Mr. Bush's decision to toss out the Constitution and judicial process by authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a warrant. Let's be clear: the president and his team had the ability to monitor calls by Qaeda operatives into and out of the United States before 9/11 and got even more authority to do it after the attacks. They never needed to resort to extralegal and probably unconstitutional methods.

This is the guts of the matter: it was utterly unecessary. Bush did it because he thinks he can get away with it. This is as naked a power grab as we have seen in the history of the country.

I watched the speech in Nashville yesterday and what really struck me was his contempt for the people of this country. What he said was, in essence, "don't worry your pretty little heads. I know what's good for you." I love being talked down to by a C student.

Accountability

The Senate Intelligence (hmmm) Committee begins hearings today on Bush's (illegal) wiretapping program this morning at 10 Eastern. Watch it on C-Span 1 on cable.

Different Lives

West Virginia Governor Urges Mining Moratorium

By IAN URBINA
Published: February 2, 2006

Just weeks after the death of 14 West Virginia miners, two more mine workers were killed yesterday in separate accidents, prompting Gov. Joe Manchin III to urge all coal companies in the state to cease operations until safety could be reviewed.

"Today has once again been a difficult day for our state's miners, their families and our mining industry," Mr. Manchin said, confirming that there were accidents at three coal mines, two underground mines and one surface mine that resulted in two deaths. "I am calling on the industry to cease production activities immediately and go into a mine safety stand down."

Hours later, the nation's top mine safety regulator, David G. Dye, quickly followed suit, asking for all mines nationally to take an hour next Monday to review their safety procedures.

"This Monday, we urge that extra time be taken, at the beginning of each shift and before the start of any mining activity, to go over the hazards involved with mining and the vital safeguards that need to be taken," Mr. Dye said.

Both of the accidents yesterday occurred shortly after 2:30 p.m., said state officials who would not release the names of the dead.

One miner was killed at an underground mine when a wall support broke loose at Long Branch Energy 18 Tunnel Mine near Danville, in Boone County, said Dirk Fillpot, a spokesman for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

The second death occurred at the Elk Run Black Castle Surface Mine in Drawdy, a mine also in Boone County and owned by Massey Energy. The miner was killed after he sparked a fire while driving a bulldozer that hit a gas line, state and federal officials said.

Lara Ramsburg, a spokeswoman for Governor Manchin, said all mines in the state had been asked to halt production long enough for each shift of workers to leave the mine and to inspect all of their equipment.

The governor said the Mine Health and Safety Administration had agreed to his request for additional safety resources.

"Each mine in the state is currently scheduled to be inspected every three months," he said. "We will immediately begin the process of inspecting every mine in the state and their equipment, conditions, engineering plans, safety procedures and safe work practices."

Mr. Manchin, a Democrat, said he was filing emergency rules last night to hasten putting into effect mine safety measures passed last week by the state's Legislature. The legislation requires miners to wear wireless devices so they can be found more quickly.

While I'm all in favor of safety checks, and they need to be done, the miners won't be paid while the mines shut down for them. The lives of hourly workers are not like those of salaried workers.

UPDATE: Read Jordan Barab on all of those wonderful Bush mine safety appointments.

Why The NYT Is Stupid

A Genius Finds Inspiration in the Music of Another

By ARTHUR I. MILLER
Published: January 31, 2006

Last year, the 100th anniversary of E=mc2 inspired an outburst of symposiums, concerts, essays and merchandise featuring Albert Einstein. This year, the same treatment is being given to another genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born on Jan. 27, 250 years ago.

Einstein, who learned to play the violin as a child and often turned to music in difficult times, was especially fond of the sonatas by Mozart.

There is more to the dovetailing of these anniversaries than one might think.

Einstein once said that while Beethoven created his music, Mozart's "was so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master." Einstein believed much the same of physics, that beyond observations and theory lay the music of the spheres — which, he wrote, revealed a "pre-established harmony" exhibiting stunning symmetries. The laws of nature, such as those of relativity theory, were waiting to be plucked out of the cosmos by someone with a sympathetic ear.

Thus it was less laborious calculation, but "pure thought" to which Einstein attributed his theories.

Einstein was fascinated by Mozart and sensed an affinity between their creative processes, as well as their histories.

As a boy Einstein did poorly in school. Music was an outlet for his emotions. At 5, he began violin lessons but soon found the drills so trying that he threw a chair at his teacher, who ran out of the house in tears. At 13, he discovered Mozart's sonatas.

The result was an almost mystical connection, said Hans Byland, a friend of Einstein's from high school. "When his violin began to sing," Mr. Byland told the biographer Carl Seelig, "the walls of the room seemed to recede — for the first time, Mozart in all his purity appeared before me, bathed in Hellenic beauty with its pure lines, roguishly playful, mightily sublime."

From 1902 to 1909, Einstein was working six days a week at a Swiss patent office and doing physics research — his "mischief" — in his spare time. But he was also nourished by music, particularly Mozart. It was at the core of his creative life.

And just as Mozart's antics shocked his contemporaries, Einstein pursued a notably Bohemian life in his youth. His studied indifference to dress and mane of dark hair, along with his love of music and philosophy, made him seem more poet than scientist.

He played the violin with passion and often performed at musical evenings. He enchanted audiences, particularly women, one of whom gushed that "he had the kind of male beauty that could cause havoc."

He also empathized with Mozart's ability to continue to compose magnificent music even in very difficult and impoverished conditions. In 1905, the year he discovered relativity, Einstein was living in a cramped apartment and dealing with a difficult marriage and money troubles.

That spring he wrote four papers that were destined to change the course of science and nations. His ideas on space and time grew in part from aesthetic discontent. It seemed to him that asymmetries in physics concealed essential beauties of nature; existing theories lacked the "architecture" and "inner unity" he found in the music of Bach and Mozart.

In his struggles with extremely complicated mathematics that led to the general theory of relativity of 1915, Einstein often turned for inspiration to the simple beauty of Mozart's music.

"Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music," recalled his older son, Hans Albert. "That would usually resolve all his difficulties."

Well, as one who labored for 25 years in the vinyard of classical music, let me just say that music presents more problems than it solves. It might have been a nice relief for amateurs like Einstein, but I don't know any musicians who turned to physics for relief from their stresses. This is a silly article.

The Imponderables

Senate Panel Rebuffed on Documents on U.S. Spying

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: February 2, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — The Bush administration is rebuffing requests from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee for its classified legal opinions on President Bush's domestic spying program, setting up a confrontation in advance of a hearing scheduled for next week, administration and Congressional officials said Wednesday.

The Justice Department is balking at the request so far, administration officials said, arguing that the legal opinions would add little to the public debate because the administration has already laid out its legal defense at length in several public settings.

But the legality of the program is known to have produced serious concerns within the Justice Department in 2004, at a time when one of the legal opinions was drafted. Democrats say they want to review the internal opinions to assess how legal thinking on the program evolved and whether lawyers in the department saw any concrete limits to the president's powers in fighting terrorism.

With the committee scheduled to hold the first public hearing on the eavesdropping program on Monday, the Justice Department's stance could provoke another clash between Congress and the executive branch over access to classified internal documents. The administration has already drawn fire from Democrats in the last week for refusing to release internal documents on Hurricane Katrina as well as material related to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Several Democrats and at least one Republican have pressed the Justice Department in recent days to give them access, even in a closed setting, to the internal documents that formed the legal foundation of the surveillance program. But when asked whether the classified legal opinions would be made available to Congress, a senior Justice Department official said Wednesday, "I don't think they're coming out."

The official said the administration's legal arguments had already been aired, most prominently in a 42-page "white paper" issued last month. "Everything that's in those memos was in the white paper," said the official, who, like other administration and Congressional officials, was granted anonymity because classified material was involved.

While the administration has spent much of the last two weeks defending the legality and necessity of the surveillance program, the Judiciary Committee session will be the first Congressional hearing on it. Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who leads the panel, said Wednesday that he had "a lot of questions" the administration had not yet adequately answered about the program's legal rationale.

Mr. Specter would not address the committee's request for the classified legal opinions, except to say, "that's not a closed matter — we're still working on that."

Several Democrats on the panel have made formal requests for the legal opinions, including Senator Dianne Feinstein of California.

In the interview, Mr. Specter said that he wanted a fuller explanation as to how the Justice Department asserts that the eavesdropping operation does not conflict with the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set strict and "exclusive" guidelines for intelligence wiretaps.

Well, I want that fuller explanation, too. And if I don't get it next week, bloody hell is going to get raised with my Senators. How many prosecutions came out of this program and how many convictions? Why weren't warrants requested? You bet I've got some questions for the senators.

Empire and Its Discontents

I don't link to Salon articles very often because my firewall software doesn't like them, but this piece is important enough to sit through the silly ad.

Out of jail, into the Army

Facing an enlistment crisis, the Army is granting "waivers" to an increasingly high percentage of recruits with criminal records -- and trying to hide it.

By Mark Benjamin
Feb. 2, 2006 |

We're transforming our military. The things I look for are the following: morale, retention, and recruitment. And retention is high, recruitment is meeting goals, and people are feeling strong about the mission.

-- George W. Bush, in a Jan. 26 press conference

It was about 10 p.m. on Sept. 1, 2002, when a drug deal was arranged in the parking lot of a mini-mall in Newark, Del. The car with the drugs, driven by a man who would become a recruit for the Delaware Air National Guard, pulled up next to a parked car that was waiting for the exchange. Everything was going smoothly until the cops arrived.

"I parked and walked over to his car and got in and we were talking," the future Air Guardsman later wrote. "He asked if I had any marijuana and I said yes, that I bought some in Wilmington, Del., earlier that day. He said he wanted some." The drug dealer went on to recount in a Jan. 11, 2005, statement written to win admission into the military, "I walked back to my car [and] as soon as I got in my car an officer put his flashlight in the window and arrested me."

Under Air National Guard rules, the dealer had committed a "major offense" that would bar him from military service. Air National Guard recruits, like other members of the military, cannot have drug convictions on their record. But on Feb. 2, 2005, the applicant who had been arrested in the mini-mall was admitted into the Delaware Air National Guard. How? Through the use of a little-known, but increasingly important, escape clause known as a waiver. Waivers, which are generally approved at the Pentagon, allow recruiters to sign up men and women who otherwise would be ineligible for service because of legal convictions, medical problems or other reasons preventing them from meeting minimum standards.

The story of that unnamed Air National Guard recruit (whose name is blacked out in his statement) is based on documents obtained by Salon under the Freedom of Information Act. It illustrates one of the tactics that the military is using in its uphill battle to meet recruiting targets during the Iraq war. The personnel problems are acute. The Air National Guard, for example, missed its recruiting target by 14 percent last year. And the regular Army missed its goal by 8 percent, its largest recruiting shortfall since 1979.

This is where waivers come in. According to statistics provided to Salon by the office of the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, the Army said that 17 percent (21,880 new soldiers) of its 2005 recruits were admitted under waivers. Put another way, more soldiers than are in an entire infantry division entered the Army in 2005 without meeting normal standards. This use of waivers represents a 42 percent increase since the pre-Iraq year of 2000. (All annual figures used in this article are based on the government's fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. So fiscal year 2006 began Oct. 1, 2005.)

In fact, even the already high rate of 17 percent underestimates the use of waivers, as the Pentagon combined the Army's figures with the lower ones for reserve forces to dilute the apparent percentage. Equally significant is the Army's currently liberal use of "moral waivers," loosely defined as criminal offenses. Officially, the Pentagon states that most waivers issued on moral grounds are for minor infractions like traffic tickets. Yet documents obtained by Salon show that many of the offenses are more serious and include drunken driving and domestic abuse.

Last year, 37 percent of the Army's waivers (about 8,000 soldiers) were based on moral grounds. Like waivers as a whole, these waivers are proliferating -- they're 32 percent higher than in the prewar year of 2000. As a result, the odds are going up that the soldiers fighting and taking the casualties in Iraq entered the Army with a criminal record.

"The more of those people you take, the more problems you are going to have and the less effective they are going to be," said Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan and a senior fellow at the progressive Center for American Progress. "This is another way you are lowering your standards to meet your goals." Retired Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, who was the Army's chief intelligence officer from 1981 to 1985, also called the increase in waivers "disturbing."

"Disturbing?" I'd call it blood fucking awful. These are people you would never hire in your shop under any circumstances. They are now staffing our Iraq war.

Same as the Old Boss

Lobbying Changes Divide House GOP
Many Resist Leaders' Proposed Reforms

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 2, 2006; Page A01

Just two weeks after House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) pledged to pass far-reaching changes to the rules of lobbying on Capitol Hill, House Republican members pushed back hard against those proposals yesterday, charging that their leaders are overreacting to a growing corruption scandal.

In a tense, 3 1/2 -hour closed-door session, many Republicans challenged virtually every element of the leadership's proposal, from a blanket ban on privately funded travel to stricter limits on gifts to an end to gym privileges for lawmakers-turned-lobbyists. Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), a veteran conservative who is seeking a top leadership post, scoffed that Congress knows how to do just two things well -- nothing and overreact, according to witnesses.

GOP leaders did withstand a motion to force every leader but Hastert to stand for reelection today. Yet the motion was backed by 85 of the roughly 200 Republicans at the meeting, after leaders predicted that it would attract little support.

"I always figure you have to look in the mirror before you go out in the morning. All we were doing was asking us to look in the mirror," Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Calif.), a co-sponsor of the motion, said after the vote. "The shadow of [Jack] Abramoff is not a mere distraction but a serious problem to address."

House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.), who was to unveil a draft of the full lobbying reform package yesterday, instead announced it was not ready. Dreier did press forward with a change in House rules that bans former members who have become lobbyists from the House floor and the House gym. It also strips lobbyist spouses of current lawmakers of floor and gym privileges.

The rule change passed overwhelmingly, 379 to 50, but not before Democrats -- and some Republicans -- ridiculed it as meaningless. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) suggested that lawmakers compromise and change the rules so that lobbyists must yield to lawmakers who want to use the gym equipment they are on.

"I'm a gym guy; I've never seen anybody lobbied there," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). "I've never seen any nefarious plots hatched on the treadmill."

Among those voting no were some of the House's most powerful and connected members, including Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio), Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.), and former majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

Taken together, yesterday's events suggested that House Republicans are badly divided over how to respond to a scandal that includes the guilty plea of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), the loss of a committee chairmanship by Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), and the cooperation with prosecutors by Abramoff, a once-prominent GOP lobbyist, who pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials.

This is going to be THE story for the year. Mark my words. Even multiple attempts to shut the press down aren't going to make it go away. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That's a fact of sociology and it is going to hang out there in this election year and just beg journalists to use it as a pinata.

From the Sea

Introduce mussels to yourself and learn a new treat. I make dinner out of this with crusty artisanal bread and herbed olive oil. Delicious.

Steamed Mussels with White Wine and Parsley

6 pounds mussels, preferably small cultivated
2 cups dry white wine
3 shallots, finely chopped
1 Turkish bay leaf
2 fresh thyme sprigs or 1/2 teaspoon dried
3 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
1/4 pound unsalted butter (optional) pepper

Wash and sort the mussels, pulling off any pieces of protruding beard, discard any which are open. Combine the wine, shallots, bay leaf, and thyme in a 10-quart pot and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer for about 5 minutes, then add the mussels, cover the pot, and turn the heat up to high. When steam starts to shoot out from under the lid, turn the heat back down to medium. Leave the pot on the heat for 5 minutes more. Leave the lid on the pot and holding down the lid with a kitchen towel. Shake pot to redistribute the mussels. Put the pot back on the heat for 2 minutes more. Take off the lid and check to see if all the mussels have opened. If not, replace the lid and cook for 2 minutes more. Remove the lid, wait a minute for the steam to dissipate, scoop the mussels out of the pot with a large spoon or skimmer, and place them in hot bowls, discarding any unopened mussels. If the liquid in the bottom of the pan is sandy, carefully pour it into a clean saucepan, leaving any sand or grit behind. Add the chopped parsley to the hot broth, whisk in the butter if desired, and season with pepper. Heat the broth until reduces by half and ladle it over the hot mussels. Serve slices of crusty bread at the table. The broth at the bottom of the bowl is worth sopping up for its own sake.

The Early Years

I asked my brother the chef if he remembered the first thing I ever cooked, since it was a pretty stressful event for our mom. Nope, no memory on his part. I have no memory of if it was any good and I haven't repeated the experiment since. I think I was about six and decided that that plum pudding stuff that Dickens wrote about in "A Christmas Carol" sounded pretty good to me. I asked mom if she knew how to make it, and in 1960 in the US you weren't going to get an affirmative answer. I found mom's Better Housekeeping cookbook, you know the one with the red oilcloth pattern cover and the three ring binder format? Yes, I was into the cookbooks almost as soon as I learned to read.

I was too short to reach the sink or the stove, so I remember that a lot of chairs were involved to put this together. Mom felt that her mother had done nothing to teach her cooking and she wasn't going to make that mistake with me, so I was using the hand mixer to blend tollhouse cookie dough almost as soon as I could walk. This is Julia Child's recipe, rather than BH's, but the concept is the same. Yes, it is an elaborate boiled pudding and it is very good. You have to give my long suffering mother points for not shutting this down. At six, I cooked plum pudding.

A Glorious Plum Pudding For Christmas
From chef and author Julia Child
1996

For about 6 cups baked in an 8-cup mold, serving 12 or more

Ingredients
The pudding mixture
# 3 c. (lightly packed down) crumbs from homemade type white bread-a 1/2-lb. loaf, crust on, will do it
# 1 c. each: black raisins, yellow raisins, and currants, chopped
# 1 1/3 c. sugar
# 1/2 tsp. each: cinnamon, mace, and nutmeg--more if needed
# 8 oz. (2 sticks) butter, melted
# 4 large eggs, lightly beaten
# few drops of almond extract
# 1/2 c. bitter orange marmalade
# 1/2 c. rum or bourbon whiskey, heated before serving
# sprigs of holly, optional
# 2 c. Zabaione Sauce

Zabaione Sauce:
(Makes about 2 cups)
# 1 large egg
# 2 egg yolks
# small pinch of salt
# 1/3 c. rum or bourbon whiskey (or Marsala or sherry)
# 1/3 c. dry white French vermouth
# 1/2 c. sugar

Special equipment suggested:
A food processor is useful for making the bread crumbs and chopping the raisins; an 8-cup pudding container, such as a round bottomed metal mixing bowl; a cover for the bowl; a steamer basket or trivet; a roomy soup kettle with tight-fitting cover to hold bowl, cover, and basket.

Timing note:
Like a good fruitcake, a plum pudding develops its full flavor when made at least a week ahead. Count on 6 hours for the initial, almost unattended steaming, and 2 hours to reheat before serving.

Directions

The pudding mixture:
Toss the bread crumbs in a large mixing bowl with the raisins, sugar and spices. Then toss with the melted butter, and finally with the rest of the ingredients, except, of course, the holly and Zabaione Sauce. Taste carefully for seasoning, adding more spices if needed.

To microwave Plum Pudding:
Butter the dish you are cooking the pudding in, then cover the bottom of the dish with a buttered piece of wax paper. Pour in batter. Cover dish with plastic wrap and pierce the plastic with a knife in several places. Cook at "defrost" (low speed) for 30 minutes. If your microwave oven does not have a carousel which turns the dish during cooking, stop the process several times during the cooking and rotate the dish manually. Finally, cook at 5 minutes on "bake" (high speed). Let the pudding set for a few minutes before unmolding. The pudding is ready when it is firm to the touch. The microwaved plum pudding is somewhat paler than its steamed counterpart.

To steam a Plum Pudding:
Use a special pan made for this purpose. You must have a container with a very tight lid on it which will stay sealed throughout the cooking. Steaming--about 6 hours: Pack the pudding mixture into the container; cover with a round of wax paper and the lid. Set the container on the steaming contraption in the kettle, and add enough water to come a third of the way up the sides of the container. cover the kettle tightly; bring to the simmer, and let steam about 6 hours. Warning: check the kettle now and then to be sure the water hasn't boiled off!

When is it done? When it is a dark walnut-brown color and fairly firm to the touch. Curing and storing. Let the pudding cool in its container. Store it in a cool wine cellar, or in the refrigerator. Ahead -of-time note: Pudding will keep nicely for several months. Resteaming: A good 2 hours before you plan to serve, resteam the pudding-it must be quite warm indeed for successful flaming. Unmold onto a hot serving platter and decorate, if you wish, with sprigs of holly.

Flaming and serving:
Pour the hot rum or whiskey around the pudding. Either ignite it in the kitchen and rapidly bring it forth, or flame it at the table. Serve the following Zabaione Sauce separately.

Zabaione Sauce:
Whisk all the ingredients together for 1 minute in a stainless saucepan. Then whisk over moderately low heat for 4 to 5 minutes, until the sauce becomes thick, foamy, and warm to your finger-do not bring it to the simmer and scramble the eggs, but you must heat it enough for it to thicken. Serve warm or cold. Ahead-of-time note: The sauce will remain foamy for 20 to 30 minutes, and if it separates simply beat it briefly over heat. If you wish to reform the sauce, whisk in a stiffly beaten egg white.

At six, I didn't do the zabaione sauce (and it wasn't in the BH cookbook, anyway) but I'm sure that I served this to my family, in whatever shape it was in (I'm not optimistic) and they made nice noises at their crazy daughter.

The recipe is vintage Julia, not six year old me, so you can cook it with confidence.

Morning Quick Bread

As promised:

Cranberry Nut Bread or Muffins

2 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
Juice of an orange (3/4 cup)
2 Tablespoons oil
1 egg, beaten
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup raw cranberries

Sift together all dry ingredients. Combine orange juice and oil. Add 1 well beaten egg. Stir all ingredients together, until flour mixture is just dampened. Add chopped nuts and cranberries. Pour into greased and floured loaf pan (9 1/4 x 5 1/4 inch). Let stand 20 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees for 60-70 minutes. Or make 12 large muffins - 350 degrees for about 20 minutes or until nicely browned.

I'm not much of a breakfast person, but this is my favorite way to start the day, usually with a schmeer of low-fat, spreadable cream cheese to boost the protein. Add a big cup of Sumatran coffee and a glass of cranberry juice and I call it breakfast. The bread will need slicing and freezing by the second day, I freeze the muffins down after the first day after baking in single serving zip-locs, nuke them on a plate, minus the bag, to heat them up.

Leftover Bounty

I love turkey, but don't cook even a bone in breast very often because it is 'way too many leftovers for one person. However, since my brother usually sends me home from holiday dinners with beaucoups leftovers, I get a chance to play around with them. This is one of my favorite ways to enjoy the wreckage of the bird and the side dishes. I'm nuts about cranberries, drink cranberry juice every day and buy cranberry sauce for the sole purpose of eating it on sandwiches. Hmmm, that reminds me, I should give you my recipe for cranberry muffins, a wonderful way to start the day and the first thing I learned to cook in Home Ec in 7th grade.

Here are
Turkey Monte Cristo Sandwiches for 4

Eight 1/2 inch thick slices challah bread or brioche
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
6 ounces smoked Gouda cheese, shredded
12 ounces thinly sliced cooked turkey breast
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup whole berry cranberry sauce or relish
3 large eggs
1/3 cup milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

To make the sandwiches: Lay the bread out on the work surface. Spread one side of each slice with the mustard. Spread half of the cheese on 4 slices of the bread. Cover with half of the turkey and season with salt and pepper to taste. Evenly spread the cranberry on the turkey on the sandwich. Top with the remaining turkey; season with salt and pepper to taste, and cover with the remaining cheese and bread. Press down slightly on each sandwich.
In a lipped plate or dish, whisk together the eggs and milk, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Heat a two burner grill pan, flat side up. Dip and coat each of the sandwiches in the egg mixture and lay in the pan. Cook until golden brown, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer the sandwiches to a baking sheet and bake until the cheese is melted, about 6 to 8 minutes.

Pour me a glass of unsweetened ice tea, toss me a salad of iceberg lettuce, cherry tomatoes and Newman's Own Italian Dressing and I'd say "lunch is served." Yes, I do keep bottled dressing in the door of my fridge, Newman's is about the best. But I never serve it to guests.

The French Response

It's recipe time! Ending my day with a call to Capital Hill definitely means enough politics for one day.

This recipe is a cousin to the Chicken Kiev recipe I gave you last night. It may be a chicken dish, but it is definitely going to bust your Weight Watchers exchanges.

Chicken Cordon Bleu

4 double chicken breasts (about 7-ounces each), skinless and boneless
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 thin slices deli ham
16 thin slices Gruyere or Swiss cheese
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
1/4 cup flour
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 eggs
2 teaspoons water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lay the chicken between 2 pieces of plastic wrap. Using the flat side of a meat mallet, gently pound the chicken to 1/4-inch thickness. Take care not to pound too hard because the meat may tear or create holes. Lay 2 slices of cheese on each breast, followed by 2 slices of ham, and 2 more of cheese; leaving a 1/2-inch margin on all sides to help seal the roll. Tuck in the sides of the breast and roll up tight like a jellyroll. Squeeze the log gently to seal.

Season the flour with salt and pepper; spread out on waxed paper or in a flat dish. Mix the breadcrumbs with thyme, kosher salt, pepper, and oil. The oil will help the crust brown. Beat together the eggs and water, the mixture should be fluid. Lightly dust the chicken with flour, then dip in the egg mixture. Gently coat in the bread crumbs. Carefully transfer the roulades to a baking pan and bake for 20 minutes until browned and cooked through. Cut into pinwheels before serving.

This is a very rich dish, so keep the accompaniments simple: a salad of mixed Italian field greens with poached pear halves and sliced walnuts with a balsamic vinaigrette and egg noodles dressed with lemon butter and paprika. This is a menu I can happily recommend pairing with a Rose' or a dry white Zin.

The Electronic Spine

I just got off the phone with a blogger conference call with Teddy Kennedy. The Dems have finally figured out that they have a left wing noise machine, and that they need to use us. Kennedy's office is taking the lead in getting us hooked up with the Dem caucus in the Senate and making staff available for us.

Senator Kennedy is interested in our questions for Abu Gonzalez in the wiretap hearings that start next week in the Judiciary Committee. If you've got suggestions, the Dems are open (and maybe we can avoid the specter of another Biden filibuster, though I doubt it) so leave them in comments or email me directly. This is techno-democracy in its next level of development, so let's show 'em what we've got. Any of you who are lawyers with experience in the Constitutional questions involved, I would LOVE to hear from you, and Con Law profs (I know you are out there) please contact me so we can set up a Skype call.

Corruption Round Robin

Former U.S. Official in Iraq to Plead Guilty to Corruption

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: February 1, 2006

A former American occupation official in Iraq is expected to plead guilty to bribery, conspiracy, money laundering and other charges in federal court on Thursday for his actions in a scheme to use sexual favors, jewelry and millions of dollars in cash to steer reconstruction work to a corrupt contractor, according to papers filed with the court.

The official, Robert J. Stein Jr., served as a comptroller and funding officer in 2003 and 2004 for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which governed Iraq after the American-led invasion. Four Americans, including Mr. Stein and the contractor, Philip H. Bloom, have been arrested in the case. Mr. Stein's plea, apparently with the understanding that he will cooperate with prosecutors, is the first to be made public.

The court papers depict a sordid exercise in greed and corruption that was spread much more widely that previously known. Including the four people already arrested, the papers indicate that a minimum of three other still unnamed co-conspirators also played a role in the scheme. In order to give more than $8 million in contracts and millions more in stolen cash to Mr. Bloom, the papers say, the conspirators accepted bribes, valuable goods and other favors.

Two of the Americans already arrested, Lt. Col. Debra Harrison and Lt. Col. Michael Wheeler, are senior Army reserve officers. The court papers indicate that the remaining unnamed co-conspirators are also Army reserve officers, for a total of at least five officers involved. But the papers suggest that others, identified only by opaque designations like "person H," may also have been involved in one way or another.

The goods included first-class plane tickets, watches and other jewelry, alcohol and cigars, the court papers say. They add that Mr. Bloom kept a villa in Baghdad where women dispensed "sexual favors" in exchange for official actions in his favor or for refraining from exposing the scheme.

Mr. Stein is accused of stealing outright at least $2 million in cash of American taxpayer money and Iraqi money that had been set aside for the reconstruction of Iraq by the American occupation. He also accepted more than $1 million in bribes and at least $600,000 of additional goods and cash that were the property of the C.P.A., the papers say.

More consistency of Bushco corruption and incompetence.

Time to Plan

Case of bird flu adds to Iraq's woes
Tue, January 31, 2006
By HELEN BRANSWELL, CP

It appears H5N1 avian influenza has spread to war-torn Iraq, a most unwelcome twist on the evolving path of this worrisome virus.

A U.S. military laboratory in Cairo confirmed a 15-year-old girl from Kurdistan in northern Iraq, who died on Jan. 17, was infected with H5N1 avian flu, Iraqi authorities announced yesterday. Earlier testing by the Iraqi national laboratory and another in Jordan concluded she did not have the virus.

H5N1 is also suspected as the cause of death for the girl's 50-year-old uncle, who became ill after nursing the dying teenager. He died Friday.

They would be the first human cases recorded in the Middle East. They represent not merely a spread of the virus's geographic range, but a logistical nightmare in the face of violence and political instability for the World Health Organization and sister UN agency the Food and Agriculture Organization, which would have a lead position for any response to outbreaks in poultry.

Testing on samples from both is being conducted at Britain's National Institute for Medical Research, a collaborating laboratory for the WHO.

"We're classifying this as a preliminary positive case, which is what we're using to describe the cases in Turkey, so that we can react as if it is a confirmed H5N1 case," WHO spokesperson Maria Cheng said from Geneva.

There is a possibility this is a case of limited human-to-human spread of the virus, Cheng acknowledged.

We are headed toward WHO stage 4 declaration. If you haven't yet started stockpiling supplies, I suggest that the time to start is now. Once we are at Stage 4, imported goods will begin to get scarce.

UPDATE: Here are the WHO pandemic stages:

INTERPANDEMIC PERIOD

Phase 1.
No new influenza virus subtypes have been detected in humans. An influenza virus subtype that has caused human infection may be present in animals. If present in animals, the subnational levels. risk a of human infection or disease is considered to be low.

Phase 2.
No new influenza virus subtypes have been detected. However, a circulating animal influenza virus subtype poses a substantial risk a of human disease.

PANDEMIC ALERT PERIOD
Phase 3.
Human infection(s) with a new subtype, but no human-to-human spread, or at most rare instances of spread subtype and early detection, notification to a close contact.

Phase 4.
Small cluster(s) with limited human-to-human transmission but spread is highly localized, suggesting that the virus is not well adapted to humans.

Phase 5.
Larger cluster(s) but human-to-human spread still localized, suggesting that the virus is becoming increasingly better adapted to humans, but may not yet be fully transmissible (substantial pandemic risk).

PANDEMIC PERIOD
Phase 6.
Pandemic: increased and sustained transmission in general population

Speaking Truth to Power

State of the Bubble?

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, February 1, 2006; 12:51 PM

President Bush's State of the Union address last night was so lacking in novelty or details that it has served as a Rorschach test of sorts for the media.

What's the lead? What does it all mean? There are lots of different answers to that question this morning.

I for one was most interested in whether the speech would originate from within Bush's protective bubble -- where he doesn't have to face ugly realities -- or from without.

Some analysts this morning said they heard Bush publicly acknowledge the country's anxiety regarding his leadership.

But if he did that at all, it was in the vaguest of ways. There was no specific recognition of the difficult problems that have arisen under his leadership.

His glowing descriptions of progress in Iraq are flatly contradicted by the reality on the ground. He spoke of changing the world without acknowledging all the hits our moral standing has taken under his watch. He barely mentioned Hurricane Katrina, and certainly expressed no regrets over his response. He didn't say a word about the botched Medicare prescription drug rollout. And he offered no ideas about clamping down on lobbying abuses.

And most significantly, he showed no sign of having genuinely listened to the growing chorus of critical voices, either in Congress or beyond.

Rather than assertively engage those who disagree with him, he cavalierly dismissed them as head-in-the-sand isolationists, retreating defeatists and protectionists doomsayers.

Not exactly an olive branch.

It's called "lying" Dan. Let's call it what it is.

More Orwell

Bush is giving a speech at the Grand Ole Opry. In what alternative universe is "the world looking to us for leadership for peace?" The rest of the fucking world is all too aware of the fact that we're blowing people up in Iraq, George, you moron. Every time you open your mouth you make us a laughingstock.

Same Old

Bush Echoes Presidents Past in Empty Talk of Economics

By Steven Pearlstein

Wednesday, February 1, 2006; Page D01

In his State of the Union speech last night, President Bush single-handedly revived the spirit of bipartisanship that has been so sorely lacking in Washington for the past decade, at least in terms of economic policy.

We've known for the past several years that the Democrats have nothing original, credible or even mildly intellectually intriguing to say about trade and immigration, the health care crisis, the energy crisis, the income inequality crisis, the education crisis, the global warming crisis, the looming entitlement crisis and the ballooning federal budget deficit.

But now it's official: the Republicans have nothing original, credible or even mildly intellectually intriguing to say about them, either.

It's unanimous.

Listening to the president's speech, in fact, was a bit like stepping into a time machine.

The we-can-meet-this-challenge rhetoric about energy independence, cars running on alternative energy and ending our addiction to Mideast Oil -- that could have come straight from the mouth of Jimmy Carter. The only thing missing was the sweater.

The bit about cutting the deficit in half while renewing individual tax cuts and the research-and-development tax credit -- that was pure Ronald Reagan. Ditto blaming malpractice suits for rising health care costs.

You have to go back only as far as Bill Clinton to find the last blue ribbon commission on entitlement reform.

And you know you're getting old when you can't even count the number of presidents and would-be presidents who have used that tired old line about how, "with open markets and a level playing field, no one can out-produce or out-compete the American worker." Wasn't that a Hubert Humphrey line?

We saw final confirmation of just how devoid the president was of fresh material when he trotted out the ol' line-item veto. Maybe now that he's packed the Supreme Court with a couple of government men, he thinks he can breathe constitutional life back into that dead policy horse.

I read the transcript this morning, it was as I predicted: yet another speech divorced from reality.

Mal-day

Kama Sutra worm crashes malware chart
The return of the 'trash your PC' virus

By John Leyden
Published Wednesday 1st February 2006 14:13 GMT

Virus authors were hard at work last month creating 2,312 new malware variants - a third higher than December, according to UK-based security firm Sophos. Most of these attacks were financially motivated and designed to steal sensitive information from compromised PCs.

But it was the return of an old-school "trash your Windows PC" worm that captured the most headlines. The Kama Sutra worm (AKA Nyxem-D or Blackworm) first appeared on 18 January posing as an email message offering a variety of salacious content. Users daft enough to fall for this ruse wind up with an infected machine and disabled security software. Worse still, Nyxem-D is also programmed to overwrite files on Friday 3 February.

According to SoftScan, a Scandinavian email filtering firm, levels of infection in the UK and the majority of Europe are very low. The largest number of infections by far is in India, it reports.

Even so Nyxem-D appears at number four in Sophos's chart. Sober-Z remains January's most frequently encountered virus but since the worm is programmed to stop spreading after 6 January it ought to drop off the radar completely in February even though it's doubtless numerous machines will remain infected. Sober-Z stopped spreading in the first week of January but still racked up almost 45 per cent of malware reported to Sophos last month, a stat that illustrates the potency of the attack it unleashed. Sophos reckons that 1.4 per cent or one in 70 emails was viral in January.

Malware laced with offers of smut, as used by the Kama Sutra worm, is a common trick. Another more sophisticated type of attack appeared last month. The Brepibot virus posed as a request for the recipient to check the article and photo for editorial content before it is used in a high profile publication such as the Guardian's Business section. The malware was spammed out with the UK in particular and the US, to a lesser extent, bearing the brunt of the assault, according to SoftScan.

January saw many variants of the Feebs worm emerging. Although none of them got anywhere near the prevalence of the Kama Sutra worm and the like, Feebs was technically sophisticated. Among other features (rootkit, P2P propagation, reporting via ICQ, on-the-fly injection into emails sent by the infected user), the worm uses Javascript to spread, according to an analysis by security appliance firm Fortinet. The worm lies in an encoded string of a Javascript embedded into an .hta document. Whenever run, the Javascript decrypts the worm body, and executes it. The .hta document is then regenerated and bulk mailed to potential victims.

Update your AV signatures RIGHT NOW.

Wonkishness

Via The Agonist:

GAO: Brass botched storm response
Homeland Security, FEMA chiefs failed to lead, inquiry finds.

By Seth Borenstein
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Wednesday, February 01, 2006

WASHINGTON — Despite ample warning of an impending catastrophe, the federal government bungled its response to Hurricane Katrina because of a void of leadership and confusion about who was in charge, an independent investigation ordered by Congress has found.

The Government Accountability Office, the investigatory arm of Congress, in a preliminary report to be released today, faulted Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and his designee, former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown, for not filling a crucial "leadership role during Hurricane Katrina."

That void "serves to underscore the immaturity of and weaknesses relating to the current national response framework," according to a copy of the report obtained Tuesday evening by Knight Ridder.

Although the report says little more than was apparent in the hours after the hurricane damaged or destroyed long swaths of the coastline, its conclusion is striking for its bluntness.

"No one was designated in advance to lead the overall federal response in anticipation of the event despite clear warnings from the National Hurricane Center," GAO Comptroller General David Walker's prepared remarks say.

Walker's statement says other agencies got ready in advance, including the military and the post office, but not FEMA, the nation's principal disaster relief agency.

Another major part of the problem was a late and incomplete activation of the national response plan and a lack of understanding of it, the GAO found.

The report says Chertoff "did not designate the storm as a catastrophic event, which would have triggered additional provisions of the National Response Plan, calling for a more proactive response. As a result, the federal posture generally was to wait for the affected states to request assistance."

I'm listening to the Senate committee hearing on Katrina right now. I say listening because of the peculiar nature of the way I blog. My work station in literally in a closet on the main floor of my condo and my TV is on the opposite wall, so I have my back to it. The upshot is that I know all of voices of the Senators but not their faces. It probably says something wonkishly bad about me that I can identify the entire Senate by voice.

1984

Experts ignored, suppressed by Bush
By Molly Ivins

In a happy harmonic convergence, Groundhog Day falls only two days after the State of the Union Address this year. Some days, I’d feel better with Punxsutawney Phil in the Oval Office — at least he doesn’t lie about the weather. The Bush administration is now trying to stop NASA’s top climate scientist from speaking out on the need for prompt action on global warming. As far as we know, the groundhog isn’t suppressing anyone, he just calls it as he sees it.

James E. Hansen, longtime head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, gave a speech last month calling for immediate reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases because global warming is so pressing. He says since then NASA has reviewed his coming lectures, papers, postings and requests for interviews from journalists. “They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public,” said Hansen. The top P.R. guy denies it, saying, “It’s about coordination.”

Yep, it sure is about coordination. According to the Environmental Working Group’s Website, there’s a coordinated, multimillion-dollar campaign funded by polluters to convince us that global warming doesn’t exist — or if it exists, it’s not serious, or if it’s serious, it’s not an immediate threat. And so we get into another one of those weird debates where something as clear as elementary addition suddenly becomes, “Well, some say ... but then, other’s say.”

The problem is not just keeping track of everything the Bushies are up to, but trying to evaluate the damage. Some damage is harder to see than others — and I offer two cases of suppression. First, there’s a congressionally mandated report on outsourcing high-tech jobs. It was supposed to be released before the ’04 election but wasn’t, because it was politically embarrassing. More than a year later, they are still stonewalling, ignoring the federal law that ordered the study done and be released before November 2004.

Second case: According to the Project on Government Oversight, the Congressional Research Service has warned a senior analyst to avoid describing his research findings. The analyst, whose job it is to describe research findings of the nonpartisan service, specializes in separation-of-power issues, but was criticized over a report and comments he made concerning the plight of national security whistleblowers.

“We are stunned that the Congress is offended to hear the truth about its failure to help whistleblowers and are even punishing their own seasoned researchers for talking about it,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the project.

What we have here are two small examples of an entire climate of secrecy and fear being created by this administration. As government officials keep more and more information from us, they are in turn increasingly less accountable for what they do, since we have no idea they’re doing it.

The New York Times broke a sad story about a duplicitous Bush policy that helped drive the elected president of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, out of his country. Haiti has since descended into abysmal chaos. Perhaps no one

person or policy should be blamed for Haiti’s long-developing problems, but it has sunk to a new low after its one noble grasp at real democracy, which Bush claims to support. How sad. The worst damage is always the small, starving children.

What, exactly, has Bush ever done to "reduce our dependence on foreign oil?" This is more Orwell.

The New Reality

Police remove Sheehan from Bush speech

By LAURIE KELLMAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- Cindy Sheehan finally got her invitation to see President Bush again, but before she set eyes on him at the State of the Union address, Capitol Police removed her from the gallery overlooking the House chamber.

The offense: her shirt, bearing an anti-war message and other "unlawful conduct," police said.

Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq who reinvigorated the anti-war movement, was handcuffed and charged with unlawful conduct, according to Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider. The charge was a misdemeanor and Sheehan was being released on her own recognizance, Schneider said.

Schneider said Sheehan had worn a T-shirt with an anti-war slogan to Tuesday night's speech and covered it up until she took her seat. Police warned her that such displays were not allowed in the House chamber, but she did not respond, the spokeswoman said.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., gave Sheehan her only ticket earlier in the day - Gallery 5, seat 7, row A - while Sheehan was attending an "alternative state of the union" news conference by CODEPINK, a group pushing for an end to the Iraq war.

"I'm proud that Cindy's my guest tonight," Woolsey said in an interview before the speech. "She has made a difference in the debate to bring our troops home from Iraq."

Excuse me, when was the First Amendment repealed? I don't seem to have gotten that press release. Since when is dissent "unlawful conduct?:

The Listener

No, I didn't watch the SOTU. In fact, by 8:30 last night, I had to turn the TV off and just spend some time in silence. Here's where you find my affection for the Cistercians. I have to start and end most days in complete silence. I just shut down, overwhelmed by input if I don't. I need to clear the system, and silence is the way I do that.

Sometimes you need to listen to something deeper.

The Real State of the Nation

Bush Calls for Cuts in Oil Reliance
# He says dependence on the Middle East should become 'a thing of the past.' His promotion of different fuels is part of a renewed domestic agenda.

By Doyle McManus, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — President Bush warned Tuesday that the United States had become "addicted to oil," much of it coming from unstable parts of the world, and called for a 20-year national effort to develop new sources of energy to replace imported fuel.

In his annual State of the Union message, this one at the beginning of the sixth year of his presidency, Bush delivered an unapologetic defense of his national security policies, from the continuing war in Iraq to increased electronic surveillance of communications at home.

The president also proposed a flurry of domestic initiatives — on energy, education and healthcare — that he said would help keep the United States competitive in the global economy.

White House aides said Bush was mindful that his standing had sagged in public opinion surveys largely because of public disquiet about the economy, healthcare and education — issues on which most voters say they trust Democrats more than they trust the president.

In a year when Republicans in Congress face a tough campaign to maintain their control of both houses, the president sought to assure voters that he understood what one aide called their "angst."

"It's … unsettling for the American people to grapple with the rising cost of energy, the rising cost of healthcare," White House counselor Dan Bartlett told reporters shortly before the speech. "The dynamic aspect of our economy, where jobs are constantly being created and lost … the rising competition of global players on the economic scene, such as China and India, all give a level of angst."

In their official responses, Democrats accused Bush of "poor choices and bad management," and they called on voters to replace the Republican congressional leadership this fall.

China-U.S. Trade Imbalance Surges

According to a Chinese report, that country's trade surplus with the United States climbed more than 43 percent last year; U.S. government figures may set the final tally even higher. Stephen Taub, CFO.com January 12, 2006

The global love affair with goods made in low-cost China has resulted in a tripling of that country's trade surplus with the rest of the world, to a record $102 billion, according to published accounts of a Chinese government report.

China reported total foreign trade exceeding $1.4 billion, according to The New York Times, which would rank it third in foreign trade, after the United States and Germany and ahead of Japan.

We're a debtor nation with a huge foreign debt, and what, if anything, W is going to do to get us out of that situation is unknown. All he does is assert. I have yet to see a plan.

Food For The Spirit

I've been studying the various arguments around lobster ravioli. In my book, the Mass. lobstermen win. This is a precious recipe.

Ravioli Dough (make in pasta machine on medium or you can just buy it)
1 lb. lobster meat 1/4 lb. fresh mushrooms
2 1/2 tsp. butter 1 tsp. mint shallots
2 cups light cream 2 1/2 tsp. flour
2 or 3 tsp. quality light sherry salt & ground pepper to taste

Boil lobsters, remove meat. Clean & mince lobster meat. Wash & mince mushrooms.

In saute pan, soften butter, add shallots. Cook 2 to 3 minutes until translucent. Add lobster meat and mushrooms and cook for another minute. Slowly sprinkle flour over mix, stirring constantly. Add sherry, stirring constantly. (If you want it a little pinker, shake in a little paprika.) Add light cream and reduce for 2 to 3 minutes on low. The mixture should be on the medium to thick side. Remove from the heat and spread it out on a flat pan to cool.

Roll out 2 ravioli pasta sheets. Mark out 2 1/4" x 2 1/4" squares. Add 3/4 tsp. of mixture into the marked square. Lay the second sheet on top and use a ravioli tool to roll and seal. Transfer onto a sheet pan that has been lined with wax paper & sprinkle with corn meal (this helps prevent sticking).

Sauce: 2 cups light cream 2 tsp. butter
2 tsp. flour 1/2 oz. brandy
1/4 tsp. paprika salt & pepper to taste

Melt butter. Add flour, brandy, light cream & paprika. Salt & pepper to taste. Keep warm in a double boiler.

Cook Ravioli: 3 quart pot pinch of salt
2 1/2 quarts water dash of oil

Bring water, salt & oil to a boil. Add raviolis quickly, but 1 at a time. Keep separated with a wooden spoon. Boil 3 to 5 minutes (preference). Remove with slotted spoon or skimmer.

Serve on a flat plate or flat soup bowl with cream sauce on the bottom. Place 4 or 5 raviolis on sauce and then drizzle with more sauce. Sprinkle with parsley.

The hard part is deciding whom you would like to invite to this dinner. Lobster is luxury food, there is no getting around that. Do you invite your best friends or is this food for the the boss?

You'll have to do that calculus yourself and work it out in comments. The food is very, very good, and I vote for inviting your boss on one night and your friends a week later.