Broadband Reaches Out

Don't Tax Municipal Wi-Fi
Could a little-noticed clause in the U.S. budget lead to taxes on city-run wireless broadband access?

Ron Sege

President Bush has established the important goal of achieving universal broadband availability for all Americans by 2007. Yet, in a little-noticed portion of its budget, the Administration urges Congress to enact a new tax, euphemistically described as a "user fee" on unauctioned spectrum licenses that give holders the right to transmit radio signals. It is hard to discern precisely what is intended by this obscure proposal, but within 24 hours of its release the White House said it had no intention of taxing Wi-Fi services that operate in unlicensed spectrum.

But with the federal government facing huge budget deficits, we remain concerned that the Administration and Congress will be tempted to tax something that today is made available for free: namely, the spectrum in which Wi-Fi devices operate. (Don't forget, the transition to digital television has been driven largely by the federal government's desire to free up spectrum used by TV broadcasters so it can be auctioned to the highest bidder.) Short of a law banning municipal broadband networks, it's hard to imagine something so inimical to competition and achieving universal access for all Americans.

FALLING BEHIND. Unlicensed spectrum has spawned investment and innovation. Taxes kill investment and innovation. In fact, even a nominal tax on Wi-Fi would eviscerate the business models of new broadband entrants. With wireless technology, we are helping to stimulate the torrid pace of broadband deployment (there are 300 systems to date in the U.S, with 5 million homes projected to be reached by the end of the year).

This growth in large part is due to high volume shipments of Wi-Fi radios for a broad range of applications, which in turn are possible because the spectrum is free. So, instead of promoting broadband, taxing and restricting who can use unlicensed spectrum will choke it and hurt economic growth. As a nation, we can't afford that.

In just the past few years, the U.S. has lost its broadband leadership position. Having been first in the world in the 1990s and fourth in 2001, the U.S. has fallen to 16th among industrialized nations in broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, according to the International Telecommunication Union. In fact, only 30% of U.S. households subscribe to broadband services, a reflection of high prices, too few choices, and unavailability of attractive services.

FIRST IN WI-FI A bright spot for the U.S. is in the deployment of broadband Wi-Fi access points, where it continues to rank first, in part as a result of the emergence of municipal systems. Many countries that are outpacing us in broadband deployment, including Canada, Japan, and South Korea, have successfully combined municipal systems with privately deployed networks to bring high-speed broadband to their citizens.

Municipal broadband networks offer the promise of increased economic development and jobs, enhanced market competition, improved delivery of e-government services, and enhanced capabilities by first responders, such as police and firefighters.

For example, Corpus Christi, Tex., is today reading 73 gas meters per second over the city's Wi-Fi mesh network (in computer speak, a mesh network is one in which the wireless "nodes" or radios communicate with each other, a few of which have direct connections with the Internet). St Cloud, Fla., is attracting businesses and residents to its city outside of Orlando with a citywide Wi-Fi network. Anaheim, Calif., has partnered with a private service provider to bring the benefits of citywide wireless broadband to homes and businesses at no cost to taxpayers.

LAST DOWN, FIRST UP. After Katrina blew through the Gulf Region, new telecommunications options, such as wireless broadband, were among the fastest to rebuild vital services used by first responders and citizens in the affected regions. Wi-Fi mesh technology will stay up the longest in the event of catastrophe -- be it a tornado, hurricane, or terrorist attack -- and can be brought back up first to aid in the rescue effort. Wi-Fi mesh and other new technologies are far superior to the old way of communicating via wires.

Municipal wi-fi has the possibility of ridding us of the broadband divide and Bushco is ready to throttle it in its crib. Typical of the anti populist neocons.

Federalism Redux

Governors Challenge Cuts In National Guard Funds

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 26, 2006

The winter meeting of the National Governors Association opened here yesterday with state executives determined to challenge Bush administration officials over proposed cuts in Pentagon funding for the National Guard and their potential impact on homeland security.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will meet privately with the governors tomorrow amid escalating concerns that the states have been shortchanged by the long Guard deployments in Iraq and by what governors see as disproportionate cuts in Guard funding.

Earlier this month, the governors signaled their displeasure with the Pentagon's new budget -- which called for a reduction in National Guard troop strength -- by sending a letter of protest. That brought a quick decision to rescind the proposed cut. But governors said they still have many questions about what the Pentagon is planning.

Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne (R), who met earlier with Rumsfeld and encouraged him to speak with all the governors at the NGA meeting, said states may not be able to respond adequately to natural disasters or terrorist attacks at home if the equipment shipped to Iraq with National Guard units is not replenished and if other Guard funding is reduced. "This is a formula for disaster," he said in an interview yesterday.

Governors have complained about the impact of long Guard deployments in Iraq, but the issue has become more acute with the administration's budget. The governors will meet with President Bush tomorrow at the White House, but it is not known whether they will raise the Guard issue with him or save it for Rumsfeld.

The controversy over the National Guard is one of several big issues on the agenda for the four-day meeting. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt sounded a grim call to arms to the states yesterday, warning that the nation is "overdue and unprepared" for a pandemic.

Leavitt also told the governors that, because of the potential scope of a pandemic, state and local governments should not assume that the federal government will have the resources to help every affected locality. "The message that has to be sounded by the country is this: Any community that fails to prepare on the assumption that at some point the federal government can come in to the rescue at the last moment does not acknowledge the complexity of this situation and would be sadly wrong," he said.

Leavitt also offered a sobering message about the impact of the health care crisis in America. The combination of spiraling costs for health care and the absence of health insurance for increasing numbers of Americans is gobbling up a growing percentage of the nation's gross domestic product, he said. Left unchecked, those trends will cost the United States its leadership role in the global economy.

We've known these problems existed for a while, it's just now that Bush is a lame duck that many of the R's are willing to challenge him this openly. We need the National Guard for many things, as the nation saw during Katrina. Likewise, our public health infrastructure has crumbled since the 1980's; it's in no condition to handle the normal health problems that we face. As Melanie regularly reminds us, what do you think it will do during a real crisis?

Of course, the suggestion we get is to shift the burden to the state and local governments, which means an increase of sales or property taxes (both of course are very regressive). That is not a solution that is viable for the majority of citizens, but since when has this group in charge been worried about the majority?

North Meets South

It might be a Minnesota thing, but I want to share it with you. I grew up on Minnesota Wild Rice and love to find new ways to serve it. My uncle was one of the few Caucasians in the state with a license to collect, which he did the same way the Ojibway of Northern Minnesota did: bending the stalks of grass over the gunwhale of a canoe and beating the hulls off the stalks into a basket. Wild rice is really a water grass rather than rice, but the nutty, smoky flavor was part of my growing up and I don't mind going to the extra work it takes to make it. It is great in soup and a superior side dish with simple, earthy meat dishes. You can get it kosher for Passover, if that's an issue.

This wild rice salad teams the nutty, slightly sweet flavor of the rice with a vinaigrette and the combination is good eating. Northern Minnesota meets South Carolina in this recipe.

2 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup wild rice
1 (6-ounce) jar marinated artichoke hearts, drained and halved, reserve marinade
1 (6-ounce) can green peas
1/3 cup coarsely chopped green bell pepper
3 green onions, chopped, white and green parts
1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup toasted slivered almonds, for garnish

Dressing:
1 1/3 cups canola oil
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon celery seed
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1 clove garlic, minced

In a 1-quart pot with a lid, bring 2 cups water and the salt to a boil. Add the rice and stir well. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Drain excess liquid from the rice.

Meanwhile, combine all the dressing ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid and shake well. Refrigerate until ready to use.

In a large bowl, combine the rice, artichoke hearts, peas, green pepper, green onions, tomatoes, reserved marinade, and half of the dressing. Toss well. Cover and chill or eat at room temperature. Just before serving, toss again and taste. Add some of the remaining dressing, if desired. Sprinkle with the almonds and serve.

Fun with Soybeans

The Metro DC area is one of the hotbeds of ethnic dining in the US, which makes it a happy place for me. Only Toronto has a more diverse population in North America. The upshot is that, within a four block walk of my home I have the choice of Afghan, Thai (2), Burmese, Persian, Italian, Japanese and Chinese (2) restaurants, and I'm in the burbs, not the East Village. If I drive five minutes, I can add Indian, Tex-Mex, French, Korean and German cuisines. I can eat my way around the world without leaving my 2 square mile town. We even have the best burger and fries in the metro area. But tonight I want to bring you an ethnic delight that I discovered only in the last year which is 'way easy to make at home, and has become a favorite here at Harmony Hall. Who knew soybeans were delicious (with a little help)? Serves 5-6 as a first course (or one as dinner....)

Salt and Pepper Edamame

1/4 cup coarse sea salt
1 tablespoon Szechwan peppercorns
1 tablespoon pink peppercorns
1 (1-pound) bag frozen edamame (soybeans in the pod)

Toast salt in a dry, small, heavy skillet over moderate heat, stirring, until the salt turns light tan, about 7 minutes. Transfer salt to a bowl.

Toast Szechwan peppercorns in skillet over moderate heat, stirring, until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Transfer toasted peppercorns to a sheet of waxed paper to cool. Using paper as a funnel, pour toasted peppercorns into an electric coffee/spice grinder or a mortar. Add pink peppercorns and pulse or pound with a pestle until finely ground. Pour through a coarse sieve into bowl of salt and stir together.

Cook edamame in salted boiling water until tender, about 4 minutes, and immediately transfer with a slotted spoon to a bowl of ice and cold water to stop cooking. Drain in a colander and pat dry.

You can nuke them in the mike for one minute on high, but you'll need to follow the same ice water procedure to stop the cooking so they don't get mushy.

Toss edamame in their shells with some peppered salt, to taste, and serve with remainder on the side. Squeeze them out of the pods with your teeth and the seasoning will come along for the ride.

Cooks' notes: Peppered salt may be made 1 week ahead and kept in an airtight container at cool room temperature. Edamame may be cooked 1 day ahead and chilled, covered. Bring to room temperature before tossing with peppered salt.

Try to find the Szechuan peppercorns, all of these things can be found on those internets as the flavor is unique.

Hot and Cheap

We call them: grinders, hoagies, subs, heros and any number of other regional variations. They are an overstuffed sandwich of combinations of meats,cheeses, vegetables and dressings. Cheap and filling, they got me through grad school (first pass) from the great sandwich shops of Boston. This is one of my favorites with a New Orleans twist.

These Hot Antipasto Heros are for 4.

2 small onions, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/3 cups diced salami, prosciutto, or smoked turkey (or a combination)
1 1/2 cups shredded whole-milk mozzarella
8 drained bottled pepperoncini (pickled Tuscan peppers, available at most supermarkets), chopped
1/2 teaspoon oregano, crumbled
1 tablespoon, plus 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
4 (6-inch-long) loaves Italian bread
Olive paste, recipe follows

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

In a heavy skillet, cook the onion and bell pepper in the oil over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until it is softened. While the onion and pepper are cooking, in a bowl stir together the salami, mozzarella, pepperoncini, oregano, and vinegar. Add the onion-pepper mixture.

Cut each piece of bread horizontally with a serrated knife without slicing all the way through, remove some of the soft inner white bread, and arrange the bread pieces cut sides up in a jelly-roll pan. Spread the bread with the olive paste. Spread the antipasto mixture on both sides of each piece of bread and bake the heros in preheated oven for 5 minutes. Season the heros with salt and pepper and re-form them, pressing the 2 sides together.

Olive Paste

10 ounces pitted Kalamata and green olives, mixed
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 1/4 cups olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Salt and pepper

In a food processor process olives with garlic until chopped. Add olive oil, lemon juice, 1/2 teaspoon salt and puree again. Transfer to a jar, cover with oil and keep refrigerated or frozen for a couple of weeks.

The End of Fun Girls

I am one of the last of a dying breed. Literally.

via Cardinal 47:

Cavegirls were first blondes to have fun

Roger Dobson and Abul Taher

THE modern gentleman may prefer blondes. But new research has found that it was cavemen who were the first to be lured by flaxen locks.

According to the study, north European women evolved blonde hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to make them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males.

The study argues that blond hair originated in the region because of food shortages 10,000-11,000 years ago. Until then, humans had the dark brown hair and dark eyes that still dominate in the rest of the world. Almost the only sustenance in northern Europe came from roaming herds of mammoths, reindeer, bison and horses. Finding them required long, arduous hunting trips in which numerous males died, leading to a high ratio of surviving women to men.

Lighter hair colours, which started as rare mutations, became popular for breeding and numbers increased dramatically, according to the research, published under the aegis of the University of St Andrews.

“Human hair and eye colour are unusually diverse in northern and eastern Europe (and their) origin over a short span of evolutionary time indicates some kind of selection,” says the study by Peter Frost, a Canadian anthropologist. Frost adds that the high death rate among male hunters “increased the pressures of sexual selection on early European women, one possible outcome being an unusual complex of colour traits.”
....
Film star blondes such as Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Sharon Stone and Scarlett Johansson are held up as ideals of feminine allure. However, the future of the blonde is uncertain.

A study by the World Health Organisation found that natural blonds are likely to be extinct within 200 years because there are too few people carrying the blond gene. According to the WHO study, the last natural blond is likely to be born in Finland during 2202.

Prison Problem

Inmates Riot at Kabul Prison

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 1:12 p.m. ET

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Hundreds of inmates, some of them convicted al-Qaida and Taliban militants, used knives and clubs made from furniture to overpower guards and take control of parts of a high-security prison in Afghanistan's capital, officials said Sunday.

Local media reported several people were killed and dozens injured. But it appeared security forces had yet to gain access to parts of the jail under prisoners' control, so officials could not confirm reports of casualties. One official said at least four inmates had been injured.

The Afghan army said it had deployed 800 soldiers, some with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, to surround the Policharki Prison. With NATO peacekeepers, they parked at least 10 tanks and armored personnel carriers outside the gates.

Government officials tried to negotiate through loudspeakers with the inmates. Their demands were not known.

Mohammed Qasim Hashimzai, deputy justice minister, reported some initial progress in talks, but an Associated Press correspondent heard periodic gunfire and prisoners shouting, ''God is Great!''

Inmates agreed to move 70 female prisoners from a wing under their control to a wing under official control, Hashimzai said.

The rioting started Saturday night when prisoners refused to put on new uniforms, delivered in response to a breakout last month by seven Taliban inmates disguised as visitors, Hashimzai said.

Prisoners forced guards out of a cell block housing about 1,300 inmates, said Abdul Salaam Bakshi, chief of prisons in Afghanistan. He accused al-Qaida and Taliban inmates of inciting other prisoners.

''All the problem is inside the prison,'' Bakshi said. ''We want to peacefully solve this problem.''

If we are running this like Abu Ghraib, I'll bet there are problems.

The Church of....

A Gospel of Intolerance

By John Bryson Chane
Sunday, February 26, 2006; Page B07

It's no secret that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are engaged in a bitter internal struggle over the role of gay and lesbian people within the church. But despite this struggle, the leaders of our global communion of 77 million members have consistently reiterated their pastoral concern for gays and lesbians. Meeting last February, the primates who lead our 38 member provinces issued a unanimous statement that said in part: "The victimization or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us."

We now have reason to doubt those words.

Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, primate of the Church of Nigeria and leader of the conservative wing of the communion, recently threw his prestige and resources behind a new law that criminalizes same-sex marriage in his country and denies gay citizens the freedoms to assemble and petition their government. The law also infringes upon press and religious freedom by authorizing Nigeria's government to prosecute newspapers that publicize same-sex associations and religious organizations that permit same-sex unions.

Were Archbishop Akinola a solitary figure and Nigeria an isolated church, his support for institutionalized bigotry would be significant only within his own country. But the archbishop is perhaps the most powerful member of a global alliance of conservative bishops and theologians, generously supported by foundations and individual donors in the United States, who seek to dominate the Anglican Communion and expel those who oppose them, particularly the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. Failing that, the archbishop and his allies have talked of forming their own purified communion -- possibly with Archbishop Akinola at its head.

Because the conflict over homosexuality is not unique to Anglicanism, civil libertarians in this country, and other people as well, should also be aware of the archbishop and his movement. Gifts from such wealthy donors as Howard Ahmanson Jr. and the Bradley, Coors and Scaife families, or their foundations, allow the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy to sponsor so-called "renewal" movements that fight the inclusion of gays and lesbians within the Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches and in the United Church of Christ. Should the institute succeed in "renewing" these churches, what we see in Nigeria today may well be on the agenda of the Christian right tomorrow.
....
The archbishop's support for this law violates numerous Anglican Communion documents that call for a "listening process" involving gay Christians and their leaders. But his contempt for international agreements also extends to Articles 18-20 of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which articulates the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, association and assembly.

Surprisingly, few voices -- Anglican or otherwise -- have been raised in opposition to the archbishop. When I compare this silence with the cacophony that followed the Episcopal Church's decision to consecrate the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, a gay man who lives openly with his partner, as the bishop of New Hampshire, I am compelled to ask whether the global Christian community has lost not only its backbone but its moral bearings. Have we become so cowed by the periodic eruptions about the decadent West that Archbishop Akinola and his allies issue that we are no longer willing to name an injustice when we see one?

Bishop Chane asks some important questions here. Does Christianity want to be known as the "enforcer" of the Book of Leviticus or the Prophet of the Sermon on the Mount?

Willful Ignorance

A Judicial Green Light for Torture

Published: February 26, 2006

The administration's tendency to dodge accountability for lawless actions by resorting to secrecy and claims of national security is on sharp display in the case of a Syrian-born Canadian, Maher Arar, who spent months under torture because of United States action. A federal trial judge in Brooklyn has refused to stand up to the executive branch, in a decision that is both chilling and ripe for prompt overturning.

Mr. Arar, a 35-year-old software engineer whose case has been detailed in a pair of columns by Bob Herbert, was detained at Kennedy Airport in 2002 while on his way home from a family vacation. He was held in solitary confinement in a Brooklyn detention center and interrogated without proper access to legal counsel. Finally, he was shipped off to a Syrian prison. There, he was held for 10 months in an underground rat-infested dungeon and brutally tortured because officials suspected that he was a member of Al Qaeda. All this was part of a morally and legally unsupportable United States practice known as "extraordinary rendition," in which the federal government outsources interrogations to regimes known to use torture and lacking fundamental human rights protections.

The maltreatment of Mr. Arar would be reprehensible — and illegal under the United States Constitution and applicable treaties — even had the suspicions of terrorist involvement proven true. But no link to any terrorist organization or activity emerged, which is why the Syrians eventually released him. Mr. Arar then sued for damages.

The judge in the case, David Trager of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, did not dispute that United States officials had reason to know that Mr. Arar faced a likelihood of torture in Syria. But he took the rare step of blocking the lawsuit entirely, saying that the use of torture in rendition cases is a foreign policy question not appropriate for court review, and that going forward would mean disclosing state secrets.

It is hard to see why resolving Mr. Arar's case would necessitate the revelation of privileged material. Moreover, as the Supreme Court made clear in a pair of 2004 decisions rebuking the government for its policies of holding foreign terrorism suspects in an indefinite legal limbo in Guantánamo and elsewhere, even during the war on terror, the government's actions are subject to court review and must adhere to the rule of law.

With the Bush administration claiming imperial powers to detain, spy on and even torture people, and the Republican Congress stuck largely in enabling mode, the role of judges in checking executive branch excesses becomes all the more crucial. If the courts collapse when confronted with spurious government claims about the needs of national security, so will basic American liberties.

NYT Edboard, do you ever read your news pages? With the court's refusal to hear Arar's case, the courts have already collapsed in the face of the imperial presidency. It's all over but the shouting and it's not clear to me that anybody in the country is paying attention or cares.

The Break-up

Juan Cole says this is the Iraq story today:

Younger Clerics Showing Power in Iraq's Unrest

By ROBERT F. WORTH and EDWARD WONG
Published: February 26, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 25 — American officials have been repeatedly stunned and frequently thwarted in the past three years by the extraordinary power of Muslim clerics over Iraqi society. But in the sectarian violence of the past few days, that power has taken an ominous turn, as rival hard-line Shiite clerical factions have pushed each other toward more militant and anti-American stances, Iraqi and Western officials say.

Even Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the paramount Shiite cleric to whom the Americans have often looked for moderation, appears to have been outflanked by younger and more aggressive figures.

After a bomb exploded in Samarra at one of Iraq's most sacred Shiite shrines on Wednesday, many young Shiites ignored his pleas for calm, instead heeding more extreme calls and attacking Sunni mosques and killing Sunni civilians, even imams, in a crisis that has threatened to provoke open civil war.

On Saturday, Iraqi political leaders from across the spectrum joined with Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in a televised show of unity to try to quell the violence. President Bush telephoned several leaders to urge them to return to talks. [Page 10.]

Earlier, as the critical moment of Friday Prayer approached, American officials and their allies were left almost helpless, hoping that Iraq's imams would step up to calm the crisis. But that hope gave way to the realization that the clerics could do as much harm as good, and for the first time since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi authorities imposed a daytime curfew to keep people from attending the sermons.

"Sectarian divisions are not new, and sectarian violence is not new," said a Western diplomat in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be seen as interfering. "What is different this time is that the Shiites, in a sign that their patience is limited, reacted violently in a number of places."

The violence and new militancy has come in part from a competition among Shiite factions to be seen as the protectors of the Shiite masses. The main struggle has been between the leading factions, both backed by Iran, and their spiritual leaders.

Many of the retaliatory attacks after the bombing were led by Mahdi Army militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric whose anti-American crusades have turned him into a rising political power.

His main rival, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric and the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri, defended the right of Shiites to respond to the bombing. He has shown a new willingness to publicly attack the American role in Iraq, once the preserve of Mr. Sadr, and he also commands a powerful militia, the Badr Organization.

"There are clerics who are very moderate and who understand what the current situation demands, and there are clerics who have political agendas and who marshal forces for their own gain," said Joost Hiltermann, the Middle East director of the International Crisis Group. "Those are the dangerous ones."

The more political clerics, Mr. Hiltermann added, "are quite willing to push their agendas no matter what it might lead to, including civil war and the breakup of the country."

The violence and escalating rhetoric among Sunnis and Shiites has left the mostly secular Iraqi leaders favored by the United States farther than ever from power.

The Low Salt Diet

I made a sandwich tonight using Hillshire Farms "Deli Turkey." That's the last time I spend money on "prepared foods." It was all salt, no taste of bird. The American Heart Association says:

Avoiding high-sodium foods

This recommendation is probably the hardest to follow, because so many convenience foods (like prepackaged meals and soups) and snacks (potato chips and popcorn) are high in sodium. But most of us take in more sodium through these foods than by using table salt. That's why it's essential to cut back and eventually eliminate them. The foods below are usually high in sodium (but read the labels, because some may be available in a low-salt or unsalted form):

* Canned soups and dry soup mixes
* Canned meats and fish (buy water-packed tuna or salmon instead)
* Ham, bacon and sausage
* Salted nuts and peanut butter
* Instant cooked cereals
* Salted butter and margarine
* Processed meats, such as deli items and hot dogs
* Prepared mixes (pancake, muffin, cornbread, etc.)
* Prepackaged frozen dinners (unless one serving has less than 400 mg of sodium)
* Preseasoned mixes (tacos, chili, rices, sauces, gravies, etc.)
* Snack foods (pretzels, potato chips, olives, cheeses, pickles)
* Salad dressings
* Fast food

We all need to learn how to cook from scratch again.

Company Dinner

While bird flu may have us all a little off poultry, I know that it is safe if thoroughly cooked and I love poultry. Rather than your standard chicken parts, I like to make cornish hens for company. The flavor is a little more mild and willing to take on the tastes of the things it is cooked with.

CORNISH GAME HENS WITH SWEET ONION COMPOTE

9 tablespoons butter
3 large onions, chopped (about 6 cups)
3 tablespoons sugar
1 cup dry red wine
3 Cornish game hens, quartered, backbones removed (have your butcher do this)

1/4 cup Sherry wine vinegar
1 1/2 cups chicken stock or canned low-salt chicken broth
2 tablespoons all purpose flour

Chopped fresh parsley

Melt 1.5 tablespoons butter in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onions and 1.5 tablespoons sugar. Cook until onions are golden, stirring often, about 15 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low. Add wine and cook until onions are very tender and mixture is reduced to thick jamlike consistency, stirring frequently, about 40 minutes. Set compote aside.

Preheat oven to 450°F. Melt 1 tablespoon butter in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add hen quarters and brown well on all sides, about 8 minutes. Place hen quarters on rimmed baking sheet (do not clean skillet). Sprinkle hens with salt and pepper. Bake hen quarters until cooked through, about 20 minutes.

Transfer hen quarters to bowl; cover to keep warm. Add drippings from baking sheet, vinegar and remaining 1.5 tablespoons sugar to skillet used to brown hens. Bring to boil, scraping up any browned bits. Add stock and bring to boil. Mix remaining 2 tablespoons butter and flour in small bowl, forming paste. Whisk paste into stock mixture. Boil until thickened to sauce consistency, about 3 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Rewarm onion compote; spoon onto center of each plate. Arrange 2 hen quarters around compote. Spoon sauce over. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.

Serves 6.

Serve with roasted garlic mashed potatoes and steamed green beans with pimientos dressed with a splash of vinaigrette.

A sauvignon blanc would be a good choice with this.

Weeknight Applause

This is an easy and jazzy way to prepare a weeknight meal.

BALSAMIC-GLAZED PORK CHOPS

4 (3/4-inch-thick) center-cut pork chops (about 2 lb total)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 oz small shallots (about 8), quartered and peeled, leaving root ends intact
2/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
Pat pork dry and sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper.

Heat oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then cook pork (in 2 batches if necessary) along with shallots, turning pork over once and stirring shallots occasionally, until pork is browned and shallots are golden brown and tender, about 5 minutes total. Transfer pork with tongs to a plate and add vinegar, sugar, and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper to shallots in skillet. Cook, stirring until sugar is dissolved and liquid is thickened slightly, about 1 minute.

Reduce heat to moderate, then return pork along with any juices accumulated on plate to skillet and turn 2 or 3 times to coat with sauce. Cook, turning over once, until pork is just cooked through, about 3 minutes total. Transfer pork to a platter and boil sauce until thickened and syrupy, 1 to 2 minutes. Pour sauce over pork.

Makes 4 servings.

Serve these with twice-baked potatos stuffed with reduced fat garlic and herb Allouette cheese spread. Microwave a half pound of asparagus tips in a covered casserole (they'll steam with just their rinsing water on them) and serve it with sweet unsalted butter and a little lemon juice.

Something Different

You haven't really lived until you've eaten truffles. They'll cost you dearly but the flavor is not recreatable.

Here's a pizza recipe which is completely different from my late uncle's marghereta pizza I gave you the other evening. This is a white pizza.

1 ounce fresh baker's yeast
1 cup warm water (110 to 115 degrees F)
1 tablespoon maple syrup
3 cups flour (recommended 00)
A handful of corn meal
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Topping:
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 white onion, cut into thin strips
2 sprigs rosemary
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 lemon, juiced
12 ounces Robiola cheese
6 ounces pancetta, thinly sliced
1 white truffle

Special equipment: Pizza stone and pizza paddle

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F and place the pizza stone on the bottom rack.

Crumble the yeast in a small bowl then add 1/4 cup of warm water and the syrup. Stir together and leave for 5 minutes to dissolve.

Put the flour and salt in a mixer fitted with a dough hook and give it a quick spin to mix. Pour in the yeast mixture, the remaining warm water and the olive oil at the same time.

Spin on low until the flour and water come together and the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Put the ball of dough in a large bowl and drizzle a few drops of olive oil on top to keep it from forming a skin as it proofs. Cover with a towel and leave in warm place for 30 minutes to let the dough proof. When the dough has proofed it will double in size and look spongy.

For the topping: Caramelize the onions in a frying pan over low heat with a little olive oil and one of rosemary sprigs. When the onions are golden season with sea salt and black pepper and a few drops of lemon juice to bring out the flavor.

When the dough has proofed, roll it out onto to a floured surface and punch the air out with your hands, then start shaping it into a circle When it's stretched out, dust a pizza paddle with corn meal and place the dough on it.

Cover with a generous splash of olive oil and scatter with pieces of Robiola. Shingle the pancetta slices around and add the caramelized onions, and the stripped needles of the remaining rosemary sprig. Drizzle with olive oil. Add salt and black pepper.

Slide the pizza onto the stone in the oven (be careful the stone is 500 degrees F) and bake for 15 minutes. Shave white truffles over it. Eat immediately.

The Red and the Gold

One of my personal comfort foods for the winter months is tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich. For me, as for most of you, that has meant opening a Campbell's can. No more. I've found a scratch recipe for tomato soup that elevates this humble meal, and hardly takes longer than the stuff out of the can.

1 (14-ounce) can chopped tomatoes
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 stalk celery, diced
1 small carrot, diced
1 yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup chicken broth
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup heavy cream, optional

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Strain the chopped canned tomatoes, reserving the juices, and spread onto a baking sheet, season with salt and pepper, to taste, drizzle with 1/4 cup of the olive oil and roast until caramelized, about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan, heat remaining olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the celery, carrot, onion and garlic, cook until softened, about 10 minutes. Add the roasted chopped canned tomatoes, reserved tomato juices, chicken broth, bay leaf and butter. Simmer until vegetables are very tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Add basil and cream, if using. Puree with a hand held immersion blender until smooth.

For a change from your usual American cheese sandwich, try this:

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, 2 turns of the pan
3 tablespoons butter
1 clove garlic, cracked away from skin
8 slices crusty Italian semolina bread
1 cup shredded provolone
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1/2 cup grated Parmesan or Romano
1 cup shredded Asiago
* All of these cheeses are available in specialty cheese case and dairy aisle already shredded

In a small skillet over medium low heat, combine oil, butter and garlic. Cook garlic in butter and oil gently for 2 or 3 minutes. Remove garlic butter mixture from heat.
Place a large nonstick skillet on the stove over medium high heat. Using a pastry brush, brush 1 side of 4 slices of bread with garlic oil and place buttered side down in skillet. Top each slice with equal amounts of the 4 cheeses, distributing them equally over the 4 slices. Top each sandwich with another slice of bread brushed with garlic butter, buttered side up. Flip the grill cheese sandwiches a few times until cheeses are melted and gooey and bread is toasty and golden. Cut grilled 4 cheese sandwiches from corner to corner and serve.

In the News

Site Offers Alternative to Flu Information

By MALCOLM RITTER
The Associated Press
Saturday, February 25, 2006; 1:39 PM

NEW YORK -- You can learn a lot about bird flu and the specter of a global human flu epidemic by checking official information from the government or medical groups. But thousands of times a day, people turn to a much different source.

It's Flu Wiki, a Web site maintained by a 52-year-old a writer who specializes in risk communication. It draws in part on contributions from people who don't reveal their names, much like Wikipedia, an encyclopedic Web site that lets anyone contribute.

Why should anybody trust a source like this?

"I'm working with some of the best scientists in the country on the subject of pandemic influenza," said Melanie Mattson, who maintains the site. "If I have a question about what's going on I ask them."

And Flu Wiki, the Virginia resident said, is "probably the most complete authority in English on pandemic influenza on the Internet."

Even for a site with more than 1,200 pages of content, that's a bold claim. The field includes not only an official U.S. government site, http://www.pandemicflu.gov , but also others from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. There are also plenty of bloggers who focus on flu.

But Flu Wiki also offers the wisdom of its expert contributors, Mattson said.

She can't identify them publicly, mostly because they fear losing federal money for giving opinions that clash with the Bush administration, she said. The disagreements aren't so much on the basic science of bird flu, but rather on what to do about it.

Flu Wiki, which averages up to 5,000 hits a day, impressed some flu experts who examined it recently at the request of The Associated Press.

Dr. Arnold S. Monto of the University of Michigan said he found the site's information reliable in general. Such sites can provide "a single place for people to go who want to get information which they may have to troll for in some of the official sites," he said.

Peter Cowen of North Carolina State University, moderator of a disease-monitoring Web site sponsored by the International Society for Infectious Diseases, said he had mixed feelings about Flu Wiki.

"In general they have a lot of good information," but some of the site's links lead to places with information of questionable value, Cowen said. Still, on balance, he said, "it looks pretty good."

The site, launched last June, offers key facts about bird flu, updated news stories, a roundup of official flu plans, tips on preparedness and a discussion forum. Volunteers have translated critical information into French, Spanish and Turkish. Norwegian may be next.

Mattson said she and her collaborators established it because too little attention was being paid to the possibility of a worldwide flu outbreak, and the public was in danger because they weren't getting basic information. The goal is to help individuals and local communities prepare for a possible pandemic, she said.

But at the moment, she doesn't see much local planning going on. "I'm not sure my town council is even aware of pandemic influenza," she said.

Her own home is stocked with a two-week supply of food and water, originally for hurricanes. She plans to expand that inventory for a possible flu pandemic. Her goal? "Eight weeks is good, 12 weeks is better," she said.

Mattson said she became concerned about the possibility of a pandemic flu after a bird flu virus jumped to people in Hong Kong in 1997, causing six deaths. A lifelong student of epidemiology and public health, she'd hoped to be an epidemiologist until she ran into organic chemistry in college. And she caught the flu and then pneumonia in the two previous flu pandemics in the 1950s and 1960s.

"Needless to say, I'm a little more sensitive to the subject of influenza than probably most people are," she said.

At the Base of It All

Teaching 'Standard Kids'

By Barbara Bachur
Saturday, February 25, 2006; Page A17

Should the best teachers be assigned the best students, as a reward for good work and encouragement to do more of it? No doubt there are teachers who would prefer to work with the gifted and talented, but I was never among them. When I taught, my classes for over a decade were made up mostly of the "standard kids" -- and that was largely by my choice.

Yes, I sometimes taught higher-level classes, but those weren't the students who brought out what I saw as the best of me. They kept me on my toes intellectually but never really challenged my spirit or my belief that they could learn. It was the kids who had no confidence and often no learning skills who beckoned me to the classroom on those gray winter mornings at 7:30 and back to the computer at 3 a.m., when I'd sometimes awaken with the thought, "If I tweak tomorrow's lesson in such and such a way, I think I can reach Charlie," the boy who just didn't get it.

My kids were needy -- many really needy. They came before school to tell me of the parent who had abused them the night before, after which, by law, I'd file a social services report, often sitting tethered to the phone line for an hour or more. After school, other students would follow, mostly just for conversation.

My work reaped many rewards: kids who finally believed in themselves, a girl whose face beamed after receiving a hard-earned B, a lonely boy who won a creative writing contest, a student who finally came to understand paragraph structure, another who fought his way out of despair after his family abandoned him. Repeatedly they forced me to meet them on their territory and bring them a piece of mine. And most days I did. I was one of the lucky ones. In a second career, my children grown, I was free to spend hour after hour on my work.

What can we do for the teachers who believe in the "standard kid"?

There's 'way too much "edu-speak" in this article. Here's what I can tell you about "the standard kid," who is really any kid, after my 30 years of teaching. What kids need in order to thrive is your undivided attention. It took me a couple of decades of teaching music in a studio setting to figure this out. What my students got from me, which was worth far more than my expertise at teaching music, was an hour a week of undivided adult attention. You may think your middle-schoolers and teens have begun to disdain the adults in their lives. Far from it, during this time of change and disjunction in their lives they need a steady hand as they learn to navigate their lives. What I heard from my students was rarely about their lives in band or orchestra. What I heard a lot about: parents, sibs, adolescent agonies, jobs, school, in roughly that order. I helped them with their homework, loaned them books for entertainment or school projects and wiped away a lot of tears. Yes, some of our time together was about the bassoon and some of my students went on to play in college and a few followed me into (and out of) the profession of music. All of them went on to become functional and healthy adults. I can't take credit for that. I was only one of many adults in their lives, but I was part of what formed them and I'm proud of the work I did with them.

Teaching is a lot like ministry. The first job is to be there, to show up completely ready to be with another person. In ministry, we call this "presence." Systems psychologist Edwin Freedman called this being "the unanxious presence" for someone else. What that means is focussing your attention completely on another person by making the conscious decision to set aside your own anxieties for a period of time. It isn't easy and takes some practice, but it can be learned. It is what I do when I practice the ministry of spiritual direction.

The two most powerful and basic emotions in human beings are love and fear. Most of us are living out of and acting out of the low level fear we call anxiety most of the time. Choosing to act out of love and pushing that anxiety out of the way requires real spiritual discipline.

Follow the Money

Why Bush is stuck on the port deal
By Thalif Deen

NEW YORK - The United Arab Emirates (UAE), the center of a growing controversy over its proposed management of US port terminals, is one of the world's most prolific arms buyers and a multi-billion-dollar military market both for the United States and Western Europe.

The energy-rich Persian Gulf nation is currently taking delivery of about US$8.4 billion worth of military equipment, mostly state-of-the-art fighter aircraft, ordered from the US ($6.4 billion) and France ($2 billion) over the past five years. The delivery of 80 US- built F-16 E/F fighter planes - described as one of the biggest single arms packages to a Middle Eastern nation and finalized in March 2000 - is to be completed in 2007.

US President George W Bush's threat to veto any attempts to block last week's deal permitting a state-owned UAE company to take over the management of six US port terminals has underlined the significance of the political and military relationship between the two countries.

Despite growing bipartisan opposition to the deal - mostly prompted by a fear psychosis that US ports should not be managed by a state-owned Arab company because of possible terrorist infiltration - Bush says the UAE has been a strong US ally in the fight against global terrorism. Despite potential terrorist threats, the president sees no risk in a Middle Eastern company overseeing US ports and shipping terminals .

But an equally significant fact in the longstanding bilateral relationship is that the UAE is a vibrant arms market not only for the US but also its allies in Western Europe, particularly France and Britain.

"The UAE [arms] market is definitely important to the US," said Tom Baranauskas, a senior Middle East analyst at the Connecticut-based Forecast International, a leading provider of defense market intelligence services. "Just the order for 80 of the newest-generation F-16E/Fs alone was a major buy from the US," he said.

"Interestingly, there are already upgrades planned for these fighter planes even though they have not completed delivery," Baranauskas said.

The upgrades and maintenance of the already delivered aircraft - and proposed new arms purchases - will be ensured only by a continued military relationship between the UAE and the US.

But he also pointed out that the UAE military's procurement priorities were shifting, and "this shift may affect the US competitiveness, and actually benefit Europeans more than the US".

Besides French Mirage fighter planes, the UAE has also taken delivery of about 36 British Aerospace Hawk, 100 trainer/ground attack aircraft, four warships from Germany and two frigates from the Netherlands. Additionally, France has supplied about 400 battle tanks in a deal worth nearly $3.8 billion.

You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. It's the old quid pro quo between oil buddies.

Done in the Dark

Homeland Security Objected to Ports Deal

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25, 2006

AP) The Homeland Security Department objected at first to a United Arab Emirates company's taking over significant operations at six U.S. ports. It was the lone protest among members of the government committee that eventually approved the deal without dissent.

The department's early objections were settled later in the government's review of the $6.8 billion deal after Dubai-owned DP World agreed to a series of security restrictions.

The company indefinitely has postponed its takeover to give President Bush time to convince Congress that the deal does not pose any increased risks to the U.S. from terrorism.

Some lawmakers have pressed for a new and intensive review. Despite persistent criticism from Republicans and Democrats, the president has defended his administration's approval of the ports deal and threatened to veto any measures in Congress that would block it. Hearings are to continue this week.

A DP World executive said the company would agree to tougher security restrictions to win congressional support only if the same restrictions applied to all U.S. port operators. The company earlier had struck a more conciliatory stance, saying it would do whatever Bush asked to salvage the agreement.

"Security is everybody's business," senior vice president Michael Moore told The Associated Press. "We're going to have a very open mind to legitimate concerns. But anything we can do, any way to improve security, should apply to everybody equally."

The administration approved the ports deal on Jan. 17 after DP World agreed during secret negotiations to cooperate with law enforcement investigations in the future and make other concessions.

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”--B. Franklin.

Transparency is what democracy breaths. Only dictatorships don't trust the people.

Power to the People

Susie says it's time to get to work and take this country back. My friend Suze kicks off a rant the likes of which I haven't seen out of her in a long time. Go read.

Hysterical Boy

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

William Greider
article | posted February 23, 2006 (web only)

A conservative blaming hysteria is hysterical, when you think about it, and a bit late. Hysteria launched Bush's invasion of Iraq. It created that monstrosity called Homeland Security and pumped up defense spending by more than 40 percent. Hysteria has been used to realign US foreign policy for permanent imperial war-making, whenever and wherever we find something frightening afoot in the world. Hysteria will justify the "long war" now fondly embraced by Field Marshal Rumsfeld. It has also slaughtered a number of Democrats who were not sufficiently hysterical. It saved George Bush's butt in 2004.

Bush was the principal author, along with his straight-shooting Vice President, and now he is hoisted by his own fear-mongering propaganda. The basic hysteria was invented from risks of terrorism, enlarged ridiculously by the President's open-ended claim that we are endangered everywhere and anywhere (he decides where). Anyone who resists that proposition is a coward or, worse, a subversive. We are enticed to believe we are fighting a new cold war. But are we? People are entitled to ask. Bush picked at their emotional wounds after 9/11 and encouraged them to imagine endless versions of even-larger danger. What if someone shipped a nuke into New York Harbor? Or poured anthrax in the drinking water? OK, a lot of Americans got scared, even people who ought to know better.

So why is the fearmonger-in-chief being so casual about this Dubai business?

Because at some level of consciousness even George Bush knows the inflated fears are bogus. So do a lot of the politicians merrily throwing spears at him. He taught them how to play this game, invented the tactics and reorganized political competition as a demagogic dance of hysterical absurdities, endless opportunities to waste public money. Very few dare to challenge the mindset. Thousands have died for it.

And thousands will continue to die for the lie. Impeach.

Company's Coming

This is a Mario Batali recipe cadged from Foodnetwork.com. My notes are below

Seafood Boil

Recipe courtesy Michael Chiarello

1/4 cup fennel seed
2 tablespoons black peppercorns
2 tablespoons coriander seeds
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
2 bay leaves
6 quarts water
2 lemons, halved
1 head garlic, sliced through the equator but not all the way through
1 cup dry wine
1/2 cup sea salt, preferably gray salt
8 small boiling potatoes
2 onions, unpeeled, ends removed
4 medium artichokes (no need to trim)
2 (1 1/2 pound) lobsters
1 pound jumbo shrimp in the shell
1 dozen fresh clams

Garnishes:
Melted unsalted butter
Sea salt, preferably gray salt
Fennel Spice Rub, recipe follows
Hot pepper sauce

Combine the fennel seed, peppercorns, coriander seed, red pepper flakes, and bay leaves and tie in a cheesecloth bag. Put the bag in a large pot with the water, the lemon halves, the garlic, the wine, and the salt. Cover and bring to a simmer, then simmer for 10 minutes.

Add the potatoes, onions and artichokes and simmer gently, covered, until they are tender. As they are done, remove them to a serving platter. The potatoes may take 20 minutes or more; the onions and artichokes will take 30 to 40 minutes.

After you have removed all the vegetables, add the lobsters. Cook just until they turn pink, about 15 minutes. Remove them with a slotted spoon to the serving platter. Then add the shrimp and clams and cook until the shrimp turn pink and begin to curl and the clams open fully, about 5 minutes.

Cut the onions in half. Cut the artichokes in half and scoop out and discard the chokes.

Serve the shrimp, potatoes, onions, and artichokes with shallow bowls of melted butter, sea salt and the Fennel Spice Rub for dipping, and with jars of hot sauce.

Fennel Spice Rub
1 cup fennel seeds
3 tablespoons coriander seeds
2 tablespoons white peppercorns
3 tablespoons kosher salt

Put the fennel seeds, coriander seeds, and peppercorns in a heavy pan over medium heat. Watch carefully, tossing frequently so the seeds toast evenly. When light brown and fragrant, pour the seeds onto a plate to cool. They must be cool before grinding, or they will gum up the blades.
Pour the seeds into a blender and add the salt. Blend to a fine powder, shaking the blender occasionally to redistribute the seeds. Store in a tightly sealed glass jar in a cool, dry place, or freeze.

Cook's notes: Yum. Use this on a flank steak to great hurrahs.

Good Morning!

This recipe is great for a company brunch and will easily serve eight if you are a generous breakfast cook who adds, oh, cinnamon rolls, toast and jam or bagels and cream cheese to the morning menu. I make this with shrimp because I'm allergic to crab (sigh....I live within spitting distance of the Chesapeake's blue crabs.) You can make a more luxurious version with lobster if you want to serve something that really sets off your mimosas.

Fruita De Mar Omelet

1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped fresh shrimp
1 large onion, chopped
1 1/2 cups chopped celery
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 teaspoon crab boil seasoning (recommended: Old Bay)
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Pinch salt
16 large eggs
4 tablespoons unsalted butter

In a large bowl, combine the shrimp, onion, celery, mayonnaise, parsley, crab boil seasoning, pepper, and salt. Toss gently to keep the shrimp from breaking up. Use the mayonnaise to moisten the shrimp mixture, adding more according to your preference.

In an 8-inch nonstick pan, melt 1 tablespoon butter over medium heat until foaming. Add 1/4 of the shrimp mix to the pan and cook gently until the celery and onions are crisp but tender, approximately 10 minutes. While the shrimp mix is heating, in a separate large bowl, whip the eggs with a wire whisk until smooth. When the crab mix is hot, add 1/4 of the whipped eggs, about 1 cup.

Cook the omelet until the edges begin to curl. Gently pull the edges toward the center, allowing the eggs to cook through. Once the eggs have become firm, flip the omelet and cook until the other side is done, about 5 minutes. Flip the omelet out of the pan onto a dish and serve immediately. Slice it in wedges, like a pie.

Serve this with a macedoine of fresh fruits:

4 lg Thinly Sliced Oranges
2 lg Diced Apples
2 lg Diced Pears
1 lg Honeydew melon, in balls
2 lg Cubed Bananas
8 oz Frozen Raspberries
1 lg Lemon
1/2 bottle of champagne
Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste.

Combine everything and let the flavors marry in the fridge for four hours or overnight, covered in plastic. Most people will never have had a macedoine and this will come as a pleasant surprise. If you avoid alcohol, you can make this with orange juice spiked with some lemon juice. You'll need about three cups.

I have a savory one I make with vegetables that I'll pair with lamb for a Passover/Easter menu later this weekend.

Friday Night Open Thread

I'm still recovering. Forget bird flu, the ordinary version has been bloody awful. To top it all off, I spent most of the day today doing some contract work for my new boss. I'm not on the payroll yet, but there is ramp-up work to do and most of the day was spent on that. Between working my keyboarding fingers to nubs, hacking and sneezing, it was a busy day. Ergo, the dearth of posts. Things will be light this weekend, too, as the new job is going to require some of my time, so co-bloggers, chime in at will.

Your plans for the weekend are welcome here along with any of your favorite flu cures.

Pandemic Flu Meme

In the Land of Coq au Vin, Soul-Searching Over Bird Flu

By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: February 24, 2006

PARIS, Feb. 23 — For the French, a bird is more than a bird.

Yves de la Fouchardiere, a lobbyist for the Loué poultry farmers, is campaigning to keep the region's chickens uncaged despite the bird flu scare.

The rooster has been the national emblem since ancient Gallic times and adorns official seals, church steeples, the garden gate of Élysée Palace, even the uniforms of the national soccer team.

In the early 17th century, King Henry IV declared the right of his subjects to have a chicken in the family pot once a week, and even today, the ritual family lunch on Sunday is defined by a perfectly roasted chicken.

"Poultry is for cuisine what canvas is for painters," wrote Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the French 19th-century gastronome. "We are served it boiled, roasted, fried, hot or cold, whole or in parts, with or without sauce, deboned, skinned, stuffed and always with equal success."

So when a wild duck was found dead, infected with the avian flu virus, in a small lake in eastern France last week, it set off a national panic, a potential health and economic calamity and an identity crisis as well. The fears were stoked again on Thursday with reports of a second infected duck in the same area — the department of Ain — and, even more ominously, the possible spread of the virus to turkeys on a nearby farm.

"The fowl is part of our national heritage," said Pierre Rolland, the mayor of Loué, a poultry-producing town southwest of Paris whose identity is defined by the free-range fowl that bear its name. "As mayor, I will defend the good reputation of our chickens, which are known throughout France and Europe. We have to avoid a Hitchcock psychosis."

France is Western Europe's main migratory crossroads for wild birds, as well as the Continent's largest poultry producer and exporter, with farmers breeding and selling 900 million chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese and other assorted fowl every year. So even a hint of the avian flu virus, which has killed more than 200 million birds worldwide, sends tremors throughout the country.

Underscoring those concerns, French officials cordoned off the suspicious turkey farm and ordered the slaughter of all 11,000 birds on Thursday, even though definitive results from laboratory testing for the virus were not expected before Friday.

If the virus does spread farther, the farms in and around Loué stand to be among the most heavily affected in the country. The landscape of the town is dominated not by a church steeple or a medieval fortress but by an ultramodern granary. A vast chick incubator and a slaughterhouse employ hundreds of area residents.

The municipal coat of arms is a shield framed by two chickens. The restaurant at the town's main hotel, Ricordeau, features only local poultry and eggs, serves meals on custom-made porcelain with images of fowl and makes its own chocolates in the shape of chickens.

As my boss likes to say, the pandemic has already happened. It has already had real effects. Poultry sales are off all over Europe and North America, governments and businesses are already encumbering significant funds for continuity planning and risk mitigation

Offense Against Nature

Awaiting the Rumsfeld Doctrine

By Al Kamen
Friday, February 24, 2006; A13

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has penciled in a visit next week to the Harry S. Truman library in Independence, Mo., to talk about President Bush 's war on terrorism and Truman's launching the long struggle against international communism.

The speech is still being worked on, so Pentagon folks won't talk about it. And they caution that the event may yet be scrubbed. But spokeswoman Hollen Wheeler allowed that the library would be an "appropriate venue for his message that day."

News that Rumsfeld would use Truman's library to compare the iconic Democrat's launching of NATO and the Marshall Plan with the Bush administration's policies is likely to spark howls of protest from some Truman fans. One official from the Truman administration called it "an insult to Truman's heritage."

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), who knew Truman, put Rumsfeld's move to cloak Bush's efforts in Truman's mantle a bit more charitably: "Well, it's kind of a stretch," Skelton observed, "but God bless him for trying." (Skelton's busy preparing his own remarks at the library May 5, when he receives the Harry S. Truman public service award.)

On the other hand, as Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other Bush officials have reminded us, there are many parallels between today's situation in Iraq, for example, and post-World War II Germany. And then there's NATO, which Truman launched, and Bush's Coalition of the Willing. And both challenges involve long-term commitments.

Finally, "-isms" in general tend to be alike.

Frankly, I'm offended just about everytime Rummy opens his mouth. I have an aversion to lies.

Sell Out

Taste of the Future

By David Ignatius
Friday, February 24, 2006; Page A15

The hubbub over terrorism isn't the biggest problem with the Dubai flap. In a sense, the Bush administration had it coming, after having beaten congressional opponents over the head with the terrorism club for four years. What goes around comes around, and while it may be comical to hear a legislator accuse President Bush of having a pre-Sept. 11 mind-set, the White House made itself a fat target.

The real absurdity here is that Congress doesn't seem to realize that an Arab-owned company's management of America's ports is just a taste of what is coming. Greater foreign ownership of U.S. assets is an inevitable consequence of the reckless tax-cutting, deficit-ballooning fiscal policies that Congress and the White House have pursued. By encouraging the United States to consume more than it produces, these fiscal policies have sucked in imports so fast that the nation is nearing a trillion-dollar annual trade deficit. Those are IOUs on America's future, issued by a spendthrift Congress.

The best quick analysis I've seen of the fiscal squeeze comes from New York University professor Nouriel Roubini, in his useful online survey of economic information, rgemonitor.com. He notes that with the U.S. current account deficit running at about $900 billion in 2006, "in a matter of a few years foreigners may end up owning most of the U.S. capital stocks: ports, factories, corporations, land, real estate and even our national parks." Until recently, he writes, the United States has been financing its trade deficit through debt -- namely, by selling U.S. Treasury securities to foreign central banks. That's scary enough -- as it has given big T-bill holders such as China and Saudi Arabia the ability to punish the U.S. dollar if they decide to unload their reserves.

But as Roubini says, foreigners may decide they would rather hold their dollars in equity investments than in U.S. Treasury debt. "If we continue with our current patterns of spending above our incomes, by 2013 the U.S. foreign liabilities could be as high as 75 percent of GDP and an increasing fraction of such liabilities will be in the form of equity," he explains. "So, let us stop whining about the dangers of unfriendly foreigners owning our firms and assets and get used to it."

Here's how bad it is: The worst thing that could happen to the United States, paradoxically, would be for Arab and other foreign investors to take us at our xenophobic word and decide that America doesn't really want foreign investment. If they pulled out their money, U.S. financial markets would plummet in a crash that might make 1929 look like a sleigh ride.

Let's rashly assume that Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert, the Republican Senate and House leaders, are serious in their expressions of concern about foreign ownership of American assets. What they should do right now is begin changing the fiscal policies that are transforming the United States into a ward of the world.

I'm dreaming, of course. Such policies would mean financial sacrifice on the part of Congress and the American people. They would require political leadership instead of quick-hit news conferences. What a quaint idea, that members of Congress actually might want to solve problems rather than make headlines.

Soul of a City

Another Mardi Gras, after the deluge

By Andrei Codrescu, ANDREI CODRESCU's latest book is "New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writing from the City."
February 24 2006

Carnival is essentially satirical, depicting folly, vanity and the vices, all the usually hidden flaws of humans who, it is hoped, will know better by Ash Wednesday, when they kneel before a priest and have a cross of ashes smeared on their penitent foreheads. "Carnival" derives from the Latin "carne vale," or "so goes the flesh." All human pleasure is temporary, but in what time remains the flesh is indulged.

In recent years, Carnival societies have become more political. Their satirical barbs have been directed at city and state officials, national leaders and world figures. The most daring parade, the Krewe du Vieux, which marches through the French Quarter, takes no prisoners. After 9/11, its giant effigy of Osama bin Laden sodomized by a U.S missile floated past cheering crowds. There were hundreds of "ghosts" wearing gas "masques." The Krewe du Vieux newsletter seethed with a kind of pamphletary zeal unseen since Thomas Paine.

This year, the same krewe put our profound anxiety and distress on display: Hundreds dressed as taped-up refrigerators marched in frigid weather; two enormous nude figures named Katrina and Rita, one black, one white, had explicit sex atop a float; a sea of FEMA blue tarps flapped in the wind from balconies, on floats, as capes on marchers. A sign proclaimed "Take us back, Chirac!" The blue tarp is the new flag of New Orleans, and the desire to return Louisiana to France is heard often, only half-facetiously.

Mardi Gras reveals New Orleanians to themselves: it's a spectacle and a portrait that is often brutal, and it would be downright intolerable without the liberal indulgence in the vices of the flesh that allow us to forget, forgive and move on.

Mardi Gras is also the only time when this city of intensely parochial neighborhoods comes together and displays its arts. Hundreds of years of dedication to spectacle have produced some profound talent. The high school marching bands of New Orleans are coached from within a tradition unknown elsewhere. In our nation of engineers, New Orleans is the province of artists.

This year there are few marching bands left in the city. The few functioning schools have been incorporated as "charter schools" that measure performance by "leap tests" and other abstractions devised elsewhere; they get no credit for the teaching of music and the arts. In a city were music is the transracial soul glue, this omission is unforgivable.

The city's psyche has been deeply wounded, and music, its medicine, is in exile. A number of musicians have returned from far-flung cities for this unique Mardi Gras, but for how long? Most of their houses were in the Lower 9th Ward and the parts of Treme and Midcity that were flooded.

This year, we need as much and as intense a Mardi Gras as we can muster to prove to ourselves that we still exist. It is the necessary beginning of our healing. We welcome tourists, but this Carnival is for those of us who are still in place. The national media, enamored of its Mardi Gras cliches, should pay special attention to the real Carnival's messages this year. Mardi Gras was never just spring break with drunken college students on Bourbon Street. But this year in particular, it's a different, more significant and more dangerous spectacle. Our very existence hangs in limbo. This may be our last party, if it isn't already a wake.

Andrei is as careful a geographer of the human spirit as I have ever met. I've been reading Exquisite Corpse for over a decade.

In Our Name

FBI Interrogators in Cuba Opposed Aggressive Tactics

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 24, 2006; Page A16

FBI officials who were interrogating terrorism suspects at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002 and 2003 strenuously objected to aggressive techniques the military was using and believed they could be illegal, according to FBI memos released yesterday.

The agents wrote in memos and e-mails that they were at odds with interrogators working for a Defense Intelligence Agency human-intelligence group and with guidance from senior Pentagon officials. The agents also repeatedly expressed their concerns to the senior military officer at the base, Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, and said that the less aggressive FBI-approved methods were more effective.

"Although MGEN Miller acknowledged positive aspects of this approach, it was apparent that he favored DHS's interrogation methods, despite FBI assertions that such methods could easily result in the elicitation of unreliable and legally inadmissible information," one FBI agent wrote to senior FBI officials in May 2003, referring to the Defense Humint Service. Miller later traveled to Iraq and oversaw all detention operations there.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the memos in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, first released versions of them in December 2004. But the memos released yesterday included previously blacked-out statements and detailed discussions of the FBI's concerns.

"Now we can say that the documents show conclusively that abuse and torture at Guantanamo was not the result of rogue elements but was the consequence of policies deliberately adopted by senior military and Pentagon officials," said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer.

Have Americans developed a taste for torture?
ASK THIS | February 13, 2006

The author of a new book on torture wonders why public response to an issue that cuts to the very core of America's national identity has been so muted. And he lays out a series of questions for President Bush, congressional candidates and your readers aimed at bearing witness to what may turn out to be a fundamental shift in moral choices by the American public.

By Alfred W. McCoy
[email protected]

Questions for Men and Women on the Street about Torture:

Q. Television dramas like "24" and "NYPD Blue" teach us that the quickest way to get criminals to talk is to rough them up. Do you think roughing up die-hard terrorists in the real War on Terror will produce the same results that cops get in TV shows?

Q. Can you think of any circumstances in which torture might be effective?

Q. Do you think that the Bush administration was justified back in 2001-2002 in allowing abusive interrogation of terror suspects in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo?

Q. Do you think that those photos of abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq damaged America's standing in world?

Q. Do you think Congress's recent ban on torture will end abuse of prisoners by U.S. military and CIA?

Death of the Legislative Branch

TIA Lives On

By Shane Harris, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006

A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens. Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.

It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget. However, the projects that moved, their new code names, and the agencies that took them over haven't previously been disclosed. Sources aware of the transfers declined to speak on the record for this story because, they said, the identities of the specific programs are classified.

Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA.

A $19 million contract to build the prototype system was awarded in late 2002 to Hicks & Associates, a consulting firm in Arlington, Va., that is run by former Defense and military officials. Congress's decision to pull TIA's funding in late 2003 "caused a significant amount of uncertainty for all of us about the future of our work," Hicks executive Brian Sharkey wrote in an e-mail to subcontractors at the time. "Fortunately," Sharkey continued, "a new sponsor has come forward that will enable us to continue much of our previous work." Sources confirm that this new sponsor was ARDA. Along with the new sponsor came a new name. "We will be describing this new effort as 'Basketball,' " Sharkey wrote, apparently giving no explanation of the name's significance. Another e-mail from a Hicks employee, Marc Swedenburg, reminded the company's staff that "TIA has been terminated and should be referenced in that fashion."

Representative democracy is a fiction under the current regime. And Congress seems to be okay with the fact that it has been castrated.

Flu Clue

I'm still really sick and cancelled my day today, too germy to foist myself on all the events I had planned for today. Sorry, no recipes tonight, I have no appetite, living on chicken soup.

Last night, I thought this was a bad cold, but the fever and chills kicked in today. This is the flu, something I haven't had in years. Me, the flu lady, with the flu. Every bone in my body aches and my attitude isn't too hot, either.

This is an open thread.

Rocks around the ankles

Students suffocate under tens of thousands in loans

By Sandra Block, USA TODAY
Thu Feb 23, 2006

Tom Dillon, 19, a pre-pharmacy major at the University of Connecticut, is carrying $52,000 in student loans. And he's just getting started. When he gets his pharmacy doctorate in four years, he expects his debt to exceed $150,000. Dillon's been drawn to pharmacy since age 5, when he found out he had epilepsy.

"The first person who helped me was my pharmacist," he says. Dillon, who no longer has epilepsy, would like to go into pharmaceutical research. But he knows he'd earn more money as a pharmacist for one of the big drugstore chains.

"When I get out, I'm going to have that $150,000 weighing over me," he says. "What I decide is going to be dependent on that debt."

And the cost of that debt is about to rise. On July 1, the rate on new federally guaranteed student loans will hit a fixed 6.8%, the highest rate since 2001. It comes as the average graduate owes $19,000. Many undergrads, though, have debt exceeding $40,000.

Those higher payments carry huge implications for this generation of college graduates. The weight of debt is forcing many to put off saving for retirement, getting married, buying homes and putting aside money for their own children's educations.

Heavy student debts may also keep young adults from starting businesses, says Diana Cantor, director of the Virginia College Savings Plan. Some graduates will refuse to risk what little money they have on entrepreneurial ventures. And securing loans will now be harder. "It's a real crisis," Cantor says. "You're strapped before you get started."

The average debt for a college graduate has soared 50% in the past decade, after inflation, according to the Project on Student Debt, a non-profit advocacy group. Just as record-low mortgage rates have eased the impact of soaring home prices, low student-loan rates have let borrowers cut their payments, softening the impact of rising debt.

"Low interest rates have served as a sort of amnesty for graduates with debt," says Robert Shireman, founder of the Project on Student Debt. "We haven't seen what the real impact is of much higher levels of borrowing."

Now, with interest rates rising, that amnesty is about to end. The 6.8% fixed rate for Stafford loans, the most popular student loan, will replace a variable rate that used to be adjusted every July 1, based on Treasury bills. Under the old system, borrowers could consolidate their loans when rates were low. And they could lock in that low rate for the life of their loans.

Today,students who don't want to borrow at higher rates have few other options. Twenty-five years ago, students who wanted to avoid debt could use money from part-time and summer jobs to help pay for college. But since then, college tuition has risen at twice the rate of consumer prices. Tuition has soared much faster than pay has for the kinds of low-wage jobs that students tend to hold.

In 1981, a student could work full time all summer at minimum wage and earn about two-thirds of annual college costs, according to an analysis by Heather Boushey, economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Today, a student earning minimum wage would have to work full time for a year to afford one year of education at a four-year public university - and that assumes she saves every penny, Boushey concluded.

It's amazing how crushing this debt is. Many of these new grads have to come home and live with their parents again, because the jobs that are being created aren't that strong (or need 2 years of experience for entry level), which causes both the parents and the kdis to see themselves as failures. Heck, I rent a house from mine and I feel like one sometimes. It's easy to tell someone to go grab an extra degree or two to help themselves, but is the debt worth it?

I've been toying around with the idea of going back to school part time to get a law degree (my first love) or a Masters in Education but I'll be honest, I can't afford it. My wife went and got a Masters in Library Science that cost her close to $20,000 at U Mich. in the mid 90's. She came into our marriage with not only that debt, but also the debt from the credit cards that she used while in grad school and that's despite having a solid job as an achivist at Case-Western for almost 2 years. Then the government is doing virually nothing to ease this burden on the students, which closes the doors of higher education to many qualified people.

What do we tell the students heading to college? Sure, there is money out there so long as you don't mind being in debt up to your eyeballs. So much for social mobility... yeah, there are merit based scholarships, but to fill all of the jobs that will open up as the baby boomers retire (theoretically), you will need people who weren't 4.0's to fill them. Are we going to outsource all of them too?

Stunning Incompetence

Clumsy Leadership
The furor over Dubai's planned takeover of some U.S. ports is a sign of how out of control the ‘war on terror’ has become.

Web-Exclusive Commentary
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek

It is time to have an accounting of just how badly run, and conceived, this "war on terror" has been. You won't hear it from the Democrats, who have been running a severe testosterone shortage since Vietnam. And there's certainly no need to take my word for it.

Instead, just listen to what the president's own party is saying. Let's start with Donald Rumsfeld, the man we thought was in charge of the GWOT, the global war on terror. Speaking last week at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Rumsfeld lamented how much better bin Laden and Zawahiri were at understanding the nature of the war. He quoted Zawahiri as saying (way back in July 2005), "We are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of Muslims," and then proceeded to complain that "the U.S. government”—some entity the Defense Secretary is not on familiar terms with, presumably—“still functions as a five and dime store in an eBay world." Al Qaeda, Rumsfeld said, as if he were still head of some blue-ribbon commission questioning the competence of the Clinton administration, has made better use of the technologies we invented than we have. "Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we, our country, our government has not adapted," he said.

Uhhh, that failure to adapt, wouldn’t that be your failure, Mr. Rumsfeld? Or the president's? But Rummy was his usual unflappable self, just as full of brio and self-confidence as he appears in Eugene Jarecki's new movie, "Why We Fight," when he raps the podium in prewar 2003 and says, "We know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.”

Again, lest I'm accused of being partisan (I'm really just a reporter, and a very disappointed hawk), I would just refer you to the rebellion within Bush's own party. The way the war was supposed to have been fought—a way that would really have distressed bin Laden and Zawahiri—was that Al Qaeda was supposed to be so isolated by now that we had most of the Arab world on our side. Deals like Dubai Ports World 's takeover of the London company that administers some U.S. ports were supposed to be pretty much routine. After all, as one commentator said to me during an appearance on al Jazeera the other day, isn't this the way globalization is intended to work: you co-opt everyone, even your rivals, into the international system? Instead, so mistrusted is the Bush administration—and so out of control has the war on terror become—that even leading Republican politicians this week sought to cancel the Dubai contract (Bush, to his credit, did manage a presidential response, vowing to veto).
....
How then did we arrive at this day, with anti-American Islamist governments rising in the Mideast, bin Laden sneering at us, Qaeda lieutenants escaping from prison, Iran brazenly enriching uranium, and America as hated and mistrusted as it ever has been? The answer, in a word, is incompetence. We now have testimony from enough Republicans and Bush loyalists—from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to former CIA senior director Paul Pillar — that the administration knew all along how flimsy its WMD case against Iraq was. We also now know, from Berntsen and others, that the administration knew then how solid the intel on bin Laden's and Zawahiri's whereabouts was. So catastrophic was Bush's decision to shift his attention and resources to Iraq, when bin Laden was panting at Tora Bora, that one is tempted to rank it with Adolf Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941, at a time when Great Britain was prostrate and America was still out of the war (a decision that almost certainly cost Hitler the war then and there). Yes, Iraq may some day become a legitimate democracy. But for now it is mainly a jihadi factory, cranking out new generations of hardened bomb-ready Islamists, as we have seen with the cross-pollination that has brought Iraqi-style suicide bombs back to Afghanistan.

Bush of course has been lucky in his adversaries as well—not bin Laden, but the Democrats (not to mention many a media pundit). To this day they seem afraid to make the case that the great war presidency has been a disastrous war presidency, in large part because of the fraudulent Iraq invasion. Has any presidential candidate ever had a better talking point than this, as John Kerry did in 2004? But Kerry, a true combat hero, turned out to be a political coward, declining to attack while the Bush-Rove machine slowly emasculated him. Today the only Democratic candidate with the necessary money and renown to run for president, Hillary Clinton, is also one who must prove her presidential timber by out-hawking the hawk-in-chief. So forget about her calling it as she sees it. No wonder Karl Rove is telling the GOP that the war on terror is still the president’s ace issue in 2006, as it was in 2002.

So, yes, bin Laden and Zawahiri have been fortunate in their enemies. Had the Bush administration been more competent, these two would have long since been bloody pulp, perhaps largely forgotten. Luckily for the rest of us, the Al Qaeda revolutionary program is so abhorrent that most of the world still has no choice but to stick with us, through thick and thin—and dumb and dumber. How long we can test the world’s patience is another matter. Alan Cullison’s 2004 article based on Zawahiri’s private thoughts is again instructive here. "Al Qaeda understood that its attacks would not lead to a quick collapse of the great powers,” he wrote. “Rather, its aim was to tempt the powers to strike back in a way that would create sympathy for the terrorists. ... One wonders if the United States is indeed playing the role written for it on the computer." What I wonder is, how many more years will we have to wait for Rumsfeld to figure that one out?

Back to the Future

South Dakota passes abortion ban

Wed Feb 22
Reuters

SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota (Reuters) - South Dakota became the first U.S. state to pass a law banning abortion in virtually all cases, with the intention of forcing the Supreme Court to reconsider its 1973 decision legalizing the procedure.

The law, which would punish doctors who perform the operation with a five-year prison term and a $5,000 fine, awaits the signature of Republican Gov. Michael Rounds and people on both sides of the issue say he is unlikely to veto it.

"My understanding is we are the first state to truly defy Roe v. Wade," the 1973 high court ruling that granted a constitutional right to abortion, said Kate Looby of Planned Parenthood's South Dakota chapter.

State legislatures in Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky also have introduced similar measures this year, but South Dakota's legislative calendar means its law is likely to be enacted first.

"We hope (Rounds) recognizes this for what it is: a political tool and not about the health and safety of the women of South Dakota," Looby said.

"If he chooses to sign it, we will be filing a lawsuit in short order to block it," she said after attending the afternoon debate at the state capital in Pierre.

Proponents have said the law was designed for just such a court challenge.

I hope all of those "pro-choice" Republicans are proud of themselves. Congratulations to all of the activists who didn't work that hard against Alito and Roberts... we are headed back to the 19th Century for Women's Rights. I'm sure they'll soon find a good reason to ignore the 19th Amendment.

Here is another perfect issue for anyone running for Congress to put at the top of their agenda since all of the polls show that a clear majority of Americans are against this type of law.

I just hope the "advisors" read the same polls.

The Dirty Myth

Outrage Waylays U.S. Goals
By Borzou Daragahi and Megan K. Stack, Times Staff Writers

BAGHDAD — The bombing of a major Shiite shrine Wednesday has stoked fears that a full-scale civil war may erupt in Iraq and sharpened long-standing animosities between Shiite and Sunni Muslims across the Middle East.

The dawn attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra also undermined America's political goals at a critical juncture when U.S. envoys are struggling to keep a delicate nation-building process from disintegrating into outright religious warfare.

"The situation has gravely deteriorated," Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, the United Nations' special representative to Iraq, said in an interview after the explosion set by unknown assailants. "It is precisely what can very dangerously inflame the sectarian situation."

The blast that blew the dome off one of the holiest Shiite sites in the world is expected to embolden Iraq's Shiite militias just as Washington was trying to purge them from the nation's security services and keep them off the streets. Shiite political parties were strengthened by the attack, at a time when the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has been prodding Sunni Arabs, Kurds and secular Iraqis to form a counterweight to the long-repressed majority sect's newly minted political power.

The attack, which could also strengthen the influence of neighboring Shiite-ruled Iran, fanned the flames of sectarian tension anew, promising to further entangle the U.S. military in Iraq.

"It will incite some bitter feelings within the Shiite communities, and it will also instigate some sectarian frictions between Sunni and Shiite," said Saad Jawad Qindeel, a moderate Shiite politician.

Within hours, retaliatory attacks targeted the minority Sunni population, which had been favored until President Saddam Hussein was toppled from power in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Wednesday's bombing and counterattacks threatened to undo efforts by American forces to stave off civil war and regional conflict.

Armed, black-clad Shiite militiamen swarmed the streets of Baghdad and other cities, waving AK-47s and rocketpropelled-grenade launchers, quickly unsettling two years of efforts to rein in these armed groups. Some reportedly fired rockets and machine guns at Sunni mosques, heightening Sunni Arabs' worries about the threat that Shiite militias pose to their communities.

The mayhem left more than 60 Iraqis dead.

The growing power of the politically tied militias, some of which are indistinguishable from official Iraqi security forces, has proved a difficult issue to resolve in efforts to stabilize the country.

Where is it written that the US gets to have any legitimate "goals" in the area? Stories like this make me nuts. The assumption of American supremecy is flat out crazy.

God's Work

Wempe Guilty of One Count of Molestation
By Jessica Garrison, Times Staff Writer

The pedophile priest whom Cardinal Roger M. Mahony apologized for returning to the ministry in Los Angeles was convicted this afternoon of molesting a young boy, but the jurors deadlocked on four other counts.

Michael Edwin Wempe, 66, now retired from the Los Angeles Archdiocese, has admitted sexually abusing 13 boys during his 36-year career in the archdiocese — but not the one he was today convicted of sexually abusing.

Both sides claimed partial victory in the case, which could send the former cleric to prison for a maximum of three years.

The conviction was in the courtroom of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe, who declared a mistrial on the other counts. Prosecutors said they will decide by March 10 whether to retry Wempe.

Rappe ordered deputies to take Wempe, who suffers from diabetes and a weak heart, into custody in the courtroom. The six men and six women, including three Catholics, took three days to decide Wempe's fate. All jurors declined to comment, as did the victim.

The verdict "sends a message to the archdiocese regarding this defendant," said Assistant Dist. Atty. Todd Hicks, who said he was "very pleased" with the verdict.

Hicks said Wempe would never have had the opportunity to commit the crime if his predatory background had been revealed earlier.

Leonard Levine, Wempe's defense attorney, said jurors conscientiously considered the evidence.

"They looked at each count individually. They looked at the facts of this case," said Levine.

Levine said his client was subjected to "a personal vendetta by the accuser. That's a natural emotion, but that's not the rule of law."

Wempe did not testify in his own defense. Prosecutors called the now 26-year-old victim, who said Wempe molested him as a child, and eight others, who testified to having been sexually abused by the former priest. Two of the others were brothers of the 26-year-old.

In 1988, Mahony sent Wempe for psychiatric treatment after he was accused of molesting boys, but then restored him to the ministry — a decision he publicly stated he now regrets. Wempe had been accused of "indiscreet conduct with young boys."

After six months at a treatment center in New Mexico, treatment that Wempe maintained cured him, Mahony reassigned him to the chaplaincy at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He remained there until 2002, when the clergy sex scandal erupted across the country. Wempe's victims came forward, and Mahony forced him to resign.

The present trial focused renewed attention on Mahony's handling of predator priests since he became archbishop of Los Angeles in 1985, a central issue in the more than 560 civil claims against the archdiocese for failing to protect children from such priests.

Wempe is one of at least three priests accused of molesting children after Mahony or a subordinate received a complaint, sent the accused to therapy, then returned him to active ministry.

If the Catholic church had ever listened to the testimony of women, it would have twigged to this problem decades earlier. But women don't count in the RCC and get reminded on a daily basis.

Busy, Sick Blogger

Co-bloggers, I'm mostly out of the house and out of pocket today. I'm attending an EPI event this afternoon, followed by a trip to the haircutter (I do look like a shaggy dog) and dinner with a friend. I'll write about the EPI event when I return home, but mostly it will be nice to be away from the computer and participating in human events.

My nose looks like Rudolph's and it was a more than a little intimidating to take part in a photo shoot with the AP yesterday. Yer werks wid wot yer gots.

I'll put up a link to the AP story about Flu Wiki as soon as it is available on the wires. As I told the photog, it is wierd to be famous for a disease which might kill millions.

Weeknight Simple, Company Good

This is one of those "meals in 30 minutes" for a weeknight that is comfort food on a cold winter night.

FARFALLE WITH SAUSAGE, TOMATOES, AND CREAM

2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 pound each sweet and hot Italian turkey sausages, casings removed
1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
1 cup chopped onion
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes with added puree
1/2 cup whipping cream

1 pound farfalle (bow-tie pasta)
1/2 cup (packed) chopped fresh basil
Freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese

Heat oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add sausage and crushed red pepper. Sauté until sausage is no longer pink, breaking up with back of fork, about 5 minutes. Add onion and garlic; sauté until onion is tender and sausage is browned, about 3 minutes longer. Add tomatoes and cream. Reduce heat to low and simmer until sausage mixture thickens, about 3 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until tender but still firm to bite. Drain, reserving 1 cup cooking liquid. Return pasta to same pot. Add sausage mixture and toss over medium-low heat until sauce coats pasta, adding reserved cooking liquid by 1/4 cupfuls if mixture is dry. Transfer pasta to serving dish. Sprinkle with basil. Serve, passing cheese separately.

Makes 6 servings.

Serve with a salad of baby arugula with Smithfield ham, blue cheese and fresh fig vinaigrette.

2 tablespoons butter
2 cups chopped fresh figs, plus 4 fresh figs, quartered*
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup cider vinegar
2 cups vegetable oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
4 (1/2-inch thick) slices brioche
1/4 cup olive oil
8 cups arugula, washed and picked
4 ounces ham, julienned and fried until crispy (recommended: Smithfield)
6 ounces crumbled blue cheese (recommended: Maytag)
Freshly cracked black pepper

*Cook's Note: If fresh figs are unavailable, you can substitute fig preserves or jam.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

In a saute pan, brown the butter with 1 1/2 cups of the figs and the sugar. Season the mixture with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat and pour into a food processor with a metal blade. Puree the mixture for 1 minute. Add the vinegar and process for 30 seconds. With the machine running, slowly add the vegetable oil until the dressing is emulsified. Season the dressing with salt and pepper. Fold in the reserved figs. Pour the dressing into a saucepan and warm the dressing.

Remove the crust from the brioche and cut into 1/2-inch cubes. In a medium mixing bowl, toss the croutons with the olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Place on baking sheet and bake until golden, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove, cool and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, toss the greens with desired amount of the dressing. Mound the greens in the center of each plate. Arrange the quartered figs, ham, and croutons around the greens. Crumble the cheese on top of the greens. Garnish the salad with cracked pepper around the rim of the plate.

This is a menu good enough for company.

Cold Medicine

I did make avgolemono (Greek chicken soup with rice, lemon and egg) for dinner. I think the fact that I ate it three times a week last year is the reason I didn't get sick, so I'm treating the bug with it.

Had I had some onions in the house, I could have gone for some cipollata, Italian onion soup and a nice change from the usual French rendition.

4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon lard, or fat back
12 cippole, red bulb onions, thinly sliced
4 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup milk
4 cups chicken stock, recipe follows
3 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup freshly grated Pecorino Toscano
Salt and pepper
6 slices Tuscan bread
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

In a large, heavy-bottomed pot, melt the butter and the lard over low heat. Add the onions and cook slowly, allowing them to develop a rich brown color. Once the onions have cooked for about 20 minutes, add the flour and stir through. Add the wine, milk and stock, then gently stir. Cook 10 minutes more, at a high simmer.

Whisk in the eggs and cheese and continue to cook until the liquid thickens to stew consistency. Season with salt and pepper. Grill each slice of bread, drizzle with oil and serve with the cipollata in warmed bowls.

Brown Chicken Stock:
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 1/2 pounds chicken wings, backs, and bones
3 carrots, coarsely chopped
2 onions, coarsely chopped
4 ribs celery, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 bunch parsley stems

In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat the oil over high heat until smoking. Add all the chicken parts and brown all over, stirring to avoid burning. Remove the chicken and reserve. Add the carrots, onions, and celery to the pot and cook until soft and browned. Return the chicken to the pot and add 3 quarts of water, the tomato paste, peppercorns, and parsley. Stir with a wooden spoon to dislodge the browned chicken and vegetables bits from the bottom of the pan. Bring almost to a boil, then reduce heat and cook at a low simmer until reduced by half, about 2 hours, occasionally skimming excess fat. Remove from heat, strain, and press on the solids with the bottom of a ladle to extract out all liquids. Stir the stock to facilitate cooling and set aside. Refrigerate stock in small containers for up to a week or freeze for up to a month.

Yield: 1 1/2 quarts

Comfort Food

It's been a cold, dark, dank day in the mid-Atlantic. We started with snow this morning which turned to rain late morning, then drizzle for the rest of the day. A great day to have The Cold From Hell. I'm in the mood for comfort foods (as if I could taste them....) and, if I had any appetite, I'd be making chili with this good smokey chile corn bread. Serves 6-8.

4 strips thick-cut bacon, chopped
2 cups stone-ground cornmeal, white or yellow
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons kosher salt
4 large eggs
2 cups milk
2 canned chipotle chiles, drained, stemmed, seeded and minced
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives

Heat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Put the bacon into a cold 10-inch cast iron pan and cook over medium heat until the fat is rendered and the bacon bits are crisp. Do not let burn. Remove the bacon to a paper towel lined plate. Keep the bacon fat in the pan and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl beat the eggs with a whisk until foamy; whisk in the milk. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir just until combined. Fold in the bacon bits, chipotle, and chives. Pour the batter into the cast iron pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 to 25 minutes.

I learned my cornbread from a Texan which means no sugar, although sugar is used throughout most of the South.

Quack

As always, Dan Froomkin cuts to the chase:

When the Trust Is Gone

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, February 22, 2006; 1:36 PM

With President Bush's credibility damaged and his political clout eroded, maybe it was just a matter of time before "trust me" didn't hack it anymore -- even with his most loyal supporters in Congress.

Today, Bush faces a significant political test ever over a sleeper issue -- the long-proposed turning over of operations at several U.S. ports to a company owned by an Arab country.

Suddenly, it's Bush who is on the receiving end of scathing critiques that he is weak on terror and oblivious to post-9/11 realities.

The issue also revisits the touchy matter of his administration's competence. It echoes the ongoing sensitivity about the separation of powers and lack of congressional oversight. And when it comes to gut-level politics, Bush finds himself caught in the pincers between Republican prejudice and Democratic opportunism.

Given the astonishingly bipartisan nature of the Congressional revolt, it's hard to imagine legislators backing down on this one. The traditional White House approach to rebellion within the GOP -- private arm-twisting -- may not work this time.

So look for White House Plan B, which is to remain steadfast in public while crafting a private retreat that is ultimately spun as a Bush victory.

Not once in Bush's five years as president has he gone to Plan C -- a veto. And while Bush threatened one yesterday, using his very first veto in the face of so much public flak would be a dramatic political defeat. Having that veto overridden would be a debacle.

One question that kept coming up yesterday: Why is this so important to Bush? There's a lot of speculation below. Bush himself says it's about fair play. Some critics suggest he puts free-market corporate values ahead of literally everything else. Or could it be that the White House is concerned that any sign of backing down to Congress on anything right now would be seen as the official start of its slide into lame-duck status?

Unhealthy

Analysts: Health Care Costs to Keep Rising

By KEVIN FREKING
The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 22, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Within a decade, an aging America will spend one of every five dollars on health care, according to government analysts who see no end to increases in the cost of going to the doctor and taking medicine.

The nation's total health care bill by 2015: more than $4 trillion. Consumers will foot about half the bill, the government the rest.

Hospital costs will rise more quickly than previously anticipated, reflecting a construction boom for urban hospitals. Meanwhile, drug costs are expected to be lower because of a greater reliance on generics, and because insurers administering the new Medicare drug benefit were able to negotiate steeper discounts than previously anticipated.

The projections, published in the journal Health Affairs, come as President Bush urges Americans to confront the rising cost of health care. In his State of the Union address last month, the president pushed health savings accounts, or HSAs, and the high-deductible insurance plans that go with them.

The administration predicts that Americans would become more thrifty consumers if they had to pay more of the upfront costs, which occurs with health savings accounts.

"We don't expect HSAs to proliferate so dramatically that we would have an impact similar to that of the managed care era of the '90s," said John Poisal, deputy director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' National Health Statistics Group. Then, health care flattened out at 13 percent of gross domestic product.

Overall, the analysts forecast a 7.2 percent annual increase in health care costs over the coming decade. That's in line with the 7.4 percent increase in 2005.

Still, the overall economy is projected to grow at a rate of only 5.1 percent over the coming decade, which means health care will play an ever-growing role.

"These changes could force payers and providers to re-examine fundamental questions regarding the delivery and financing of health care services," the analysts said.

Another trend within the new government projections is an ever-growing reliance on the government to foot the bill for health care. By the end of the next decade, the government will pay for about half of the nation's medical costs.

Overall, the most important factor in health care spending is income, the analysts said. As Americans make more money, they spend more to get healthy. People making $90,000 are more likely to visit a doctor and get their prescriptions filled than those who make $50,000, Poisal said.

Just imagine, the wealthiest nation in the world complaining about a two tiered health care system. The sad thing is that we've known this was coming and yet nothing has been done.

And if you think things are stressed now, just imagine what it wil be like when the Iraq vets come home and need long term care (especially if their jobs don't provide health care).

Today's Bad News

Federal Wildlife Monitors Oversee a Boom in Drilling
Energy Programs Trump Conservation

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 22, 2006; Page A01

PINEDALE, Wyo. -- The Bureau of Land Management, caretaker of more land and wildlife than any federal agency, routinely restricts the ability of its own biologists to monitor wildlife damage caused by surging energy drilling on federal land, according to BLM officials and bureau documents.

The officials and documents say that by keeping many wildlife biologists out of the field doing paperwork on new drilling permits and that by diverting agency money intended for wildlife conservation to energy programs, the BLM has compromised its ability to deal with the environmental consequences of the drilling boom it is encouraging on public lands.

Here on the high sage plains of western Wyoming, often called the Serengeti of the West because of large migratory herds of deer and antelope, the Pinedale region has become one of the most productive and profitable natural gas fields on federal land in the Rockies. With the aggressive backing of the Bush administration, many members of Congress and the energy industry, at least a sixfold expansion in drilling is likely here in the coming decade.

Recent studies of mule deer and sage grouse, however, show steep declines in their numbers since the gas boom began here about five years ago: a 46 percent decline for mule deer and a 51 percent decline for breeding male sage grouse. Early results from a study of pronghorn antelope show that they, too, avoid the gas fields.

Yet as these findings have come in, the wildlife biologists in the Pinedale office of the BLM have rarely gone into the field to monitor harm to wildlife.

"The BLM is pushing the biologists to be what I call 'biostitutes,' rather than allow them to be experts in the wildlife they are supposed to be managing," said Steve Belinda, 37, who last week quit his job as one of three wildlife biologists in the BLM's Pinedale office because he said he was required to spend nearly all his time working on drilling requests. "They are telling us that if it is not energy-related, you are not working on it."

Belinda, who had worked for 16 years as a wildlife biologist for the BLM and the Forest Service, said he came to work in the agency's Pinedale office 20 months ago because of the "world-class wildlife." He has quit to work here for a national conservation group, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, as its energy initiative manager.

"It is a huge attraction for biologists to work in western Wyoming," he said. "But in this [BLM] office, they want you to look at things in a single-minded way. I have spent less than 1 percent of my time in the field. If we continue down this trend of keeping biologists in the office and preventing them from doing substantive work, there is a train wreck coming for wildlife."

Let's see: despoliation of wildlife, the air, civil rights....I really wonder if there will be anything left of this country by the time the neocons are done with it.

Blogging v. Life

High Court's Newbie Rounds the Learning Curve

By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, February 22, 2006; Page A02

It was Samuel Alito's first day of school yesterday, and the new Supreme Court justice demonstrated himself to be a precocious, if sometimes too enthusiastic, pupil.

In his first day on the bench, Alito laughed obligingly at Justice Antonin Scalia's joke about river discharge. He stroked his chin thoughtfully and rocked in his chair, just as the more senior justices do. The eight questions he asked -- on the finer points of the Clean Water Act and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission -- put him on course to surpass within days the total number of questions Justice Clarence Thomas has asked in 15 years.

The new student had some awkward moments as he adjusted to his surroundings. He tried to talk at the same time as 85-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens, then quickly backed down. He continued the questioning of a government lawyer after the time for the argument had expired. And, in his haste to depart the chamber, he forgot the rules of seniority and stepped in front of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; the 72-year-old Clinton appointee was uninjured.

Milbank seems to own the snark franchise in the WaPo's A section and I frankly wonder what this crap is doing on the "news" pages. It isn't news, it isn't analysis, it's just attitude.

Galloping Crud Open Thread

Light posting today. What ever the bug was which grabbed me last week, today it is simply sitting on me and the sucker weighs a ton.

Unavoidably Bipartisan

I think that Kurtz has a good feel for this issue and why it is toxic to the grand illusion.

Making Waves

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 22, 2006

I've been trying to dope out how the UAE port security deal became the white-hot political story of the moment.

Here's what I've discovered.

On Feb. 12, the AP moved a story that began: "A company in the United Arab Emirates is poised to take over significant operations at six American ports as part of a corporate sale, leaving a country with ties to the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers with influence over a maritime industry considered vulnerable to terrorism."

Know what else happened on Feb. 12? A certain ranch owner called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times to say that a certain senior administration official had accidentally shot his hunting buddy. And for the next week, the media cared about little else, culminating in this week's Time and Newsweek cover stories.

But the story was percolating along. Last Wednesday, Feb. 15, a Washington Times editorial asked: "Do we really want our major ports in the hands of an Arab country where al Qaeda recruits, travels and wires money?"

On Thursday, a New York Times editorial said the administration had taken "laxness to a new level" by allowing Dubai Ports World to run significant operations at six ports, including the one in New York. The next day, The Washington Post, which had run the AP wire five days earlier, in effect tried again with a staff-written story:

"The management of major U.S. ports taken over by an Arab-owned company? What was the Bush administration thinking when it allowed such a thing?"

The Times tried again too that day, with this story: "The Bush administration dismissed the security concerns of local officials yesterday and restated its approval of a deal that will give a company based in Dubai a major role in operating ports in and around New York City."

Then some Democrats, notably Hillary and Chuck Schumer, ripped the administration, and since the Cheney story was fading, a new controversy was born.

Now at this point, the conservative bloggers usually weigh in and tell the left-wing moonbats to stop playing politics with national security and leave the White House alone. But that didn't happen, and soon George Pataki and Bill Frist were jumping on the anti-Dubai bandwagon.

Michelle Malkin was out there early, saying: "The buck stops with the White House. The president has the ultimate authority to stop the deal. And he should . . . My bottom line is that the deal looks bad and smells worse."

How long can you play the "other" card again and again then expect your supporters to buy that these "others" are the best source of security?

The actual idea that we should outsource our port security to a multinational corporation is insane. This is something that the administration has known it needed to do since October 2001 and yet they are just now getting around to it.

In a sense, this and Katrina are both excellent real world examples of how unseriously this administration takes its responsibility to protect the public from disasters. Instead of laying out a rational plan, thier idea is to throw something together for their cronies and hope that the people don't notice how they are being bamboozalded. Except this time, even Congressional Republicans can't stomach what is going on for now.

Progress, Bush Style

Blast Destroys Golden Dome of Sacred Shiite Shrine in Iraq

By EDWARD WONG
Published: February 22, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 22 - Insurgents dressed as police commandos detonated powerful explosives this morning inside one of Shiite Islam's most sacred shrines, destroying most of the building, located in the volatile town of Samarra, and prompting thousands of Shiites to flood into streets across the country in protest.

The golden-domed shrine housed the tombs of two revered leaders of Shiite Islam and symbolized the place where the Imam Mahdi, a mythical, messianic figure, disappeared from this earth. Believers in the imam say he will return when the apocalypse is near, to cleanse the world of its evils.

The blast took place at about 7 a.m. and shook the city of Samarra, a Sunni-dominated area that is nevertheless sacred to Shiites. The gunmen entered the shrine and handcuffed guards in the building, then set about planting the explosives, an official of the provincial governorate said. There were no immediate reports of casualties, but the golden dome was entirely destroyed, as well as three-quarters of the structure.

Samarra has long been one of the most violent cities in Iraq, and American forces there have struggled to contain a virulent Sunni-led insurgency. The American military has tried various offensives, only to have insurgents regroup and carry out further strikes. The Americans have also had little success in propping up Iraqi security forces in the town.

I'm sure there is some good news somewhere the "liberal" media is ignoring as Iraq spirals out of control. If there is a civil war, how can we spin it as "Misson Accomplished"?

For Carnivores

I love london broil, whether it is done on the grill or under the broiler, but it really is better in the summer on the grill. Here is my shorthand grilling dry rub. No more than 5 minutes on a side but use some patience and let it rest ten minutes and you'll have some fine slices of steak. Serve this with twice baked potatoes and a salad of bibb lettuce dressed with an herb vinaigrette. Decorate the salad with grape tomatoes, cucumber slices and chopped parsely and serve it after the main course, in the Italian fashion. A grind of fresh pepper and a sprinkle of ground parmesan and you are cooking Italian.

(2-pound) London broil
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 recipe Dry Rub, recipe below

Rub London broil with olive oil and then coat generously with the dry rub. Let stand for about 15 minutes at room temperature.

Preheat a grill pan over medium-high heat.

Place meat on grill and grill for about 5 minutes on each side for medium-rare. Remove from heat and let rest for 5 to 10 minutes before slicing on the bias.

Dry Rub:
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon sweet paprika
2 teaspoons garlic powder
4 pinches salt
15 grinds black pepper

Mix all ingredients together thoroughly in a small bowl. Coat the steak, grill, be happy. Slice thinly at 45 degrees to the horizontal axis and this is very good eating.

Site News

Today has been heavy with personal business (no two days are alike for me) and Wiki work as the flu news gets scarier. Tomorrow, I have real life meetings to deal with, so pickings are likely to be sparse unless the co-bloggers can chime in.

I may get a food post up before I hit the sheets, no guarantees. I'm so tired right now that my hair hurts and my tummy still ain't right.

Your blogger is human and has the complete set of human failings.

Little Bites

Tapas are the small plates served in Spanish bars to accompany sherry. They are a wonderful way to have a sherry tasting party. Dry sherries are the best to accompany savory bites. Here are three tapas to get you started.

OVEN-ROASTED WILD MUSHROOMS WITH GOAT CHEESE AND CHILE OIL

Chile oil:

* 1 cup pure olive oil
* 2 ounces dried New Mexico peppers
* 1 ounce dried arbol chile powder
* 2 tablespoons ancho powder

Place all ingredients in a blender and puree. Strain mixture through a fine strainer. Reserve. This may be done up to one day in advance.

Roasted mushrooms:

* 8 cups mushrooms (combination of portobello or cremini, shiitake and oyster mushrooms), stems removed and sliced
* 3 tablespoons olive oil
* 4 cloves garlic, minced
* 1/4 cup thinly sliced shallots
* 1/2 cup chile oil
* 8 ounces goat cheese, cut into 8 slices
* Salt and freshly ground pepper
* 3 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. In a large mixing bowl, combine the mushrooms with the olive oil, and shallots, then season to taste with salt and black pepper. Arrange the mushrooms evenly in one layer in a heavy roasting pan and roast for 15 minutes or until tender. Remove the mushrooms from the roasting pan and place into a large cazuela or baking dish. Drizzle with 1/2 cup of chile oil and top with the slices of cheese. Bake until hot, 5 to 8 minutes. Remove from the oven, garnish with thyme, and drizzle with the remaining chile oil. Serve with lots of crusty French bread.

Yield: 8 servings

SHRIMP FILLED ZUCCHINI BLOSSOMS

* 12 zucchini blossoms
* 1/2 pound small raw shrimp, peeled, deveined, diced
* 2 tablespoons chopped shallots
* 1 tablespoon fresh tarragon
* 1/4 cup cream
* 1/2 cup French bread cubes, all crust removed
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
* 1/4 cup olive oil
* 1/2 cup flour
* 1/2 cup water

Rinse the blossoms under cold running water gently and dry on paper towels. Combine the chopped raw shrimp with the shallots and tarragon. In a separate bowl combine the cream with the French bread and the salt and pepper and, using the back of a spoon or your fingers, mix until pasty.

Mix this bread paste with the shrimp and combine well.

Split the flowers open using a paring knife, insert a teaspoon of the shrimp paste inside, and fold the flower closed.

Heat the oil over medium heat in a large saute pan. Mix the flour and water together with a fork and add more flour if the batter is looser than heavy cream.

Dip each flower into the batter and then fry in the hot oil until crisp and golden.

Serve immediately.

Yield: 4 small appetizers

Herbed Goat Cheese and Shrimp Tapas

* 12 tablespoons Goat cheese
* 1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
* 1 teaspoon chopped fresh tarragon
* 1 teaspoon chopped fresh chervil
* 1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano
* 2 teaspoons minced garlic
* Salt and pepper
* 12 large shrimp, peeled, tail-on and butterflied
* 12 thin slices of proscuitto
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* Drizzle of white truffle oil

In a mixing bowl, blend the cheese, herbs and garlic together. Season the mixture with salt and pepper. Season the shrimp with salt and pepper. Press one tablespoon of the filling in the cavity of each shrimp. Wrap each shrimp tightly with one piece of proscuitto. In a saute pan heat the olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the stuffed shrimp and sear for 2 to 3 minutes on each side, or until the shrimp turn pink and their tails curl in towards their body. Remove from the pan and place on a large plate. Drizzle the shrimp with truffle oil. Garnish with parsley.

Yield: 12 stuffed shrimp

Secrets

The White House's Chilling Effect

By Ruth Marcus
Tuesday, February 21, 2006; Page A15

The Bush administration is constantly telling us that it can't tell us too much, for fear of chilling debate among the president and his top advisers. This argument would be a lot more persuasive if -- on the rare occasions the public is permitted a peak behind the White House curtain -- there were more evidence of something to chill.

Five years and counting, the notion that this is an insular White House headed by an incurious president isn't exactly administration-bites-dog news. But recent developments have reinforced and even broadened this image: This White House is not just reluctant to hear anything that conflicts with its pre-set conclusions -- it's also astonishingly ineffective in obtaining and processing information it wants to have.

The classic version of this phenomenon -- the administration's disinterest in dissenting views -- is painfully detailed in Foreign Affairs article by former CIA official Paul R. Pillar describing how the administration failed to prepare for -- or, Pillar says, even inquire about -- the "messy aftermath" that intelligence analysts predicted for Iraq. Pillar's efforts to assign blame to Bush administration policymakers ought to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt, given the CIA's own shortcomings. Still, it's maddening to read that the administration's first request for an analysis of postwar Iraq didn't come until "a year into the war."

And had the we'll-be-greeted-as-liberators crowd asked? According to Pillar, the prewar analysis was depressingly prescient: a "long, difficult and turbulent transition" in which occupying forces become "the target of resentment and attacks" and Iraq "a magnet for extremists." The CIA and the White House may have the most publicly rocky relationship since Ben Affleck and J. Lo, but how is it possible this information wasn't sought and considered before the fact?

The findings of the House and Senate investigations of the administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina may be even more disturbing, though, because they suggest that the administration has a hard time assimilating and acting on information even when it wants to.

Incurious and incompetent, Bushco is interested in power rather than governing.

More Bad News

Playing Chicken With Bird Flu

Published: February 21, 2006

Nigeria has reported avian flu in several states in the country's north. But the outbreak began on Jan. 10 or earlier, and it took Nigeria 20 days to send samples to a lab that could test them. The government has announced quarantines on the affected farms, but visiting reporters say that no quarantines exist and that some of the farms have not even been visited by animal health officials. Nigeria is paying far too little for each chicken it kills; that approach ensures that farmers will hide their flocks.

Avian flu can be controlled. In the past three years, bird flu broke out in Malaysia, Korea and Japan, and all three countries eradicated it, thanks to early warning and quick action that eliminated the flu by killing only a few thousand chickens. Those countries had systems in place to test animals regularly and respond rapidly to reports of signs of danger. But there is no effective veterinary surveillance in most poor countries. Since each bird-to-human transmission gives the virus another opportunity to mutate into a form that could cause a pandemic, the health of the whole world could depend on constructing it.

Humans are often plagued by zoonotic diseases, which arise first in animals. In last few years we have had SARS and West Nile and mad cow diseases, to name a few. Avian flu is now attracting the attention and money that could help nations build up their veterinary services and control these threats.

The World Organization for Animal Health faces overwhelming challenges in improving veterinary services for these regions and controlling bird flu outbreaks. The backyard chicken, kept by hundreds of millions of people in poor countries, has more contact with wild birds and with people than its industrial cousin. The families who keep chickens have not been educated about the dangers, and barefoot children continue to play with sick poultry. Agricultural officials vaccinating poultry can spread disease as they travel from farm to farm, and chicken-killing teams may be poorly trained and easily corrupted.

It's too little, too late.

Our Secret Government

U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review

By SCOTT SHANE
Published: February 21, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 — In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.

But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy — governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved — it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.

Mr. Aid was struck by what seemed to him the innocuous contents of the documents — mostly decades-old State Department reports from the Korean War and the early cold war. He found that eight reclassified documents had been previously published in the State Department's history series, "Foreign Relations of the United States."

"The stuff they pulled should never have been removed," he said. "Some of it is mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous."

After Mr. Aid and other historians complained, the archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees government classification, began an audit of the reclassification program, said J. William Leonard, director of the office.

Mr. Leonard said he ordered the audit after reviewing 16 withdrawn documents and concluding that none should be secret.

"If those sample records were removed because somebody thought they were classified, I'm shocked and disappointed," Mr. Leonard said in an interview. "It just boggles the mind."

If Mr. Leonard finds that documents are being wrongly reclassified, his office could not unilaterally release them. But as the chief adviser to the White House on classification, he could urge a reversal or a revision of the reclassification program.

A group of historians, including representatives of the National Coalition for History and the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, wrote to Mr. Leonard on Friday to express concern about the reclassification program, which they believe has blocked access to some material at the presidential libraries as well as at the archives.

Among the 50 withdrawn documents that Mr. Aid found in his own files is a 1948 memorandum on a C.I.A. scheme to float balloons over countries behind the Iron Curtain and drop propaganda leaflets. It was reclassified in 2001 even though it had been published by the State Department in 1996.

While some of this doesn't pass the silly standard, what we have here is the CIA and NSA putting a stranglehold on the lungs of a democracy, the shared information available to an informed citizenry. Our security agencies are robbing us of the ability to be good voters and I find this every bit as scary as the machinations of the Bush administration.

More Mistakes

Iraqi Province Cuts Off U.S. Forces
Karbala Provincial Governor Suspends Contact With U.S. Forces in Iraq, Complained About Dogs
International Headlines

KARBALA, Iraq Feb 20, 2006 (AP)— The governing council of Karbala province said Monday it was suspending contact with U.S. forces over the behavior of soldiers during a visit to the governor's office two days ago.

The decision followed similar moves by leaders of Maysan and Basra provinces, which have frozen ties with British forces in southern Iraq.

Karbala provincial spokesman Abdel Amir Hanoun complained that U.S. soldiers brought dogs inside the building when their commander visited provincial Gov. Aqeel al-Khazraji, considered an insult by the council.

They also blocked roads leading to the governor's office, preventing council members and the governor from parking cars outside the building, Hanoun said. The governor instructed the council to suspend contacts until U.S. forces apologize, he said.

The Karbala council is controlled by the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's largest Shiite party, and Dawa, the party of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

On Sunday, Maysan province decided to suspend ties with British authorities pending an investigation into a recently released videotape of British soldiers beating Iraqi youths during a January 2004 riot there.

British authorities said three soldiers have been arrested in connection with the beatings shown on the videotape first reported by the London newspaper News of the World.

Three years in and it doesn't appear that we've learned a damn thing.

Dinner from the Big Easy

This year, I think we all have some greater sense of connection to New Orleans at Mardi Gras time. Here is a classic recipe that I enjoy throughout the year, but it is a creole special for Mardi Gras.

NEW ORLEANS-STYLE RED BEANS AND RICE WITH SAUSAGE FULCHER

1 pound dried red kidney beans, picked over
1 pound smoked link sausage, halved lengthwise and cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick slices
1 large onion, chopped
2 pale-green inner celery ribs (with leaves), chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced, or to taste
6 cups water
4 bay leaves
1 tablespoon dried thyme, crumbled
2 teaspoons dried oregano, crumbled
1 teaspoon Tabasco
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
2 teaspoons salt, or to taste

Accompaniment: white rice
In a bowl soak beans in water to cover by 2 inches overnight. In a 6-quart heavy kettle combine all ingredients except 1/2 pound sausage. Bring mixture to a boil and simmer, covered, over moderate heat 1 1/2 hours. Remove lid and cook mixture at a bare simmer 1 hour more, adding more water if mixture is too thick.

Remove 1 cup bean mixture and mash to a paste. Stir bean paste and remaining 1/2 pound sausage into bean mixture and simmer 5 minutes. Serve bean mixture with rice.

Serves 6 to 8 as a main course.

I like Aidell's sausage" with this or any sausage dish. If you keep kosher, there is something for you! Bruce Aidell redefines sausage beyond pork and this is seriously good.

Breakfast!

The Thomas's ad isn't wrong: what makes English muffins fun and interesting is all those nooks and crannies that hold butter and other toppings so efficiently and present them so lusciously to our taste buds. However, a Thomas's muffin is so machine standard that it really doesn't do that any more. You want nooks and crannies? You are going to have to bake them yourself. You'll need English muffin molds, but you can make them from tuna and canned chicken cans. Consider this advanced food prep if you are a flu prepper. You'll need 8-10 forms for this recipe. English muffins freeze very well and defrost in the microwave better than loaf bread (which gets hard very fast.)

Scant half cup cornmeal
1/2 cup non-fat powdered milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon shortening
1 cup hot water
1 envelope dry yeast
1/8 teaspoon sugar
1/3 cup warm water
2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
Non-stick vegetable spray
Special equipment: electric griddle, 3-inch metal rings, see Cook's Note*

In a bowl combine the powdered milk, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, shortening, and hot water, stir until the sugar and salt are dissolved. Let cool. In a separate bowl combine the yeast and 1/8 teaspoon of sugar in 1/3 cup of warm water and rest until yeast has dissolved. Add this to the dry milk mixture. Add the sifted flour and beat thoroughly with wooden spoon. Cover the bowl and let it rest in a warm spot for 30 minutes.

Preheat the griddle to 300 degrees F.

Add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt to mixture and beat thoroughly. Scatter cornmeal on the griddle. Place metal rings onto the griddle and coat lightly with vegetable spray. Using #20 ice cream scoop, place 2 scoops into each ring and cover with a pot lid or cookie sheet and cook for 5 to 6 minutes. Remove the lid, scatter more cornmeal on the uncooked side and flip rings using tongs. Cover with the lid and cook for another 5 to 6 minutes or until golden brown. Place on a cooling rack, remove rings and cool. Split with forks and serve.

If the poached eggs, hollandaise sauce, paprika and chopped parsley are ready, your eggs benedict are served.

I like 'em with plain, unsalted butter and three-fruit marmalade but when times are really taxing I've been known to load on the unsalted Skippy Super Crunch for a protein hit. Yes it clings to the roof of your mouth. Deal with it.

Cucina di Mezzogiorno

It's been another avian flu/wiki kind of day, sorry for the dearth of postings. Tomorrow is going to be light, too. I have car issues and that means a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles. I don't how it is in your state, but in Virginia a root canal is preferable to a trip to the DMV. Or appendix surgery. Or an IRS audit. You get the picture.

Here's a little something you can make for lunch while I'm someplace between circles 3-6 of Hell in Dante's Inferno tomorrow:

When I was in Italy the first time, it took me a little time to get the lay of the land. On top of that, I was traveling with a festival orchestra in small towns where most of the locals spoke no English (I had about 5 hours of Berlitz Italian and a musician's Italian vocabulary=very limited), which meant that by the time you got one town figured out, you were in a new one. But I found a constant across the areas of Italy in which we traveled: bar food was reliable and cheap and available at all hours (good for a musician's crazy schedule.) One of our conductors, a veteran Italy traveler, cued me into this and I eat them to this day. This is the little sandwich called "tost" in Italian and it will keep you from starvation in between restaurant hours anywhere on the peninsula.

Classically, "tosti" are made between slices of Italian bread. Spread one slice with good mayonaisse, top with slices of thinly sliced deli ham and slivers of gruyere. Spread the other slice with grainy Italian mustard.. Place under a panini press on a lightly oiled pan and cook on medium for three minutes on a side, just enough to brown the bread and melt the cheese.

These days, I skip the oil and heat them on "broil" in the toaster oven . The flavor hit is the same and I avoid the fat calories. There is something about making a hot sandwich which renders a more satisfying, more comforting and more filling product.

I like to make these little numbers on English muffins. Hmm, that reminds me, we need a cooking class on making your own English muffins. Thomas's are good, your own are so much better that you literally won't believe it.

The Fragile Chain

Oil Prices Leap After Nigeria Attacks Hit Output

By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: February 20, 2006

Oil prices rose 2.6 percent today after a series of violent attacks by militants in the Niger Delta that shut down nearly a fifth of Nigeria's oil production.

Brent crude oil for April delivery rose $1.57 a barrel to $61.46 a barrel on London's ICE Futures exchange. Trading in the United States was closed because of Presidents' Day.

Tensions in the oil-rich delta have flared since Saturday after militants kidnapped nine foreign oil workers, set pipelines on fire, and disrupted a major export terminal in the latest series of clashes against the central government.

As a result, Nigeria's oil production has been cut by 455,000 barrels a day out of a total of about 2.5 million barrels a day, according to Royal Dutch Shell, the main foreign producer in Nigeria.

The threat to oil supplies from Africa's largest producer comes at a time of heightened concerns over the security of supplies given the global tightness in production and the rising demand for oil. News agencies reported that the rebels had threatened more violence in a campaign to free two ethnic leaders.

Nigeria is the fifth-largest importer to the United States, after Mexico, Venezuela, Canada and Saudi Arabia. Nearly half of Nigeria's oil exports go to the United States.

"The incidents in Nigeria are happening at a time when geopolitical events seem to be happening at a near-continuous rhythm — such as production problems in Iraq, tensions in Iran and in Venezuela," said Frédéric Lasserre, the head of commodity research at Société Générale in Paris. "It's a long list and it fosters a climate of very volatile oil markets."

Nigerian oil is particularly prized by refiners, especially in the United States, because it is of a light, sweet variety that is easier and cheaper to refine than the thicker and sulfur-rich kind that comes from the Middle East or Venezuela.

According to Royal Dutch Shell, the Forcados loading platform, which is about 20 kilometers offshore, was set on fire and a pipeline was blown on Saturday. As a sign that the attacks seemed well coordinated, nine foreign contractors who were working on a pipe-laying barge were kidnapped, also on Saturday. They were three Americans, two Egyptians, two Thai, and British and one Filipino national, working for Houston-based Willbros Group.

Another pipeline was damaged by an attack today, said Caroline Wittgen, a spokeswoman for Shell in London.

Analysts said that the weekend attacks showed that the armed groups were willing to step up their pressure on the government by targeting offshore oil facilities, which had largely been spared so far.

"We would expect the potential for further chaos in Nigeria to provide a floor for prices above $60, and we expect that Nigeria will continue to be a major issue in terms of supply security," Kevin Norrish, an analyst at Barclays Capital in London wrote in a note to investors.Oil prices rose 2.6 percent today after a series of violent attacks by militants in the Niger Delta that shut down nearly a fifth of Nigeria's oil production.

Brent crude oil for April delivery rose $1.57 a barrel to $61.46 a barrel on London's ICE Futures exchange. Trading in the United States was closed because of Presidents' Day.

Tensions in the oil-rich delta have flared since Saturday after militants kidnapped nine foreign oil workers, set pipelines on fire, and disrupted a major export terminal in the latest series of clashes against the central government.

As a result, Nigeria's oil production has been cut by 455,000 barrels a day out of a total of about 2.5 million barrels a day, according to Royal Dutch Shell, the main foreign producer in Nigeria.

The threat to oil supplies from Africa's largest producer comes at a time of heightened concerns over the security of supplies given the global tightness in production and the rising demand for oil. News agencies reported that the rebels had threatened more violence in a campaign to free two ethnic leaders.

Nigeria is the fifth-largest importer to the United States, after Mexico, Venezuela, Canada and Saudi Arabia. Nearly half of Nigeria's oil exports go to the United States.

"The incidents in Nigeria are happening at a time when geopolitical events seem to be happening at a near-continuous rhythm — such as production problems in Iraq, tensions in Iran and in Venezuela," said Frédéric Lasserre, the head of commodity research at Société Générale in Paris. "It's a long list and it fosters a climate of very volatile oil markets."

Nigerian oil is particularly prized by refiners, especially in the United States, because it is of a light, sweet variety that is easier and cheaper to refine than the thicker and sulfur-rich kind that comes from the Middle East or Venezuela.

According to Royal Dutch Shell, the Forcados loading platform, which is about 20 kilometers offshore, was set on fire and a pipeline was blown on Saturday. As a sign that the attacks seemed well coordinated, nine foreign contractors who were working on a pipe-laying barge were kidnapped, also on Saturday. They were three Americans, two Egyptians, two Thai, and British and one Filipino national, working for Houston-based Willbros Group.

Another pipeline was damaged by an attack today, said Caroline Wittgen, a spokeswoman for Shell in London.

Analysts said that the weekend attacks showed that the armed groups were willing to step up their pressure on the government by targeting offshore oil facilities, which had largely been spared so far.

"We would expect the potential for further chaos in Nigeria to provide a floor for prices above $60, and we expect that Nigeria will continue to be a major issue in terms of supply security," Kevin Norrish, an analyst at Barclays Capital in London wrote in a note to investors.

I've been contemplating the "car free" lifestyle for some time. Gas prices maybe the thing that pushes me over the edge.

What He Said

The Mensch Gap
By Paul Krugman

"Be a mensch," my parents told me. Literally, a mensch is a person. But by implication, a mensch is an upstanding person who takes responsibility for his actions. The people now running America aren't mensches.

Dick Cheney isn't a mensch. There have been many attempts to turn the shooting of Harry Whittington into a political metaphor, but the most characteristic moment was the final act — the Moscow show-trial moment in which the victim of Mr. Cheney's recklessness apologized for getting shot. Remember, Mr. Cheney, more than anyone else, misled us into the Iraq war. Then, when neither links to Al Qaeda nor W.M.D. materialized, he shifted the blame to the very intelligence agencies he bullied into inflating the threat.

Donald Rumsfeld isn't a mensch. Before the Iraq war Mr. Rumsfeld muzzled commanders who warned that we were going in with too few troops, and sidelined State Department experts who warned that we needed a plan for the invasion's aftermath. But when the war went wrong, he began talking about "unknown unknowns" and going to war with "the army you have," ducking responsibility for the failures of leadership that have turned the war into a stunning victory — for Iran.

Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, isn't a mensch. Remember his excuse for failing to respond to the drowning of New Orleans? "I remember on Tuesday morning," he said on "Meet the Press," "picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.' " There were no such headlines, at least in major newspapers, and we now know that he received — and ignored — many warnings about the unfolding disaster.

Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, isn't a mensch. He insists that the prescription drug plan's catastrophic start doesn't reflect poorly on his department, that "no logical person" would have expected "a transition happening that is so large without some problems." In fact, Medicare's 1966 startup went very smoothly. That didn't happen this time because his department ignored outside experts who warned, months in advance, about exactly the disaster that has taken place.

I could go on. Officials in this administration never take responsibility for their actions. When something goes wrong, it's always someone else's fault.

Was it always like this? I don't want to romanticize our political history, but I don't think so. Think of Dwight Eisenhower, who wrote a letter before D-Day accepting the blame if the landings failed. His modern equivalent would probably insist that the landings were a "catastrophic success," then try to lay the blame for their failure on the editorial page of The New York Times.

Where have all the mensches gone? The character of the administration reflects the character of the man at its head. President Bush is definitely not a mensch; his inability to admit mistakes or take responsibility for failure approaches the pathological. He surrounds himself with subordinates who share his aversion to facing unpleasant realities. And as long as his appointees remain personally loyal, he defends their performance, no matter how incompetent. After all, to do otherwise would be to admit that he made a mistake in choosing them. Last week he declared that Mr. Leavitt is doing, yes, "a heck of a job."

But how did such people attain power in the first place? Maybe it's the result of our infantilized media culture, in which politicians, like celebrities, are judged by the way they look, not the reality of their achievements. Mr. Bush isn't an effective leader, but he plays one on TV, and that's all that matters.

Whatever the reason for the woeful content of our leaders' character, it has horrifying consequences. You can't learn from mistakes if you won't admit making any mistakes, an observation that explains a lot about the policy disasters of recent years — the failed occupation of Iraq, the failed response to Katrina, the failed drug plan.

Above all, the anti-mensches now ruling America are destroying our moral standing. A recent National Journal report finds that we're continuing to hold many prisoners at Guantánamo even though the supposed evidence against them has been discredited. We're even holding at least eight prisoners who are no longer designated enemy combatants. Why? Well, releasing people you've imprisoned by mistake means admitting that you made a mistake. And that's something the people now running America never do.

Back to Court

Here are some of the items that are coming up in front of the new and improved (?!?) Supreme Court. Let's take a note as to what a great job our Senators have done to preserve these basic rights and laws:

Court to rehear public employee speech case

Lyle Denniston 2/17/06

The Supreme Court on Friday ordered re-argument in a significant pending case on the free speech rights of government employees -- Garcetti v. Ceballos (docket 04-473). There were no grants of new cases on Friday. Here is the Orders List. The Court will next issue orders on Tuesday, and there could be new grants at that time.

The new argument is expected to come during the current Term, either in March or April. The regular calendars for those months are full, but only for morning sessions.

The Garcetti case tests whether the First Amendment protects comments that public employees make in the course of performing their regular duties. It involves Richard Ceballos, a deputy prosecutor in Los Angeles County who wrote a memo to his superiors blowing the whistle on a flawed search warrant. He was taken off the prosecution team in the case, and transferred to a less desirable office; he contended this was in retaliation for his exercise of free speech rights.

The lead prosecutor at the time, Gil Carcetti, contended that, since the comments were made during the deputy's normal duties, they should not be entitled to First Amendment protection under prior public employee speech precedents. The Ninth Circuit Court rejected that argument, finding that Ceballos' comments were protected against retaliation.

The Court heard argument in the case early in the Term -- on Oct. 12. The decision to order it re-argued may mean that the Court was closely divided as it deliberated on it, and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's departure in retirement had left the Court facing the prospect of a 4-4 split. If that is the reason for the new hearing, the new Justice, Samuel A. Alito, Jr., very likely would hold the decisive vote.

That pesky 1st Amendment... who needs it, or whistle blowers, anyways. After all, the government should be able to do whatever it wants and not have to worry about people calling them on the carpet when they screw up.

There is also this case:

Alito faces environmental quagmire in first case

By Felicity Barringer
The New York Times
2/20/06

WASHINGTON - More than half of the nation's streams and wetlands could be removed from the protections of the federal Clean Water Act if two legal challenges launched more than a decade ago by two Michigan developers are supported by a majority of the newly remade Supreme Court.
One case involves a developer who wanted to sell a wetland for a shopping center, and, in preparation, filled it with sand without applying for a permit, in defiance of the authorities. The second was brought by a would-be condominium developer who applied to the Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to fill a wetland, and was denied.
Oral arguments in the cases - the first before the newest justice, Samuel Alito - are scheduled for Tuesday morning. They will pit developers and a phalanx of their industrial, agricultural and ideological allies against both the solicitor general and a who's who of environmental lawyers in an argument over the scope of one of the country's fundamental environmental laws.
The central question is where federal authority ends along the network of rivers, streams, canals and ditches. Does it reach all the veins and arterioles of the nation's waters, and all the wetlands that drain into them? Does it end with the waterways that are actually navigable and the wetlands abutting them? Or is it someplace in between?
Also at issue: Who draws those lines - and how - and who decides what the Clean Water Act means by ''navigable waters'' and ''the waters of the United States.''
Tucked in the larger question is the issue of how many of the nation's 100 million or so acres of wetlands have a close enough connection, or nexus, to regulated waters to fit under the same regulatory umbrella.
The twin cases, blending questions of hydrology and federalism, take aim at the constitutional and legal underpinnings of the federally run system that controls the health of the nation's web of waterways. The developers argue that the federal custodians of the Clean Water Act have overreached by asserting jurisdiction over ditches and wetlands far from the large waterways over which Congress has clear authority.

Maybe I'm wrong in my gut assumption about him... but I'm not very optomistic here.

Rest and Restoration

Need an Answer? Sleep on It.

When decisions involve a lot of complex factors, thinking deeply about them can produce worse outcomes than decisions made simply after "sleeping on it," according to research published last week in Science.

Volunteers asked to make judgments about the quality of different cars based on four criteria were more likely to choose the best car if they did think deeply about it, compared with those who did not put much effort into thinking about the decision.

But volunteers provided with 12 criteria about the cars fared worse when they thought deeply about their decision, compared with volunteers who were given the same information, were deliberately distracted by other things, and then were asked to make a judgment call.

Ap Dijksterhuis and colleagues at the University of Amsterdam said over-thinking complex decisions seems to produce dissatisfaction with the final answer, compared with simple gut responses. They hypothesized that the reason people do not make good decisions by thinking deeply in complex situations is because multiple evaluations of an issue can produce inconsistent conclusions. Additionally, people really can take into account only a limited number of things and, when presented with too much information, they focus on the wrong things.

"We tend to inflate the importance of some attributes at the expense of others, leading to worse choices," the scientists wrote. They later added that it "should benefit the individual to think consciously about simple matters and to delegate thinking about more complex matters to the unconscious."

I should have done this before I bought my last car. As a general rule, I utilize the "sleep on it" approach for nearly every important decision.

WaPo: Stenographer

THIS WEEK

Monday, February 20, 2006; Page A02

The President's Presidents' Day

President Bush will observe the national holiday today talking about energy policy in the Midwest. The energetic president spends the night in Colorado and talks about energy some more tomorrow at the National Renewable Energy Lab. Those favoring a more conventional Presidents' Day observance can head to Mount Vernon for a wreath laying at George Washington's tomb and a fife-and-drum parade. At the National Archives, they will be celebrating Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday.

Energetic? My a**.

Bush poised to set vacationing record
Visits to Crawford outpacing Reagan

By Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker, Washington Post | August 3, 2005

WACO, Texas -- President Bush is getting the kind of break most Americans can only dream of -- 33 days away from the office, loaded with vacation time.

The president departed yesterday for his longest stretch away from the White House, arriving at his Crawford ranch in the evening for five weeks of clearing brush, visiting with family and friends, and tending to some outside-the-Beltway politics. By historical standards, it is the longest presidential retreat in at least 36 years.

The August getaway is Bush's 49th trip to his cherished ranch since taking office and the 319th day that Bush has spent, entirely or partially, in Crawford -- nearly 20 percent of his presidency to date, according to Mark Knoller, a CBS Radio reporter known for keeping better records of the president's travel than the White House itself. Weekends at Camp David or at his parents' compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, bump up the proportion of Bush's time away from Washington even further.

Bush's long vacations are more than a curiosity: They play into diametrically opposite arguments about this leadership style. To critics and late-night comics, they symbolize a lackadaisical approach to the world's most important day job, an impression bolstered by Bush's two-hour midday exercise sessions and his disinclination to work nights or weekends. The more vociferous among Bush's foes have noted that he spent a month at the ranch shortly before the 9/11 attacks, when critics assert he should have been more attentive to warning signs.

Worrisome

Health Experts Surprised at Rapid Spread of Bird Flu

By HARI KUMAR and ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: February 20, 2006

NEW DELHI, Feb. 19 — The first reports of bird flu that cropped up in recent days in widely separated countries — India, Egypt and France — highlighted the disease's accelerating spread to new territories.

International health experts have been predicting widespread dissemination of the disease for about half a year, since they concluded that it could be spread by migrating birds. But the recent acceleration has perplexed many experts, who had watched the A(H5N1) virus stick to its native ground in Asia for nearly five years.

The most alarming of the current outbreaks, if only for sheer size, were the two widely separated episodes of avian flu in India, one of which has killed 50,000 birds in poultry flocks in the last few days. The Indian government, which has long been on alert for the virus because that country is on many migration paths in Asia, began killing half a million birds in the hopes of quashing the outbreaks, officials announced Sunday.

But the most perplexing report involved the single case in France — a wild duck found dead in the suburbs of Lyon — because migratory birds from Asia that carry the virus do not normally travel there at this time of year.

"After several years in one place, why is it now moving so rapidly?" asked Dr. Samuel Jutzi, director of the Animal Production and Health Division at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. "There is a lot about this that we just don't know."

The dead duck in France, he said, was "very odd, very difficult to explain." But he added, "What is known is that the width of flyways are very broad, and there may have been a swarm that went farther westward than normal."

In Western Europe, the disease has been confined to wild migratory birds, and authorities across the Continent were taking severe measures to protect domestic poultry. Many countries are now requiring that all poultry be kept indoors to prevent mixing with potentially infected wild birds.

In recent days, a wild duck in central Italy was also found dead from the virus, the first time it had been found so far north in that country.

On the German island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, 18 wild birds were confirmed to have the disease, bringing the total of infected birds there to 59 in the past week, mostly swans and hawks. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, visited the island on Sunday, a sign of how seriously European governments are taking the disease.

Germany is preparing to kill at least some of the 400,000 domestic birds on the island to make sure the virus does not spread into poultry flocks, local authorities said. When bird flu is detected in an area, the most effective way to control an outbreak is to kill all the birds in a surrounding area to isolate the highly infectious virus, and to ban movement of poultry in and out of the area.

But in India the disease is already in farm birds, raising more complicated issues, and the possibility that there will be human infections. Although the dreaded virus does not now readily infect humans or spread among them, more than 160 people have caught the disease worldwide, all of them people who had close contact with sick birds.

Experts are worried that A(H5N1) could acquire the ability to spread from human to human through natural processes, setting off a worldwide influenza pandemic.

Government officials in a rural district of western India on Sunday began to slaughter and inoculate roughly a million chickens, and dozens of people from the same area were dispatched to be tested, a day after test results confirmed the first outbreak of avian flu in this country.

Yes, the way the disease has spread in the last couple of weeks has everyone nervous. But this also tells us that we don't really understand some important vectors of disease transmission in animal populations, which becomes increasingly scary as we move into a world where zoonoses (animal disease reservoirs) become threats to people.

Nothing to see here

Frist: No New Spy Legislation Needed

Sunday February 19, 2006
By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press

Frist: No New Spy Legislation Needed

Sunday February 19, 2006 7:46 PM

AP Photo WX103< a0506-200602191438

By DEB RIECHMANN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, standing firmly with the White House on the administration's eavesdropping program, said Sunday he doesn't think new or updated legislation is needed to govern domestic surveillance to foil terrorists.

``I don't think that it does need to be rewritten, but we are holding hearings in the Judiciary Committee right now,'' Frist said on CBS' ``Face the Nation.''

Frist also said he didn't think a court order is needed before eavesdropping, under the program, occurs. ``Does it have to be thrown over to the courts? I don't think so. I personally don't think so,'' he said.

Critics argue the program, run by the National Security Agency, sidesteps the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which prohibits domestic eavesdropping without a warrant from a special intelligence court.

``This NSA program - it has to comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and it has to comply with the Fourth Amendment,'' which guarantees protection against unreasonable searches, California Rep. Jane Harman, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN's ``Late Edition.''

Some lawmakers are drafting legislation to change FISA, and Sen. Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says he has worked out an agreement with the White House to consider legislation and provide more information to Congress on the eavesdropping program.

While insisting the program is legal and setting the bar high on any possible legislative changes, White House officials recently signaled they are willing to work with Congress if it feels that further ``codification'' of the law is needed. A White House spokesman declined to comment further on the issue on Sunday.

This should be interesting... I wonder how much longer First will continue to be the majority leader before he is forced to step down. The White House knows what they did was illegal, otherwise why are they trying to strike a deal?

The Right to Life

I'm doing a passle of research on American health care and health insurance and I keep running into interesting things. James McManus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, is on Book TV flacking his new book on his own recent encounters with the "health care system" and I just started Googling some things. Host T.R. Reid just asked McManus who funded the ads that defeated the last attempt at access reform, and McManus took a guess, "the insurance industry." Here is what I found. Remember the "Harry and Louise" ads against the Clinton baby step plan to re-arrange the deck chairs on the health care Titanic?

"Through a combination of skillfully targeted media and grassroots lobbying, these groups were able to change more minds than the President could, despite the White House 'bully pulpit.' ... Never before have private interests spent so much money so publicly to defeat an initiative launched by a President," states Thomas Scarlett in an article titled "Killing Health Care Reform" in Campaigns & Elections magazine.

In 1993, Childs recalled, "The insurance industry was real nervous. Everybody was talking about health care reform. ... We felt like we were looking down the barrel of a gun." Forming coalitions, he explained, is a way to "provide cover for your interest. We needed cover because we were going to be painted as the bad guy. You [also] get strength in numbers. Some have lobby strength, some have grassroots strength, and some have good spokespersons. ... Start with the natural, strongest allies, sit around a table and build up ... to give your coalition a positive image." For the health care debate, his coalition drew in "everyone from the homeless Vietnam veterans ... to some very conservative groups. It was an amazing array, and they were all doing something."

Instead of forming a single coalition, health reform opponents used opinion polling to develop a point-by-point list of vulnerabilities in the Clinton administration proposal and organized over 20 separate coalitions to hammer away at each point. "In naming your coalition ... use words that you've identified in your research," Childs said. "There are certain words that ... have a general positive reaction. That's where focus group and survey work can be very beneficial. 'Fairness,' 'balance,' 'choice,' 'coalition,' and 'alliance' are all words that resonate very positively." The Coalition for Health Insurance Choices (CHIC), for example, focused on opposing the Clinton plan's proposed "mandatory health alliances."

To drive home the message, CHIC sponsored a now-legendary TV spot called "Harry and Louise," which featured a middle-class married couple lamenting the complexity of Clinton's plan and the menace of a new "billion-dollar bureaucracy." The ad was produced by Goddard*Claussen/First Tuesday, a PR and election campaign management firm that has worked for liberal Democrats, including the presidential campaigns of Gary Hart, Bruce Babbitt and Jesse Jackson. According to Robin Toner, writing in the September 30, 1994, New York Times, "'Harry and Louise' symbolized everything that went wrong with the great health care struggle of 1994: A powerful advertising campaign, financed by the insurance industry, that played on people's fears and helped derail the process."

CHIC and the other coalitions also used direct mail and phoning, coordinated with daily doses of misinformation from radio blowtorch Rush Limbaugh, to spread fears that goverment health care would bankrupt the country, reduce the quality of care, and lead to jail terms for people who wanted to stick with their family doctor. Every day 20 million Americans tune in and turn on to the Limbaugh talk radio show, which is aired on 650 stations across the United States. However, few people realize the degree of technologically sophisticated orchestration behind Limbaugh's power.

Childs explained how his coalition used paid ads on the Limbaugh show to generate thousands of citizen phone calls urging legislators to kill health reform. First, Rush would whip up his "dittohead" fans with a calculated rant against the Clinton health plan. Then during a commercial break listeners would hear an anti-health care ad and an 800 number to call for more information. Calling the number would connect them to a telemarketer, who would talk to congressional staffers fielding the calls typically had no idea that the constituents had been primed, loaded, aimed and fired at them by radio ads on the Limbaugh show, paid by the insurance industry, with the goal of orchestrating the appearance of overwhelming grassroots opposition to health reform. "That's a very effective thing on a national campaign and even in a local area if the issue is right," Childs said. He said this tactic is now widely used, although few will discuss the technique.

Childs also stepped in to provide corporate resources where members of the coalition were unable to do it themselves: "With one group we wrote a large portion of their direct mail package which went out to 4.5 million people and generated hundreds of thousands of contacts. We worked with a number of [business trade] associations to finance fly-ins to Washington, DC, where people lobbied their Representatives. ... In some case we funded them entirely, in some cases funded part of them, in others we didn't have to fund, we just provided the background and message. In other cases we actually wrote the stuff. ... With our coalition allies in some cases we were totally invisible. ... We actually ended up funding some advertising that our coalition partners ran under their names, mostly inside the Beltway to effect lawmakers' thinking."

By 1994, the barrage had substantially altered the political environment, and the Republicans became convinced that Clinton's plan - any plan - could be defeated. Their strategist, William Kristol, wrote a memo recommending a vote against any Administration health plan, "sight unseen." Republicans who previously had signed on to various components of the Clinton plan backed away. GOP Senator Robert Packwood, who had supported employer mandates for twenty years, announced that he opposed them in 1994, leading the National Journal to comment that Packwood "has assumed a prominent role in the campaign against a Democratic alternative that looks almost exactly like his own earlier policy prescriptions." In desperation George Mitchell, the Democratic Party's Senate majority leader, announced a scaled-back plan that was almost pure symbolism, with no employer mandates, and very little content except a long-term goal of universal coverage. Republicans dismissed it with fierce scorn.

In 1994, notes author James Fallows, the Wall Street Journal tested the reaction of a panel of citizens to various health plans, including the Clinton plan. First they tried describing each plan by its contents alone, and found that the panel preferred the Clinton plan to the main alternatives. "But when they explained that the preferred group of provisions was in fact 'the Clinton plan,'" writes Fallows, "most members of the panel changed their minds and opposed it. They knew, after all, that Clinton's plan could never work."

If there is a world-wide avian influenza pandemic in the next few years, it is going to be somewhat different in this country than it will be in other nations in the "industrialized west" because, with the exception of the US and South Africa, all the others have universal access and coverage. We don't know what, if anything, will happen with H5N1 (maybe nothing, but that looks increasingly less likely as more studies come in) but predicting what will happen in a country with 46 million uninsured means that the scarier scenarios come more into play.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. -Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

If I were feeling ironic tonight (I'm not, I have a bad stomach and an attitude) there are a whole lot of things I could do with the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence in the current political climate. But let me stick with one point, that unalienable right to life. The nutty religious right gets all twitterpated (and sometimes violent) about abortion as a "right to life," but where are they on my "right to life" by having access to adequate medical care? That's what it is: medical care is a right to life. The way the rhetoric on the right works is that unborn fetuses have rights I don't have.

Health insurance in this country is nothing short of a scandal. If you have a "pre-existing condition," a chronic disease, you are going going to be denied coverage BECAUSE YOU ARE SICK. The insurance industry in this country has done to universal coverage exactly the same thing that industrial America did to unions: demonize it. The stories that we hear repeatedly about how some widow in the UK had to wait six months for bunion surgery, or how Canadians are coming over the boarder to get their procedures done down here, when the truth is that wealthy Canadians are using the Mayo Clinic the same way that wealthy Americans do, and the industry is demonizing healthcare for ordinary Americans and have taught Americans to hate universal care the way they hate unions. My, hasn't this been a successful campaign against the self-interest of those of us in the serf class. You'd think that American workers would WANT healthy workers. And that healthy workers would reduce their costs in the big picture.

American business is now so addicted to short term profit statements in the next quarter that it is willing to put off the scary news until later, when it will come up with another bullshit PR strategy to deal with it. Right now, short term profit statements are selling on Wall Street and only a few courageous people are willing to say:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. -Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid worldthem briefly and then "patch them through" directly to their congressperson's office.

This is not a country which prizes "the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" when it cannot guarentee the right to healthcare, the first front in the road to wellness. I have demonstrated below that this country is actually about class, but in America, we aren't allowed to talk about it.

But wait, there is more! It might not be in your interest that I get sick with an infectious disease and infect you.

These are the facts, and yet the insurance companies play ostrich. I don't think that is going to work out well for them or us down the road.

Church for the State

In N.C., GOP Requests Church Directories

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 18, 2006

The North Carolina Republican Party asked its members this week to send their church directories to the party, drawing furious protests from local and national religious leaders.

"Such a request is completely beyond the pale of what is acceptable," said the Rev. Richard Land, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

During the 2004 presidential race, the Bush-Cheney campaign sent a similar request to Republican activists across the country. It asked churchgoers not only to furnish church directories to the campaign, but also to use their churches as a base for political organizing.

The tactic was roundly condemned by religious leaders across the political spectrum, including conservative evangelical Christians. Ten professors of ethics at major seminaries and universities wrote a letter to President Bush in August 2004 asking him to "repudiate the actions of your re-election campaign," and calling on both parties to "respect the integrity of all houses of worship."

Officials of the Republican National Committee maintained that the tactic did not violate federal tax laws that prohibit churches from endorsing or opposing candidates for office, and they never formally renounced it. But Land said he thought the GOP had backed down.

"I heard nothing further about it, so my assumption was that it stopped, at least at the national level," he said.

Yesterday, the Greensboro News & Record reported that the North Carolina Republican Party was collecting church directories, and it quoted two local pastors as objecting to the practice. The Rev. Richard Byrd Jr. of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Greensboro said anyone who sent in a directory "would be betraying the trust of the membership," and the Rev. Ken Massey of the city's First Baptist Church said the request was "encroaching on sacred territory."

Very interesting... I was wondering how we got on Liddy's mailing list.

Seriously though, look at who is protesting it. The Southern Baptists are actually critizing the Republican Party. Ok, I know it's not going to last, but I want to enjoy this while it lasts.

BTW: Could the lazy mainstream media bother to point out that there are many many non-Republicans who vote against these #@$%! because they are deeply religious?

Pizza and Love

If there is a person within the sound of my blog who doesn't love pizza, I haven't met them yet. Pizza in the US is almost the perfect meeting of tomato, bread and cheese, and those three things have been a human food passion for as pizza margarata reminds me of Cinzanos with soda consumed in the Italian sun on piazzas in Umbria, Brescia and Sicily late in the afternoon, just as the sun was turning from afternoon into evening. I don't know why things taste better then, I suspect we are willing to give them more time.

Grilled Pizza Margarita

6 ounces Pizza Dough, recipe follows
1/4 cup virgin olive oil, for brushing and drizzling
1/2 teaspoon minced fresh garlic
1/2 cup loosely packed shredded fontina
2 tablespoons freshly grated Pecorino Romano
6 tablespoons chopped canned tomatoes, in heavy puree
8 basil leaves

Prepare a hot charcoal fire, setting the grill rack 3 to 4 inches above the coals.

On a large, oiled, inverted baking sheet, spread and flatten the pizza dough with your hands into a 10 to 12-inch free-form circle, 1/8-inch thick. Do not make a lip. You may end up with a rectangle rather than a circle; the shape is unimportant, but do take care to maintain an even thickness.

When the fire is hot (when you can hold your hand over the coals for 3 to 4 seconds at a distance of 5 inches), use your fingertips to lift the dough gently by the 2 corners closest to you, and drape in onto the grill. Catch the loose edge on the grill first and slide the remaining dough into place over the fire. Within a minute the dough will puff slightly, the underside will stiffen, and grill marks will appear.

Using tongs, immediately flip the crust over, onto the coolest part of the grill. Quickly brush the grilled surface with olive oil. Scatter the garlic and cheeses over the dough, and spoon dollops of tomato over the cheese. Do not cover the entire surface of the pizza with tomatoes. Finally, drizzle the pizza with 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

Slide the pizza back toward the hot coals, but not directly over them. Using tongs, rotate the pizza frequently so that different sections receive high heat; check the underside often to see that it is not burning. The pizza is done when the top is bubbly and the cheese melted, about 6 to 8 minutes. Serve at once, topped with the basil leaves and additional olive oil, if desired.

This is the way I learned to make it in my uncle's pizza kitchen, but I never learned to throw it the way my brothers or my uncle did. If "Pizza Bill's Pancake House" still exists in Virginia, Minnesota, some of that crust up there on the tin ceiling were my failed attempts.

But this recipe will give you a result as good as my late uncle's wonderful pies.

Pizza Dough:
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
6 cups high-gluten flour
2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
Extra-virgin olive oil

Sprinkle the yeast over 1/2 cup warm (105 to 110 degrees F) water and allow it to dissolve and activate, about 5 minutes.

Combine the flour and salt and mound it onto a cool work surface creating a high walled well in the center. Combine the yeast mixture with 1 1/2 cups of cool water and pour into the well. Slowly begin to mix the water and flour, a little at a time, moving your fingers in short, counter clockwise circles around the border of the water. When the dough is firm enough to hold it's shape, scrape the remaining flour over it and knead until the mass is smooth and shiny, approximately 7 minutes.

Transfer the dough to a bowl that has been brushed with olive oil. Brush the top of the dough with olive oil to prevent a skin from forming, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place away from drafts until doubled in bulk, about 2 hours. Punch down the dough and knead once more. Let the dough rise again for about 40 minutes, punch down again and form dough into 4 balls.

Fill four pans with them, and then start ladling the sauce and placing the cheese.

Like my brother,our model was our uncle,Virginia, Minnesota's "Pizza Bill" who reveled in everything he did, including founding the first pizza restaurant on Minnesota's Mesabi Iron range. It was a place where I learned pizza and public service at a young age.. He's gone now a couple of years and I miss the enthusiasm. Bill Mattson was larger than life, and at 6'6" I'd call that an understatement. He was drafted for basketball by the LA Lakers but turned that down to lead a small town restaurateurs life and raise his very fine daughters very quietly. I don't know many people who would make that choice.

Which is why it is now time to leave Washington. And go someplace quieter.

Melanie

Food Poisoning Open Thread

Yr. Ob'd'nt C'rr'spndnt has something which looks suspiciously like a "food borne illness" which is why posts have been sparse for the last day and I can't tell what tomorrow will bring. I think it was that tuna salad sandwich I picked up at the grocery.

It could also be a "flu-like illness," which covers a multitude of really crappy bugs. I've got a fever, a cough, and GI distress. Whatever the differential diagnosis, I feel like hell, and have been spending more time in bed than in front of the computer.

And I broke a toe last night slamming a foot into the bathroom door. Yes, I feel truly crappy and my attitude is down the porcelain swirly with the rest of my guts.

Avian Flu News

Bird Flu Reaches India; Deaths Top 90 Worldwide

Associated Press
Sunday, February 19, 2006; Page A24

BOMBAY, Feb. 18 -- India reported its first case of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu Saturday after chickens were found to have died from the virus. A man in Indonesia also died from the disease, that country's 19th death, officials said.

Indian officials will immediately begin slaughtering hundreds of thousands of birds in a 1.5-mile radius around the poultry farms in the western town of Navapur, where the confirmed cases were detected, said Anees Ahmed, the Maharashtra state minister for animal husbandry.

"Around 500,000 birds will be killed," he said. "It is confirmed the deaths were caused by the H5N1 strain."

At least 30,000 chickens have died in Navapur, a major poultry-farming region of Maharashtra state, over the past two weeks, Ahmed said.

Officials initially believed the birds had died of Newcastle Disease, another deadly bird illness, but further tests revealed that bird flu was responsible.

Bird flu has killed at least 91 people -- mostly in Asia -- since 2003, according to World Health Organization figures updated through Monday.

Most victims have been directly infected by sick birds, but scientists fear the H5N1 virus could mutate to a form easily passed between humans and spark a pandemic.

Yet another region of the world with infected birds. Yet another opportunity for human co-infections of annular flu and H5N1 and gene swapping. Believe me, all of us at Flu Wiki are watching this very carefully.

Disastrous Plan

Drug Plan's Start May Imperil G.O.P.'s Grip on Older Voters

By ROBIN TONER
Published: February 19, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 — Older voters, a critical component of Republican Congressional victories for more than a decade, could end up being a major vulnerability for the party in this year's midterm elections, according to strategists in both parties. Paradoxically, one reason is the new Medicare drug benefit, which was intended to cement their loyalty.

During next week's Congressional recess, Democrats are set to begin a major new campaign to highlight what Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, describes as "this disastrous Republican Medicare prescription drug plan."

Democratic incumbents and challengers plan nearly 100 public forums around the country, armed with briefing books and talking points on a law that, party leaders assert, "was written by and for big drug companies and H.M.O.'s, not American families."

Recognizing the widespread criticism of the new drug program, Republican senators met in a closed session with administration officials this week to discuss the rocky rollout of the plan and prepare for questions back home.

But pollsters say the Republicans' difficulties with the over-60 vote go beyond the complicated drug benefit, which began Jan. 1.

President Bush's failed effort to create private accounts in Social Security last year was also unpopular with many older Americans. That, in addition to confusion over the drug benefit, has "taken the key swing vote that's been trending the Republicans' way and put it at risk for the next election," said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster. "And what that means is Republicans are going to have to work extra hard."

Mr. Bolger added: "It's no secret what the Democrats are going to do. It's what they always do — scare seniors."

Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, countered: "We told them up front, the way you're designing this is going to be a disaster. If you go back to the debate, we said this is set up for failure."

Retirees loom large in midterm elections because they turn out in force at the polls, even in nonpresidential years; their numbers and influence are particularly strong in Congressional battlegrounds like Florida and Pennsylvania.

Political opportunity knocks:

As the election approaches, increasingly anxious Congressional Republicans say the onus is on the Bush administration to make the program work. Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who played a crucial role in the drug law, said, "By and large, people are satisfied, but there are a lot of people who are frustrated and confused, no two ways about that. The question is whether those people who are frustrated and confused are going to have their problems resolved in the next few months. The administration is really on the hook for smoothing out these problems."

Surveys show that older voters remain skeptical; a new nationwide poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health research group, found that retirees were almost twice as likely to say they viewed the benefit unfavorably (45 percent) as favorably (23 percent). Last month's New York Times/CBS News Poll found that most did not expect the law to lower drug costs over the next few years.

In the 22nd Congressional District, in Florida, where State Senator Ron Klein, a Democrat, is challenging Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr., a Republican, Mr. Klein said the prescription drug issue was part of a general economic squeeze, including higher homeowners' insurance and gas prices, that retirees were feeling.

"Things have gotten pretty rough in the last couple years, and these Medicare prescription drug costs, on top of the other issues, are weighing pretty heavily on people with fixed incomes," Mr. Klein said. "Let's start thinking about the consumer side, instead of figuring out how to prop up the pharmaceutical and insurance industries."

Anyone who thinks that the Bush Administration will do anything to lower drug costs needs to get back on their meds.

A Rotten System

37 million poor hidden in the land of plenty

Americans have always believed that hard work will bring rewards, but vast numbers now cannot meet their bills even with two or three jobs. More than one in 10 citizens live below the poverty line, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening

Paul Harris in Kentucky
Sunday February 19, 2006
The Observer

The flickering television in Candy Lumpkins's trailer blared out The Bold and the Beautiful. It was a fantasy daytime soap vision of American life with little relevance to the reality of this impoverished corner of Kentucky.

The Lumpkins live at the definition of the back of beyond, in a hollow at the top of a valley at the end of a long and muddy dirt road. It is strewn with litter. Packs of stray dogs prowl around, barking at strangers. There is no telephone and since their pump broke two weeks ago Candy has collected water from nearby springs. Oblivious to it all, her five-year-old daughter Amy runs barefoot on a wooden porch frozen by a midwinter chill.

It is a vision of deep and abiding poverty. Yet the Lumpkins are not alone in their plight. They are just the negative side of the American equation. America does have vast, wealthy suburbs, huge shopping malls and a busy middle class, but it also has vast numbers of poor, struggling to make it in a low-wage economy with minimal government help.

A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown.

Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two. Amos Lumpkins has work and his children go to school. But the economy, stripped of worker benefits like healthcare, is having trouble providing good wages.

Even families with two working parents are often one slice of bad luck - a medical bill or factory closure - away from disaster. The minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed billions from welfare programmes.

For a brief moment last year in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina brought America's poor into the spotlight. Poverty seemed on the government's agenda. That spotlight has now been turned off. 'I had hoped Katrina would have changed things more. It hasn't,' says Cynthia Duncan, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire.

Oklahoma is in America's heartland. Tulsa looks like picture-book Middle America. Yet there is hunger here. When it comes to the most malnourished poor in America, Oklahoma is ahead of any other state. It should be impossible to go hungry here. But it is not. Just ask those gathered at a food handout last week. They are a cross section of society: black, white, young couples, pensioners and the middle-aged. A few are out of work or retired, everyone else has jobs.

They are people like Freda Lee, 33, who has two jobs, as a marketer and a cashier. She has come to the nondescript Loaves and Fishes building - flanked ironically by a Burger King and a McDonald's - to collect food for herself and three sons. 'America is meant to be free. What's free?' she laughs. 'All we can do is pay off the basics.'
....
During the 2004 election the only politician to address poverty directly was John Edwards, whose campaign theme was 'Two Americas'. He was derided by Republicans for doing down the country and - after John Kerry picked him as his Democratic running mate - the rhetoric softened in the heat of the campaign.

But, in fact, Edwards was right. While 45.8 million Americans lack any health insurance, the top 20 per cent of earners take over half the national income. At the same time the bottom 20 per cent took home just 3.4 per cent. Whitaker put the figures into simple English. 'The poor have got poorer and the rich have got richer,' he said.

Dealing with poverty is not a viable political issue in America. It jars with a cultural sense that the poor bring things upon themselves and that every American is born with the same chances in life. It also runs counter to the strong anti-government current in modern American politics. Yet the problem will not disappear. 'There is a real sense of impending crisis, but political leaders have little motivation to address this growing divide,' Cynthia Duncan says.

British sensibility won't understand the theological implications of that last paragraph, since it is uniquely Yankee. There is a peculiarly American take on a bad reading of Calvinist theology which says that the "elect," favored/redeemed by God, will be visible by their material success. The other side of that those who are not successful are obviously on God's bad side. These notions have entered American popular culture with our fascination with the wealthy and famous. We may say that "the Lord helps those who help themselves," but our notions of what constitutes "self-help" include a low wage, low benefit structure which makes damn sure that you can work your ass off and never get ahead. Americans work harder and have less to show for it than any industrialized country.

A Friend in Deed

Susie found new digs and they sound wonderful. We talked until late last night, both of our lives seeming to finally turn around. It's been a long damn haul for both of us.

I can hardly wait to see her new place and I dare say I'll be in Philly by cherry blossom time.

In Search of the Wild Mushroom

This is another Italian dish which is simple and extraordinarily good. Like most pasta dishes, it is a first course, and designed to be served with game (which has an affinity for oyster mushrooms) as a main course. As an American main course, serve it with a soup first course. Once the pasta is made and resting, you can concentrate on the soup. A hearty

Serve everything with generous bowls of grated Parmagiana-Reggiano. And a black pepper grinder.

For presentation of the fettuccine, consider taking a vegetable peeler to a hunk of parmesan cheese. The slivers sliced this way look impressive and taste good. Top everything with a chiffonade of parsley and chive.

The arugala functions as your salad. With soup and bread, this is living. Oh, yes, living very well, without a speck of meat in sight.

If You Had an Italian Grandmother

Gorgonzola isn't to everyone's taste, but it is my favorite of the blue cheeses. As a cook, there are so many things I can do with it and it is cordial with everything from pasta to veggies and fruits.

Here is a simple treatment of a simple, rustic Italian dish which gets gasps everytime I serve it. If you enjoy eating pasta and other Italian starches, learn to make them from scratch. They are so much better than anything you can buy at the store. All you need is a rolling pin and a bread board and a little time. Gnocchi are easy to make with your hands.

Potato Gnocchi with Gorgonzola Sauce
for 6-8

1 pound baking potatoes, washed
Vegetable oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 large egg
1/2 cup, plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
1 cup water
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup heavy cream
1 pound Gorgonzola

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Season the potatoes with the oil, salt and pepper. Place on a baking sheet and bake until tender, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Remove from the oven and cool completely. Peel the potatoes, discarding the skin, and place in a bowl. With a hand potato masher, mash the potatoes until smooth. Season with salt and pepper. Add the egg and 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of the flour. Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup flour on a baking sheet, lined with parchment paper. Turn the dough onto the floured surface and roll into a log, about 1-inch thick. Cut the dough into 1-inch pieces. Roll each piece across the tines of a fork.

In a large saucepan, combine the milk, water, 1 teaspoon olive oil, salt and pepper. Bring the liquid just to a boil. Add the gnocchi and poach for 5 minutes. Remove the gnocchi with a slotted spoon and drain. Place the cream in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer. Whisk in the cheese and season with salt and pepper. Toss the gnocchi with the cream sauce. Spoon onto a large serving platter. Garnish with black pepper.

Use the potato skins to make potato peel broth, which is an excellent vegetarian soup base.

In Italy this would be served as a primo piatto or first course, followed by a meat or fish course. The dish is so rich that it stands on its own with a salad of wild field greens dressed simply with a raspberry vinaigrette and some good bread. I actually prefer a red wine with this dish because the tannins are a good counter to the cheese. Barolo and Montepulciano are good choices.

Leftovers will store in the fridge for three days. Freezing changes the consistency of the gnocchi and isn't recommened. To reheat in the microwave, add a little evaporated milk and a tablespoon of butter before you nuke it.

Another classic version of gnocchi and equally as simple: melt a half-stick of sweet, salted butter on a low burner. As the butter is melting, add 6 leaves of fresh sage. You don't want to cook the sage, just let it infuse the butter. Add a little oil to the pot, remove the sage leaves and pour over warm gnocchi and pass fresh parmesan cheese and fressh pepper.

Breakfast!

When I was a new young bride many years ago and just learning to cook, I baked every Friday. It was challah and bagels every week. Bagels were a new food to Minnesotans when I was an undergraduate student. They escaped the Jewish communty's shops and delis in the early seventies and were a new food to me. They were also one of the cheapest power lunches around the University of Minnesota campus. I ate them, topped with schmear and cherry preserves and then learned to cook them myself from a Jewish cookbook. I don't know about you, but finding a real New York bagel outside of the city is impossible. These come passibly close. When you bake them yourself, you have more control over the texture of the crust and interior.

1 1/4 cups lukewarm water
2 packets of yeast
3 tablespoons sugar (or honey)
1 tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons Malt Syrup*
4 cups flour

Dissolve yeast, salt, sugar and malt syrup in 1/2 cup of the lukewarm water (It should feel neither hot nor cold when touched to the skin on your wrist). Stir in the remaining 3/4 cup of lukewarm water and begin adding flour. Continue adding flour until dough holds together. Knead in remaining flour as you knead the dough on a floured board. (4 cups is an approximate amount for the flour. You may use a little less or a little more, depending on a lot of things like the kind of flour or how humid a day it is. More kneading will produce a chewier bagel.)

Place dough in an oiled bowl, turn once to make sure top of dough is oiled, and cover with a cloth. Set aside in a warm place to rise for at least 1 1/2 to 2 hours. It should be doubled in size.

Punch down dough, give it a few turns on the board, then pinch off some dough and form it into bagel shapes. This will take some practice to get them to be shaped perfectly. They will still taste good even if they are lopsided. Allow bagel shapes to rise again for about 20 minutes. Slip bagels into boiling water and cook 1 to 2 minutes on each side. Drain for 1 minute.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Dust a baking sheet with cornmeal. Place the boiled bagels on the baking sheet. Sprinkle with seeds, if desired. Place the sheet of bagels into the preheated oven and bake 12 minutes. Turn th bagels and bake until deep golden brown, about 7 more minutes. (Baking times may vary depending on the calibration of your oven.)

Tip: If you like your bagels crunchy, mist them with water from a spray bottle while they are in the oven.

* If you can't find Malt syrup, you can use dark brown sugar.

If your friends are used to eating those things that come in plastic bags from the supermarket, you will amaze them with these. I use light, whipped cream cheese these days and Nova from Trader Joe's. You can top a bagel and cream cheese with anything, from savory to sweet.

Garden Pleasure

For me ratatouille is the dish I crave when I'm walking around the Farmers' Market on summer Saturday mornings. This treatment reflects the classical method, but in the summer I like to grill the veggies before they go into the pot. It adds a lovely smokey flavor. This recipe serves 6-8 as a main course and it is a never-fail crowd pleaser at a pot luck.

Ratatouille with Feta, Green Olives, and Almonds

1 cup whole almonds
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed
1 teaspoon red chili flakes
4 cloves garlic, chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pound feta cheese, crumbled
1 cup pitted green olives
1 bunch fresh basil, leaves hand-torn
1 medium onion, chopped
5 medium Japanese eggplant, chopped
3 medium zucchini, chopped
3 tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 tablespoon capers, drained
1 (28-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, drained and hand crushed
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Put the almonds into a large skillet over medium heat. Gently toast the nuts, being careful not to let them burn, for about 3 minutes. Add 3 tablespoons olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon red chili flakes, 1 chopped garlic clove, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for another 3 minutes and transfer to a plate to cool. Crush the almonds roughly and put them into a bowl along with the feta cheese, olives, and 1/3 of the basil leaves. Mix well to combine all the ingredients.

Put 3 tablespoons olive oil and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon chili flakes into the skillet over medium heat. Add the onions, remaining garlic, and 1/3 of the basil leaves and cook until the onions start to soften, about 5 minutes. Put in the eggplant and cook until it is soft, about 10 minutes, adding more olive oil if necessary. Add the zucchini, fresh tomatoes, and capers; season with salt and pepper. Continue cooking until these vegetables are soft but still whole. Add the canned tomatoes, vinegar, and remaining basil leaves. Continue to cook for another 15 minutes; remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

To serve, put the ratatouille into a bowl or platter and top with the feta, olive, and almond mixture.

Serve with toasted pita chips

From Penn Dutch Country

This is just plain fun. I'm not much of a snack food eater, but I love pretzels.

Hot Soft Pretzels

1 packet of active dry yeast
3 teaspoons dark brown sugar
1 1/2 cups warm water (105 - 110 degrees F.)
1 tablespoon salt
4 cups all-purpose flour
Cornmeal and extra flour for dusting worksurface
Coarse kosher salt

In a large bowl combine yeast, 1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar, and water and let stand 5 minutes until foamy and bubbly. Add remaining sugar and salt and stir well. Add the flour, 1 cup at a time, mixing by hand until well incorporated. Knead dough until smooth about 7 minutes and has a sheen. Transfer to a bowl and let stand, covered, for 40 minutes in a warm place.

Dust your work surface with flour and cornmeal. Divide dough into approximately 12 pieces and roll out to desired length and thickness. (Note: thinner=crispier). Form dough into pretzel-shapes and transfer to a baking sheet that has been lightly dusted with cornmeal. Allow pretzels to rise for 30 minutes, uncovered.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

Carefully transfer risen pretzels to boiling water with a spatula and boil on one side for 2 minutes, flip and boil other side for 1 1/2 minutes. Transfer boiled pretzels to a rack to drain for 1 minute. Arrange pretzels on a baking sheet, lightly dusted with cornmeal, and sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake for 20 minutes until golden brown.

Quick Weeknight Dinner

Baked Rigatoni with Spinach, Ricotta, and Fontina Recipe
Serves 6

A quick take on spinach and ricotta cannelloni, this baked pasta is fast because there's nothing to stuff. The filling is simply tossed with cooked rigatoni that's then topped with fontina and baked to a golden brown.

WINE RECOMMENDATION
A delicately flavored white such as Orvieto will complement the mild ricotta nicely. And, because Orvieto is not oaky, the wine has no bitter tannin to clash with the slightly bitter spinach and nutmeg.

RECIPE INGREDIENTS

1 pound rigatoni
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 10-ounce package frozen spinach, thawed
2 cups (about 1 pound) ricotta cheese
5 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
6 ounces fontina cheese, grated (about 1 1/2 cups)

RECIPE METHOD

Heat the oven to 450 degrees F. Oil a 9-by-13-inch baking dish.

In a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook the rigatoni until almost done, about 12 minutes. Drain. Put the pasta in the prepared baking dish and toss with 1 tablespoon of the oil.

Meanwhile, squeeze as much of the water as possible from the spinach. Put the spinach in a food processor and puree with the ricotta, 3 tablespoons of the Parmesan, the nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Stir in half the fontina.

Stir the spinach mixture into the pasta. Top with the remaining fontina and Parmesan. Drizzle the remaining 2 tablespoons oil over the top. Bake the pasta until the top is golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes.

VARIATION

You can substitute another chunky pasta, such as penne rigate, penne, ziti, or fusilli. Boil all of these one or two minutes less.

The Used Lie Salesman

Bush’s Policies Don't Promote Growth

Commentary: The economic evidence is clear: the president’s tax changes have not worked to improve the health of the economy.

By John Irons and Lee Price
February 17, 2006
Article created by the The Center for American Progress.

Business Investment

According to proponents of the tax cuts, cutting corporate income taxes and personal income tax rates was supposed to “improve the investment incentives of America’s businesses.” Small business owners, especially, were supposed to respond to lower individual tax rates by investing more and hiring new workers. In addition, more than $200 billion of cuts were specifically tied to business investment, reducing the cost as a way to encourage purchases of equipment, software, structures and machinery.

The cuts were an utter failure. Business investment has always recovered after a recession, but this was the most sluggish recovery in memory. As a result, business investment has grown 65% more slowly since the peak of the business cycle five years ago than the average for similar periods after nine cycle peaks in the last 60 years. (A business cycle includes a recession and the expansion until the next recession. The peak of a business cycle occurs just before a recession.)

In the recession and recovery of 1990-1994, instead of cutting taxes, Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton signed tax increases into law. Yet businesses’ investment grew much faster during that recovery than it has during the last four years.

The Bush tax cuts have been a waste precisely because they were targeted at business owners and the wealthiest Americans, rather than the average consumer whose increased demand and consumption would have made it sensible for businesses to invest.

Employment

Business investment didn’t take off, and neither did job creation. Even now, after five years of huge tax cuts, one million more people are officially unemployed than when George Bush took office, and millions more have left the labor force.

President Bush has noted that 2 million jobs were created over the course of 2005, and that we have added 4.6 million jobs since the decline in jobs ended in May 2003. This is not evidence that the tax cuts are working.

When the third round of tax cuts passed in 2003, one of the Bush administration’s major selling points was the claim that the economy would create 5.5 million jobs from July 2003 through the end of 2004 – almost one and a half million more jobs than would be expected in a normal recovery. Instead, only 2.4 million jobs were created, 1.7 million less than the number we were told to expect with no tax cut.

Job growth remains abnormally slow. Last year's 2 million new jobs represented a gain of only 1.5%. With normal growth, we would have created 4.6 million jobs last year.

Wages and Income

Not surprisingly, since job growth has been so poor, the tax cuts have also failed to create substantial wage and salary growth. Most Americans depend on their wages and salaries for their standard of living. In a healthy economy, wages and salaries should rise along with rising national income and productivity. A record long period of job decline followed by sluggish job growth has created slack in the labor market and pulled down wage growth below inflation growth in the last two years. Last year, middle income wages grew less than inflation (2.4% vs. 3.4%), reducing their buying power.

The Overall Economy

The tax cuts failed to produce the burst of economic activity the president promised. Instead of doing better than in past business cycles, the economy has grown sluggishly, at a rate far slower than in previous cycles The most common measure of economic activity, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), grew only 13.5% since the first round of tax cuts were passed in early 2001, averaging 2.7% per year. The average for similar periods in the past was far better – growing 16.3% or 3.2% per year.

Heckuva job, Georgie

America's Shame

'The Americans are breaking international law... it is a society heading towards Animal Farm' - Archbishop Sentamu on Guantanamo
By Ian Herbert and Ben Russell
Published: 18 February 2006

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has launched a passionate attack on President George Bush, saying his administration's refusal to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay camp reflected "a society that is heading towards George Orwell's Animal Farm".

Dr Sentamu, the Church of England's second in command, urged the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) to take legal action against the US - through the US courts or the International Court of Justice at The Hague - should it fail to respond to a report, by five UN inspectors, advising that Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay should be shut immediately because prisoners there are being tortured.

The report was published on Thursday, as a senior High Court judge, Mr Justice Collins, stated that American actions over Guantanamo's Camp Delta do not "appear to coincide with that of most civilised nations". As a result of his ruling, three of eight British inmates held in the camp are to appeal to the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to intervene with the Bush administration on their behalf.

Archbishop Sentamu's comments will strengthen the increasingly insistent international pressure for Guantanamo to be closed. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called for its closure, after similar appeals by Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, and the UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

Dr Sentamu said the UNHRC should seek a writ of habeas corpus, compelling the US to bring those being detained at Guantanamo to court, to establish whether they are imprisoned lawfully and if they should be released.

"The American Government is breaking international law," he told The Independent. "The main building block of a democratic society is that everyone is equal before the law, innocent until proved otherwise, and has the right to legal representation. If the guilt of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is beyond doubt, why are the Americans afraid to bring them to trial? Transparency and accountability are the other side of the coin of freedom and responsibility. We are all accountable for our actions in spite of circumstances. The events of 9/11 cannot erase the rule of law and international obligations.

"The US should try all 500 detainees at Guantanamo, who still include eight British residents, or free them without further delay. To hold someone for up to four years without charge clearly indicates a society that is heading towards George Orwell's Animal Farm."

The Government has already managed to secure the release, in March 2004, of the four British nationals who were detained at Guantanamo ­ Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar ­ although only after guarantees they would be constantly monitored and face an investigation to ascertain whether they can be charged in this country.

Washington had claimed all four were "enemy combatants" who trained at camps run by al-Qa'ida. But they were released after UK police concluded there was not enough evidence to charge them with any offence. The men said they had been tortured at Guantanamo, allegations the US denied.

So far the Prime Minister appears unmoved by the growing sense of indignation brought on by the UNHRC report. He reiterated a statement first made a year ago that the base in Cuba was "an anomaly".

Sir Menzies Campbell, the acting Liberal Democrat leader, said: "This is not an anomaly which needs to be sorted sooner or later. This is an outrage that needs to be sorted out now. Guantanamo Bay has damaged the reputation of the US and its allies across the globe, and particularly in the Middle East."

The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, told the BBC the military tribunals proposed by Washington to try detainees at the base did not amount to a fair trial "by standards we would regard as acceptable". But last night, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, rejected Mr Annan's calls.

"He's just flat wrong. We shouldn't close Guantanamo," he said. " We have several hundred terrorists, bad people, people who if they went back out on the field would try to kill Americans ... To close that place and pretend that really there's no problem just isn't realistic."

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has launched a passionate attack on President George Bush, saying his administration's refusal to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay camp reflected "a society that is heading towards George Orwell's Animal Farm".

Dr Sentamu, the Church of England's second in command, urged the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) to take legal action against the US - through the US courts or the International Court of Justice at The Hague - should it fail to respond to a report, by five UN inspectors, advising that Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay should be shut immediately because prisoners there are being tortured.

The report was published on Thursday, as a senior High Court judge, Mr Justice Collins, stated that American actions over Guantanamo's Camp Delta do not "appear to coincide with that of most civilised nations". As a result of his ruling, three of eight British inmates held in the camp are to appeal to the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to intervene with the Bush administration on their behalf.

Archbishop Sentamu's comments will strengthen the increasingly insistent international pressure for Guantanamo to be closed. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called for its closure, after similar appeals by Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, and the UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

Dr Sentamu said the UNHRC should seek a writ of habeas corpus, compelling the US to bring those being detained at Guantanamo to court, to establish whether they are imprisoned lawfully and if they should be released.

"The American Government is breaking international law," he told The Independent. "The main building block of a democratic society is that everyone is equal before the law, innocent until proved otherwise, and has the right to legal representation. If the guilt of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is beyond doubt, why are the Americans afraid to bring them to trial? Transparency and accountability are the other side of the coin of freedom and responsibility. We are all accountable for our actions in spite of circumstances. The events of 9/11 cannot erase the rule of law and international obligations.

"The US should try all 500 detainees at Guantanamo, who still include eight British residents, or free them without further delay. To hold someone for up to four years without charge clearly indicates a society that is heading towards George Orwell's Animal Farm."

We're viewed increasingly as an outlaw state and too many Americans are comfortable with that.

Ramping Up Repairs

Content of Soil Causes Concern in Levee Repair
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

BAYOU BIENVENUE, La. — It will take a staggering four million cubic yards of soil to repair the levee system around New Orleans, and nearly half of it will go here, a battered 12-mile stretch along the navigational canal east of the city known as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.

Yet critics of the Army Corps of Engineers say the new construction is likely to fail again. The sandy local dirt being used for levee construction is too weak, they say, and not enough thick clay is being imported by barge from Mississippi to strengthen it.

Getting enough of the kind of soil that can stand up to future hurricanes is one of the greatest challenges of the levee effort, as the Corps of Engineers and its contractors race to restore the storm protection system. By June 1, the start of this year's hurricane season, they want the levees to be as least as strong as they were before Hurricane Katrina. The St. Bernard project, which began last fall, is among the biggest challenges in rebuilding the 350-mile levee system around New Orleans; the Corps estimates that this stretch of levee alone will require 1.65 million cubic yards of soil, most of it excavated from local pits.

To build the new levees to a 20-foot height, much of them in inaccessible areas, the corps has had to search for soil with enough clay content to bind the sandy blend that is here. To strengthen the local soil, the Corps has been bringing in clay by barge from Mississippi.

Corps officials acknowledge that that getting enough of what they call "borrow" material to has been difficult, but say the search has been going well and the levees will be strong.

"I'm very confident in what we're building," said Col. Lewis Setliff III, commander of the Task Force Guardian, the corps unit that is responsible for restoring the damaged flood protection system. "It's certainly better than what was there before."

But Robert G. Bea, a professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leader of the group of independent investigators that is financed by the National Science Foundation, said the earth he had seen on the site "is no better than it was before."

On an inspection tour of the levees last month, he collected some 200 pounds of samples and found them distressingly rich in sand and peat. "The soil I brought back with me is nothing I would want in a levee," Professor Bea said.

He sent the soil samples to Jean-Louis Briaud, a soil erosion expert at Texas A&M; University. Professor Briaud said that the soil, if not properly compacted during the construction process, would erode easily: on a scale of erodability from one to five, he places the soil at one, the lowest grade.

"The compaction makes a big difference," Professor Briaud said, and the work the corps does on the soil could improve its strength to between Grade 4 and 5 if it is compacted to the highest possible degree. Corps officials say that the soil is being compacted well; Professor Bea said that the compacting work he saw did not appear to be sufficiently effective. He added that at the time he was there, no clay was being mixed into the sandy soil.

"You might have the holes filled," Professor Bea said, "but does that mean that people are O.K. to go back and restore their homes and their lives?" He added, "I'm still struggling to reconcile my view of reality with what the corps is saying is going on there today."

Corps officials disagreed with his assessment. At one repair site where bulldozers moved with steady purpose, Lt. Col. Murray Starkel, deputy district commander for the corps here, reached down and picked up a gummy blob of clay. "There is good material on site," he said.

Hurricane season starts in less than 5 months and, for some strange reason, I'm disinclined to believe anything I hear out of the Corps.

A Little Backbone

It's nice to see a Republican recognizes that W can't repeal the Bill of Rights.

Senate Chairman Splits With Bush on Spy Program

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: February 18, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 — The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Friday that he wanted the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program brought under the authority of a special intelligence court, a move President Bush has argued is not necessary.

The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said he had some concerns that the court could not issue warrants quickly enough to keep up with the needs of the eavesdropping program. But he said he would like to see those details worked out.

Mr. Roberts also said he did not believe that exempting the program from the purview of the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act "would be met with much support" on Capitol Hill. Yet that is exactly the approach the Bush administration is pursuing.

"I think it should come before the FISA court, but I don't know how it works," Mr. Roberts said. "You don't want to have a situation where you have capability that doesn't work well with the FISA court, in terms of speed and agility and hot pursuit. So we have to solve that problem."

Mr. Roberts spoke in an interview a day after announcing that the White House, in a turnabout, had agreed to open discussions about changing surveillance law. By Friday, with Mr. Roberts apparently stung by accusations that he had caved to White House pressure not to investigate the eavesdropping without warrants, it appeared the talks could put the White House and Congress on a collision course.

White House officials favor a proposal offered by another Republican senator, Mike DeWine of Ohio, whose bill would exempt the eavesdropping from the intelligence court. Mr. DeWine wants small subcommittees to oversee the wiretapping, but Mr. Roberts said he would like the full House and Senate Intelligence Committees to have regular briefings.

"I think it's the function and the oversight responsibility of the committee," he said, adding, "That might sound strange coming from me."

Mr. Roberts's comments were surprising because he has been a staunch defender of the program and an ally of White House efforts to resist a full-scale Senate investigation. On Thursday, he pushed back a committee vote on a Democratic push to conduct an inquiry, saying he wanted to give the White House time to negotiate on possible legislation. On Friday, he dismissed accusations that he had bowed to pressure.

"The irony of this is that it is portrayed now as administration pressure brought to bear on us, meaning the Republicans on the committee and basically me," Mr. Roberts said Friday. "It's just the reverse. It's the Republicans on the committee, my staff and myself, who have been really — I don't want to say pressuring, but trying to come up with a reasonable compromise that will settle this issue. It was our activity that brought them along to this point, plus the possibility of an investigation."

The eavesdropping, authorized in secret by President Bush soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has allowed the National Security Agency to monitor the international telephone and e-mail communications of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people within the United States — without warrants — when the authorities suspect they have links to terrorists.

This is still pretty wimpy thinking but it is a refreshing change from the reflexive genuflection in the direction of the White House that the Repubs have been doing for the last 5 years.

Smog Over The Border

Ontario Objects To EPA Plan on Coal Emissions

Bloomberg News
Saturday, February 18, 2006; Page A06

Ontario, Canada's most populous province, is challenging a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposal that it says would allow higher emissions from nearby coal-burning power plants.

The proposed change to the EPA's New Source Review program would probably cause more smog to drift into Ontario because it would ease pollution controls for plants in neighboring U.S. states such as Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, Ontario's Ministry of the Environment said in a news release.

Environment Minister Laurel Broten filed comments with the EPA yesterday detailing the province's concerns. Ontario claims that more than half of its air pollution stems from the United States, particularly from electric utilities. The province says poor air quality has hurt the economy and health of its citizens.

"Smog doesn't respect international borders, neither do the ill effects," Greg Flynn, head of the Ontario Medical Association, said in a statement.

Under New Source Review, which is part of the 1977 Clean Air Act, U.S. plant owners must install pollution-reduction equipment when they make improvements that increase emissions. The EPA is seeking to alter the rule in a way that would make it less likely that such emission upgrades would be triggered. The agency says the changes are aimed at making pollution regulations more efficient, while environmentalists argue that it is a gift to energy companies.

New York, Illinois and nine other states also filed comments with the EPA objecting to the revisions. They contend that the rule changes amount to an illegal interpretation of the Clean Air Act and would increase overall air pollution.

The US EPA should now be known as the Environmental Pollution Agency.

Pasta With....

RECIPE INGREDIENTS

1 pound rigatoni
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 10-ounce package frozen spinach, thawed
2 cups (about 1 pound) ricotta cheese
5 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
6 ounces fontina cheese, grated (about 1 1/2 cups)

RECIPE METHOD

Heat the oven to 450 degrees F. Oil a 9-by-13-inch baking dish.

In a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook the rigatoni until almost done, about 12 minutes. Drain. Put the pasta in the prepared baking dish and toss with 1 tablespoon of the oil.

Meanwhile, squeeze as much of the water as possible from the spinach. Put the spinach in a food processor and puree with the ricotta, 3 tablespoons of the Parmesan, the nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Stir in half the fontina.

Stir the spinach mixture into the pasta. Top with the remaining fontina and Parmesan. Drizzle the remaining 2 tablespoons oil over the top. Bake the pasta until the top is golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes.

VARIATION

You can substitute another chunky pasta, such as penne rigate, penne, ziti, or fusilli. Boil all of these one or two minutes less.

The Basic Stuff

RECIPE INGREDIENTS

1 pound rigatoni
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 10-ounce package frozen spinach, thawed
2 cups (about 1 pound) ricotta cheese
5 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
6 ounces fontina cheese, grated (about 1 1/2 cups)

RECIPE METHOD

Heat the oven to 450 degrees F. Oil a 9-by-13-inch baking dish.

In a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook the rigatoni until almost done, about 12 minutes. Drain. Put the pasta in the prepared baking dish and toss with 1 tablespoon of the oil.

Meanwhile, squeeze as much of the water as possible from the spinach. Put the spinach in a food processor and puree with the ricotta, 3 tablespoons of the Parmesan, the nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Stir in half the fontina.

Stir the spinach mixture into the pasta. Top with the remaining fontina and Parmesan. Drizzle the remaining 2 tablespoons oil over the top. Bake the pasta until the top is golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes.

VARIATION

You can substitute another chunky pasta, such as penne rigate, penne, ziti, or fusilli. Boil all of these one or two minutes less.

This is so hearty and satisfying that taking a pan of it to a potluck would be condsidered an act of kindsness.

For Good Luck

I guess I've got the Italian thing working tonight....

My absolute favorite cookbook (and PBS chef) author is Lidia Bastianich, the New York restaurateur. Her Italian cooking is a little different than others you see on TV: she's from Istria, now part of Croatia and the cuisine partakes of both Italy and central Europe. Her new show debuts on PBS in April and I can't wait. I learned this recipe from one of her television years a few years ago. For many years, this was my New Year's Day dinner. Strozzapretti are considered good luck in Italy.

Strozzapretti
(Priest Chokers)

Servings: 6

Ingredients: For the strozzapretti:
1 1/4 cups ricotta cheese, preferably fresh or whole milk
2 eggs
1/2 cup finely chopped, cooked and drained spinach (see note)
1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano- Reggiano cheese
5 tablespoons fine dry bread crumbs, or as needed
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Large pinch freshly grated nutmeg
2 cups all-purpose flour, or as needed

For the sage sauce:
1/2 cup Chicken Stock (Lidia’s Italian Table, p. 80) or canned low-sodium chicken broth
3 tablespoons butter
10 fresh sage leaves
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, plus more for passing, if you like

Directions: Place the ricotta in a cheesecloth-lined sieve and place the sieve over a bowl. Cover the ricotta with plastic wrap and let drain in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours or up to 1 day. That's the classical Italian approach. I use a coffee filter holder and a paper coffee filter over a large glass, cover with plastic wrap overnight in the fridge. It's easier.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. In a medium mixing bowl, beat the eggs until well blended. Add the spinach and beat until blended. Stir in the drained ricotta, 1 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano and 5 tablespoons bread crumbs. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Stir until well blended.

Coat a baking pan with a generous amount of the flour. Line a second baking pan with a lightly floured kitchen towel. With floured hands, roll two tablespoons of the ricotta mixture into a 11/2-inch ball. Roll it in the flour until generously coated. Before continuing, test the flavor and texture of the mixture by dropping the strozzapretto into the boiling water. It should hold its shape and rise to the surface within a minute. Continue cooking for 1 minute after the strozzapretto rises to the surface, then lift it with a slotted spoon from the water. If the strozzapretto didn’t hold its shape, add a little more bread crumbs. Taste the cooked strozzapretto and adjust the seasonings if necessary. Once you’re happy with the taste and texture of the strozzapretti, form the remaining mixture into balls, roll them in flour and set them on the lightly floured towel.

In a skillet large enough to hold the cooked strozzapretti in a single layer, heat the broth, butter and sage leaves over medium low heat to simmering; simmer 3 minutes. Remove the sauce from the heat.

Add half the strozzapretti to the pot of boiling water and stir gently until they return to the surface. Cook until firm, about 1 minute after they rise to the top. Remove them with a skimmer and transfer them to the pot with the sage sauce, draining well. Repeat with the remaining strozzapretti. Place the pan over medium-low heat and gently shake the pan to warm the strozzapretti and coat them with sauce. Remove the pan from the heat, add the grated cheese and swirl the strozzapretti in the sauce until they are coated.
Serve the strozzapretti in warmed bowls, spooning extra sauce over each. Pass additional cheese if you like.

Note: For 1/2 cup chopped cooked spinach, start with about 10 cups (loosely packed) stemmed fresh spinach leaves. Wash them thoroughly, in several changes of water if necessary, to remove all grit. Drain the spinach in a colander. Transfer the spinach with just the water that clings to the leaves to a large, heavy pot. Place the pot over high heat and cook until the liquid in the bottom begins to steam. Season the spinach very lightly with salt-- remember, the spinach will reduce drastically in volume. Cover the pot and steam the spinach, stirring several times, until the spinach is tender, but still bright green, about 2 to 3 minutes. Immediately drain the spinach in a colander and rinse under cold running water until the spinach is cool enough to handle. Squeeze as much water as possible from the spinach with your hands. Squeeze firmly — the more water you remove from the spinach, the lesser the amount of bread crumbs you will need to add to the mixture, and the more tender your strozzapretti will be. Chop the spinach in a food processor or by hand and measure out 1/2 cup to use in this recipe.

All of Lidia's recipes are like this, she gives you detailed instructions and assumes nothing. That's the same way she teaches on her TV shows. If you like Italian, get to know Lidia.

Classically, this would be a first course, but I think Americans would probably eat this as a main course. In the Italian fashion, I like my salad after. But I think I'd like to start this menu with a soup. This minestrone with pesto is a nice pairing. Finish with a creme anglais or lemon gelato and you'll wish you were in Italy. I find the concept of de-caf expresso to be a contradiction in terms, but you can buy the stuff and a simple expresso pot is part of every Italian household.

Party Planning

Mardi Gras is coming. I'm thinking ahead to party food if you decide you'd like to throw a bash or have been tasked to bring something for one. This is one of my favorite dips. When I take to parties, there is never any left to bring home.

Warm Spinich-Parmesan Dip

2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 3/4 cups chopped onion
6 large garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1/2 cup chicken stock or canned low-salt chicken broth
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 can of artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
1 10-ounce package ready-to-use baby spinach leaves
1 cup (packed) grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Baguette slices, toasted

Melt butter with oil in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add onion and garlic; sauté until onion is tender, about 6 minutes. Add flour; stir 2 minutes. Gradually whisk in stock and cream; bring to boil, whisking constantly. Cook until mixture thickens, stirring frequently, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in spinach, artichokes, cheese, sour cream and cayenne (spinach will wilt). Season with salt and pepper. Transfer dip to serving bowl. Serve warm with toasted baguette slices.

Makes about 4 cups.

When the Flakes Fly

We're back to winter with snow flurries expected tomorrow, so tomorrow might be the day to get out the crock pot and cook this. Extra servings freeze well.

Red-wine Pot Roast with Porcini

1 cup low-salt chicken broth or beef broth
1 ounce dried porcini mushrooms

1 4-pound boneless beef chuck roast, trimmed
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 celery stalks with some leaves, cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices
3 garlic cloves, smashed
1 tablespoon chopped fresh marjoram plus sprigs for garnish
1 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, drained
1 cup dry red wine

Preheat oven to 300°F. Bring broth to simmer in saucepan. Remove from heat; add mushrooms, cover, and let stand until soft, about 15 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer mushrooms to cutting board. Chop coarsely. Reserve mushrooms and broth separately.

Sprinkle beef with salt and pepper. Heat oil in heavy large ovenproof pot over medium-high heat. Add beef and cook until brown on all sides, about 15 minutes total. Transfer beef to large plate. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon drippings from pot. Place pot over medium heat. Add onion and celery. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and sauté until beginning to brown, about 8 minutes. Add garlic, chopped marjoram, and reserved porcini mushrooms; sauté 1 minute. Using hands, crush tomatoes, 1 at a time, into pot. Cook 3 minutes, stirring frequently and scraping up browned bits from bottom of pot. Add wine; boil 5 minutes. Add reserved mushroom broth, leaving any sediment behind. Boil 5 minutes.

Return beef and any accumulated juices to pot. Cover; transfer to oven. Cook 1 1/2 hours. Turn beef and continue cooking until tender, about 1 1/2 hours longer. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Cool slightly. Refrigerate uncovered until cool. Cover and keep refrigerated.)

Transfer beef to cutting board; tent with foil. Spoon fat from surface of juices in pot. Bring juices to boil; cook until liquid is reduced to 4 cups, about 7 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Cut beef into 1/2-inch-thick slices. Transfer to platter. Spoon juices over, garnish with marjoram sprigs, and serve.

Serves 6

Cook's notes: to make this in a crock pot, cube the chuck before browning and then turn beef and the rest into the crockpot together. Cook 8-10 hours on low. Remove the beef and reduce the sauce in the crock pot set on high, uncovered, about 20 minutes.

This is delish served over boiled redskin potatoes or egg noodles.

Listen to the Kids

A reader writes to Dr. Alterman:

Another Cheney joke invented by my daughter-- I was explaining to my son how the Republicans here in Indiana were able to make us go on daylight savings time. I explained that they were in the majority and voted that way. My son then asked if Republicans cared about those who didn't want daylight savings time. My daughter immediately replied "One Republican just shot another Republican. Do you really think they care about you?"

Doh!

Here is something fun for a Friday afternoon.

The Simpsomaker

I think you have to do a screen capture to get it to print, but the site is a hoot and you can even put your Simponized self in front of Moe's even though you aren't off of work yet.

Donny's Bubble Show

It's that time of the day gang... namely the Donald Rumsfield media circus of lies, damn lies, and what the %$^^& was that (?) statements. If we needed anymore evidence of how these people are, here we go. Let's look at one aspect of it.

Rumsfeld Says Extremists Winning Media War

(btw: if this doesn't win an award for irony, nothing will)

By AMY WESTFELDT
Feb. 17, 2006

NEW YORK — Al-Qaida and other Islamic extremist groups have poisoned the Muslim public's view of the United States through deft use of the Internet and other modern communications methods that the American government has failed to master, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Rumsfeld sounded a theme he frequently raises as a key to eventually winning the global war on terrorism: countering anti-Western messages from Islamic extremists.

"Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we _ our country, our government _ has not adapted," he said.

He quoted Ayman al-Zawahri, the chief lieutenant of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, as saying that their terrorist network is in a media battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims. Rumsfeld agreed, saying that the battle for public opinion is at least as important as the battles on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The extremist groups are able to act quickly on the information front, with relatively few people, while the U.S. government bureaucracy has yet to keep up in an age of e-mail, blogs and instant messaging, he said.

"We in the government have barely even begun to compete in reaching their audiences," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld has often described the U.S. government as being disadvantaged by its ponderous approach to dealing with the media, and he has pushed for the U.S. military in particular to try innovative approaches to getting out its message to the Islamic world.

He has also complained that the U.S. media tends to focus too much on the negative aspects of U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Donny... if we weren't busy killing innocent people, torturing prisoners, and holding people in jail with no real opportunity for a trial then maybe we wouldn't have such image problems.

Nah... that's too easy. It's makes more sense to blame the internet and the media for all of those negative stories. The fact that members of the media can't travel much outside the Green Zone to find any positive stories has nothing to do with the lack of good things.

I wonder what else he said...

Korea Can Defend Itself: Rumsfeld

WASHINGTON (Yonhap) _ South Korea is fully able to defend itself, so U.S. forces do not need stay in the forefront, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday.

Great... was there a massive troop movement in North Korea that no one was told about?

Why hasn't he been fired yet?

Reaction Continues

via The Agonist:

Cleric offers reward for killing of cartoonist

Jeremy Lennard and agencies
Friday February 17, 2006

A Pakistani cleric today offered 1.5m rupees (£9,600) and a car as a reward to anyone who killed the cartoonist who drew images of the prophet Muhammad.

Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi, a prayer leader at the Mohabat Khan mosque in Peshawar, made the announcement to a 1,000-strong crowd outside the mosque after Friday prayers.

"This is a unanimous decision by all imams that whoever insults the prophet deserves to be killed, and whoever will take this insulting man to his end will get this prize," he said.

It was unclear which of the cartoonists who contributed drawings to Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper was being targeted by Mr Qureshi.

Sirajul Haq, a senior minister in the provincial government - run by a hardline Muslim coalition - said the government should demand the extradition of the cartoonist and put him on trial in Pakistan.

The crowd burned a Danish flag and an effigy of the country's prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Other clerics also condemned the cartoons, one of which shows Muhammad wearing a turban with a bomb poking out of it.

"Oh God, please punish those who dared to publish these sacrilegious cartoons ... give enough power to the Muslim countries and enable them to take revenge," Qari Saeed Ullah, a prayer leader in Islamabad, said.

Elsewhere in Pakistan and across the wider Muslim world, Friday prayers saw a resurgence of demonstrations against the images, which were originally published in September last year.

Thousands of Pakistani security forces were deployed across the country after five people were killed and western businesses attacked this week.

This isn't helpful.

Tough love?

Fla. Officials Release Tape in Boy's Death

By MELISSA NELSON
The Associated Press
Friday, February 17, 2006

PANAMA CITY, Fla. -- Authorities released a video tape Friday showing guards restraining a boy at a juvenile detention boot camp just hours before he died.

The parents of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson believe the footage, from a boot camp security camera, will show that guards beat their son to death. They were viewing the 1-hour, 20-minute tape at their lawyer's office in Tallahassee as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement made it public.

Two legislators who have seen the tape said Anderson was brutally beaten and kicked before he died Jan. 6. They described an out-of-control situation, with guards punching and choking Anderson even as he went limp.

Anderson's family alleges he was beaten by guards on his first day at the boot camp. A medical examiner determined this week that the teen died from a blood disorder _ not from any injuries suffered in a beating.

......

Anderson was arrested in June for stealing his grandmother's Jeep Cherokee and sent to the boot camp for violating his probation by trespassing at a school.

The boot camp concept for juveniles began in Florida in 1993, and five camps now house about 600 boys ages 14 to 18.

This tape shows what many people already knew... how disturbing it is to think that this is the *best* way that an enlightened society can deal with troublemakers. Who's really surprised when these private (outsourced) camps get overly violent to make sure that a lesson is taught... when the only lesson that is taught is that might makes right, not exactly the healthiest way to handle conflicts. Even better, many of these camps have a strong religious bent to them (so much for that sepaparation of church and state).

It's not uncommon for people to think that we should focus on punishments 1st, 2nd, and 3rd when dealing with juveniles. Yet, if we want to truely help them out don't you think there should be a greater focus on rehabilitation than punishment. To do that, we need to make it clear to the state officials that this type of punishment is not acceptable.

Dangerous Times

Behind the Silence
Cheney Reveals His Power -- and Arrogance

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, February 17, 2006; Page A19

Cheney is often described as the most powerful vice president in the nation's history -- he mentioned to [Britt] Hume that he has the personal authority to declassify secret information, for example -- and it seems clear from his recounting of the shooting's aftermath that his authority extends far beyond White House control. He shot Whittington on Saturday afternoon and didn't bother to speak to a soul in the White House until Sunday morning. Even Karl Rove, the president's political wizard, had to get his information elsewhere -- from Katharine Armstrong, whose family owns the 50,000-acre ranch where Cheney was spending the weekend.

Cheney revealed that he didn't talk to President Bush about the shooting until Monday. Is it just me, or is that weird?

After the shooting, Cheney understandably focused first on Whittington's well-being. But after Whittington was off to the hospital, Cheney and the rest of the shooting party went back to the ranch house and had dinner. The vice president left it to others to make the necessary phone calls to Whittington's children. He went to bed without having told the public anything.

Cheney knew that the White House communications people "urged us to get the story out," he said. But it was "my call," he told Hume, that civilian Armstrong would be the one to make the first public statement and that she would make it by calling a reporter she knew at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, not the White House press pool.

Everyone else in the administration seems to believe that was a terrible decision, but Cheney defended it to Hume in a way that seemed, frankly, oblivious.

For a man defined by his reputation for cool competence in times of crisis, Cheney was remarkably clueless without his handlers. "I had no press person with me, I didn't have any press people with me," he told Hume.

Cheney also appeared deeply shaken. It was stunning to hear the least touchy-feely public figure in Washington go all open-book and confessional: "The image of him falling is something I'll never be able to get out of my mind. I fired, and there's Harry falling. And it was, I'd have to say, one of the worst days of my life, at that moment."

So here we have a vice president with vast, autonomous power who makes a serious mistake -- and yes, we all make mistakes, sometimes bad ones -- but then doesn't tell anybody until he's had dinner and a night's sleep. He feels naked because he's not surrounded by a covey of spokespeople. He's either emotionally devastated by what he's done or so arrogant that he believes he doesn't have to face the public. Or both.

Four days after the incident, prodded by Rove and others, he finally speaks. We see the icy, confident, I-know-I'm-right Dick Cheney only when he's defending his obviously ill-advised "call" about how to disclose the incident. Otherwise he seems remorseful and distracted, as if a part of him will always be in that clearing on the Armstrongs' ranch, firing his shotgun and seeing Harry Whittington go down.

"The president's satisfied with what the vice president said yesterday," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, told reporters. But if I were George W. Bush, I wouldn't be satisfied at all. I'd be worried about what Cheney might say or do next.

Gene, you must not have gotten the memo: we are now living in Bizarro World and Bush and Cheney aren't accountable to anyone. You've had six years to figure that out.

Symbolism

This AP writer probably didn't intend the punchline:

Alito takes his seat on high court

Gina Holland, The Associated Press

Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined colleagues in the courtroom for the first time Thursday, just for show, before the real work begins next week on issues including abortion, presidential wartime powers and the environment.

Alito, 55, had already been on the job two weeks and been sworn in twice. Thursday's oath was largely ceremonial, and President Bush and Justice John Paul Stevens skipped the four-minute event. Stevens, the leader of the liberal wing, was out of town.

Alito was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts, another Bush nominee, who wished him "a long and happy career in our common calling."

Alito then took his place on the bench, in the far-right seat when facing the court, reserved for the most junior member. Alito looked uncomfortable as he settled into his black leather chair, next to the diminutive Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but he smiled later for pictures outside the court.

The "far right seat" sounds about right.

Social Engineering for Destruction

Welfare Agencies Seek Foster Children's Assets

By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: February 17, 2006

GREENSBORO, N.C. — In 2004, at the age of 14 and at his own desperate request, John G. became a ward of North Carolina.

His mother abandoned him for crack when he was 3, and his adoptive father died of cancer a year later. A succession of guardians beat him, made him sell drugs and refused to buy him toys.

When he finally arrived at a county-financed group residence, he was wearing outgrown clothes. On the plus side, he was receiving Social Security survivor benefits and he held title to a modest house, willed to him by the adoptive father 10 years earlier and an asset that might give him traction, or at least a place to live, when he "ages out" of foster care at 18.

Now, the fate of the house — and the insistence of Guilford County officials on taking all of John's Social Security benefits to help pay for his foster care — are at the center of a legal battle with potential repercussions around the country.

The dispute is the latest in a continuing struggle between children's advocates and money-starved welfare agencies. They are wrestling over the proper use of more than $100 million in Social Security benefits that the states are taking on behalf of foster children with disabilities or a dead or disabled natural parent.

Determined to extract as much federal aid for social programs as the law will permit, some state welfare agencies even hire private companies, working for contingency fees, to help them reap more federal money by identifying foster children who are eligible for Social Security benefits. The money is then routinely used to help offset the cost of foster care.

Advocates for children question the wholesale takeover of money, accusing agencies of repaying themselves for care they are obligated to provide and of failing to use the windfall to meet children's individual needs, whether extra tutoring or counseling or, as in John's case, something more unusual.

Guilford County officials refused to release any of John's money, even when they learned that his last guardian had stopped making the $221 monthly mortgage payments on his house and that he faced its imminent loss. A local court has ordered the county to make payments for now, but the county has appealed and said it might appeal to the United States Supreme Court if necessary.

For John, who as a foster child may not be fully identified, it was clear as he visited the house recently that it represented not just money but also a precious link to his troubled past and an unknown future.

"This is my childhood," John, now 15, said as he climbed through a broken window to explore the boarded-up structure for the first time since he fled it two years ago. On the floor of the bedroom, he found a brown teddy bear and clung to it, saying softly, "My mother gave this to me before she left."

John has no idea how he will support himself, but he wants to live in the house he inherited, a property valued at $80,000. "It will be a good place to be," he said.

John's court-appointed volunteer protector found out about the threat to his house and enlisted a Legal Aid lawyer to help him fight for it.

"For the state to pocket a child's money and allow his home to go into foreclosure just doesn't make sense," said his Legal Aid lawyer, Lewis Pitts. "No one can say it's in the best interests of the child."

There are a bunch of questions here: who takes care of whom and why, and who pays for it?

My guess is that it is pretty damn rare for a kid in the foster care system to have an asset to look forward to when they "age out" of the system and it is probably in the best interests of the kid and society that they continue to have it. We look at "public support" of any kind as some sort of sin, rather than the kind of minimum of care that a reasonable society owes its most fragile members and seek to recoup the cost out of somebody's hide. Pathetic.

Technological Responsibilities

Congressman quizzes Net companies on shame

By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

When the U.S. House of Representatives convened a hearing on Wednesday to talk about China and the Internet, it quickly devolved into an exercise in political speechmaking.

Not until nearly halfway through the event did any of the technology executives receive a chance to respond to a rapid-fire series of condemnations.

One exchange, though, with Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, stood out. Lantos, who is co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, quizzed executives from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco Systems not about technical or legal details--but about their view of the morality of cooperating with China's ruling Communist Party. Lantos, a Budapest-born Jew who represents the southwest quadrant of San Francisco, is the only member of Congress who is a Holocaust survivor

Rep. Tom Lantos: Can you say in English that you're ashamed of what your company and what the other companies have done?

Google: Congressman, I actually can't, I don't think it's fair for us to say that we're ashamed.

Lantos: You have nothing to be ashamed of?

Google: I am not ashamed of it, and I am not proud of it...We have taken a path, we have begun on a path, we have done a path that...will ultimately benefit all the users in China. If we determined, congressman, as a result of changing circumstances or as a result of the implementation of the Google.cn program that we are not achieving those results then we will assess our performance, our ability to achieve those goals, and whether to remain in the market.

Lantos, to Cisco: Is your company ashamed?

Cisco: (Begins to talk about products that Cisco sells.)

Lantos: Just answer me directly. The totality of the things that you and the other three companies have done, are you proud of it or are you ashamed of it?

Cisco: The products we provide in China are identical to the products we provide worldwide...What we have done is followed very closely the policies of our government, which are informed by human rights concerns and have been for 30 years now, in terms of providing what products are appropriate and not appropriate to provide to China and which users.

Lantos: I am asking a direct question. Is there anything you have done in the whole period you operated in China that the company ought to be ashamed of?

Cisco: We think that is a positive thing that we do throughout the world including China...My answer is I feel that our engagement is consistent with our government's goals.

Lantos, to Microsoft: Is your company ashamed?

Microsoft: We comply with legally binding orders whether it's here in the U.S. or China.

Lantos: Well, IBM complied with legal orders when they cooperated with Nazi Germany. Those were legal orders under the Nazi German system...Do you think that IBM during that period had something to be ashamed of?

Microsoft: I can't speak to that. I'm not familiar in detail with IBM's activities in that period.

Lantos: You heard (Rep. Christopher Smith's) speech (click for PDF). Assuming that his words are accurate, is IBM to be ashamed of their action during that period?

Microsoft: Congressman, I don't think it's my position to say whether IBM should be ashamed.

Lantos, to Yahoo: Are you ashamed?

Yahoo: We are very distressed about the consequences of having to comply with Chinese law...We are certainly troubled by that and we look forward to working with our peers.

Lantos: Do you think that individuals or families have been negatively impacted by some of the activities we have been told, like being in prison for 10 years?

Sadly, there are many more businesses that need to be dragged in front of the Congress and held publicly responsbile. They know what the impact of their actions are and hide behind fancy rhetoric to confuse the public.

The World's Most Profitable Company

On Private Web Site, Wal-Mart Chief Talks Tough

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: February 17, 2006

In a confidential, internal Web site for Wal-Mart's managers, the company's chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., seemed to have a rare, unscripted moment when one manager asked him why "the largest company on the planet cannot offer some type of medical retirement benefits?" Mr. Scott first argues that the cost of such benefits would leave Wal-Mart at a competitive disadvantage but then, clearly annoyed, he suggests that the store manager is disloyal and should consider quitting.

The Web site, which Mr. Scott uses to communicate his tough standards to thousands of far-flung managers, gives a rare glimpse into the concerns that are roiling Wal-Mart's retailing empire, from the company's sagging stock price to how it treats its workers. Judging by the managers' questions, Mr. Scott has an internal public relations challenge that in some ways mirrors the challenge he faces from outside critics.
....
In his postings, Mr. Scott tries to strike a chummy, "in the trenches" tone, reminding managers how frequently he visits stores — at least once a week — and pops into meetings unannounced "to make sure there's not a filter keeping me from hearing what's really important."

But his responses often serve to remind managers of the gap between them and their chief executive, who earned more than $17 million last year, including stock options, who hops around the globe on Wal-Mart's fleet of jets and who lives in a gated community called Pinnacle.

You might want to take a look at this, the company apparently views employee benefits as a communist plot.

Climate Change

Glacier Melt Could Signal Faster Rise in Ocean Levels

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 17, 2006; Page A01

Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly Earth's oceans will rise over the next century, scientists said yesterday.

The new data come from satellite imagery and give fresh urgency to worries about the role of human activity in global warming. The Greenland data are mirrored by findings from Bolivia to the Himalayas, scientists said, noting that rising sea levels threaten widespread flooding and severe storm damage in low-lying areas worldwide.

The scientists said they do not yet understand the precise mechanism causing glaciers to flow and melt more rapidly, but they said the changes in Greenland were unambiguous -- and accelerating: In 1996, the amount of water produced by melting ice in Greenland was about 90 times the amount consumed by Los Angeles in a year. Last year, the melted ice amounted to 225 times the volume of water that city uses annually.

"We are witnessing enormous changes, and it will take some time before we understand how it happened, although it is clearly a result of warming around the glaciers," said Eric Rignot, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Greenland study is the latest of several in recent months that have found evidence that rising temperatures are affecting not only Earth's ice sheets but also such things as plant and animal habitats, coral reefs' health, hurricane severity, droughts, and globe-girdling currents that drive regional climates.

The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are among the largest reservoirs of fresh water on Earth, and their fate is expected to be a major factor in determining how much the oceans will rise. Rignot and University of Kansas scientist Pannir Kanagaratnam, who published their findings yesterday in the journal Science, declined to guess how much the faster melting would raise sea levels but said current estimates of around 20 inches over the next century are probably too low.

While sea-level increases of a few feet may not sound like very much, they could have profound consequences on flood-prone countries such as Bangladesh and trigger severe weather around the world.

"The implications are global," said Julian Dowdeswell, a glacier expert at the University of Cambridge in England who reviewed the new paper for Science. "We are not talking about walking along the sea front on a nice summer day, we are talking of the worst storm settings, the biggest storm surges . . . you are upping the probability major storms will take place."

The study also highlights how seemingly small changes in temperature can have extensive effects. Where glaciers in Greenland were once traveling around four miles per year, they are now moving twice as fast. While it is possible that increased precipitation in northern Greenland is somehow compensating for the melting in the south, the scientists said that is unlikely.

There are multiple ways warming might be causing glaciers to accelerate. The scientists said increased temperatures may loosen the grip that glaciers have on underlying bedrock, or melt away floating shelves along the shore that can hold ice in place.

Whatever the mechanism, the phenomenon seems widespread. At a news conference organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science at its annual meeting in St. Louis, glacier scientists Vladimir Aizen from the University of Idaho and Gino Casassa of Chile's Centro de Estudios Cientificos said they were seeing the same thing happen to glaciers in the Himalayas and South America.

"Glaciers have retreated systematically and in an accelerated fashion in the last few decades," Casassa said. One glacier that provided Bolivia with its only ski slope five years ago has splintered into three and cannot be used for skiing, the scientist added.

Rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers also raises concerns for the large portion of humankind that gets its fresh water from glacier-fed rivers in South Asia, Aizen noted.

Most climate scientists believe a major cause for Earth's warming climate is increased emissions of greenhouse gases as a result of burning fossil fuels, largely in the United States and other wealthy, industrialized nations such as those of western Europe but increasingly in rapidly developing nations such as China and India as well. Carbon dioxide and several other gases trap the sun's heat and raise atmospheric temperature.

The consensus opinion of climate scientists is that this is a human problem. We're fouling our nest.

Great Cooking

I read from current critics who regard Providence, RI, Al Forno as having fallen on hard times. If true, that is a sad thing, as this was one of the legendary Italian kitchens in this country. From one of their cookbooks, I have this recipe. The passion for shellfish is mine.

Clams Al Forno
suggested wine: 1999 Brovia Roero Arneis. (Piedmont, Italy)

These clams are gutsy and robust. Serve them with a good, crusty country bread to sop up the juices – you don’t want to miss a drop.

36 to 40 littleneck clams, cleaned and scrubbed
2 large onions (8 to 10 ounces), peeled, halved, and thinly sliced
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and chopped
½ teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
½ cup water
2 tablespoons minced fresh garlic
1½ cups chopped canned tomatoes in heavy puree
8 tablespoons minced fresh garlic
3 scallions, cut into julienne
1 lemon, cut into 6 wedges

1. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.
2. Place the clams in a single layer in a baking dish.
3. Scatter all the remaining ingredients except the scallions and lemon wedges over the clams. Roast the clams for 9 minutes; turn them and roast for about 9 to 10 minutes longer, until they pop open. Discard any that don’t open.
4. To serve, place 6 clams in each bowl and divide the broth among them. Serve piping hot, garnished with scallions and lemon wedges.

Serves 6 as an appetizer

Oh, what the hell, cook three dozen and serve them as a meal. When I was living in North Carolina, I'd take myself out for dinner and order three dozen oysters on the half shell as dinner on my birthday. My brother the chef always asked, "And how was that tummy ache?" Well, it was real, but consuming three dozen oysters in the company of those who loved vongole s much as I do, at a leisurely pace with some champagne was worth every minute of digestive discomfort after the repast.

It was my brother the chef who taught me to eat oysters in the first place. Even though I'd lived in Boston, I didn't have a clue about shellfish until Leigh took me to Baltimore's Inner Harbor when I was visiting him after a conference near Baltimore, back in the day when I was still teaching in North Carolina. I'd never had an oyster before and I think we ate three dozen with Baltimore's justifiably famous Cheese bread.
We walked around to all of the Phillip's Seafood stalls in the old buildings of the Inner Harbor and Leigh bought me three here, three there. I fell in love.

Shelling raw oysters on the half shell requires a special glove to protect your hand (this is dangerous work) and an oyster shucking knive. Damn, they are good, but I live within spitting distance of a couple of great oyster bars and I'll let somebody else do the dangerous work.

Clams and mussels I prefer boiled or steamed as above. Oysters? Raw, please.

Satay=Sate

It's recipe time!

I remember the first time I had this, in the home of Dutch friends while I was running a radio station in North Carolina. I didn't find restaurants that served it until I came to DC in 1985.

This is another one of those "base" recipes that you can play around with. Beef and shrimp are also traditional satays, the method is exactly the same. This is a great dish on the grill in the summer. I, of course, am all psyched about mynew grill and can't wait to try this recipe on the grill. With snow expected Monday, that day is a ways off, but your oven broiler will work as well and a top of the stove grill pan is also something that gets a work out around here. If you are an apartment or condo without a place to put a gas or charcoal grill, this last will work for you nicely if you have an exhaust fan on your stove hood. And, it is cheap. Remember to get the grill without the no-stick surface, we know now that the stuff is carcinogenic. Smart use of oils will take care of the sticking problem.

Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce

Marinade:
1 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into strips

20 wooden skewers, soaked in water 30 minutes
Vegetable oil, for grilling
Butter lettuce leaves
Fresh cilantro leaves
Peanut sauce, recipe follows

Combine the yogurt, ginger, garlic, and curry powder in a shallow mixing bowl, stir to combine. Place the chicken strips in the yogurt marinade and gently toss until well coated. Cover and let the chicken marinate in the refrigerator for at up to 2 hours.

Thread the chicken pieces onto the soaked skewers working the skewer in and out of the meat, down the middle of the piece, so that it stays in place during grilling. Place a grill pan over medium heat and brush it with oil to prevent the meat from sticking. Grill the chicken satays for 3 to 5 minutes on each side, until nicely seared and cooked through. Serve the satays on a platter lined with lettuce leaves and cilantro; accompanied by a small bowl of peanut sauce on the side.

Peanut Sauce:
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
2 teaspoons red chili paste, such as sambal
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
2 limes, juiced
1/2 cup hot water
1/4 cup chopped peanuts, for garnish

Combine the peanut butter, soy sauce, red chili paste, brown sugar, and lime juice in a food processor or blender. Puree to combine. While the motor is running, drizzle in the hot water to thin out the sauce, you may not need all of it. Pour the sauce into a nice serving bowl and garnish with the chopped peanuts. Serve with chicken satay.

Yield: 3 cups

In Holland, where you are going to find this in Maylasian and Indonesian restaurants as part of a riijstafel of 17-19 courses (all small bites, like far eastern tapas) it will be served with rice and sambal oelek. I love hot food and find sambal to be a challenge. It has a quick afterburn but doesn't last quite as long as those deadly little Thai red chilies.

Satay is a classic first course in Thai restaurants, but it is in those multicourse Malay and Indonesian meals where it becomes a centerpiece. Serve it with tom kha gai soup and a pad thai. This is a very easy and satisfying excursion into a foreign cuisine.

Other Voices

Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day. I've got errands to run in the morning that can't be put off any longer. In the afternoon, I'm participating by remote in an avian influenza simulation at Boston University with my new boss. Expect another light posting day and I'll ask the guest posters to step it up tomorrow and Saturday, which I need as a day off. I've been blogging seven days a week since 15 November, 2003, and this is one tired blogger.

Wierd Weather

It was 65 degrees today. I went out without a jacket on for the first time in a couple of months. But it is supposed to snow again on Monday. The backing and forthing usually means I come down with a brutal cold, assuming I can manage to get rid of this sinus infection.

Live from Houston

One of the few redeeming features of CNN is Anderson Cooper. I'm rarely up late enough to see him, but now he's blogging "360 Degrees." Here's today's entry:

Thursday, February 16, 2006 Houston straining under weight of Katrina evacuees I was off last night in Arizona shooting a story for an upcoming broadcast and am now on a plane heading for Houston, Texas. Tonight's broadcast will be from there.

We want to see how some of the people who evacuated from the Gulf Coast to Houston because of Hurricane Katrina are doing. This city took in more than 100,000 evacuees after the storm. It is coping now with growing pressure on its schools and hospitals while contending with an apparent increase in crime.

Despite these issues, I continue to be amazed by the resilience of so many people in the face of tragedy. Many have lost homes, jobs, everything they know, and yet they persevere.

"What option do we have?" one woman asked me this past weekend in New Orleans. She was about to be evicted from the hotel where she was staying. Of course, she's right -- getting up each morning, putting one foot in front of the other -- what else can you do when your world has crumbled?

I really can't imagine being in their shoes. I hope I never have to find out what it is like.

Performance Review

Cheney's code of silence

THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS corps this week has been hopping mad over Vice President Dick Cheney's tardy, confusing and tightly limited public disclosure about accidentally shooting his friend, Harry Whittington. Although the reporters' indignation has been borderline comical, and the hunting accident terrific fodder for late-night humor on TV (except in the Whittington household), the episode is also a serious reminder that when it comes to the executive branch's doings, Cheney is the bottleneck. .... Americans deserve to know what's being done in their name, and visual images are part of that information. Just as important, prompt disclosure shows the rest of the world that the U.S. is confident enough to forthrightly confront its own problems, no matter how dire. Unfortunately, another news event this week confirms that the opposite is the norm.

The House Committee on Government Reform has been listening to witness after witness describe how they suffered workplace retaliation after blowing the whistle on national security activities they thought were unethical or illegal. One of the aggrieved whistle-blowers, former National Security Agency intelligence officer Russell Tice, also testified that the NSA has a secret domestic surveillance program capable of tracking Americans in the "millions," which would be far larger than previously believed.

Never mind the Armstrong Ranch. We wouldn't know about the NSA program or even Abu Ghraib if Cheney had his way. The vice president has been the single most influential Washington advocate for White House secrecy since 1974, when he persuaded his then-boss, President Ford, to veto the Freedom of Information Act. (The veto was overidden.) We'll be living with the consequences of Cheney's tight lips long after this week's brouhaha fades.

What this shows me is that, behind all the swagger, Bushco are cowards. If you had an employee who provided you with as little accountability as Bush and Cheney to (and they do work for us) you'd can him.

More Questions

WaPo's Dan Froomkin has some questions:

Not Exactly Clearing Things Up

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, February 16, 2006; 1:00 PM

Vice President Cheney's sit-down with Fox News yesterday ended his four days of hiding out after shooting a 78-year-old lawyer in a hunting accident. Speaking with Brit Hume, Cheney publicly accepted responsibility for the shooting and called it "one of the worst days of my life."

But he did little to clear up the many mysteries swirling around the shooting and his decision to keep it secret for almost a day.

For instance: Was Cheney reckless? Obviously, the shooting of Harry Whittington was an accident, but could it have been prevented? Understanding what happened would require a much more detailed recounting than Cheney -- or any of the other witnesses -- have given thus far.

In fact, where are all those other witnesses? Why haven't we heard in more detail from Cheney's other hunting partner that afternoon, Ambassador to Switzerland Pamela Willeford? Even more significantly, why haven't we heard a word from the hunting guide on horseback who it turns out was right there, as well? Or from the Secret Service, which was presumably keeping an eye on things?

What was the real reason Cheney didn't want to make a public announcement right away? Even the generally deferential Hume didn't buy Cheney's repeated insistence that he was waiting to get accurate information about his victim's condition: "But there were some things you knew. I mean, you knew the man had been shot, you knew he was injured, you knew he was in the hospital, and you knew you'd shot him," Hume said.

And is Cheney answerable to anyone in the White House?

Doesn't look like it, Dan. I also seem to recall that we pay his paycheck, and he ought to be accountable to us. Bush, too.

World Reaction

WaPo'sAnthony Shadid is participating in a Live Chat from the paper's Bierut bureau. This interchange with a reader is interesting:

Buffalo, N.Y.: How much of the anger was really about the cartoons and how much was it just a dislike of the West? I saw quite a few American flags burning even though the cartoons had nothing to do with America.

Anthony Shadid: There's no question that grievances were conflated, interconnected and so on. I think we saw that especially in Afghanistan. In some ways, that's what worries me. I've always been struck, in the Arab world at least, by the ability of people to distinguish American policy, for instance, from, say, Americans, or European policy from individual citizens. I fear that's becoming less the case these days.

It isn't just the Muslim world that feels this way, by the way. A Canadian I spoke with a few weeks ago had been in Europe recently, and Europeans feel the same way. The Europeans were very welcoming to him when they determined that he wasn't a Yank.

Cold Truth

The Basra video should lay to rest a scurrilous lie

The smug superiority of the British over their peacekeeping efforts in Iraq is an insult to those of us who live there

Jasem al-Aqrab
Thursday February 16, 2006
Guardian

Since April 2003, the people of Basra have consistently been bemused by reports that they and their city enjoy a state of calm and stability under the command of the British forces, in contrast to the north of Iraq and the so-called Sunni triangle. As someone born and bred in Basra, I hope that the recent images of British troops beating young Basra boys to within an inch of their lives will allow such claims to be laid to rest and show a fraction of the reality that has made life throughout Iraq a living hell.

When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke a couple of years ago, I recall a commentator on the BBC World Service smugly saying that the Americans were heavy-handed and undisciplined when it came to dealing with civilians, while the British were far more restrained, touring Basra in their berets as peacekeepers rather than occupiers. My estimation of the BBC World Service dipped when the other side of the picture was not presented.

The truth is that ever since the fall of Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime, abuses and atrocities committed against Iraqi civilians have been a regular, at times daily, occurrence throughout the country, including in Basra. These have been committed by American, British and Iraqi official forces. Hearing the British prime minister describe this latest incident as an isolated case fills me and fellow Iraqis with anger.

It adds insult to very serious injury when we are told that this humiliation, torture and violence is the work of a few "bad apples". From previous experience, the most we can look forward to is a whitewash inquiry and possibly a young, low-ranking soldier being made a scapegoat.

As a strong believer in the need for Iraqis to use the political process to bring about change, it is not difficult to see how innocent youngsters are radicalised and why they turn to widely available arms. Those who were beaten mercilessly while being mocked by the film-maker for their pain and humiliation will never listen to me or my colleagues when we try to win them over to peaceful ways of venting their anger and frustration. Their families, loved ones, friends and even those who see the horrific images on TV will be ever more convinced that such degradation can only be met with fire and force.

The allegation that insurgents have flooded into Iraq from neighbouring Syria and Iran may hold some truth, but the flooding I fear is the daily recruitment of insurgents by the brutal, inhumane and tyrannical treatment that young Iraqis experience every day at the hands of occupation forces, as well as the Iraqi government forces they support.

Although I and numerous members of my family suffered personally, physically and otherwise at the hands of the Saddam Hussein regime, and dreamed for many years of the day he would be gone, I always opposed the invasion and occupation of our country. Subsequent events have made me even more convinced of the fallacy and immorality of the military campaign that Britain and the US have pursued in Iraq. The biggest indictment of the war and occupation is surely that more and more Iraqis are speaking publicly of how life was far better when Saddam was in power - an achievement most Iraqis never imagined possible.

Tony Blair's suggestion that British forces are in Iraq to educate Iraqis in democracy has only added salt to our bleeding wounds. This rhetoric harks back to imperial times when Britain was a colonial power and treated my forefathers, as well as many other peoples in the world, as backward savages. It hurts me that despite Mr Blair's first-class education, he seems to have learned so little. Until recently, Britain was admired and respected by Iraqis. The few who had the chance to visit or study in the UK were looked upon with envy. The past three years have seen to it that that respect has been obliterated.

How can you tell when George Bush is lying? His lips are moving.

Joining the Supremes

Court Veteran Remembers a Scary Start

By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: February 16, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — No one will blame Justice Stephen G. Breyer if he flashes back more than 11 years to his own challenging start on the Supreme Court when Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. is ceremonially sworn in there on Thursday.

Arguably, few people have ever been better prepared to make the move to the court than Stephen Breyer. Like Justice Alito, he spent more than a decade as a federal appeals court judge. Like Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., he was once a Supreme Court law clerk. He then observed the court from a variety of perspectives, as chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a member of the United States Sentencing Commission and a Harvard law professor. He was chief judge of the federal appeals court in Boston when, at 55, he was named to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1994.

So was the transition an easy one? Far from it.

"I was frightened to death for the first three years," he said in a recent conversation.

Over tea in his chambers, Justice Breyer, who would have broken the record for longest-serving junior justice had Justice Alito's confirmation been delayed a month or so, recalled the anxiety of those early years.

He had felt adequately prepared and had expected to move comfortably into his new role, he said, and was therefore surprised at how overwhelming he found it.

"I was afraid I might inadvertently write something harmful," Justice Breyer said. "People read every word. Everything you do is important. There is a seriousness to every word, and you really can't go back. Precedent doesn't absolutely limit you. In almost every case, you're in a wide-open area. The breadth of that opening, getting up to speed on each case, constitutional law as a steady diet, the importance to the profession. ..." His voice trailed off, and he shook his head. "My goodness!" he exclaimed.

Justice Breyer was speaking only for himself, offering neither advice to nor commentary on Justice Alito or his other new colleague, Chief Justice Roberts. But coming from one who ordinarily projects an air of cheerful self-assurance, his comments were a reminder that the Supreme Court is a different world, even for those who may have spent a lifetime preparing for it. The social rituals and arcane procedures are mastered quickly enough. Getting used to living a life where every word matters takes a bit longer.

This is a life that is the polar opposite of blogging. I don't think I'd like it.

Exporting FLordia's Elections

Haitians Celebrate Preval Presidency

By STEVENSON JACOBS
The Associated Press
Thursday, February 16, 2006

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Rene Preval was declared the winner of Haiti's presidential election Thursday under an agreement between the interim government and electoral council, staving off a crisis over last week's disputed vote in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country.

With nearly all the votes counted, Preval had been just shy of the 50.1 percent margin needed to avoid a runoff next month. Under the agreement, some of the 85,000 blank ballots cast in the Feb. 7 election were subtracted from the total number of votes counted, giving Preval a majority, said Michel Brunache, chief of Cabinet for interim President Boniface Alexandre.

.....

The agreement, which Brunache said was signed by members of the electoral council and several government ministers, came during a late Wednesday night meeting of government and election officials in the electoral council offices.

The blank votes represented 4 percent of the estimated 2.2 million ballots cast. By removing some of the blank ballots from the total count, Preval's share of the vote rose from 49.76 percent to 51.15 percent, Brunache said.

"We have reached a solution to the problem," Provisional Electoral Council president Max Mathurin said. "We feel a huge satisfaction at having liberated the country from a truly difficult situation."

The agreement capped a dramatic nine days since Haitians turned out in droves for an election seen as crucial to avoiding a political and economic meltdown in the destitute Caribbean nation. Gangs have gone on kidnapping sprees and factories have closed for lack of security in the two years since former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ouster.

Some 7,300 U.N. troops and 1,750 international police are in the country under Brazilian command, helping to maintain order.

Voters almost overwhelmed poll workers by their numbers on election day. When returns were slow in coming, suspicion built that the vote count was being rigged.

On Tuesday, Haitian TV reported the discovery of ballots discarded in a garbage dump near the capital. AP reporters visited the site Wednesday and saw thousands of ballots, some marked for Preval, deep in the dump along with a vote tally sheet and four bags meant to carry returns from the election.

The discovery troubled U.N. officials because the bags were not supposed to be thrown out. U.N. official Catherine Sung, an electoral adviser at the vote tabulation center, told the AP the signed bags were meant to contain annulled and blank votes.

Here is another situation where the Bush Administration is forced to "accept" an election result that they are not fond of. It looks like the new President is a crony of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and even the normally diplomatic reports from NPR couldn't hide their contempt for how this election was handled.

Ah well, at least Diebold isn't involved this time.

Dark News

Poultry, Not Wild Birds, Most Often Carries Deadly Avian Flu to Africa

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 16, 2006; Page A14

The lethal strain of H5N1 bird flu found in Nigeria this month probably got there in poultry and not through the movement of wild birds, according to migratory-bird experts and several lines of circumstantial evidence.

The first Nigerian cases were found at a commercial farm with 46,000 chickens, not among backyard flocks that would have greater contact with wild birds. Nigeria imports more than a million chicks a year from countries that include Turkey, where H5N1 appeared last fall, and China, where it has circulated for a decade.

H5N1 has been found in three duck species that spend winter in Africa.

Furthermore, the infected flocks in two of Nigeria's northern states are not near wetlands where migratory birds spend the winter. There are no reports of waterfowl die-offs like those in Asia and Eastern Europe. The few wild species known to occasionally harbor H5N1 arrived months ago and are about to leave.

If it turns out that trade, not nature, was responsible for introducing H5N1 to Africa, better control of trade in domesticated birds may be able to limit the virus's spread there and on other continents, public health experts said.

"If you put all the possible factors in perspective, we wouldn't jump to the conclusion as others do that it was wild birds that brought it," said Ward Hagemeijer, an ornithologist at Wetlands International, a Dutch conservation organization.

William B. Karesh, a veterinarian with the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, said: "I would never rule out wild birds. But I think we have to look at the most probable routes, and the most probable route would be poultry. How did it skip the whole Nile Delta and get to Nigeria? That kind of bothers me. Common sense would dictate that it should be all over Egypt by now."

This was the topic of much conversation in the "flu community" yesterday. The reality is probably "both/and," through both migration and the poultry trade.

What David Brown, a lazy reporter, doesn't tell you: surveillance, both veterinary and medical, is so poor in Africa that we really have no idea what is going on in the Dark Continent, which is likely to carry a disproportionate burden of disease because of the complete unavailability of any kind of medical care in the sub-Saharan nations. Africa will be a "viral sink" for H5N1 avian influenza.

Start mixing a highly pathogenic infectious disease with the existing 25% HIV rate in the local population and you have a great laboratory for genetic mixing.

Bring Back the Grownups

A Deadly Vacuum

Published: February 16, 2006

While there is no shortage of incompetent public officials involved in this tragedy, one stands out above the rest. That person is Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

According to the panel's report, Mr. Chertoff has "primary responsibility for managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster," yet he handled his decision-making responsibilities "late, ineffectively, or not at all." A FEMA official named Marty Bahamonde sent word back to Washington on the same day Katrina struck, saying the 17th Street Canal levee in New Orleans had been breached. This was not based on a rumor; he had seen it with his own eyes from a Coast Guard helicopter. FEMA public affairs officials sent Mr. Chertoff's chief of staff an e-mail note that night. The former FEMA director, Michael Brown, says he notified the White House at the same time. Yet the next day, President Bush said New Orleans had "dodged the bullet," while Mr. Chertoff flew to Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu.

These are the people charged with protecting us and, failing that, rescuing us. This department was put together based on the belief that everyone would be safer with every facet of preparedness, protection and response under one umbrella. The first time this new system was tested, it failed. And it failed on Mr. Chertoff's watch.

Now Mr. Chertoff and his opposite number inside the White House are proposing changes to FEMA, including a new professional response force. While this is a good idea in and of itself, big organizational solutions will not help if there is a leadership vacuum. It would be nice for the administration to finally send a message that if important people do a bad job, they go away.

But the best tribute possible to the roughly 1,400 people who died along the Gulf Coast would be to help those still suffering in Mississippi and Louisiana, and those evacuees stranded hundreds of miles from home. Right now, almost six months after Katrina hit, families are being forced to leave hotels and are moving into shelters in Louisiana. If that is not a disaster, we do not know what is.

This crisis isn't over, but officials aren't behaving as if they are on a crisis footing. There is no sense of urgency in the White House or in Congress to ensure that people get the help they need. Many people died. Many more can yet be saved.

I watched the hearing earlier this week. Chertoff and Michael Brown played fingerpointing games with each other. It was embarrassing, like watching small boys making excuses for a playground dispute. A grownup would have taken responsibility and resigned for screwing up. Not only are the Bushies incompetant, they are without honor. This is an administration of squabbling, childish incompetents.

Sick Call

I rolled over this morning and the clock said 7:52 and I groaned "Oh, no, I over slept," and I made a cup of coffee and slowly woke up to realize I'm not just tired, I'm sick. I've got a raging sinus infection and my face hurts. I have an ayurvedic solution for this, but it takes a couple of days. Expect things to be a little slow around here today. My brain feels like it is working at half speed.

The Sweet Side

I'm not much of a sweets fan, but I've been watching the cake shows on The Food Network and I learned to make fondant three decades ago and it is worth learning if you like to make and serve cakes. This "frosting" is also a preservative which keeps cakes from staling at room temperature. It is useful for that, and the fact that it is easy to decorate. Me, I'm a chocolate cake with buttercream frosting girl for those rare days when I ever eat cake at all. I'd rather spend that carb budget on some hearty baguette or fresh pasta.

Here is how you can make a fondant the equal of the folks on TV.

Things to consider:

Fondant 101

The porcelain-smooth finish of rolled fondant creates a suitable base for a variety of decorations and embellishments and can keep a cake fresh for several days (even in warm weather) by protecting it from air exposure. Rolled fondant is a popular choice for wedding cakes, but it does not have to be reserved for nuptials alone; its rich, sweet taste makes it a good icing for cakes for any special occasion.
Amount Guidelines
When deciding how much fondant to portion out, err on the side of too much. Excess fondant can always be reused.
For round, octagonal, petal, or hexagonal tiers approximately 3 1/2 inches high:
6-inch diameter: 1 1/2 pounds fondant
8-inch diameter: 2 pounds fondant
10-inch diameter: 2 1/2 pounds fondant
12-inch diameter: 3 pounds fondant
For square tiers approximately 3 1/2 inches high:
6-inch diameter: 2 pounds fondant
8-inch diameter: 2 1/2 pounds fondant
10-inch diameter: 3 pounds fondant
12-inch diameter: 4 pounds fondant
Fondant Tips
1. Fondant should be used at room temperature.
2. For a flawless final appearance, be sure that your surface, rolling pin, and hands are clean and lint-free. Tie back long hair, trim long nails, avoid wearing fuzzy clothing, and remove any jewelry on your hands and wrists.
3. When storing fondant, make sure the plastic bag and tub is tightly sealed to prevent it from drying out. Store the tub at cool room temperature; do not refrigerate. It will last for several days.
4. For best results, spread a thin layer of icing over the cake before applying the fondant; this "crumb coat" will create a tacky surface to which the fondant can stick.
5. Once the fondant has been rolled, quickly transfer it to the cake; the time between rolling it out and covering the cake should be no more than 5 minutes. The iced cake will keep at room temperature for several days. If the cake’s filling requires refrigeration, avoid a long chilling time or the fondant can become dewy.
6. If you are making a multi-tiered cake, cover each tier with fondant before stacking them on top of one another. For best results, stack just before serving.
7. To conceal rough edges between the fondant-covered cake layers, and for a more professional appearance, create a decorative border around the cake’s edges and between the tiers. Roll a small piece of fondant into a thin snake as long as the cake’s circumference. Wrap the snake around the cake’s edge, gently press into cake, and crimp as desired. This is a "base" recipe which can be used a lot of different ways, including as a candy.

To make fondant:

2/3 c. or 1/2 can Condensed Milk
1/2 c. butter, creamed
1 tsp. salt
5 1/2 c. icing sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Cream butter. Add condensed milk, salt, then add icing sugar gradually. Mix, then pour onto a baking board and knead with hands until smooth. You may divide and color and flavor each section as you wish. Make into small sized shapes, let set overnight and dip in chocolate.

Note: you can make Easter eggs with this recipe by coloring some of the fondant yellow, rolling it into small balls, and covering with white fondant that you shape into egg shapes

Note: Christmas mints can be made this way by including candy canes that you hit in a plastic bag with a rolling pin to break them up into small pieces. Makes really unique colors and a nice minty taste. You can also add ground nuts to the centers of these. Your imagination is your only limit.

You can roll this out for cake frosting or roll it up as candy. This is a very versatile base recipe.

Now, for Something Completely Different

It's been bird flu, all day, all the time today and that's only going to get worse. H5N1 avian influenza is now endemic in birds in Africa and Europe. These are flocks which come to North America during the migratory season. Should you be paying attention? Yes. As of now there is no established human to human strain of the virus, but the more places it spreads, the greater contact between birds and humans. And that's not good. I've been on bird flu phone calls most of the day, and this is pretty depressing stuff. Time for a change of pace.

Your obedient correspondent has never run into a funghi she didn't love.

Shrimp and Shiitake Kebabs
Serves 8

1/4 cups Herb-Garlic Marinade, plus 3/4 cup, plus 1/4 cup recipe follows
16 shiitake mushrooms, trimmed
24 jumbo shrimp (about 1 1/2 pounds)
8 (10-inch) wooden skewers

Clean mushrooms. Place mushrooms in a small bowl and mix with 1/4 cup marinade. Marinate at least 1 hour (and up to 4) in a sealable bag.

If desired, shell shrimp. In a large heavy-duty sealable plastic bag combine shrimp with 3/4 cup marinade and seal bag, pressing out excess air. Marinate shrimp, chilled, for at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour. Soak skewers in warm water 30 minutes. Prepare grill.

Drain shrimp, discarding marinade. In a sieve set over a bowl drain mushrooms and reserved mushroom marinade for basting. Thread 3 shrimp and 2 mushrooms, alternating shrimp with mushrooms, and keeping the mushrooms flat onto skewers. Kebabs may be assembled 1 hour ahead and chilled, covered.

Grill kebabs on a lightly oiled rack set 5 to 6 inches over glowing coals, basting with reserved marinade and turning them occasionally, until just cooked through, about 3 minutes on each side. (Alternatively, broil kebabs under a preheated broiler 2 to 3 inches from heat about 2 1/2 minutes on each side.) Drizzle kebabs with remaining 1/4 cup marinade.

Herb-Garlic Marinade:
6 large garlic cloves
1/3 cup packed tender fresh thyme sprigs
1/4 cup packed fresh rosemary leaves
1 1/2 tablespoons coarse salt
1 cup fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 cups olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper

Mince together garlic, thyme sprigs, and rosemary with salt and mash to a coarse paste.
In a bowl whisk together garlic paste and remaining ingredients until emulsified. Marinade may be made 1 day ahead and chilled, covered.
Yield: makes about 2 1/2 cups

This is simple and comes together in under 30 minutes. I like this with an herby risotto and a salad of mesclun with a lemon vinaigrette. All of the flavors are quite assertive and I would chose a big, oaky chardonnay with this.

Another Post Mortem

Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron takes the podium at today'sHuffington Post and asks: Alito: Did Senate Democrats Mess Up?

Did Senate Democrats mess up? On the nomination of Samuel Alito, that's the question that grabbed the media's attention. What got lost in the post mortems is that, putting aside how Democrats performed, Senate Republicans abdicated their advise-and-consent responsibilities. Rather than exploring Alito's legal views, which will affect us for a generation, they worked tirelessly to divert attention from them, subverting any notion that the Senate has a meaningful role to play on behalf of the American people in the judicial appointment process.

On January 31, New York Times reported that the White House and its surrogates "laid out a two-part strategy" for the Alito nomination: "first, extol [Alito's] nonpartisan legal credentials ... steering the debate away from [his] possible influence over hot-button issues. Second, attack the liberal groups" in opposition. Senate Republicans faithfully followed the script.

Even though they, too, believe that judicial philosophy matters (remember Harriet Miers?), they repeatedly trotted out Alito's impressive qualifications as if those were the only reasonable consideration. They served up softball questions, once even asking Alito "who was the best debater" between his sister and him. They shamelessly and misleadingly blasted Alito's critics as amoral heathens looking for the courts to carry out an unpopular agenda. And they revised history with false claims that the Alito nomination was the conservative mirror image of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's.

Most prominently, however, Senate Republicans baldly asserted, over and over again, that anyone who questioned Alito's views was engaging in "partisan politics," "distortion," "despicable behavior" and "character assassination." This was true, they implied, not only of Democratic senators, but law professors, editorialists and even news reporters. The point, of course, was to instantly discredit any meaningful analysis of Alito's record.

But why? It is clear that hard-line conservatives, especially those who sunk Harriet Miers, cheer Alito's elevation for the same reasons progressives fear it: his adherence to a vision of the law that aggrandizes executive power at the expense of individual freedoms, limits Congress's authority to protect workers and consumers, and restricts the courts' ability to enforce civil rights, women's rights and worker and public health protections. Why couldn't Republicans just be honest about that? Why wouldn't they elicit and defend Alito's specific legal views, rather than spouting platitudes about how judges should "interpret, not make, the law"?

After all, this was supposed to be the moment that the Right had been waiting for - the moment, not to obfuscate, but to triumphantly secure popular approval for "conservatives' paramount strategic objective of changing constitutional orthodoxies," according to former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein.

The reason why Senate Republicans assiduously avoided the supposedly long-awaited national debate about the role of the courts seems clear: they know the public won't embrace the throwback legal regime that the Right began trying to revive in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department 25 years ago. As demonstrated by the Senate's resounding rejection of Robert Bork's nomination in 1987, this vision, which Bork proudly articulated, is simply too scary for ordinary Americans to accept. So instead, elected Republican officials seek to achieve what Bork stood for through stealth. (And, yes, they are succeeding.)
....
At one point during the hearings, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) taunted Democrats by saying that Republicans would "clean [their] clocks" if they choose to make judicial philosophy an election issue. But the fact of the matter is that if Republicans were ever forthright about the Right's legal agenda, Senator Graham would almost certainly be wrong. Getting the public to grasp that agenda is the challenge facing Democratic senators who care about the courts.

Nan is exactly right and the stakes really are that high. The Dems are doing a lousy job of telling the story, however.

We're Not Ready

Pandemic planning -- is your business ready?
By Helen Branswell
The Canadian Press
MINNEAPOLIS (Feb 15, 2006)

Businesses hoping to weather a potential influenza pandemic need to plan for myriad problems that mass illness in society and in their workforces could create, participants at a conference aimed at spurring business continuity planning were told yesterday.

Planners need to think about such things as whether Internet servers have sufficient capacity and whether workers will be able to access automatically deposited pay cheques if power outages put bank machines out of service.

"One of my biggest concerns is that servers are not large enough to handle all the at-home telecommuting," admitted Sherry Cooper, one of Canada's leading economists.

"Servers could go down."

Employees accustomed to having their salaries transferred electronically to their bank could find themselves unable to withdraw funds if bank machines are crippled by lack of power, noted Cooper, chief economist for BMO Nesbitt Burns.

"If people can't get at their money, there could well be significant panic."

Cooper was part of a roster of speakers drawn together to help representatives of more than 200 U.S. and international companies grapple with the complex issue of how to buttress the business sector to get through a flu pandemic.

The two-day meeting is hosted by the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the centre, had one word of advice for companies that find themselves struggling to come to grips with the complex issue and to anticipate the various ways it could affect their businesses.

"Start," he said.

Litigator Cheryl Falvey told the gathering many companies still don't get how a flu pandemic could affect them. But those that make essential products -- the makers of medical masks and syringes, for instance -- certainly do and they are not alone, she said.

"There's lots of movement in the highest levels of corporate America," Falvey said. "They're taking it very seriously."

For her part, Cooper wasn't convinced much of the business sector has recognized that mass human illness would have unanticipated consequences outside of the health-care sector.

"I do not believe that businesses are prepared. I certainly don't believe the infrastructure is prepared," she said, referring to the vast network of services -- garbage removal, electricity, water systems -- that keep society functioning.

These are the kinds of issues we are discussing over at Flu Wiki. With the massive infection of European birds now making the news, media interest is starting to flare again. I'll be giving an interview to the Associated Press tomorrow and I'll let you know when it is going to hit the wire and give you a link as soon as I have one.

God bless Helen Branswell, the best bird flu reporter in North America, and this is a shout-out to my colleague Sherry Cooper at BMO Nesbitt Burns.

Discipline

One word: discipline.

That's what right-minded, service-oriented, justice-promoting, self-giving Americans should be practicing right now in the wake of this stupid Dick Cheney story.

Yes, it's inevitably the hot story in the news cycle right now.

Yes, it's getting way more play than it should.

Yes, the key element of this story--the 21-hour delay in reportage--is, of course, the one severely UNDER-played aspect of th