Summertime, And the Living Is...

This is a Dean and Deluca recipe base that I've been fiddling with for a few years. I consider this a premiere bbq sauce for fowl and pork, I like it less for red meat, not savory enough. But for chicken and ribs, this sings.

Kentucky Black BBQ Sauce

2 ts Vegetable oil
1/4 c Minced onion
1/4 c Plus 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
1/3 c Plus 2 Tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
2 tb Plus 1 teaspoon light brown sugar
1 tb Lemon juice
1/2 ts Ground black pepper
1/3 ts Tabasco sauce
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
A scant 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
A scant 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
A scant 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 ts Coarse salt

Heat the vegetable oil over moderate heat. Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes, or until onion is soft and light golden brown. Add the garlic and cook until softened.

Add the remaining ingredients, and simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes. (The sauce will thicken slightly.)

Makes about 1 Cup

For red meats, eliminate the sweet spices, increase the the garlic, vinegar, salt and pepper.

This is a terrific base bbq sauce without any tomato, rather like the bbq sauces of Memphis and Eastern Carolina. Use it to marinade chicken, and then brush it on the skin close to the end of the cooking. Pork will need to be brushed throughout the grilling cycle.

You will not believe how good this is.

It's all in your Brain

At least that's what this most recent report says...

Brain Development and Intelligence Linked, Study Says

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 30, 2006

The brains of very intelligent children appear to develop in a distinctive and surprising way that distinguishes them from less intelligent children, a federal study reported yesterday.

The study is the first to try to measure whether differences in brain development are linked to intelligence, said researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health, who did several brain scans on 309 healthy children between the ages of 6 and 19.

The scans showed that children with the highest IQs began with a relatively thin cortex -- the folded outer layer of the brain that is involved in complex thinking -- which rapidly grew thicker before reaching a peak and then rapidly becoming thinner, said Philip Shaw, the lead investigator. Children of average intelligence had a thicker cortex around age 6, but by around 13 it was thinner than in children of superior intelligence.

The study is the most definitive finding to date of a relationship between the physical characteristics of the brain and intelligence. Such a relationship has long been something of a holy grail for scientists.

"Studies of brains have taught us that people with higher IQs do not have larger brains," said National Institutes of Health Director Elias A. Zerhouni in a statement, but "thanks to brain imaging technology, we can now see that the difference may be in the way the brain develops."

"I was surprised that the relationship between intelligence and brain structure changed so much as a child grows up," said Shaw. "In early childhood, the smartest children had a thinner cortex -- this is the opposite of what you'd expect. By late childhood, the pattern had changed completely."

The cortex has long been known to get thinner in late adolescence, presumably because the brain prunes cells, neurons and connections that are not being used. The new study found that the cortex continued to thicken in gifted children until around age 11 or 12, much later than in children of average intelligence, whose cortex thickening peaked by age 8. "It's almost like the most agile minds have the most agile cortex," Shaw added.

The study, being published today in the journal Nature, does not suggest any particular interventions that might boost a child's intelligence. But Richard J. Davidson, a brain imaging expert at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said the fact that the region of the brain being studied is highly malleable suggests that experience and environmental cues may play a very important role in shaping intelligence.

So maybe it is a combination of both nature and nurture all along eh? It's nice of science to show us that.

The rest of the article is very interesting including the graphs that go along with it. Perhaps some of this research could also be used to explain why elderly people who are more mentally active are less likely to suffer from diseases like alzheimers. It's just a thought.

I'm spending my weekend with 4 thick cortexed students at the North Carolina State Odyssey of the Mind Competition. We are in the area of Tech Transfer and if we finish in the Top 2 in our division, we can go on the Iowa for World Competition in May.

A Night in Hanoi

One of the things I love about living in Northern Virginia is the large and vibrant Vietnamese community here. The Vietnamese restaurants around me are literally within a stone's throw and the large number of them mean that the competition is huge and they really compete over Vietnam's signature soup, pho, which is pronounced "fuh." I can literally eat this twice a day, and it is very easy to make at home if you keep your fridge stocked with some very basic ingredients (or have a farmers' market in the summer.) If you've got some chicken or beef stock frozen down in the freezer, you can throw this together in literal minutes and it manages to be hearty and refreshing at the same time, not a mean trick.

1 stewing hen, about 5 pounds
2 pounds chicken bones or chicken necks
4 quarts cold water
1 ounce fresh ginger, crushed
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 pound rice vermicelli ("bun" in Vietnamese)
1 whole cooked chicken breast (2 halves), thinly sliced
8 to 12 fresh cilantro sprigs, for garnishing soup
4 to 8 fresh basil sprigs, for garnishing soup
4 fresh mint sprigs, for garnishing soup
2 cups fresh bean sprouts, for garnishing soup
2 limes, cut into wedges, for garnishing soup
2 to 3 sliced fresh jalapeno, Serrano, or Thai chile peppers, for garnishing soup
Sriracha chili sauce, for serving
Fish sauce (Nuom Plach in Vietnamese, Nam Pla in Thai), for serving

Cut the hen into 8 pieces and discard any excess fat. Rinse chicken bones and necks with cold water and place in a stockpot. Add the water and ginger and bring to a boil. Skim any foam that rises to the surface. Reduce the heat to a low simmer and cook for 3 hours; do not allow the liquid to boil to ensure a clear broth.

Remove and discard the hen and bones. Strain the broth through a fine mesh sieve or chinois lined with cheesecloth. Return the broth to a large soup pot and continue to simmer until reduced to a volume of 2 1/2 or 3 quarts. Season with salt, to taste, and keep hot while you assemble the remaining ingredients.

Prepare the rice vermicelli according to package directions. Once done, transfer to a colander and drain well. Rinse well under cold running water. Drain thoroughly before using. (The noodles may be prepared up to this point 2 hours ahead of serving.)

When ready to serve the soup, for each serving ladle 2 cups of the hot broth into a large soup bowl. Quickly dip the cooked noodles in the remaining hot broth to rewarm, then place a handful of noodles in each bowl. Divide the sliced chicken breast between the bowls, laying the slices over the top of the noodles. Serve the soup immediately, with the fresh cilantro, basil, mint, bean sprouts, lime wedges and jalapeno peppers in baskets on the table for each person to garnish their own soup, as desired. Add chili sauce or fish sauce, to taste, if desired. I like both the chili and fish sauce, because I'm a hot food person, but this is authentic without it.

Rice vermicelli noodles can be found in most supermarkets in the oriental food aisle and they are cheap.

You can do the same thing with beef and beef broth, starting the broth on beef bones and a pound of top round, which is the more classic Hanoi preparation of this dish. But with bird flu lurking the price of chicken is through the floor and getting cheaper, so I thought I'd bring you this version.

I prefer no sugar in this recipe, but that's me. Your mileage may vary.

Every diner designs their own soup at the table, it is food you get to play with. That works for me.

Friday Night

This has been the day from hell. Flu Wiki is still down and we don't know why. I've been working on 9 parallel tasks on the job, and none of them are done (this will be a working weekend) and I have deadlines early next week. Don't expect to see a lot of activity out of me tonight. I want to watch Emeril, have a glass of wine and kick back a little after one tough week. Because I have to get up and do it all over again in the morning.

So, this is life in the executive suite, eh? Well, I do have my own bathroom....;-)

Culture of Coruption

Ex-DeLay aide pleads guilty

By James Vicini
Reuters
Friday, March 31, 2006

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former top aide to Texas Republican Rep. Tom DeLay pleaded guilty in the widening Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal on Friday, the second former assistant to the powerful congressman to do so.

Tony Rudy, the former deputy chief of staff to DeLay, entered the guilty plea to one count of conspiracy in federal court as part of a deal with Justice Department prosecutors

The indictment charged that Rudy accepted $86,000 from Abramoff while working as a staffer for DeLay, then the Republican leader in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In return, the indictment said Rudy asked lawmakers to vote against an Internet-gambling bill that would have harmed one of Abramoff's clients.

Abramoff, the lobbyist at the heart of a scandal that has rattled top Republicans, has been cooperating in the federal investigation into whether Washington politicians gave his clients favorable treatment in exchange for campaign contributions, Super Bowl tickets and other illegal gifts.

Rudy faced a maximum penalty of five years but under the agreement he was expected to serve between 2 and 2 1/2 years. He agreed to cooperate and provide "complete and truthful information" in the Justice Department investigation.

Rudy's guilty plea spells more trouble for Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney, who took a golf trip to Scotland with Abramoff and Rudy in August 2002.

According to the indictment, a congressman named Representative No. 1 "agreed to take favorable official action and render other assistance on behalf of the clients of Abramoff and defendant Rudy."

The congressman was not named but according to records made public Ney fits that description.

Remember, Ney is just the beginning. I wonder who else will be indicted as we get closer to November...

Work Reflections

It's going to be another busy work day so I don't know how much blogging I'll be able to do until late this afternoon. I really can't complain, though. I really feel like I've got the best job in the world: I'm doing something that I care about deeply which may actually make the world a slightly better place, I work from home so I don't have to deal with shitty DC traffic to get to work, I can work (most of the time) in bluejeans or shorts and a T-shirt, and I think I have the best boss in the world. It's also a job to which I can bring all of the skills I've honed over my crazy employment history over 30 years of a working life. It finally feels like all of the pieces have fallen into place. About damn time, ain't it?

How about you? What kind of a day are you having?

In the Neighborhood

It's another gorgeous spring day in the Mid-Atlantic and the magnolias are just beginning to bloom. I decided to go for an early morning walk and ended up at my local Panera Bread which serves breakfast. I didn't know they served breakfast. And they have free wi-fi. Hmmm. I see some breakfast blogging in my future.

Feeling Safer?

It's 61 days to hurricane season.

Levee Repair Costs Triple
New Orleans May Lack Full Protection

By Peter Whoriskey and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 31, 2006; A01

The Bush administration said yesterday that the cost of rebuilding New Orleans's levees to federal standards has nearly tripled to $10 billion and that there may not be enough money to fully protect the entire region.

Donald E. Powell, the administration's rebuilding coordinator, said some areas may be left without the protection of levees strong enough to meet requirements of the national flood insurance program. Those areas probably would face enormous obstacles in attracting home buyers and investors willing to build there.

The news represents a shift for the administration; President Bush had pledged in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina to rebuild New Orleans "higher and better." Now, some areas may lose out as they compete for levee protection. Powell's announcement, in a conference call with reporters, prompted denunciations from state and local officials who said the federal government is reneging on promises to rebuild the entire region.

"This monumental miscalculation is an outrage," said Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). "This means that, just two months before hurricane season, the Corps of Engineers informs us they cannot ensure even the minimum safety of southeastern Louisiana. This is totally unacceptable."

The change followed a surprise announcement from the Army Corps of Engineers that the levee reconstruction project, most recently estimated at $3.5 billion, would now cost $9.5 billion if insurance-certified levees were extended throughout the region.

Powell had said in December when the administration announced a $3.1 billion levee plan that Bush's commitment to rebuild the Gulf Coast "would be satisfied as it relates to the safety and security of the people." In February, after Congress approved $2 billion for the project, Bush said an additional $1.5 billion would be needed. The Senate will consider the request next week.

Yesterday, Powell acknowledged that now "we are faced with some new and tough policy decisions."

The news shattered the fragile relationship between Washington officials and Louisiana leaders, who have assumed that the rebuilding effort would cover the entire New Orleans area.

State and local leaders said the U.S. government had broken a trust and appeared to backing away from commitments to rebuild. Louisiana officials also questioned why federal engineers are just now announcing that the task would cost $6 billion more.

"Every time we turn around, there's a new obstacle," said Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.). "The estimates were done for rebuilding the levees, and a number was given to the administration and to the Congress. Now all of a sudden they say they made a $6 billion mistake?"

Melancon said he wondered whether the changes reflected the comments made by officials such as House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) after the storm questioning the wisdom of rebuilding the low-lying city.

"I have been concerned since November that people here in Washington didn't really want to help. . . . I think the people are starting to see where the problems are," Melancon said.

Anybody with an ounce of sense in their head knew this was going to happen. Bushco never gave a damn about NOLA and now they are seeking the coward's way out, "it costs too much."

It doesn't cost too much when they want to give the Goddamn national parks away to the snowmobilers. It doesn't cost too much when they want to cut billions of dollars of taxes on the rich. It doesn't cost too much to give jillions of dollars to corporate interests for damn near anything. Anything which is going to give you and me a break costs too much, however. Have you noticed that?

By the way, how much are we paying for that there war in Eye-raq?

The Debt Crisis

A reader in Gulf Breeze, FL sent this:

Republicans do funny things
By Senator Harris McDowell (D) Delaware

No Democrat would be stupid enough to kill competition for student loans for two reasons. 1) It is a dumb idea. 2) Republicans would kill us for it.

And rightly so.

Yet, that is what happened to the U.S. Congress just a few months ago; and Republicans controlling the House are right in the middle of it.

As a Democrat, I admit it: Sometimes I wonder about Republicans. But let's give Republicans some grudging credit for all they have done to convince people that they are the guardians of the free market system.

When people are watching and the cameras are rolling, they talk a good game about protecting consumers with competition and free markets. But a few days before Christmas, at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, with nary a reporter in sight, Republicans in Congress took the most anti-competitive law in America, and made it worse.

They outlawed competition for the 40 million people with hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans who can no longer shop for a better deal or even change lenders if they so choose.

Lots of people heard that Congress raised rates on student loans. But much worse, and what got much less attention, was that Congress also changed the way people pay them back. Starting July 1, students and parents will no longer be able to lock in low rates for longer terms. Big lenders convinced Congress that competition for their student loan portfolio would be bad.

Just as they convinced Congress to remove a provision that would have outlawed the most anti-competitive law in America: the Single Holder Rule.

Under this law, students a[nd] parents whose loans are owned by only one lender cannot change lenders i[f] they find a better deal for rates or terms of service. And they are only allowed to refinance one time. That is it. No more.

As a result of this unprecedented protection from the marketplace, America's largest student loan lender is also one of America's most profitable companies. Not because they are better, smarter or faster, but just because they have better friends on Capitol Hill to protect them from competition.

Imagine if a Congressman tried that kind of law with your home loan, car loan, boat loan or any kind of loan. He would be laughed out of office.

Yet, Republicans meet in the dead of the night to outlaw competition for student loans, and they are the ones who are laughing because few even noticed.

Some did. Columnist Dick Morris called the anti-refinancing move an "obnoxious...student loan rip-off." The New York Times called it "robbing Joe College to pay Sallie Mae." The Chronicle of Higher Education said legislation was meant to make refinancing less appealing to borrowers, and "force the consolidation companies out of the market."

It is working with a vengeance.

Today, because of crushing debt from credit cards and student loans, the average age of a person filing for bankruptcy is less than 30 years old. By outlawing refinancing, this new legislation is removing a student's most valuable tool to manage that debt.

We don't have to wait until July to know the results; more graduates with even less ability to repay their loans, more defaults, higher cost to the federal government, and a whole bunch of Republicans in Congress hoping students and parents never find out how a few big companies have turned a federal student loan program into a cash cow at their expense.

The previous chair of the committee overseeing student loans, John Boehner, did such a good job that his colleagues kicked him upstairs to become House Majority Leader. The committee has a new chair, and a new chance to set this crazy law right.

One of the first questions they will have to answer is why can't we refinance student loans wherever and how often we like, just like other loans?

Let's hope that they answer that question during school hours and not at 3 a.m. Because if Republicans aren't good for free markets and competition, what good are they?

They are great at turning the entire fucking country over to the banks and that's
what is going on here. This is no longer news, folks.

It took me ten long years to pay off my school loans and in the early years of my career that payment was nearly as high as my rent. I defaulted twice, renegotiated the loan twice and had a few options no longer available to today's students.

The Repubs want their serf class to have college degrees that they can never pay for.

The Man Who Rode Out

Boston Baked Beans

I grew up on these and I don't think they'll hurt you.

1 pound dried navy or pea beans (about 2 cups)
1/4 pound chopped bacon browned and drained
1 large onion cut into rings
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons molasses
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/8 teaspoon pepper
garlic powder to taste

Place beans in large sauce pan and cover with water. Heat to boiling; then boil two minutes. Remove from heat. Let stand one hour. Add more water to cover beans once more. Simmer uncovered 45 minutes. Be sure to keep on low heat. Boiling will cause beans to burst. Drain beans, reserving one cup of the liquid.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fry bacon and remove from pan. Drain. Cook onions in bacon fat until soft. Remove and drain. Add brown sugar, molasses, mustard, pepper, and garlic powder. Simmer 20 minutes. Fold in beans, bacon, and onions and reserved bean liquid. Place all in casserole dish.
Bake 1 hour.

The REal Deal

If you are tired of living with those little packets of "duck sauce" with your Chinese takeout, here is how to make the real deal in your own kitchen

Chinese Duck Sauce

5 cups mixed peeled, chopped fruit (apples, pears, peaches and/or
plums)
1 cup water
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
2 to 3 medium cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. dry mustard
optional: up to 1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper

Combine everything in a medium-sized saucepan and bring to a boil.

Turn the heat down, and simmer uncovered until all the fruit is very
soft (about 30 minutes or longer)

Cool thoroughly, then chill

Yum, this is a chinese home cook choice. Enjoy!

Comfort Food, With a Reason

Here's what I'm making for dinner tomorrow night. I'm in desperate need of comfort food and this is what does it for me: Welsh Rarebit. I don't know how you beat hot cheese and bread. Serve this with a broiled tomato on the side and dinner is served. The last week has been so hard that I need pats on the tummy and this recipe takes me there. I've spent the last two days professionally with bird flu and I can't stand another moment of death and destruction. Oh, you all have read The Great Influenza, right?

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup porter beer
3/4 cup heavy cream
6 ounces (approximately 1 1/2 cups) shredded Cheddar
2 drops hot sauce
4 slices toasted rye bread

In a medium saucepan over low heat, melt the butter and whisk in the flour. Cook, whisking constantly for 2 to 3 minutes, being careful not to brown the flour. Whisk in mustard, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper until smooth. Add beer and whisk to combine. Pour in cream and whisk until well combined and smooth. Gradually add cheese, stirring constantly, until cheese melts and sauce is smooth; this will take 4 to 5 minutes. Add hot sauce. Pour over toast and serve immediately.

If you want to hear the contrarian voice on the avian flu, Dr. Marc Siegel is available on the link. He's treated me like I'm some tatty whore and I'm not fond of him, but you can make up your own mind.

when it is just! spring

Rhubarb Pie

I'm still feeling a little queasy from yesterday's misadventure, but today was so beautiful here, 70 degrees and everything in bloom but the azaleas, that my interest turned to spring recipes.

I grew up in Minnesota where spring, and spring foods, are later, but the earliest pie ingredient was the rhubarb, which we also call pie plant. My mom made batches of these every summer from the rhubarb plant which was lovingly tended in our back yard, a daughter plant to the one which grew in her own parent's yard. Hot rhubarb pie with ice cream was a beloved desert around our house. I'm not big on sweets, but this is something I like to cook myself.

This sugarless version uses fruit concentrate instead of refined sugar, which I don't use much.

4 cups diced, raw rhubarb (1/2 inch dice)
2 cups diced peeled sweet apples, such as golden delicious
1/3 cup apple juice concentrate
1/4 cup unbleached flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon grated orange rind

Line a pie pan with pie dough. Stir the rhubarb and diced apples together and arrange them on top of the pie shell. Combine the remaining ingredients and sprinkle them over the fruit. Dot with 2 tablespoons butter (optional). Cover the pie with well-pricked pie dough or with a lattice. Bake the pie in a 450-degree oven for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown. Enjoy!

Time Management

Dan Froomkin connects the dots:

Read the text of yesterday's event, and it's clear that while Bush is indeed taking more unscreened questions than ever before, he's not really that interested in answering them. Most of the time, he uses them as launching pads for long, rambling amalgamations of familiar talking points that are only generally related to what he was asked.

For instance, Bush was asked to what degree he thought the insurgency inside Iraq is dependent on foreign support. Good question.

Bush's response was an 872-word rehash of previous statements about the makeup of the Iraqi insurgency, Syrian interference with Lebanon, the multilateral approach to Iranian nuclear ambitions, and the difficulty of negotiating with non-transparent societies.

There was nothing directly responsive to the question, of course.

So what's the point of taking questions, if not to answer them? Could it be to simply appear to be answering questions? Or just to repeat, repeat, repeat?

Yesterday, you almost got the feeling that he was just talking to run down the clock.

But why would he do that? One possible reason yesterday was: To preempt any television coverage of a press conference at which leading Democrats were unveiling their Bush-bashing security agenda.

Indeed, Bush's event had originally been scheduled for 1:20 p.m. yesterday. But Tuesday afternoon, the White House suddenly moved it up to 12:50. The Democratic press conference was scheduled to start at 1. Bush finally wrapped up his talk at 2:22. Anyone know when the Democrats stopped talking? Anybody see anyone in the audience giving him hand signals?

A Christian Justice

Photographer: Herald got it right

or Guess what? Scalia Lied!

By Marie Szaniszlo
Thursday, March 30, 2006

Amid a growing national controversy about the gesture U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made Sunday at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, the freelance photographer who captured the moment has come forward with the picture.

“It’s inaccurate and deceptive of him to say there was no vulgarity in the moment,” said Peter Smith, the Boston University assistant photojournalism professor who made the shot.

Despite Scalia’s insistence that the Sicilian gesture was not offensive and had been incorrectly characterized by the Herald as obscene, the photographer said the newspaper “got the story right.”

Smith said the jurist “immediately knew he’d made a mistake, and said, ‘You’re not going to print that, are you?’ ”

Scalia’s office yesterday referred questions regarding the flap to Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg, who said a letter Scalia sent Tuesday to the Herald defending his gesture at the cathedral “speaks for itself.”

“He has no further comment,” Arberg said.

Allow me a further comment then. Scalia has already shown in numerous occasions that he doe not care what anyone thinks about him since he is a Supreme Court judge. Thus, he can say anything even prejudging a case before it is brought before him and not recuse himself. This is uncalled for. It's unethical and we should expect more from a sitting Supreme Court Justice.

More to the point, if you saw a Democratic or even vaguely Liberal judge acting like this, the clowns in the media would start demanding that Congress impeach the judge for their behavior. It's not like there isn't a precident for this sort of thing. Of course, we don't have to worry about the media holding Scalia accountable, even though he is George's template for what a great judge is.

Remember Afghanistan?

Taliban Continue Attacks in Afghanistan

By RAHIM FAIEZ
The Associated Press
Thursday, March 30, 2006

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Suspected Taliban militants killed a district chief and three of his staff in an ambush in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, while in the south rebels killed a police commander and his brother, officials said.

Separately, a suicide car bomber killed himself and wounded six Afghans in a botched attack on a U.S.-led coalition convoy in Kandahar city, the former Taliban stronghold in the country's south, police said.

Thursday's violence followed a rare attack a day earlier on a coalition military base in Helmand's Sangin district, which killed an American and a Canadian soldier and sparked fierce U.S.-led retaliation that left 32 insurgents dead in the bloodiest fighting in months.

If the British and the Soviets military couldn't handle this region, then how do we expect to do it on the cheap, acting like a teen with ADHD? We know that the President of Afghanistan only really has control over the capital and that opium production is at record levels... so how screwed up is Iraq if Afghanistan appears to be successful?

Busy Blogger

I'm super busy at work today, so this will be a light posting day. Sorry. Gotta pay the bills first.

Surprise!

You can count on the knuckles of the finger of one hand the number of times I agree with Robert Novak. Today is one of those days.

Not the staff dreams are made of

March 30, 2006

BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Everybody in Washington's Republican political community was well-aware that any changes George W. Bush made in his White House staff would not constitute a shakeup. What nobody expected was that Josh Bolten, in essence a professional bureaucrat, would be promoted to chief of staff. Yet, this selection becomes understandable as a confirmation of Karl Rove's supremacy in the White House.

Rove holds the mundane titles of senior adviser to the president and deputy chief of staff, but scarcely anything happens in the Bush administration without his approval. Now he is more influential than ever. Andrew Card, the departing chief of staff, served (as a Cabinet member) under the senior President Bush (as Rove did not). In contrast, Bolten can thank his rise in the second Bush regime to Rove, his nominal subordinate.

I talked to former White House staffers who served Republican presidents over the last quarter of a century. To a man, they were appalled that President Bush had squandered the opportunity handed him when a burned-out Card told him he must resign. It was the time, they agreed, to emulate what President Ronald Reagan did in 1987 when his national approval rating dropped below 40 percent and he brought a new team to the White House: Howard Baker, Kenneth Duberstein, Frank Carlucci and Colin Powell. By not emulating Reagan's boldness, Bush failed to address the unhappy state of his administration and his party.

Throughout his governmental career in Washington and Sacramento, Reagan never was hesitant to drop overboard aides who had become part of the problem. The belief in Republican circles is that Bush is unable to change the guard at the White House because that would tacitly admit something is wrong with the way he governs.

Into his sixth year as president, Bush has preferred to promote from within -- a tendency that has brought third-level aides to the top of White House sections. Although this has produced staff mediocrity, nobody questions Bolten's intelligence and competency.

While Card forced himself to work 16- or 17-hour days, Bolten is a natural workaholic who as a bachelor seemed on the job continuously as director of the Office of Management and Budget. He is more attuned to issues than Card and gets along better with Congress, especially Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. Bolten stayed overtime at this year's House Republican retreat in Cambridge, Md., to chat with members of Congress.

But Bolten replacing Card also advances Rove's project, which was obvious as early as the mid-'90s, of removing the influence of people close to the elder Bush. Rove named Bolten, then working for Goldman Sachs in London, as the Austin-based policy director of the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. There is no question that Bolten is a Rove man.

Bolten's promotion does improve the professional quality of the president's chief of staff, but Republicans fear the worst about his successor at OMB. If Bush follows his usual pattern and promotes from within according to the present pecking order, the new OMB director will be the agency's current deputy, Clay Johnson. A Dallas businessman who was Gov. Bush's aide in Austin and was the administration's personnel director in Washington, Johnson has won few admirers. I found widespread hope but little optimism that he would be overlooked for the OMB post.

A dysfunctional OMB director is the last result Bush needs in a White House filled with problems. The absence of a Cabinet secretary coordinating the departments with the president is an inexplicable and unnecessary shortcoming. Lesser staff positions remain unfilled, which may explain the ruinous hours that senior aides are forced to keep.

Prior to Tuesday's surprise announcement of Bolten-for-Card, a Republican parlor game was trying to guess the 21st century counterparts of Howard Baker & Co. named by Reagan in 1987 to save his presidency. It is not an easy task to come up with good names, but it is highly unlikely that Bush and Rove made such a search. Their implicit message is that no shakeup is needed because they had nothing to do with the parlous condition of the administration and the Republican Party.

See, Novak, the Black Prince, is actually concerned about the future of the Republican party and thinks the Boy King should care about that, too. Memo to Novak: W never cared about anything other than himself. You've had a decade to figure that out and you haven't yet? Bob, time to get a clue. The Bushes used the Republican party to get where they wanted to go. Period. You thought they were conservative? Who ran up the biggest deficits in the last couple of decades? Who shrank the government? If those are important ideas to you, Bob, barking up the Shrub hasn't taken you where you wanted to go.

Break of Day

I spent the entire night dreaming about going out for breakfast. So. I'm going out for breakfast. Back in an hour

Reality Bites

The DoD declare war on you. If you've been paying attention, this won't be a surprise.

How Environmentalists Lost the Battle Over TCE
By Ralph Vartabedian, Times Staff Writer
March 29, 2006

After massive underground plumes of an industrial solvent were discovered in the nation's water supplies, the Environmental Protection Agency mounted a major effort in the 1990s to assess how dangerous the chemical was to human health.

Following four years of study, senior EPA scientists came to an alarming conclusion: The solvent, trichloroethylene, or TCE, was as much as 40 times more likely to cause cancer than the EPA had previously believed.

The preliminary report in 2001 laid the groundwork for tough new standards to limit public exposure to TCE. Instead of triggering any action, however, the assessment set off a high-stakes battle between the EPA and Defense Department, which had more than 1,000 military properties nationwide polluted with TCE.

By 2003, after a prolonged challenge orchestrated by the Pentagon, the EPA lost control of the issue and its TCE assessment was cast aside. As a result, any conclusion about whether millions of Americans were being contaminated by TCE was delayed indefinitely.

What happened with TCE is a stark illustration of a power shift that has badly damaged the EPA's ability to carry out one of its essential missions: assessing the health risks of toxic chemicals.

The agency's authority and its scientific stature have been eroded under a withering attack on its technical staff by the military and its contractors. Indeed, the Bush administration leadership at the EPA ultimately sided with the military.

After years on the defensive, the Pentagon — with help from NASA and the Energy Department — is taking a far tougher stand in challenging calls for environmental cleanups. It is using its formidable political leverage to demand greater proof that industrial substances cause cancer before ratcheting up costly cleanups at polluted bases.

The military says it is only striving to make smart decisions based on sound science and accuses the EPA of being unduly influenced by left-leaning scientists.

But critics say the defense establishment has manufactured unwarranted scientific doubt, used its powerful role in the executive branch to cause delays and forced a reduction in the margins of protection that traditionally guard public health.

If the EPA's 2001 draft risk assessment was correct, then possibly thousands of the nation's birth defects and cancers every year are due in part to TCE exposure, according to several academic experts.

"It is a World Trade Center in slow motion," said Boston University epidemiologist David Ozonoff, a TCE expert. "You would never notice it."

Senior officials in the Defense Department say much remains unknown about TCE.

"We are all forgetting the facts on the table," said Alex A. Beehler, the Pentagon's top environmental official. "Meanwhile, we have done everything we can to curtail use of TCE."

But in the last four years, the Pentagon, with help from the Energy Department and NASA, derailed tough EPA action on such water contaminants as the rocket fuel ingredient perchlorate. In response, state regulators in California and elsewhere have moved to impose their own rules.

The stakes are even higher with TCE. Half a dozen state, federal and international agencies classify TCE as a probable carcinogen.

California EPA regulators consider TCE a known carcinogen and issued their own 1999 risk assessment that reached the same conclusion as federal EPA regulators: TCE was far more toxic than previous scientific studies indicated.

TCE is the most widespread water contaminant in the nation. Huge swaths of California, New York, Texas and

TCE is the most widespread water contaminant in the nation. Huge swaths of California, New York, Texas and Florida, among other states, lie over TCE plumes. The solvent has spread under much of the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys, as well as the shuttered El Toro Marine Corps base in Orange County.

Developed by chemists in the late 19th century, TCE was widely used to degrease metal parts and then dumped into nearby disposal pits at industrial plants and military bases, where it seeped into aquifers.

The public is exposed to TCE in several ways, including drinking or showering in contaminated water and breathing air in homes where TCE vapors have intruded from the soil. Limiting such exposures, even at current federal regulatory levels, requires elaborate treatment facilities that cost billions of dollars annually. In addition, some cities, notably Los Angeles, have high ambient levels of TCE in the air.

An internal Air Force report issued in 2003 warned that the Pentagon alone has 1,400 sites contaminated with TCE.

I started working with Trike as a solvent 30 years ago and knew that it was a suspected carcinogan back then. The EPA is, as always with the Bush admin, covering up science which is already decades old.

Yes, I used to design circuit boards and pull them out of trike baths to put into the new computers we now see on the heads of pins. I also assembled cardiomonitors, the kind put into your body, for a while. What of it? Do you think that only "that other kind of people" do assembly line work?

If you haven't spent a little time on "the pickle factory," as we called our jobs, you really don't know how America works.

Did we think we were making heart-saving machines? Silly you, we knew that. But we were treated like we were making pickles for Duncan Heinz and that it didn't really matter.

If you've got a Med-Tronic pace maker in your chest, I'd want to get it tested at least once a year.

Carcinogens in the water aren't new. Corporate america declared war on you a long time ago.

Get Your Mojo Workin'

Getting Bush's mojo working

By DALE McFEATTERS
Scripps Howard News Service
29-MAR-06

So now we come to President Bush's problems, which this week entailed the ritual second-term sacrifice of a chief of staff, Andrew Card, to be replaced by a virtually identical chief of staff, Josh Bolten, imported all the way across the White House driveway from the budget office.

And what accounts for the mysterious succession of blunders, gaffes, oversights and just plain bad luck that has afflicted the White House?

Let former White House aide and informal adviser Mary Matalin explain Bolten's special significance, invisible to those who witnessed the awkward little changing-of-the-guard ceremony:

"The president's given him full license to bring in more or remove or to recalibrate for the purposes of re-energizing and getting our mojo back. If anybody knows how to get their mojo, it's Josh."

Now "mojo" and "Bush" are not words that often occur in the same sentence. Surely, Matalin is the first with that honor, but missing mojo _ magic powers and personal and sexual magnetism _ would explain a lot.

Bolten's resume _ Princeton, Stanford Law, Goldman Sachs, senior Senate staff _ is impressive, but does not seem to particularly prepare a person for mojo retrieval.

The first question is: Where does he look?

Perhaps it's in that file drawer in the Bureau of the Public Debt in Parkersburg, W.Va., where Bush last year made a great show of looking at some folders of government IOUs. Since the national debt was $7.7 trillion then and is now more than $8 trillion and on a speedy track to reach $9 trillion, that publicity stunt, in retrospect, is as embarrassing as "Mission Accomplished." Talk about your lost mojo.

If mojo is a problem, let us suggest a possible source. In the soggier precincts of still-drying-out Louisiana, there was _ and is _ great anger at the government's late and poorly coordinated Hurricane Katrina response.

Since Louisiana is a center of voodoo, it's not out of the question that a voodoo priest put a curse on the White House and even now is sticking pins into a Bush doll. We can see Bolten in his pinstripes and wingtips slogging through the swamps, alligators and cottonmouths to reach some isolated island deep in the bayous to ask the voodoo papa or maman to please lift the curse and restore the president's mojo.

If I were the priest, I'd hold out for a reward, perhaps the job of White House chief of staff. Washington is just too wonderful.

Hmmm..."sticking pins into a Bush doll." Sounds like a campaign strategy.

Simple Things

I like simple things. This recipe has been a hit at my house for a while.

Roast beef sandwich w/horseradish mayo

Yield: 4 Servings
¾ c Hellmann's or Best Foods real or light mayonnaise or low fat mayonnaise dressing
3 tb Prepared horseradish
4 Hard rolls; split
¾ lb Sliced roast beef
Lettuce; tomato and onion slices
In small bowl combine mayonnaise and horseradish; set aside. Fill rolls with roast beef, lettuce, tomato and onion; top with horseradish mayonnaise

Serve this with some soup and, by damn, you've got a meal.

Soup 3.0

Being the odd bird that I am, when the forces of darkness (ice storms, sickness) want to overwhelm us, I turn not to chicken soup but to Manhatten style clam chowder. When I can get to the store for fresh cherrystones, I make it from scratch and here is my building plan:

24 ea Fresh cherrystone or chowder clams
4 c Water
1/4 lb Salt pork, diced
2 ea Onions, finely chopped
1 1/2 c Chopped celery
4 ea Potatoes, peeled and diced
3 c Tomato juice
1 ts Salt
1/4 ts Freshly ground pepper
1/2 ts Thyme

Wash the clams well and place in a kettle
with the water. Simmer until the shells open.
Discard any clams that "do not" open. Drain and
reserve 3 cups of the broth. Saute the salt pork until
it is crisp and light brown. Add the onions and
celery and saute until they are translucent but not
brown. Add the potatoes, reserved clam broth, tomato
juice, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, cover, and
simmer for about 15 minutes, until potatoes are barely
tender. Meanwhile, remove the clams from their shells
and chop fine or put through a food grinder. Add the
thyme and chopped clams to the potatoes. Cover and
cook for 5 minutes longer.

This is an old NYTimes Cookbook recipe. Mess with it and put your changes in the comments below.

You can make this with bottled clams in clam juice. It takes about two bottles, I reserve the juice and start the whole mess with chicken broth and then saute the veggies as above and add them to the broth. Drain two bottles of clams and add five minutes before the end of cooking, with one of the bottles of clam juice, reserving the other.

Freeze the leftovers with the extra clam juice added. You'll be glad of it on some rainy day this spring when the scent of the ocean will make you feel like a human being again after a couple of dark days.

For me this soup is always about a return to myself as citizen of the planet, concerned about our deep seas of consciousness as much as the deep atlantic. It awakens me to remember that I'm responsible for more than my little patch of the planet.

That's not so bad to get out of a soup, eh?

Sick Blogger, Vol. Whatever

I get to invoke "the sick person's rule." I still have some sort of GI illness, today has not been a lot of fun and I've spent a lot of it running interference for Suze and the local court let me reschedule my appearance due to illness. That was a fun few minutes spent on the phone. I don't have a lot of experience with courts and law enforcement people and I tend to hyperventilate when they show up in my life. This has been a thoroughly filthy day while the Wiki team is still sorting through the server issues at Flu Wiki. I'd give you a link but the site doesn't seem to be up yet.

Ya think the GI issues might be stress?

At any rate, it is full dark here in Northern Virgina (we call it NoVa for short) and I'm calling it a day. Yes, I hydrated all day but I still feel like dark death. I don't have a fever, so this might be food poisoning I picked up from the tuna salad sandwich I bought at the grocery last night. No, Alka-seltzer and the pink stuff aren't helping. I'm going to crawl back into bed and sort out the other stuff later.

Sick Friend

Go over to Susie's place and wish her a speedy recovery. She's spending the night in a Philly hospital just to be on the safe side. I swear that woman is even more stubborn than I am but she was scared enough this morning to take my advice and head for the ER. I'm glad somebody listens to me once in a while. Chest pains and shooting left arm zingers? Get thee to the cardiologist.

The Times Ed Board Gets Shrill

Not Quite What We Had in Mind

Published: March 29, 2006

For months now, people have been urging President Bush to shake up his inner circle and bring in fresh air. Perhaps in response, the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card Jr., resigned yesterday. Mr. Bush opened the window — and in climbed his budget director, Joshua Bolten, who used to be Mr. Card's deputy.

If this is what passes for a shake-up in this administration, the next two and a half years are going to be grim indeed. This is a meaningless change, and it simply sends the message that Mr. Bush lacks the gumption to trade in anyone in the comforting, friendly cast of characters who have kept him cocooned since his first inauguration.

It's hard to figure out what unmet need this change is supposed to fill. There's been a lot of talk about how exhausted the original Bush team is. But Mr. Bolten ought to be as pooped as everybody else. It takes just as much energy to put together an out-of-whack, fiscally ruinous budget as it does to mess up an invasion or ignore a cataclysmic hurricane.

Mr. Bolten has been giving the president advice for years, and the result has been a deficit estimated at $371 billion. Perhaps he'll come up with a better approach in his new job. We've heard that under Mr. Card's watch, aides wound up showing Mr. Bush videos of TV news coverage of Hurricane Katrina to convince their boss that it really was a problem. Maybe Mr. Bolten can start the next budget discussion with some audiovisual aids — like an abacus.

Crime and Punishment

Abramoff gets 70 months for Florida fraud

Wed Mar 29, 2006

MIAMI (Reuters) - Jack Abramoff, a disgraced lobbyist at the heart of a Washington influence-peddling scandal that has rattled top Republicans, was sentenced to nearly six years in prison on Wednesday for fraud in the purchase of a Florida casino cruise line.

Abramoff, who is cooperating in a federal investigation into whether Washington politicians gave his clients favorable treatment in exchange for campaign contributions, Super Bowl tickets and other illegal gifts, was sentenced to 5 years and 10 months in prison.

Abramoff, along with co-defendant Adam Kidan, was ordered to pay $21.7 million in restitution. Kidan was also sentenced to 5 years and 10 months in prison.

Abramoff pleaded guilty in a Miami federal court in January to conspiracy and wire fraud charges, acknowledging he faked documents to get a $60 million loan to buy the SunCruz fleet of gambling ships in 2000.

The documents falsely claimed Abramoff and business partner Kidan had put $23 million of their own money into the deal.

Abramoff also pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy and fraud charges in Washington, admitting he showered golf trips, meals, sports tickets and other gifts on lawmakers in return for actions that would help his clients.

Federal investigators were examining Abramoff's links to a number of Washington politicians, including former House Majority leader Tom DeLay of Texas and Republican Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio. DeLay and Ney have denied any wrongdoing.

Let's see what else falls out as they give that tree a good shake. I wonder how many more Congressmen and women with suddenly resign to "spend more time with their family".

Site News

I'm fighting (and losing) something which feels suspiciously like food poisoning today. Posting will probably be light because sitting for extended time in front of the computer is, um, not really possible.

Culture of Entitlement

'War' on Christians Is Alleged
Conference Depicts a Culture Hostile to Evangelical Beliefs

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 29, 2006; A12

The "War on Christmas" has morphed into a "War on Christians."

Last December, some evangelical Christian groups declared that the religious celebration of Christmas -- and even the phrase "Merry Christmas" -- was under attack by the forces of secularism.

This week, radio commentator Rick Scarborough convened a two-day conference in Washington on the "War on Christians and the Values Voters in 2006." The opening session was devoted to "reports from the frontlines" on "persecution" of Christians in the United States and Canada, including an artist whose paintings were barred from a municipal art show in Deltona, Fla., because they contained religious themes.

"It doesn't rise to the level of persecution that we would see in China or North Korea," said Tristan Emmanuel, a Canadian activist. "But let's not pretend that it's okay."

Among the conference's speakers were former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) as well as conservative Christian leaders Phyllis Schlafly, Rod Parsley, Gary Bauer, Janet Parshall and Alan Keyes.

To many of the 400 evangelicals packed into a small ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, it was a hard but necessary look at moral relativism, hedonism and Christophobia, or fear of Christ, to pick just a few terms offered by various speakers referring to the enemy.

To some outsiders, it illuminated the paranoia of the Christian right.

"Certainly religious persecution existed in our history, but to claim that these examples amount to religious persecution disrespects the experiences of people who have been jailed and died because of their faith," said K. Hollyn Hollman, general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

"This is a skirmish over religious pluralism, and the inclination to see it as a war against Christianity strikes me as a spoiled-brat response by Christians who have always enjoyed the privileges of a majority position," said the Rev. Robert M. Franklin, a minister in the Church of God in Christ and professor of social ethics at Emory University.

This is the culture of entitlement gone very sick. Evangelicals, some of them, don't much like the separation of church and state and feel that they are entitled to have the state reflect their very narrow beliefs. Yes, the popular culture isn't particularly hospitable to the culture of faith. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

G.K. Chesterton wrote that "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." Evangelicals who have the hubris to think that only they have Christianity right ought to reflect on Chesterton and develop a little modesty.

Don't Go There

Infections Take Heavy Toll on Patients, Profit
Hospitals Urged to Boost Prevention

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 29, 2006; Page A03

Pennsylvania patients who contracted an infection during a hospital stay in 2004 rang up charges that were seven times higher than patients who did not develop an infection, complications that cost insurers and individuals an extra $614 million, according to a state analysis being released today.

Patients with hospital-acquired infections spent many more days in the hospital, underwent more extensive procedures and were seven times more likely to die, deaths that many experts say were largely preventable. Though the findings were from a single state, industry analysts said the problem of hospital-acquired infections is universal.

Patients with hospital-acquired infections cost significantly more to treat, stayed much longer and were many times more likely to die than patients who did not acquire an infection, according to a study of Pennsylvania hospitals.

"When people check into the hospital, they hope and expect to leave better off than when they arrive," said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.). "But some of the millions of Americans who pick up infections each year are lucky to check out, and a few never do."

Doctors, nurses and patients' relatives have long known the risks of contracting an infection while in a hospital. But there has been little quantifiable data available on the cost of those infections, from a financial or a medical perspective. The average hospital payment for a Pennsylvania patient who did not have an infection was $8,078, compared with $60,678 for patients who did, according to the report by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council.

Pennsylvania is the first state to require hospital reporting of infections; five other states have similar laws but have not yet collected or published results.

In a hearing scheduled for today, Barton said he will press for more public accountability. "We don't know which hospitals are safe and successful any more than we know how much they charge," he said. "Consumers should have the right to find out just how well their hospitals perform."

In Pennsylvania, for instance, the 180 hospitals that reported infection data billed for an additional $2.3 billion. They actually collected $614 million for those cases because most insurance companies have negotiated discounts.

Do you notice doctors and nurses washing their hands between patients as they go through the wards? You don't?

That's only a part of the problem. Some hospitals have become reservoirs of nasty infectious diseases through other poor hygeine practices and this is the dirty (exactly) little secret of the hospitals. This problem is only getting worse as more and more bugs develop drug resistence.

Hospitals have become bad places for sick people, but this is not new.

Kangaroo Tribunals

Court skeptical of tribunals

By David G. Savage
Originally published March 29, 2006

The Supreme Court gave a skeptical hearing yesterday to the Bush administration's claim that the president has the power to create and control special military tribunals to punish foreigners he deems to be war criminals.

Five of the eight justices hearing the case commented that the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions set basic rules of fairness for trying alleged war criminals.

And they questioned whether the president was free to ignore those basic rules - as well as the rules of American military law.

It suggested a second setback might be looming for the administration's legal strategy in the fight against terrorism. Two years ago, the court said war - even a new kind of war on terrorism - does not give the president a "blank check" to make new legal rules for capturing and holding prisoners.

The case heard yesterday concerned the rules for punishing these prisoners. But the tenor of the argument suggested the court would again reject President Bush's claim of a unilateral power to try and punish alleged al-Qaida conspirators.

"If you defer to this system and give the president the ability to launch all these military tribunals, you will be countenancing a huge expansion of military jurisdiction," Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal told the justices.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer appeared to agree. "If the president can do this, well then he can set up a [military court] to go to Toledo and ... pick up an alien and not have any trial at all," he said.

Katyal was representing Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden who was picked up in Afghanistan in 2001. He has been held since then at the military jail for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The administration, led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, has charged him with being a war criminal for having conspired with al-Qaida to kill Americans.

But the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld is not a test of whether bin Laden's driver is guilty as charged. Rather, it is a test of the president's power to act as lawmaker, prosecutor, judge and jury in the war on terrorism.

Hamdan's lawyer says he has no objection to having his client tried under the rules of courts martial used by the U.S. military. Most lawyers say these trials are fair because the prosecutors and judges have some independence from the command structure and because the defendant can confront and challenge the evidence used against him.

The Geneva Conventions say foreign prisoners of war can be tried as war criminals but they should be tried by a reputable court with established rules of fairness.

But in November 2001, President Bush issued an order saying his administration would not follow the Geneva Conventions. Instead, his order said that terrorists and captured al-Qaida operatives would be tried in special military tribunals.

The president reserved for himself the power to define which offenses would be crimes, who would prosecute the case, what rules would be followed and who would serve as judge and jury. And after the trial, those who were convicted could appeal their cases to the president.

This system is "literally unburdened by the laws, Constitution and treaties of the United States," Katyal said.

Emphasis mine. The rule of lawlessness. Considering the Bush/Alberto Gonzalez record on death penalty review in Texas, would you want to appeal your case to the man whose kangaroo tribunal just "convicted" you?

Flu Wiki News

Flu Wikians wondering what happened to the site: as you know, we have been having a variety of problems with our site hosting firm for the last couple of months. We looked for and found alternative hosting, courtesy of my employer, on the Millennium Project of the American Council for the United
Nations University servers. After experiencing the third set of posting problems in a week Tuesday morning, we determined that today was the day to make the move. If you've ever managed a website, you know that from the time the software and site archive is installed on the new IP and the DNS codes are entered, it takes a day or two before the site will propagate in your browser. I believe that I anticipated that Text Drive would allow the site to remain resident on their server until it had propagated in the new server. They did not.

The relationship with Text Drive had been so cordial up until January that I was considering ending a long and mostly productive relationship with A+ hosting to move this site to Text Drive servers. All of that changed in January when our Text Drive dedicated administrator left the company and responsibility for server administration was given to the company's CTO. I don't know what business model this comes out of, but Jason Hoffman was both openly hostile and abusive to both me and pogge, our system administrator. If that is part of their business plan, I wish them well with it.

At any rate, pogge copied the software and current archive of Flu Wiki to the new IP this afternoon. Within hours, TextDrive deleted it from their servers. It hasn't yet propagated at the new place. I'm certain that all the Flu Wikians are desperate with worry about what happened. No, it was no government conspiracy to close us down. It was a mean spirited set of capitalists who don't understand that one of the basic principles of doing business is being pleasant to the people who are in a position to send more business your way.

This post is being sent to all of my friends, colleagues and acquaintances who are hosted by or doing business with TextDrive. They need to know the kind of people we were are dealing with.

To say that the last two months were stressful is an understatement. I don't have the tech savvy to understand the kinds of tech work arounds pogge was having to perform to keep us on the air, but this has to have been very unpleasant for him, as well. All of us are volunteers who have other, busy professional lives and pogge is self-employed, which meant taking time away from his paying customers. I sincerely hope that this move, once completed, will allow me and pogge much better nights' sleep with one fewer thing to worry about. It had gotten to the point where I dreaded coming down the stairs to my workstation each morning wondering what else had broken overnight. And pogge, who is a good friend, got to the point where hearing from me wasn't something he enjoyed.

As I start new professional responsibilities in the coming weeks, which very much include the Flu Wiki, having this problem off of my plate is a source of some relief. I'll have more to say about the new job next week. It's about flu and a bunch of other things. I've never done a start-up before (I know a bunch of you have and don't have much good to say about it) but the boss has an excellent track record as a serial start up guy, and I don't know that I've ever been so well treated by a boss. The other new employees and I have all commented on it to each other. He knows what he is doing, assumes we do too, seeks our advice in our areas of expertise and takes it.

That said, a start up is a high stress environment for all of the management team and I've never done this before and am part of that team. I *barely* understand what is going on most of the time and I have some travel coming up to go to events I also *barely* understand. Co-bloggers, I'll send you travel schedules as I become aware of them.

This crazy week isn't over and there are other high stress items in the hopper, like a traffic court date in the morning. That one is too long to go into. Suffice it to say, this week can't be over soon enough.

Rant, Molly, Rant!

The White House That Cried Wolf

Posted on Mar. 27, 2006
By Molly Ivins

The Pentagon has once again investigated itself! And—have a seat, get the smelling salts, hold all hats—the Pentagon has once again concluded the Pentagon did absolutely nothing wrong and will continue to do so.

In this particularly fascinating case, the Pentagon investigated its own habit of paying people to make up lies about how well the war in Iraq is going, and then paying other people to put those lies in the Iraqi media, thus fooling the Iraqis into thinking everything in their country is tickety-boo. Well, if we can’t fool them, whom can we fool?

The case revolves around a contract worth several million dollars given by the U.S. military command in Baghdad to the Lincoln Group, a public relations outfit started by two young entrepreneurs, one British, one American, in 2003 in Iraq. Articles were written by American military personnel from the American point of view about the war, to wit, it’s going well. Lincoln Group in turn paid Iraqi journalists, some “on retainer,” to print the articles without revealing the source.

Amusingly enough, through other programs, the U.S. government is also spending money trying to teach Iraqis about the importance of a free press in a democracy. According to the Pentagon’s investigation of itself, none of the Lincoln Group’s actions violate military policies because the Pentagon is just trying to counter the vast amount of anti-American propaganda carried in Middle Eastern papers.

While I think this is the best Pentagon-investigating-itself case of the week, I have to admit it’s like the Oscars—these investigations are so hard to compare to comedy and tragedy, documentary and animated shorts. Also featured this week is the case of the Abu Ghraib dog handler, a 24-year-old sergeant who was convicted for tormenting detainees. The dog was not convicted, on the theory that it was just acting on orders.

Despite the huge international outcry over torture, so far the heavy hitters in the plot receiving real red, white and blue justice are Lynndie England, a 5-foot-3, 23-year-old woman with learning disabilities, and some noncommissioned officers. They were clearly the masterminds behind the entire international stink fest, from Gitmo to Afghanistan. England was put in prison for three years. Her baby boy will be walking and talking by the time Ms. England finishes doing her time, but no one in the upper ranks is responsible for anything that’s happened.

In the unfortunate case of the Black Room reported in The New York Times, we taxpayers seem to have been charged with the cost of refurbishing one of Saddam Hussein’s military bases into “a top-secret detention center.” One former torture chamber is now an “interrogation cell” used by Special Operations forces. “In the windowless, jet-black garage-sized room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball.” I say, this time, let’s indict the dogs.

Of course, there is always the same depressing coda to new accounts of torture and mistreatment of prisoners by American troops—no useful information was acquired.

With all these horrifying details surfacing ("No Blood, No Foul” was the slogan at the Special Operations forces’ Camp Nama), you may wonder why I return to the case of the chipper newspaper articles. I find them deeply symbolic, certainly paradigmatic and possibly even plangent, a word that’s hard to work into a newspaper column. Quite some time after we had invaded Iraq, our government informed us we had done so in order to bring democracy to that nation. Originally, we were told we had to invade the country because there were tons of weapons of mass destruction therein, but they turned out not to be there. So, through a process of masterly media manipulation, we went from Saddam’s nuclear program to democracy. It seems to me this is how George W. Bush and Co. govern, period. It’s a Karl Rove thing. When reality is unsatisfactory, just manipulate the media.

You can’t deny that the process has excellent results. It wins elections, for one thing. It confuses our critics and turns debate away from what we might loosely call “the truth” and into pointless fistfights about whether Iraq has descended, is descending or might descend into civil war.

“HOW DARE YOU CALL IT A CIVIL WAR—YOU’RE JUST LENDING COMFORT TO OUR ENEMIES.”
“LOOKS LIKE A CIVIL WAR TO ME.”
“DOES NOT—WHERE’S LEE, WHERE’S GRANT?”
“DOES SO!”

This is not helpful dialogue—remember the fight over whether there was an “insurgency” in Iraq or the Mission was still Accomplished, it was just “remnant Baathists and foreign terrorists”? That was a mirror of the arguments we had at home over whether President Bush could be described as a “friend” of Ken Lay’s or whether he is “close” to Tom DeLay or “knows” Jack Abramoff. Likewise, entire policy discussions would get subsumed by furious debate over whether Bush’s proposals meant “privatization” of Social Security or were merely “personal accounts.”

Grabbing reality by the throat and forcing it into a form you find more pleasing than reality itself is not only a great election strategy, it works for a lot of people on a lot of levels in life—denial is a good game while it lasts.

But as we can all attest, if you ignore reality, sooner or later it will bite you in the ass. I suspect the “tough-minded” (they pride themselves on being tough-minded) members of the Bush administration think they are not ignoring reality, but just persuading other people to ignore it long enough to allow them to change it. This is not an original thought. Many of the great thumb-suckers of D.C. have come to the same conclusion and pondered deeply on the “fatal hubris” of this administration. Fatal jackasses are what we have.

Remember this: Republicans = fatal jackasses

Econ 101

Fed Raises Key Rate and Says More Increases May Be Needed

By VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: March 28, 2006

The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark short-term interest rate by a quarter point this afternoon, to 4.75 percent, and signaled that further increases may be needed to guard against inflation.

In its first rate action under Ben S. Bernanke, who took over from Alan Greenspan as the central bank's chairman in February, the Fed strongly indicated that it would hew closely to Mr. Greenspan's views on inflation and monetary policy for now. It was the 15th increase in the Fed's almost two-year-long campaign to tighten monetary policy, which started in June 2004 when the federal funds rate on overnight bank loans was at 1 percent.

Stocks and bonds fell after the Fed decision and the dollar rose against the euro and other currencies. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index dropped 8.38 points, or 0.6 percent, 1,293.23. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves in the opposite direction of its price, rose to 4.78 percent late this afternoon from 4.70 percent late Monday.

The Fed reiterated in its closely read statement detailing its decision that "some further policy firming may be needed to keep the risks to the attainment of both sustainable economic growth and price stability roughly in balance."

The Fed statement also said that growth had picked up pace after slowing markedly in the fourth quarter and that the policy makers remain concerned about the prospects of inflation, even though there were few signs of higher energy prices driving up the cost of other goods thus far.

Ouch. Home sales are already down, year-over-year, and this is going to hurt.

Parsing the Move

His sources are better than mine:

The Card Sacrifice

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, March 28, 2006; 12:54 PM

Sacrificing Andy Card, his longtime chief of staff, is President Bush's way of responding to the growing complaints about the administration's competence.

The botched response to Hurricane Katrina, the deteriorating situation in Iraq, the rocky relations with the Republican Congress -- all of these are seen at least in part as failures of execution. And execution is the chief of staff's job.

But Card's departure in no way addresses the two even more fundamental areas where Bush is vulnerable: His decisions and his credibility.

In most White Houses, the chief of staff is a godlike figure, putting his stamp on the presidency in almost every conceivable way. But in the Bush White House, political guru Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney loom much larger and have way more to do with what the president says and does than Card ever did. As long as they stay put, the rest may largely be window dressing.

Card was extremely popular with his staff and oversaw the most buttoned-down, leak-proof, on-time, on-message White House in history. But he was not a big influence on Bush. He was more like Bush's nanny.

Card spent many hours of his legendarily long work days aggressively monitoring -- and limiting -- the information flow to the president. "The president has to have time to eat, sleep and be merry, or he'll make angry, grumpy decisions," Card said in a 2004 radio interview described in this column . "So I have to make sure he has time to eat, sleep and be merry. But I also have to make sure he has the right time to do the right thing for the country, and that he gets the right information in time, rather than too late."

Replacing Card with Joshua B. Bolten does not in any way satisfy the demands of those who were calling for new blood at the White House. Bolten was policy director of the 2000 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign and has been a top Bush aide since January 2001. He was Card's deputy chief of staff before taking his current job as director of the White House's budget office.

In this morning's Oval Office announcement , Bush hugged Card and called him a close friend while keeping Bolten at arm's length and describing him as "a man with broad experience, having worked on Capitol Hill and Wall Street and the White House staff."

But in June 2003 , upon announcing Bolten's nomination to the budget post, Bush described Bolten as "one of my closest and most trusted advisers." And their relationship has only deepened since.

Of course, Card's departure could be the beginning of a much wider shakeup.

I think that's unlikely, given Bush's famous loyalty.

UPDATE: The word I'm hearing is that he's leaving to manage Mitt Romney's possible presidential bid in '08.

Bird Flu Reader

The NYT "Health" section today is a veritable read-around on bird flu. It has a complete range of points of view, from scepticism to David Nabarro's shouted alarm. It's here an more than worth a look.

Their War

Via Yankee Doodle:

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 672 days since Jenna and Not-Jenna Bush, the slacker offspring of Preznit Numnutz, graduated from college and they are still not in the uniform of the US armed services.

Why? Because they have other priorities. They are too busy partying down in Georgetown to show their support for the war by enlisting their chickenhawk-child selves into the military service, that's why.

Why can't they be like their royal counterparts in the UK? The Royal Family, unlike the Bush Crime Family, has a centuries-long tradition of honorable military service. Prince Andrew was a combat helicopter pilot in La Guerre de las Malvinas (aka the Falklands War), Prince William, direct heir to the throne, has entered Sandhurst (Britain's West Point), and little brother Prince Harry graduates Sandhurst in April and could be sent to Iraq as a cavalry lieutenant.

How's that shit, Jenna and Not-Jenna? That make you a proud father, Baby Doc?

The rest you, those who think the proud military tradition of this nation needs to be upheld by those most likely to profit from it, be sure to sign the Buzzflash petition and demand that the Bush offspring enlist, or else bring the troops home. If it's not a cause noble enough for any of the children of the Bush Dynasty to join, then it's not noble enough for our sons and daughters to die for.

And check out The Yellow Elephant blog, which asks the question "It's their war; why aren't they fighting it?"

The Other

Decency to 'Those People'

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, March 28, 2006; Page A23

Half a million people poured into the streets of Los Angeles on Saturday to protest the various Republican-sponsored proposals in Congress that would demonize illegal immigrants. Hundreds marched yesterday in Detroit, which, last I checked, is nowhere near the Mexican border. Tens of thousands have demonstrated in Phoenix, Denver and other cities across the country. In every case, the crowds were mostly Latino.

We all know that Latinos are the nation's largest minority and that most of the people in those demonstrations either were born in the United States or are here legally. But we also know that at least some of those protesters had gone through the experience of crossing the border illegally under the tutelage of avaricious people-smugglers known as "coyotes." At least some had been here for months or years, working to send money home to their families, keeping their heads down, somehow managing to carve out lives for themselves and their children.

Who are they? After the demonstrations were over, where did they go? Are they so diabolically clever at hiding in plain sight? Or is it that the rest of us refuse to see them, because by seeing them we would have to acknowledge their humanity?

That willful blindness is why the debate on illegal immigration is so hypocritical. If we lump undocumented immigrants into an undifferentiated mass of Those People, we can avoid really looking at the immigrant experience. And we can convince ourselves that it is somehow different from the periodic waves of immigration that have shaped this nation -- that suddenly it is not an issue, or even a problem, but an urgent crisis.

While I don't disagree with anything Gene says, there is a larger context he is missing here: immigrants, legal or otherwise, are overwhelmingly among the working poor, and it is the poor who are invisible in this country. If we don't see them, then we don't have to deal with them. The great crime of the undocumented worker is to be poor, which is the worst crime you can commit in this country.

Celebrity Culture

Scalia's Recusal Sought in Key Detainee Case
Retired Officers Say Justice's Impartiality Is in Question After Remarks on Combatants

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 28, 2006; A06

On the eve of oral argument in a key Supreme Court case on the rights of alleged terrorists, a group of retired U.S. generals and admirals has asked Justice Antonin Scalia to recuse himself, arguing that his recent public comments on the subject make it impossible for him to appear impartial.

In a letter delivered to the court late yesterday, a lawyer for the retired officers cited news reports of Scalia's March 8 remarks to an audience at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland. Scalia reportedly said it was "crazy" to suggest that combatants captured fighting the United States should receive a "full jury trial," and dismissed suggestions that the Geneva Conventions might apply to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Scalia's remarks "give rise to the unfortunate appearance that, even before briefing was complete, he had already made up his mind" about issues in the case, the lawyer, David H. Remes, wrote. Noting that Scalia reportedly had discussed the rights of accused terrorists in the context of his son Matthew's recent tour as an Army officer in Iraq, Remes wrote that this creates an appearance of "personal bias arising from his son's military service."

The case to be heard today -- Hamdan v. Rumsfeld , No. 05-184 -- is one of the most important terrorism-related cases to reach the court. It is a challenge by Osama bin Laden's former chauffeur, now being held at Guantanamo Bay, to the legality of the military commission that seeks to try him for war crimes. Military trials for terrorist suspects are a centerpiece of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policy, but they have been criticized by human rights activists, especially in Europe.

The retired officers are Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms, Brig Gen. James P. Cullen, Vice Adm. Lee F. Gunn, Rear Adm. John D. Hutson and Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter. They have filed a friend of the court brief in the case opposing the military commissions, on the grounds that denying Geneva Conventions protections to detainees at Guantanamo Bay could result in their denial to U.S. troops by their captors abroad. Scalia's speech was first reported by Newsweek's Web site on Sunday.

Newsweek quoted Scalia as describing European reaction to Guantanamo Bay as "hypocritical."

In his letter to the court, Remes said Scalia's reported reference to the Geneva Conventions was of particular concern to the retired officers as it is directly at issue in the case. Their brief supports the view of the petitioner, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, that the conventions apply to him and could entitle him to a court-martial trial like that which U.S. soldiers receive.

Other calls for Scalia's recusal came yesterday from the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil rights organization that supports the challenge to the military commissions, and from Rep. John D. Conyers (Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

Court rules say that justices must recuse in cases where their impartiality "might reasonably be questioned." But it is up to each justice to make that decision. Court analysts said yesterday it is unlikely Scalia will recuse from the case.

Our loquacious justices
U.S. Supreme Court judges should be seen and not heard, at least until the case is over.
By Jonathan Turley, JONATHAN TURLEY is a law professor at George Washington University.
March 28, 2006

TODAY, THE U.S. Supreme Court will assemble to hear one of the most important cases of the term: Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, which will test President Bush's claim of near-absolute authority over detainees in the war on terror. But most of the attention will be fixed on the fourth seat from the right and its occupant, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, who, in a clear breach of judicial decorum, if not judicial ethics, recently divulged his views on the issues in the case before oral arguments had even begun.

Scalia's comments, delivered in Switzerland earlier this month, were only the latest example of Supreme Court justices talking out of school. In fact, the justices have been entering the public debate recently in a way that would have been viewed as scandalous just a couple of decades ago.

Abandoning a long-held tradition of avoiding public speeches (other than the occasional mundane graduation address), justices have been holding forth on every subject from the power of the political right to "morality legislation" to the war on terror. The model of the reclusive jurist is being supplanted by a type of judicial Tony Robbins, who regularly boosts his "constituency" on the left or the right with energizing speeches.

More than any other justice, Scalia has helped forge this new model of the celebrity justice. He has long been the enfant terrible of the court: precocious, unpredictable, brilliant. But his apparent inability to restrain himself in public forums has caused no end of problems.
....
Of course, there was a time when justices did not have "constituencies." Historically, members of the Supreme Court have jealously protected not just their own privacy, but the image of the court as detached from politics. Jurists are barred from speaking publicly about the merits of pending cases because they are supposed to be impartial and open arguments from all parties. But Scalia has reinforced the view of this court as pre-wired for certain results.

The trend is now obvious, but the direction should disturb lawyers and non-lawyers alike. It seems little to ask for justices to refrain from public speeches on legal issues in exchange for their unique offices. We were better off when justices spoke primarily to history, and when their only constituency was the rule of law.

I see this a little differently: the SCOTUS has become just another careerist option on the celebrity lawyer ladder for those who have memoirs to write.

As the Season Turns

This might be the best quiche I've ever eaten (outside of the miracles that the chefs at the cheap fabulous bistro 5 minutes a way turn out, they aren't on the net.) Just follow the directions and you'll amaze those around your table, and this is easy. It's the layering that makes it work. This serves 8 as a first course, 4-6 as a main course (it is substantial and filling. This ain't your mom's bridge club quiche.) This is a Gourmet mag recipe this month and I'm making it again for a luncheon in June. Even the men liked it, this is hearty food. My, um, "corrections" to the recipe are below.

HAM, LEEK, AND THREE-CHEESE QUICHE

1 round of refrigerated pie dough for a 9-inch pie (from a 15-oz package; not a preshaped frozen pie shell)
3/4 lb leeks (about 3 medium; white and pale green parts only)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 lb thinly sliced smoked ham
3 oz Gruyère, coarsely grated (1 cup)
3 oz Italian Fontina, coarsely grated (1 cup)
3 oz whole-milk mozzarella, coarsely grated (1 cup)
3 large eggs
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 3/4 cups crème fraîche (from two 8-oz containers)

Special equipment: a 9-inch pie plate (4-cup capacity)

Prebake pie dough in pie plate according to package instructions, then remove from oven and reduce temperature to 350°F.

Meanwhile, halve leeks lengthwise and cut crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces, then wash well in a bowl of cold water, agitating leeks. Lift out and drain leeks in a colander and pat dry. Melt butter in a 10-inch heavy skillet over moderately low heat and cook leeks, stirring occasionally, until very tender, 8 to 10 minutes.

Line warm pie shell with sliced ham, overlapping layers as necessary to cover bottom and side of pie shell completely. Toss cheeses together and sprinkle evenly into pie shell (do not pack cheese), then spread leeks evenly on top of cheese. Whisk together eggs, nutmeg, and pepper until combined well, then whisk in crème fraîche until smooth.

Carefully pour half of custard on top of pie filling, gently moving cheese with a spoon to help custard disperse evenly. Slowly add remaining custard in same manner. Cover pie loosely with foil, gently folding edges over crust (keep foil from touching top of cheese mixture) and transfer to a baking sheet.

Bake until center of filling is puffed and set (center will be slightly wobbly but not liquid), about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours. Cool on a rack at least 20 to 30 minutes before serving (filling will continue to set as it cools). Serve warm or at room temperature.

Cooks' note:
Quiche can be made 3 days ahead and cooled completely, uncovered, then chilled, wrapped in plastic wrap. Reheat quiche (uncovered) in a 350°F oven until warmed through, about 15 minutes.

My notes: add a quarter teaspon of fresh ground nutmeg to the egg and cheese mixture. With all that ham, I need no salt but your mileage may vary. You can easily add a half pound of steamed and drained fresh asparagus halves when you pour the batter into the crust for more spring interest. Break them up into half inch sections and microwave in a scant bit of water in a covered safe pan in the mic for 30 seconds, and then drain. They will be adequately blanched.

Real Men DO eat this quiche and feed it to their daughters. This is hearty food, served with crusty bread and, perhaps, herb butter. Serve with a salad of field greens with a lemon vinaigrette, and, as the season turns, a bowl of strawberries and creme fraiche and you have a meal fit for royalty. Enjoy. The Queen of England couldn't possibly live any better.

Internet Explorer: Here We Go Again!

OK, Bumpers. Different day, same ride. We've all been here before.

• There is a new multiply confirmed Microsoft Internet Explorer vulnerability.
• It hands control of your Windows system to an attacker at the far end of the network wire.
• All you have to do to get hacked is visit a malicious website, after that, exploitation is automatic.
• There is no Microsoft patch out for this yet.
• It is currently being exploited from literally thousands of malicious websites.
• And it can nail your system to the wall even if it is a fully patched instance of Windows XP Service Pack 2.

I trust nobody reading this uses Internet Exploder Explorer by choice, right?

If I'm wrong ... well, you don't have to wait for a patch. Just use another browser.

Firefox may be downloaded for free here.

Opera may be downloaded for free here.

Both of these have security histories that are practically armor-plated compared to IE. But that isn't hard.

Here is the security history of Opera 8.x.

Here is the security history of Mozilla Firefox 1.x.

Here is the security history of Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x.

Any questions??

So when a patch is released for this latest gaping wound, apply it like good citizens. Then, just continue to ignore the smoking crater that is IE unless you have absolutely no choice but to use that browser and that browser only.

Here is a bibliography of Microsoft's latest embarrassment.

1. Microsoft Internet Explorer "createTextRange()" Code Execution


2. CVE-2006-1359


3. Microsoft Internet Explorer CreateTextRange Remote Code Execution Vulnerability


4. Microsoft Security Advisory (917077)


5. Internet Explorer createTextRange() 0day ITW Exploit


6. Publicly disclosed vulnerability in Internet Explorer


7. New publicly disclosed vulnerability in Internet Explorer


8. Recent exploits regarding the Internet Explorer HTML handling vulnerability.


9. Update regarding recent Internet Explorer attacks


10. Microsoft Updated Security Advisory (917077) and APWG Report released


11. Informational Alert: New I.E. Zero Day Exploit


12. 'Critical' IE bug threatens PC users


13. IT: Web Site Attacks Against Unpatch IE Flaw Spike


14. Internet Explorer exploits in the wild


15. Attacks on Unpatched IE Flaw Escalate

A New Turn on a Classic

IRISH CHEDDAR AND STOUT FONDUE

2 cups 1- to 1 1/2-inch-diameter red-skinned potatoes, halved
2 cups cauliflower florets
2 cups very small brussels sprouts
2 apples, cored, cut into wedges

1 pound Irish cheddar cheese, grated
2 1/2 tablespoons all purpose flour
3/4 cup (or more) Irish stout (such as Guinness)
3 tablespoons frozen apple juice concentrate, thawed
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
White pepper to taste

Steam all vegetables until tender, about 15 minutes. Arrange vegetables and apples around edge of large platter.

Meanwhile, toss cheese with flour in large bowl. Bring 3/4 cup stout, juice concentrate, and mustard to simmer in large saucepan over medium heat. Gradually add cheese mixture, stirring constantly, until cheese is melted and smooth, thinning with more stout, if desired. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer fondue to bowl. Place in center of platter with vegetables.

Chef's note: Extra Sharp white cheddar is a great substitute for the Irish cheddar.

Makes 6 first-course servings. You will not have any leftovers. You can very successfully substitute any raw cruditee veggies for the recommended ones. This is delicious with sweet spring onions or vidalia quarters.

Better Beans

This is really good and you can make it from your preps IF you prepped your herbs and spices. Yes, we have to do something with our beans besides rice and beans, and this is great on Tex Mex rice or with corn chips. You did prep some corn chips, didn't you?

Baked White Bean and Rosemary Dip

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 tablespoon olive oil
* 1 cup chopped onions
* 1 tablespoon minced garlic
* 1 teaspoon dried rosemary, chopped
* 2 (15 ounce) cans great Northern beans, rinsed and drained
* 1/8 cup lime juice

* 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
* salt to taste
* paprika
* 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
* I can Rotel tomatoes with chilis

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Slowly cook and stir onions, garlic and rosemary until soft. Add Rotels and reduce the juice by half.
3. In a food processor, blend the onion mixture, great northern beans, lime juice, red pepper and salt until smooth.
4. Transfer the mixture to a medium baking dish and garnish with paprika. Bake uncovered in the preheated oven 25 minutes, or until hot and bubbly. Add chopped cilantro and mix.

Before this goes into the oven, I add a small can of drained black olive slices and mix well.

Make your own baked tortilla chips.

MBA Presidency

MBA: Marketing Below Average?

“Don’t Study Too Hard: MBA’s [sic] Fail at Marketing.” The headline pasted across the front page of the latest issue of Advertising Age, essential reading among marketing folk, refers to a survey by Ken Coogan & Partners, a consulting firm. The survey found that companies with a preponderance of MBAs on their marketing team were more likely to underperform – ie, to reduce their market share – than to increase it. The study, which used data compiled by VNU’s ACNielsen, an information and media company, looked at 32 consumer-products companies, including General Mills, Kraft Foods, Nestlé and Pfizer. At the underperforming firms, about 90% of their marketing executives held MBAs. This compared with a mere 55% at those firms where sales growth beat the industry average. Moreover, while the successful firms were more likely to support professional development activities - such as peer groups and internal mentoring - the underperformers were more likely to send their marketers off to executive MBA programmes.

The survey, however, did not fully support Advertising Age‘s headline. High-performing firms had more marketing executives with college degrees than did underperforming firms. Study hard? Yes. But maybe not at a business school.

Vindication for liberal arts grads! Yes!

Cable iNsipid Network

Found in a comments thread at an AlterNet blog post on CNN's shitty coverage. Made my day.

Scene 1

Wolf Blitzer- Welcome to The Situation Room. Today we are going to generate more heat than light, allow paid pundits from bought-and-paid-for Beltway Think Tanks to shout their daily talking points, give one legitimate expert 15 seconds to try to interject a relevant point in the melee, run commercials for 1/3rd of our program time, consume another 1/5th of our time with bumps, teases and tags and I will personally utter the phrase "You are in the situation room" at least 20 times.

When we return I will still be on this gaudy set in front of a huge plasma screen asking the presidents of ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox if they think the FCC is really necessary. Of course, if the Sheriff of Mayberry has a car chase, we will suspend all coverage until that is over as it is Breaking News. You are in the situation room.

I think that just about sums it up.

I'm listening to the odious Kyra Phillips right now, so you don't have to.

Secrecy

Homeland security group to meet away from public eye

By Anne Broache
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: March 24, 2006

A new advisory committee in the Homeland Security Department is free to disregard a law designed to keep meetings open and proceedings public, according to a departmental notice.

The newly created Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council is charged with sharing information aimed at protecting the nation's infrastructure, cybercomponents included. Michael Chertoff, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary, cited security reasons when he signed off on exempting the council from the Federal Advisory Committee Act, or FACA.

The decision, which many private-sector players had strongly recommended, was released in a departmental notice published Friday.

The council, which plans to meet at least quarterly, will bring together various federal agency employees and private-sector representatives to discuss the Department of Homeland Security's infrastructure protection plan, which remains in draft form. The fields represented range from agriculture and energy to information technology and telecommunications. Participants include the U.S. Telecom Association, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association and Internet infrastructure services provider VeriSign.

If those participants are required to comply with FACA, it could leave them seriously hindered in sharing "sensitive homeland security information," the department said.

The 1972 law generally requires such groups to meet in open sessions, make written meeting materials publicly available, and deliver a 15-day notice of any decision to close a meeting to the public. The last is a particular point of concern for Homeland Security officials, who anticipate that private emergency meetings may need to be scheduled on short notice.

The private sector, fearing that sensitive data will get to the wrong hands, has continued to resist sharing important information with the feds, the Department of Homeland Security said, citing government auditors' findings from late 2003.

Making the meetings public would amount to "giving our nation's enemies information they could use to most effectively attack a particular infrastructure and cause cascading consequences across multiple infrastructures," another departmental advisory council warned in August.

One privacy advocate said he didn't buy the excuses. "The public has an extremely strong interest in knowing whether DHS and the relevant industries are doing enough to protect facilities, and whether there might be company negligence that contributes to any possible security vulnerabilities," David Sobel, a general counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, wrote in an e-mail interview.

Yeah, those excuses don't hold any water, just like the excuses around Cheney's committee didn't. I wonder what they are up to....

Summer Planning

Hurricane expert releases 2006 season forecast

A Colorado State University hurricane expert is predicting 17 named storms for the upcoming 2006 hurricane season, higher than the number of storms he predicted at this time last year.

With 69 days to go before the start of hurricane season, Dr. William Gray, Professor of Atmospheric Science, is predicting a very active season with 17 named storms, nine storms reaching hurricane strength and of those, five will be major hurricanes.

In the 2005 hurricane season, which included Hurricane Katrina, there were 27 named storms, 15 hurricanes and seven intense or major hurricanes.

These are the highest numbers he has ever issued this early in the season, Gray said.

Something else to look forward to.

Around the World

Dire warnings by Rob Webster and Dave Nabarro have begun to penetrate the consciousness of the MSM. As Dr. Nabarro says in the article below, the dramatic, explosive expansion of H5H1 across global geography is nearly mind boggling.

UN expert stands by his dire warnings
By Donald G. McNeil Jr. The New York Times

MONDAY, MARCH 27, 2006

Dr. David Nabarro, chief avian flu coordinator for the United Nations, has become gun-shy about making predictions - in particular, about if and when the H5N1 virus, now devastating bird populations around the world, will do the same to humans. But Nabarro describes himself as "quite scared," especially since the disease has broken out of Eastern Asia and reached birds in Africa, Europe and India much faster than he expected it to. "That rampant, explosive spread," he said, "and the dramatic way it's killing poultry so rapidly suggests that we've got a very beastly virus in our midst." Nabarro, the former chief of crisis response for the World Health Organization, admits that he has been accused before of being an alarmist. On his first day in his current job, he was quoted as saying that the avian flu could kill 150 million people. In December 2004, when he was in charge of the health organization's response to the Indian Ocean tsunami, he warned that if help did not arrive quickly, cholera and malaria could kill twice as many people as the waves had just swept away. In Darfur the same year, he said that 10,000 people a month were dying in refugee camps because the Sudanese government was rebuffing aid. And earlier in 2004, he warned that Israeli roadblocks were endangering Palestinians who needed drugs for diabetes and high blood pressure. Asked to reflect on those warnings, he answers: About Darfur, he was dead right; on the Palestinians, he was also right, but massive infusions of aid kept death rates down; and on the tsunami, he said, he made his dire forecast when only 40,000 people were believed dead, and the world's abundant generosity paid for the clean water and mosquito control that prevented the worst from coming true. On avian flu, he notes, he predicted a range of 5 million to 150 million deaths - the same range the World Bank was using - but headline writers quoted only the higher figure. And how many does Nabarro now say could die? "I don't know," he said. "Nobody knows." But he repeatedly said that he is more scared than he was when he took the job in September. In October, he predicted that the virus would reach Africa, where surveillance is so poor that deaths of chickens or humans could easily go undiagnosed for weeks. Last month, he was proved right.

Posted by Melanie at 12:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What Good News?

Huffposter Paul Rieckhoff takes on the "media are only telling the bad news" trope, reprinting an email from a friend serving in Iraq:

"I never hear that because we all here know the good news stories are bullshit and do not really affect the mission in any way. It's like this thing we keep saying here about all the new people we've recruited for the iraqi police. It leaves out the fact that my platoon was in a 40 minute gun fight with the iraqi police. So you recruited more of them ... awesome! I am sure that will make everything better. Also, they don't do ANYTHING. They don't even leave their building, and that is not an exaggeration. They don't. So what good is a billion-man police force that doesn't do anything? Also, they get almost no training. They tried to stand up some kind of mentoring initiative here using the guardsmen that are civilian cops, but it so far has fallen through. They will get set up to be killed, as is already suspected of the THREE SVBIEDs that have hit their station. Inside jobs, all. During our fight with them, we picked up the police chief (who was riding in a car that was shooting at a coalition vehicle -- an M1A1. You know how that story ends) and he was with a guy (who it turned out was his nephew) who had this radical islamic terrorist literature on him. It would be a joke if it weren't costing our lives.

"the iraqi army is making progress and we're handing over more and more to them everyday." Complete bullshit. What's the good news in the fact that all their logistics, medical, engineering, staff function, etc. is being done by us? ALL OF IT. And PS, they're not being trained on any of the other shit, either, except a broken medical training program.

You can clearly see by reading the news how much it matters that X number of people have power now. The bottom line is, the overwhelming majority of people live in fear. We can do NOTHING to help them. We don't have anywhere near the manpower, and our actions are too severely restricted. Good thing 2500 people died for this.

What are the good news stories? I would love to hear them. Spare me the heart warming tales of a single family or school or neighborhood that was helped. Operation Iraqi Freedom is, at this point, an abject failure. This is the most dangerous place on earth and it's getting worse, not better.

Also, you have to consider that our definition of good news is not the iraqi definition of good news. These people are not americans. Culturally, they do not respect or appreciate the same things we do. "Our neighborhood has power now! It's about time, infidels. What about the water?" "Hey, thanks for the medicine for our clinic! I'm still totally supporting the insurgency, but at least i can provide them better medical care now." Giving them shit does not win their allegiance. They don't think, "wow, I was wrong about americans." It just gives them shit.

The "we don't hear good news from Iraq" mindset is one that is totally ignorant of Iraqi culture. There is no good news. There's a bunch of people getting handed shit, and it doesn't change a single thing."

Gastarbeiter

This is in Al Kamen's always entertaining "In the Loop" column in today's WaPo.

Chavez on the Lookout for Immigrants

President Bush also pushed last week for his guest worker proposal to allow millions of illegal immigrants to continue working in this country.

There was a fine photo of Bush meeting Thursday with friendly groups about the issue. And there, sitting at Bush's right hand, was none other than Linda Chavez , who heads something called the Center for Equal Opportunity.

Chavez, Loop Fans may recall, was Bush's first nominee to be secretary of labor in 2001. Her nomination was scuttled when it was discovered she hadn't been forthcoming to them about her interesting relationship with an illegal immigrant living in her home who was doing generally unpaid housework for her.

She probably knows as much as anyone about working guests.

You have to admire Bushco's ability to recycle the same old crooks. That's the one thing that they really do conserve.

Ripped from the Headlines

Bird Flu Defies Control Efforts
The culling of flocks has failed to slow the rapid spread of the virus, due in North America this year. Vaccination of poultry is under study.
By Jia-Rui Chong, Times Staff Writer
March 27, 2006

The spread of avian influenza to at least 29 new countries in the last seven weeks — one of the biggest outbreaks of the virus since it emerged nine years ago — is prompting a sobering reassessment of the strategy that has guided efforts to contain the disease.

Since February, the virus has cut a wide swath across the globe, felling tens of thousands of birds in Nigeria, Israel, India, Sweden and elsewhere. Health officials in the United States say bird flu is likely to arrive in North America this year, carried by wild birds migrating thousands of miles to their summer breeding grounds.

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The speed of its migration, and the vast area it has infected, has forced scientists to concede there is little that can be done to stop its spread across the globe.

"We expected it to move, but not any of us thought it would move quite like this," said Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations' coordinator on bird flu efforts.

The hope was once that culling millions of chickens and ducks would contain or even eradicate the virus. Now, the strategy has shifted toward managing a disease that will probably be everywhere. Officials are hoping to buy a little more time to produce human vaccines and limit the potential economic damage.

"We cannot contain this thing anymore. Nature is in control," said Robert G. Webster, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., who has been studying the virus since it emerged in 1997.

Formally known as avian influenza A, or H5N1, the virus is rarely transmitted to humans.

There have been 186 human cases and 105 deaths since 2003, according to the World Health Organization. More than a quarter of the deaths — 29 — have occurred this year.

Many fear the virus will mutate into a form that is more easily transmitted among people, introducing a deadly flu strain unfamiliar to the human immune system.

Let's parse this a little. H5N1 is a virus which scares the bejabbers out of those of us who study influenza, me among them. But it isn't human virus, at least not yet. It may never become one. That's the good news. The bad news is that every influenza pandemic we know much about (and we know a little) has started in birds and this bug has developed a taste for humans when it has come in contact with us on an extended basis (humans living with their birds, as is common in South Asia.)

Should you be paying attention? Damn straight. Should you be changing your behavior? It is time to look at doing some disaster planning if you never did before. That's just good sense.

The Road Ahead

Postings from me are likely to continue to be light for the next couple of days as the new job ramps up, but the co-bloggers contribute a perspective which is, I think, much wider and I thank them for it.

I'm winding up on an article that the justifiably maligned Marc Siegel published in the WaPo yesterday on bird flu which is, quite frankly, a load of bird crap. I don't know if Siegel is a shill for the poultry industry, but we've had so much of that bird guano lately that it wouldn't surprise me, and if he isn't, he can lay out his bona fides here. His central argument is so specious that I'm sure that I'll get some interesting email, as I do every time I or anyone else take this snake oil salesman on. Bring it on, Marc! I think you hit 16 emails in one day the last time we tried this, and never managed to make a logical article in any of them. Please use [email protected] this time, my other client isn't working so well right now. Marc is one of those authors who googles himself every night and sends out barrages of emails to his critics without ever really answering them. He trolls for offense. That seems like a strange, dim life. If you have the stones to carry this out in public, which you never have before, bring it on! I doubt we'll see your testosterone in a public forum, however.

Check in with Flu Wikie each day to find out where the latest thinking on the science (still pretty confusing) and flu news (also confusing) is posted. We don't know what is going to happen with avian flu and Marc Siegel's "happy talk" isn't supported by the science or even by his rhetoric and arguments.

See you in the morning, Marc. Sleep well.

Recipes will be back this week. I just needed the damn weekend off. I've been writing this blog daily for two and a half years with only two days off and I'm damned tired. Give a girl a break please.

My last real vacation, as in "get out of here and go someplace else for longer than three days" was in 1998. Poor people don't take vacations. I have one scheduled for this summer on a small island in the Bay of Fundy (go Google that yourself) where I plan to be unplugged from the internet for a couple of weeks, and plugged into the local flower, the Atlantic Lupins, the birds on the Atlantic Flyway, some whale watching and serious amounts of lobster rolls.

I want to stare out of the windows of a small cabin at a landscape which is dramatically different from the one here and just let my mind wander for enough hours that I've found myself again. Real vacations are like retreats, time to go and find all the things you gave away and compromised to get through the ordinary days, time to bring them back. Vacations and retreats are part garbage removal and part lost treasure retrieval. And need to be long enough to do both. I'm overdue.

Note to Marc Siegel, all of the above makes me cranky and I've got all the cites at my fingertips. I notice that you don't publish in the scientific journals. Is there a reason for that?

I'm back, weakly for the next few days, but plenty pissed. Co-bloggers, bring your best stuff. We have work to do.

Marc, use the comments box if you think you have an argument that will survive public space. If you can't do that , don't expect a lot of sympathy out of me.

Voices from the Past

It's only been in the last 30 or so years that historians have really decided to consider "pop culture" an area worth examining which is odd since I always find that students do best when they have a connection to the material. If you have a person who loves cars and machines, find a way to connect with that love no matter what you are studying (kinda hard when you are doing world history with the acient Summerians...).

This article that my wife forwarded to me is a real gem and looks at an area that we don't get to cover at all in school but I wish we would... the history of pop music. Specifically, how many people do you think even know there were recordings on wax cylinders? Now they can.

How Pop Sounded Before It Popped

By JODY ROSEN
Published: March 19, 2006

FOR a couple of months now my iPod has been stuck on Stella Mayhew's "I'm Looking for Something to Eat." It's a lurching little waltz-time pop tune, drawled over brass-band accompaniment. The lyric is hilarious, the lament of a gal on a diet who can't stop eating, and it climaxes with a glutton's soul cry: "I want some radishes and olives, speckled trout and cantaloupe and cauliflower/ Some mutton broth and deviled crabs and clams and Irish stew." I can't get it out of my head — so far, it's my favorite record of 2006.

As it happens, it's also my favorite record of 1909. It is an Edison Phonograph Company wax cylinder, recorded 97 years ago by Mayhew, a vaudeville star who liked to poke fun at her considerable girth. In certain ways, the song is up to date: the satire on dieting is plenty relevant in the early 21st century, and Mayhew's slurred talk-singing is a bracingly modern sound. But the noisy, weather-beaten recording is unmistakably a product of the acoustic era — the period from about 1890 to the mid-1920's, before the advent of electric recording — when musicians cut records while crammed cheek-by-jowl-by-trombone around phonograph horns in rackety little studios.

Mayhew's record is just one of several thousand cylinders, the first commercially available recordings ever produced, that have recently become available free of charge to anyone with an Internet connection and some spare bandwidth. Last November, the Donald C. Davidson Library at the University of California, Santa Barbara, introduced the Cylinder Digitization and Preservation Project Web site ( cylinders.library.ucsb.edu ), a collection of more than 6,000 cylinders converted to downloadable MP3's, WAV files and streaming audio. It's an astonishing trove of sounds: opera arias, comic monologues, marching bands, gospel quartets. Above all, there are the pop tunes churned out by Tin Pan Alley at the turn of the century: ragtime ditties, novelty songs, sentimental ballads and a dizzying range of dialect numbers performed by vaudeville's blackface comedians and other "ethnic impersonators."

For decades, these records languished unheard by all but a few intrepid researchers and enthusiasts. Now, thanks to the Santa Barbara Web site and the efforts of a small group of scholars, collectors and independent record labels, acoustic-era popular music is drifting back into earshot, one crackly cylinder and 78 r.p.m. disc at a time. These old records hold pleasant surprises, but they also carry a larger lesson about gaping holes in the story of American pop.

What follows in this hypnotic article is a brief history of popular music before the creation of vinal records and what is being done to protect this resource. How do we talk about this period when there are taboo subjects out there like minstrel show music? I can promise you that's not showing up on anyone's State Test in US History (though I thought that PBS handelled the topic very well in their special on Stephen Foster a few years back). Likewise, how do we reconcile the fact that many of these performers were considered as dangerous and risque as many of our pop stars are today even though they seem quite tame to us 100 years later?

The Archive itself is very easy to search through and allows you to play the piece without having to download it. The history on the technologies is illuminating. There are over 6000 recordings that you can search through right now and I can't wait to get some free time to see what's there.

Pernicious Myths

Retraining Laid-Off Workers, but for What?

By LOUIS UCHITELLE
Published: March 26, 2006

Layoffs have disrupted the lives of millions of Americans over the last 25 years. The cure that these displaced workers are offered — retraining and more education — is heralded as a sure path to new and better-paying careers. But often that policy prescription does not work, as this book excerpt explains. It is adapted from "The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences" by Louis Uchitelle, an economics writer for The New York Times. Knopf will publish the book on Tuesday.

JO GOODRUM, a thin, energetic woman older than her audience of aircraft mechanics — old enough, perhaps, to be their mother — got their attention with a single, unexpected sentence, which she inserted early in her presentation. Her husband, she said, had been laid off six times since the late 1980's. And yet here she was, standing before them, in one piece, cheerful, apparently O.K., giving survival instructions to the mechanics, who would be laid off themselves in 10 days.

They were, in nearly every case, family men in their 30's and 40's who had worked for United Airlines since the mid-1990's. Summoned by their union, they had gathered in the carpeted conference room at the Days Inn next to Indianapolis International Airport, not far from United's giant maintenance center, a building so big that 12 airliners could be overhauled in it simultaneously. That no longer happened. Most of the repair bays were empty. The airline was cutting back operations, and the 60 mechanics at the meeting were in the fourth group to be let go.

Confrontation had brought on the layoffs. Influenced by militants in their union local, Hoosier Air Transport Lodge 2294 of the International Association of Machinists, the 2,000 mechanics at the center had engaged in a work slowdown for many months, and then a refusal to work overtime. But rather than give ground, United responded by outsourcing, sending planes to nonunion contractors elsewhere in the country.

That scared the mechanics. They quieted down and, in effect, authorized the leaders of Lodge 2294 to make peace. Their hope was that if they cooperated, United would ease up on the layoffs and revive operations at, arguably, one of the most efficient, high-tech maintenance centers in the world. In this state of mind, the union was helping to usher the 60 laid-off mechanics quietly away. It had rented the conference room on this cold January evening in 2003 to introduce the men to what amounted to a boot camp for recycling laid-off workers back into new, usually lower-paying lines of work.

SIMILAR federally subsidized boot camps, organized by state and local governments, often in league with unions, have proliferated in the United States since the 1980's, and now many cities have them. Unable to stop layoffs, government has taken on the task of refitting discarded workers for "alternate careers." In deciding as a nation to try to rejuvenate them as workers, we put in place a system, however unrealistic, that implicitly acknowledged layoffs as a legitimate practice.

The presumption — promoted by economists, educators, business executives and nearly all of the nation's political leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike — holds that in America's vibrant and flexible economy there is work, at good pay, for the educated and skilled. The unemployed need only to get themselves educated and skilled and the work will materialize. Education and training create the jobs, according to this way of thinking. Or, put another way, an appropriate job at decent pay materializes for every trained or educated worker.

If the workers were already trained, as the mechanics certainly were, then what they needed was additional training and counseling as a transition into well-paying, unfilled jobs in other industries. If the transition failed to function as advertised, well, the accepted wisdom suggested that it was the fault of the workers themselves. Their failure to land good jobs was due to personality defects or a resistance to acquiring new skills or a reluctance to move where the good jobs were.

Nearly all of the pernicious myths about the meaning of work are deconstructed in this column. The idea that a job which offers a reasonable amount of dignity at a living wage is somehow a gift that has to be earned by personal virtue is quintessentially American and perverse. It should be seen as a human right.

A Progressive Book Review

The Left Hand of God

The Left Hand of God. By Michael Lerner. HarperSanFrancisco. 416 pages. $24.95.
Book Review By Mark LeVine
March 24, 2006

Lerner proposes such a strategy for tackling the "spiritual crisis" that afflicts America, moving the Democrats away from being the minor league Party of the Right Hand of God and towards something more in keeping with the progressive social vision that once animated it. The problem is, as Lerner admits (making an argument similar to Thomas Frank's in What's the Matter with Kansas?), the Left has become too elitist and out of touch with ordinary Americans, to whom conservatives, though directly responsible for policies that do many of them economic harm, connect on a deeper, more personal level than secular liberals have been able to.

And when it comes down to it, millions of people seem to be willing to vote for someone who is screwing them economically if that person at least shows them a basic level of respect even while playing on their fears of all those "others" who threaten either to take away their jobs or convert their kids to homosexuality.

As important as Lerner's diagnosis of what ails liberals in America is the list of policy recommendations he offers. What's needed, he argues, is a "spiritual covenant with America," one that directly approaches American families with a vision and set of policies that reward love and caring, and encompasses kindness, generosity and commitment to the common good. Such an ethics would touch on issues such as education, health care, environmental stewardship, and —no less important—personal responsibility and respect.

It is in the latter area that Lerner in some respects parts ways with Wallis, whose evangelical background has makes it very difficult for him to accept homosexuality, at least publicly. Lerner's vision of personal morality is more expansive and more in tune with a true progressive vision even as it maintains Wallis's important focus on social justice as a defining expression of Christian belief.

All of these arguments are persuasive, and what makes the book an inspiring read is that it empowers the reader with practical ideas for implementing the spiritually progressive politics Lerner envisions. And yet, reading the book's discussion of utterly sensible policy suggestions such as a Social Responsibility Amendment to the Constitution, and education reform, I can't help thinking that success depends on an incredible degree of faith; not in God, but rather in the American people, and in the possibility that if the Left could find the right way to present these ideas to them they would embrace—or at least consider—our politics.

I am not convinced that "Americans" (to the extent we can make such a generalization) really want the God of Loving Kindness for whom Lerner so powerfully advocates. Suppose Americans, like Russians, or Israelis, or a host of other peoples, have come to like their leaders strong, brutal, and willing to hit back at all enemies, real or perceived, as long as they can manage the violence such policies inevitably generate?

Suppose it's too late to change our system? Suppose it's rotten to the core? For as long as I can remember, Lerner has been saying that at some point the utopian becomes pragmatic when pragmatism no longer works. But what happens when utopianism—at least of the progressive, rather than apocalyptic, variety—no longer moves people, because the system has succeeded in making such a transformation seem impossible to imagine?

What made America so strong during the last half century was its ability to return to its ideals of liberty and justice even after straying from them. If, as many argue, America's century has ended, then perhaps one symptom of its decline is the inability of American culture to renew itself in the way Lerner calls for. The fact that across Latin America, and even in Europe, radical progressive movements based on a progressive reading of Christianity have come to the fore over the last several decades suggests that the best hope for the politics Lerner is calling might well lie outside the United States.

It's unfortunate, then, that The Left Hand of God's analysis doesn't reach beyond America's shores. My gut feeling is that for the spiritual vision Lerner and his comrades envision to succeed in America, it will first have to succeed elsewhere, showing Americans by example that there is a Third Way. At the very least, an urgent task before the movement is to bring together the most spiritually aware critics from across the globe to figure out a way to restore hope in an age of increasing cynicism and naked political power. This book is a crucially important move in that direction; let's hope it inspires similar thinking and writing on a truly global scale.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is the founder of the progressive interfaith magazine Tikkun and is one of Melanie's guiding lights.

Test Pattern

Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math

By SAM DILLON
Published: March 26, 2006

The intense focus on the two basic skills is a sea change in American instructional practice, with many schools that once offered rich curriculums now systematically trimming courses like social studies, science and art. A nationwide survey by a nonpartisan group that is to be made public on March 28 indicates that the practice, known as narrowing the curriculum, has become standard procedure in many communities.

The survey, by the Center on Education Policy, found that since the passage of the federal law, 71 percent of the nation's 15,000 school districts had reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects to open up more time for reading and math. The center is an independent group that has made a thorough study of the new act and has published a detailed yearly report on the implementation of the law in dozens of districts.

"Narrowing the curriculum has clearly become a nationwide pattern," said Jack Jennings, the president of the center, which is based in Washington.

At Martin Luther King Jr. Junior High School in Sacramento, about 150 of the school's 885 students spend five of their six class periods on math, reading and gym, leaving only one 55-minute period for all other subjects.

About 125 of the school's lowest-performing students are barred from taking anything except math, reading and gym, a measure that Samuel Harris, a former lieutenant colonel in the Army who is the school's principal, said was draconian but necessary. "When you look at a kid and you know he can't read, that's a tough call you've got to make," Mr. Harris said.

The increasing focus on two basic subjects has divided the nation's educational establishment. Some authorities, including Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, say the federal law's focus on basic skills is raising achievement in thousands of low-performing schools. Other experts warn that by reducing the academic menu to steak and potatoes, schools risk giving bored teenagers the message that school means repetition and drilling.

"Only two subjects? What a sadness," said Thomas Sobol, an education professor at Columbia Teachers College and a former New York State education commissioner. "That's like a violin student who's only permitted to play scales, nothing else, day after day, scales, scales, scales. They'd lose their zest for music."

Not only a limited number of subjects but too many tests:

Standardized Tests Face a Crisis Over Standards

NEVER has the nation's education system been so reliant on standardized tests and the companies that make them. Thanks to the federal No Child Left Behind Law, this year, for the first time, every student from third to eighth grade and one high school grade must take state tests. That is about 45 million tests to be graded annually and it does not even include all the standardized tests now required for professional certification, or the SAT, ACT, AP, GRE exams, to name a few.

Last week was not a good one for the half-dozen companies that dominate the testing industry. Pearson admitted that it had incorrectly scored thousands of the College Board's SAT tests. The Educational Testing Service agreed to pay $11.1 million to settle a class-action suit brought on behalf of 4,100 people who were told that they had failed a teacher licensing test when they had actually passed. And in New York, new seventh- and eighth-grade tests developed by McGraw-Hill included several questions from practice tests that were mistakenly used again on the real tests.

Test officials say that it was just a bad week and that mistakes are few, considering all the tests given.

I wonder if our British cousins face similar problems:

Exams cut by third as stress on pupils soars

Anushka Asthana, education correspondent
Sunday March 26, 2006
The Observer

The true level of pressure facing children was laid bare last night as Britain's most senior exams official admitted pupils faced a huge and excessive exam load that had distorted the balance of what was taught in schools.

Ken Boston, chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), said he was determined to reduce the number of tests that pupils in England and Wales are forced to sit. He also admitted, however, that it was time to raise the standard of exams, with new higher-level grades and harder exams for the brightest students.

'The assessment load is huge,' Boston said. 'It is far greater than in other countries and not necessary for the purpose. We are pushing for the overall burden of assessment to be reduced.'

Colleges and schools could see the exam load fall quite quickly. By 2009, A-level students will spend up to a third less time in the exam hall. The QCA plans to cut the time spent in the exam hall from 10.5 hours to a maximum of seven hours. Students will sit four papers over the two years rather than six.

That, argued Boston, would allow room for longer, essay-style questions that would pick out the most talented.

It would also reduce the stress for students facing competitive exams in four out of their five final years at school, he added. 'We need to look critically at the assessment regime,' said Boston. 'Assessment for learning is critical but stacks of [tests] can distort the balance of the curriculum and put too much emphasis on what is examined. I think this has been happening.'

Boston will make his points on Wednesday, when the QCA publishes its annual review. He stressed that he was not 'anti-assessment' and believed in measuring performance, but felt the excessive exam load had forced teachers to focus too heavily on tests.

For many, the announcement could not have come sooner. Chris Keates, the general secretary of the teaching union the NASUWT, said: 'We don't need Ken Boston to tell us the problem; we need Ken Boston to deal with it. We have been raising concerns about the enormous assessment burden on schools for a number of years.'

James Marshall, head of English at the independent Shrewsbury School, said it was a welcome U-turn. 'The obsession with a culture of targets, bite-sized modules and endless re-testing hasn't benefited anyone. I would welcome any reforms that reduce the amount of needless testing in schools.'

A welcome U-turn indeed!

The Patience of Job

Redirecting Bullets in Baghdad

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: March 26, 2006

I GOT back to Iraq two weeks ago, having been away more than a year. The first story I covered began with a tip that vigilantes had hanged four suspected terrorists from lamp posts in Sadr City, a Shiite slum. The minute I got to the scene, I realized I was stepping into a new Iraq. Another new Iraq, really; maybe even the third Iraq I have seen since I began reporting here in 2003.

Gone were the American tanks that used to guard the intersections. Instead, aggressive teenagers with machine guns and shiny soccer jerseys ruled the streets. They poked their heads into cars and detained whomever they wanted. There were even 8-year-olds running checkpoints, some toting toy pistols, others toting real ones. Whatever they carried, 4-foot-tall militias made me nervous. The streets now had a truly Liberian feel.

The episode was oddly symmetrical with a moment in 2004 when mobs in Falluja swarmed four American contractors and hung the bodies from a bridge. But there were a few big differences. For one, this wasn't Falluja, angry heart of the insurgency. This was Baghdad. And these weren't Americans dangling from rope. They were Sunni Arab Iraqis.

I had thought Iraq might be getting quieter. Fewer mortars were sailing into the Green Zone, where the Americans are based, and fewer suicide bombings were disrupting the morning rush. Even the airport road, the most dreaded strip of asphalt in the world, was doing better. It had been repaved and was flowing with traffic.

But soon I caught on. The violence had not declined. It had just turned inward. No longer was most of it pointed at the Americans, either directly or indirectly, as it had been during the invasion and when the insurgency exploded in 2004. Back then, if G.I.'s were not the targets, their helpers were — the Iraqi police, regional governors, Kurdish leaders, foreign civilians, anyone remotely connected to the "occupiers."

It's true that American soldiers are still dying, but the focus of the bloodshed has changed.

The day after that mob scene in Sadr City, bodies started showing up, first a couple and then dozens. By conservative counts, nearly 200 civilian men have been executed in the past two weeks and dumped on Baghdad's streets. Many have been hogtied. Some have had acid splashed on their faces. Others have been found without toes, fingers, eyes.

Granted, Baghdad is no stranger to the corpse. There were assassinations two years ago, when an entire intellectual class was being wiped out.

But this new wave of executions was different. It was more sadistic and less selective. These people weren't rounded up because they were important. They were tortured and killed simply because of their religion. And because most of them were Sunni Muslim Arabs, there was no response from the Shiite-led government.

Mass murder used to provoke some form of official reaction, however feeble. I remember seeing the Iraqi police seal off areas after big bomb attacks and poke around for evidence. Now, there are major crimes with no crime scenes. Very few of these mystery killings have been investigated, and it isn't for lack of witnesses. Many of these men were abducted in daylight, in public, in front of crowds.

Not enough can be said about the attack on a Shiite shrine in Samarra last month. That explosion opened a cycle of revenge that seems to have split modern Iraqi history. There is before Samarra and after. Before Samarra, many Iraqis tried to play down Sunni-Shiite tensions. Since Samarra, they live in mortal fear of them.

If this all sounds depressing, it is. That's how people here feel. I've been looking hard, but in two weeks I haven't found an Iraqi optimist. In the summer of 2004, I profiled a band of young artists who braved dangerous roads to get away from Baghdad and paint pretty pictures of the Tigris River. Now, they're homebound. There is a similar sense of newfound hopelessness in the faces of the Iraqis I work with.

"I'm optimistic" George Bush has never had the facts of any situation under good control. No wonder he's been a failure in every business enterprise he's ever entered.

That ought to sober everyone as we enter hurricane season 2006 (since the last one was such a smashing success) and pandemic flu waits in the wings (as it were.)

How many thousands of people do we have living in the Gulf in those FEMA trailers that aren't safe in another hurricane? How long are we willing to pile tragedy upon tragedy?

Nearly damn forever, it seems.

Naughty or Nice?

When I taught Civics, I used just such an example of how the law hasn't kept up with technology, and it's nice to see that the Roberts Court didn't dissappoint me. The problem is that they haven't solved the problem, just dodged it.

What's Obscene, Anyway?

by Alex Koppelman
March 22, 2006

With just four words - "the judgment is affirmed" - the Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear Nitke v. Gonzales. Those four words may be the most important Internet purveyors of sexual content hear for quite some time.

Even in our federal system of government, the law concerning obscenity is a legal oddity. A photograph that in New York would be considered protected speech under the First Amendment could in Alabama be considered obscene, making the photographer and distributors subject to felony charges. That's a consequence of the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 case, Miller v. California, in which the court ruled that obscenity was essentially a subjective judgment, and called for prosecutors, judges and juries to apply "community standards" in determining what speech was obscene and what was protected. In the age of the Internet, a new issue has been raised - if something considered free speech in New York is accessible in Alabama, where it's considered obscene, what standard should be used? By rejecting the case, the Supreme Court has left that question open.

"We have this Balkanization under the 1st Amendment in regards to sexual speech," says John Wirenius, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the case. "It's the only part of the 1st Amendment where there's no national standard. In obscenity alone, material can be free and protected in 49 of 50 states, but in one portion of one state it can be considered obscene and you can be prosecuted."

The case was brought by Barbara Nitke, a photographer whose work often focuses on sexual matter, including so-called "deviant" acts such as sadomasochism. Nitke, who is president of the world-renowned Camera Club of New York and a faculty member of the School of Visual Arts, sued the federal government in late 2001, arguing that the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provides federal penalties for distributing obscenity to minors through the Internet, was an unconstitutional violation of her First Amendment rights because it made her fear prosecution for publishing her work on the Internet. The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, an activist organization dedicated to "[advancing] equal rights of consenting adults who practice forms of alternative sexual expression," joined Nitke in the suit.

Nitke's suit argued that the Miller standard, developed in a world without the Internet, when artists could choose to whom they wanted to distribute their content, shouldn't be applicable in today's society, when anyone with an Internet connection could conceivably access work considered obscene in their community.

"We were saying that the Supreme Court should not apply the Miller test in a mechanistic way to the Internet," says Wirenius, "because unlike other means of communication - telephone calls, movies, books, which were individually sent through the mail - you know you're choosing to do business with Memphis, Tennessee. The Internet is all or nothing. You can't post for people in San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York, Chicago, without posting to everyone."

Because the CDA is a federal law, federal prosecutors have the luxury of choosing where to bring obscenity charges - the logical choice, of course, is a community less permissive of sexual speech. Unsurprisingly, then, Wirenius says, "the government, in bringing obscenity prosecutions, has historically chosen more conventional, more religious, communities

In their appeal to the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs were challenging a July 2005 decision by a panel of three U.S. district court judges from the Southern District of New York. That decision did not, the judges wrote in their opinion, "reach the issues of whether some of the works that plaintiffs present as examples of chilled speech would be protected by the ... Miller test [or] whether current technology would enable plaintiffs to control the locations to which their Internet publications are transmitted." Instead, it focused on a failure by the plaintiffs to present enough evidence of what material existing on the Internet might be considered obscene in some communities but not in others.

The example I used with my students was what if I decided to establish a web site for my family members for my kids and placed pictures of them bathing together on there and someone stumbled across it by accident and thought they were obscene. Could I be arrested based on community standards if the pictures weren't considered obscene in Raleigh but in the community where they were viewed? The students argued, before looking at Miller, that no I shouldn't be arrested, though under the Miller case it was possible if someone wanted to push it.

By placing the burden on the plantiff to define what is obsence on the Internet, they made it nearly impossible for them to prove their case. This is a real blow for the 1st Amendment, and it really highlights many of the real legal problems that instant communication brings. Sure, I don't want my children pulling up many of those porn sites out there, even when they are old enough to understand what is going on. There are ways I can lessen the chances of that happening though, through training and oversite of the computer (at least when they are at home). I don't need the government coming in to help me take care of them... that's not their job (though providing a better infrastructure wouldn't hurt them any). I just hope that we as a society make the correct choices on what to do and don't pander to the most restrictive people and interpretations of the law.

Our Rosy Economy and Related Short Lies

When lies become reflex, you know an alcoholic is near bottom.

Iraqis in Tal Afar question Bush's optimism

REUTERS

10:16 a.m. March 24, 2006

TAL AFAR, Iraq – U.S. President George W. Bush held up the northern town of Tal Afar this week as an example of progress being made in Iraq but many residents find it hard to share his optimism. .... But more than a dozen local people who spoke to a Reuters reporter on Friday said they had little faith in the future of their town, where the offensive fuelled sensitivities in an ethnically and religiously mixed region.

Sunni Turkmen Rafat Ahmed, 35, a shop owner said: 'As I'm talking now the Americans and the Iraqi army are surrounding my neighbourhood. If we leave our houses we could be arrested.'

The town's population of some 250,000 is dominated by Turkish-speaking ethnic Turkmen, about half Sunni Muslims and half Shi'ites. Most of the remaining 20 percent are Sunni Arabs.

The deployment last year of Iraqi troops, who were widely perceived locally as Shi'ite Arab outsiders, prompted the Sunni mayor of Tal Afar to tender his resignation in protest at what he described as a sectarian operation. The involvement of ethnic Kurdish forces was also a source of tension, local people said.

'Anyone who says Tal Afar is good and safe actually knows nothing because the reality is we are unsafe, even inside our houses, because we don't know when we'll be arrested,' said pensioner Abdul Karim al-Anizi, 60, a Shi'ite Turkmen

Some of the anger is being directed back at the U.S. forces that pushed out the militants.

'The situation in Tal Afar is deteriorating and the smell of death is everywhere. People never know why they are killed. They only know that the Americans are the cause of their agonies,' said Hussein Mahmoud, a Shi'ite Turkmen university professor.

I suspect that "knowing why you are killed" is fairly cold comfort. The fact that a lot of killing is going on gives the lie to W's sunny optimism about Iraq and Tal Afar. I listened to that speech with my jaw hanging open. He really is the Boy in the Bubble if he believes even half of what he speechified about this week.

Iraq is going to hell in a handbasket, the "economy" is in shards for anybody who isn't in the top 20% and Bush sees daisies and sunsets. Life is always great if you're the dim son of wealthy dynasty in America. For those who have millionaire families who can bail them out every time they fail, I'm sure things are fine. For the rest of us, it ain't so good. If you are a jobseeker over 45, good luck

The Ultimate Burger

I learned this recipe from The Food Network's Alton Brown. I was extremely skeptical: it was too simple. I was wrong. This is the ultimate burger. The only change I make is to add an ounce of bourbon, which makes it even moister.

Put the pepper and any other finishing touches on the finished burger. This pristine patty is worthy of tasting on its own. It's for four.

The Ultimate Burger

8 ounces chuck, trimmed, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
8 ounces sirloin, trimmed, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

In separate batches, pulse the chuck and the sirloin in a food processor 10 times. Combine the chuck, sirloin, and kosher salt in a large bowl. Form the meat into 5-ounce patties and don't handle them any more than you have to, it makes the meat tough

Heat a cast iron skillet or griddle over medium-high heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Place the hamburger patties in the pan. For medium-rare burgers, cook the patties for 4 minutes on each side. For medium burgers, cook the patties for 5 minutes on each side. Flip the burgers only once during cooking.

The buns should be toasted, use the bakery ones, not the ones in the factory packages. I prefer my burgers on the grill or in a grill pan with the buns toasted along side.

If you don't have the space for a grill, get a good grill pan. What they do for meat is nearly magical. I don't care for sauteed meat cooked in its own grease, I want the taste of the fire and the meat itself. This one works great. I use this one. It's easy to clean and doesn't leave my food drowning in fat.

While I'm a fairly minimalist cook and don't use a lot of gadgets, I cannot live without the Cuisinart basic machine that I've used for more than 20 years. This thing holds up to daily use and justifies the space it takes up on my tiny counter top. I use it for everything from chopping sauces to pureeing soups to making bread to processing the veggies I freeze or can from the farmers' market. It is as basic to my method as a fork, and it kneads bread like a champ. My scratch pasta recipe starts in the Cuisinart and my pesto is done in five minutes with it. 20 years of nearly daily use and I've never replaced so much as a blade. These things are BUILT.

No, I don't get a buck from Cuisinart, Inc., to say that, but the adstrip is over on the right if they want to buy one. This is simply something I find essential as a cook. And this recipe is so good that I had to tell you about it.

A good food processor is an investment in many years of happy cooking and eating.

The Queen of Sandwiches

When I moved to Boston from Minneapolis for grad school in 1978, I was in for a set of linguistic complexities around food that took me work to figure out. Back home we called it "pop," in eastern Mass it was soda. I take cream and sugar in my coffee, in Boston, it's regular sweet, or sweet and light. In all of the neighborhoods near where I lived, a submarine sandwich (or "hoagie") was a "grinder." It took me months to figure out that these were one of the best deals in the city: for a couple of bucks, I could get a sandwich that would last me at least a couple of meals. Not to mention learning the ways around the local Yiddish in the kosher delis of my neighborhood in Brookline, but that's another post. This one is about sandwiches, long sandwiches on crusty rolls. This one is Boston style:

Grinder

1. Start with a long loaf or roll of light, crusty bread (the type that must be bought fresh and keeps only a day or two). Split the loaf so that it has a shallow top and a deeper bottom. Then deepen or widen the bottom (you can cut in a "V" and pull out the bread in the middle, or score once and flatten to make a broad base).

2. If you like mustard, start by spreading that on the base.

3. Then layer thin slices of meat (any type of salami or mortadella/bologna). Follow with thin slices of provolone cheese. Finally, top with thin slices of tomato.

4. Chop fine any/all of these: lettuce, garlic dills, raw onion, hot pepperoncini, black olives. Sprinkle generously on the sandwich.

5. Top with a drizzle of olive oil or simple Italian dressing, oregano, and salt and pepper. Cap with top of loaf.

The word changes with the region:

"Ah, behold the notion of a grinder. What's a grinder? Bad question to ask... there's more names for a submarine styled sandwich than you could ever know, but "grinder" is one that's particular to most of Connecticut. In fact, I've found that most people out this way are more protective of their sandwich names than they are over the debate of Coke being "soda" or "pop". Which sandwich are you?

"Like I said, in Connecticut it's grinder, but this also extends to most of New England - rumor has it that some parts of California also call their foot long sandwiches this, but I can't say I've noticed. Maine goes a different way and calls it an Italian sandwich, but they are usually more concerned with lobsters anyway. In the southwestern most corner of CT, it's actually a wedge which comes from Manhattan, and is ironic to me seeing as the sandwich is not wedge shaped. The rest of New York thinks it's a hero, which I dispute because a grinder doesn't wear a cape. Pennsylvania claims it's a hoagie for reasons I can't begin to fathom. Floridians call it a Cuban sandwich... I never did like FL.

"New Jersey dubbed it a torpedo, as in "can one torpedo help clean up the coast line" I'm sure. I've also read that they refer to it as a zep, whatever that is. Given that they also made it illegal to pump your own gas, yet always seem to have understaffed stations, its obvious that they can find a way to screw up anything. And lastly, there's the south with the Poor Boy, or as the natives say, Po'boy. I've got no gripe with this one because some of the grinders that I had in New Orleans were phenomenal... their high quality of food overrides the screwed up name that they've given the sandwich, to be blunt.

Anyone know what a grinder is to the rest of the states? Just a submarine sandwich?"

It's a hoagie or a sub here, depending on who you talk to. What is it in your part of the world?

Posted by Melanie at 10:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Fun in the Afternoon

As you know, I'm a sucker for well designed finger sandwiches and love a well constructed high tea. This is an art worth learning. If you can find or organize a great high tea, you can completely disarm a client with a cultural experience they probably haven't had before. Make this late afternoon habit a place to woo prospects or interview potential employees. It's charming, skips the alcohol and, when well done, subs for a light, early dinner while providing an atmosphere which is much less formal than a structured business lunch or dinner. Do it for friends who have never been to one and you'll be thanked eternally.

The food needs to be light. This recipe fills the bill.

Cuke-with-a-Kick Finger Sandwiches

1 cucumber
4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
3 scallions, minced
3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
1 tablespoon red horseradish (or white if you can't find red)
Large pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon dried mustard
Several grinds of black pepper
10 slices very thin white bread (recommended: Pepperidge Farm)

Peel the cucumber, halve it, de-seed and slice it very, very thin. Lay the cucumber slices out on a sheet of paper towel and cover them with a second sheet. Let stand until the paper towels soak up the cucumber slices' liquid, about 15 minutes.

Mash the butter, scallions, dill, horseradish, mustard, salt and pepper together in a small bowl until well blended. Remove crusts on ten slices of bread. Spread 5 of the bread slices with half of the dill butter, then top the butter with a layer of cucumber slices—it's fine if they overlap a little bit. Spread the remaining butter over the remaining bread and top the sandwiches. Cut each sandwich into 4 pieces.

To de-seed cukes, start with young ones. They are milder and the seeds easier to remove. After halving the fruit, gently drag the point of a teaspoon along the seed bed. Until you acquire the touch, this may need a couple of passes. You want to remove the gelatinous seed bed without taking out any of the meat below. This technique will give you the tenderest sandwiches with no bitterness.

Empty Headed Ditz

Blitzer played a clip of Larry King's interview with Laura Bush which will be on King's program later tonight. I never watch him because he's almost the worst interview in the MSM (just behind Kyra Phillips) but this quote hit me in the head like a horseshoe:

LAURA BUSH, FIRST LADY: It's very difficult to watch on television and see the loss of our soldiers in Iraq and to get the idea that the Iraqis don't care, that they don't want us there, that it's a sacrifice they don't respect or regard.

I do think they do. I think the people in Afghanistan -- I know the people of Afghanistan, from when I have been there, say: "Don't leave. You know, don't leave us yet. Let us build our democracy. Let us get all of the institutions of -- of democracy into place before you go."

There are many, many countries that want the help of the United States, and that get the help of the United States. And I hope the American people can feel proud of that.

Gee, Mrs. Bush, would you please tell us which countries want to be carpet bombed, killing thousands of military and civilians, none of whom ever threatened your country? Which ones want to have their electricity cut to hours a day? Which want to have their prinicipal economic product disrupted? Which will enjoy having a 150,000 armed foreign soldiers who don't understand or care about your culture, history or historical sites and won't hesitate to bust any or all of those up? Which would willingly invite a 60% unemployment rate? Can Laura be that stupid? She expects gratitude out of the Iraqis? What did Ahmad Chalabi give her to smoke?

More Broken Promises

FEMA Abandons Pledge on 4 No-Bid Contracts

by HOPE YEN
The Associated Press
Friday, March 24, 2006

WASHINGTON -- FEMA has broken its promise to reopen four multimillion-dollar no-bid contracts for Hurricane Katrina work, including three that federal auditors say wasted significant amounts of money.

Officials said they awarded the four contracts last October to speed recovery efforts that might have been slowed by competitive bidding. Some critics, however, suggested they were rewards for politically connected firms.

Acting FEMA Director R. David Paulison pledged last fall to rebid the contracts, which were awarded to Shaw Group Inc., Bechtel Corp., CH2M Hill Inc. and Fluor Corp. Later, the agency acknowledged the rebidding wouldn't happen until February.

This week, FEMA said the contracts wouldn't be rebid after all. In fact, they have been extended, in part because of good performance, said Michael Widomski, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"They are continuing the work," Widomski said, and the agency is now focused on competitive bids for disaster relief contracts for the next hurricane season beginning June 1.

"We looked at the lessons learned from Katrina," Widomski said. "We're painstakingly looking at what best fits the needs of disaster victims and taking bids for future work."

An additional $1.5 billion in work promised to small businesses also has yet to be awarded.

A review by the Government Accountability Office of 13 major contracts said last week the government had wasted millions of dollars, due mostly to poor planning by FEMA. Among the 13 were three of the four no-bid contracts for temporary housing, worth up to $500 million each, that went to three major firms with extensive government ties.

The preliminary review did not address the validity of no-bid contracts issued right after the Aug. 29 storm. The fourth housing contractor, the Shaw Group, was not included in the audit.

The Shaw Group's lobbyist, Joe Allbaugh, is a former FEMA director and friend of President Bush. Bechtel CEO Riley Bechtel served on Bush's Export Council from 2003-2004, and CH2M Hill Inc. and Fluor Corp. have done extensive previous work for the government.

The companies have denied political connections played a factor.

Any Democrat that is serious about leading needs to demand an independent investigation NOW and continue to push for one until it comes up. If these comapnies are doing such a hot job as FEMA wants us to believe, then why does this headline not shock me?

Firm backs out of flooded car pact

Thursday, March 23, 2006
By James Varney
The Times-Picayune

Faced with mounting questions about its pending contract with New Orleans to remove thousands of flood-wrecked cars from the city, a prominent national engineering firm backed out of the proposed deal Wednesday.

he company, CH2M Hill, which is headquartered in Denver but has had a New Orleans office for 10 years, said the controversy over the deal was one factor in its decision. But the main reason, company officials said, was a growing sense that the problem could be solved for less than the $23 million city administrators said they would spend on the CH2M Hill contract.

That figure is substantially more than the bids other companies submitted in response to the city's emergency request in October, according to records. And the protracted negotiations unfolded this week against a backdrop of car-crushing companies revealing they offered to pay the city $100 or more per car in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when an estimated 30,000 ruined vehicles clogged city streets -- a potential windfall of $3 million or more. Critics, including some City Council members, asked why the city would pay for a service when instead it could collect millions in revenue and get the cars removed.

Steve Mathies, a CH2M Hill vice president and manager of its Louisiana operations, said the company's offer was not etched in stone, and reports that its charges would approach $1,000 per vehicle were incorrect. While the engineers in the company's Poydras Street office were "scratching their heads" about how competitors proposed to do the job for much less, and Mathies said the company still believed its comprehensive price was fair, it also concluded the environment surrounding the project had turned sour for CH2M Hill.

"We can do the math," he said. "If something is better for the city of New Orleans, if there's a better way to do this, we're willing to back away and let the city explore other avenues."

Actually, it's so we can get out with fat pay checks without having to do a thing. It looks like a common pattern with the Bush supporters. This article does a great job of showing how the costs grew over time and how well the company played the city and is trying to weasal its way out claiming they are waiting for "state contracts" instead of doing the job they've been expected to do.

Better yet, use some of those high paid consultants of yours to slap together some generic 20 sec spots on Republican Wasteful Spending for the Fall.

More SAT Bubbles

Talk about the gift that keeps giving!

SAT Problems Even Larger Than Reported

By KAREN W. ARENSON
Published: March 23, 2006

The College Board disclosed yesterday that the problems resulting from the misscoring of its October SAT examination were larger than it had previously reported.

In a statement, the organization said it discovered last weekend that 27,000 of the 495,000 October tests had not been rechecked for errors. It said that after checking those exams and one other overlooked set, it had found that 400 more students than previously reported had received scores that were too low.

A board official added that the maximum error was 450 points, not 400.

This is the third time in two weeks that the board, which administers the exam, has acknowledged that its earlier assessment of the problems was wrong. In its statement, the board also outlined steps it planned to avoid mistakes.

The disclosures prompted fresh criticism that the board had not been as forthcoming as it should have been in disclosing the problems promptly and in detail.

"Everybody appears to be telling half-truths, and that erodes confidence in the College Board," said Bruce J. Poch, vice president and dean of admissions at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. "It looks like they hired the people who used to do the books for Enron. My next question is what other surprise we're going to hear about next."

The board said two weeks ago that it had found scoring problems on the October SAT after two students requested in December that their tests be re-scored by hand. In the review, the board became aware of a more widespread problem.

It asked Pearson Educational Measurement, the large testing company that scores the exam, to rescore the October exams. As a result, the board found that 4,000 students had received understated scores and that 600 had overstated scores. The policy of the board is to change just scores that are too low. Pearson has said the errors resulted in part from too much moisture when it scanned the answer sheets to be graded by machine.

Last week, the board said 1,600 exams, separated for special processing because of security and other questions, had not been rescored. The board asked Pearson to rescore those tests. While awaiting that rescoring, the board asked Pearson to confirm again that all the October tests had been scored a second time. It turned out that they had not been.

Last weekend, the board said, Pearson informed board officials that 27,000 tests had not been "fully evaluated." Neither the board nor Pearson explained how or why those tests had been overlooked.

In rescoring the 27,000 tests this week, 375 were found to have scores lower than they should have been. The incidence of problems — 1.4 percent of the 27,000 — was significantly higher than in the first batch of problems, in which eight-tenths of 1 percent of the tests were misscored. An additional 18 misscored tests were found among the 1,600 separated from the rest of the October exams for special processing.

According to the board statement yesterday, the total number of students who received scores too low was 10 percent larger than it had reported before, approximately 4,400 rather than 4,000. The board said yesterday that 613 others had received scores higher than those they had earned on the three-part exam, which has a possible 2,400 points.

The vice president for public affairs at the board, Chiarra Coletti, said it would notify college admissions officers and high school guidance counselors last night through an "e-mail alert," and inform affected students today.

Pearson, one of the biggest players in the testing industry, has experienced other scoring problems. It started scoring the SAT last year.

In its statement yesterday, the board said Pearson would ensure that all answer sheets were "acclimatized before scanning" and would scan each answer sheet twice. Pearson will also improve its software to detect whether answer sheets have expanded because of humidity.

In addition, the board said Booz Allen Hamilton, the consultants, would conduct a "comprehensive review, with emphasis on the scanning process," over the next 90 days, and would recommend improvements.

Ms. Coletti said that she did not know how much the new procedures would cost, but that the test fee for the rest of this year would "certainly remain the same."

On the other hand, we are going to stick to everyone next year since we are such @#$^ ups that we can't get a scantron to work properly. It's a good thing that the testing board outsourced this job to professionals.

Hey Floridian teachers! How much do you want to be that your pay bonuses are going to be tied in with people like this? I can tell you that our seniors are very worried about this and quite angry. Maybe we have the begining of a parental revolt against these insane tests that only test how well you can take a test.

Florida Teachers

Fla. to Link Teacher Pay To Students' Test Scores

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 22, 2006

HIALEAH, Fla. -- A new pay-for-performance program for Florida's teachers will tie raises and bonuses directly to pupils' standardized-test scores beginning next year, marking the first time a state has so closely linked the wages of individual school personnel to their students' exam results.

The effort, now being adopted by local districts, is viewed as a landmark in the movement to restructure American schools by having them face the same kind of competitive pressures placed on private enterprise, and advocates say it could serve as a national model to replace traditional teacher pay plans that award raises based largely on academic degrees and years of experience.

Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has characterized the new policy, which bases a teacher's pay on improvements in test scores, as a matter of common sense, asking, "What's wrong about paying good teachers more for doing a better job?"

But teachers unions and some education experts say any effort to evaluate teachers exclusively on test-score improvements will not work, because schools are not factories and their output is not so easily measured. An exam, they say, cannot measure how much teachers have inspired students, or whether they have instilled in them a lifelong curiosity. Moreover, some critics say, the explicit profit motive could overshadow teacher-student relationships.

"Standardized tests don't measure everything in a child's life in school," said Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association, which is appealing the new pay policy to a state administrative judge. "We should take a look at the total education and not just what they can put on a bubble sheet."

The pay program approved last month by the Board of Education is mandatory and intended to ensure compliance with a 2002 Florida law requiring performance pay for teachers. The policy comes amid growing debate about the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), which Bush has put at the center of his school-restructuring plan.

The tests are already used to determine whether students pass or fail certain grades, and schools that test well, or better than the previous year, are rewarded with bonuses that are typically divided among teachers and staff, amounting in some cases to more than $1,000 a year.

........

The centerpiece of the new effort, known as E-Comp, requires all school districts in Florida to identify the top 10 percent of each variety of teacher and award them a 5 percent salary supplement. For an educator earning the average teacher salary in Florida of $41,578, that amounts to just over $2,000.

Controversy surrounds how that top 10 percent of teachers will be identified.

Those who teach FCAT subjects -- basically math and reading -- will be ranked exclusively according to how much their students have improved their scores over the previous year. Teachers will earn points when they advance their students from one level of proficiency to another.

Those who teach other subjects must also be ranked according to "objective" measures that the districts are supposed to design. State officials overseeing those efforts are pushing to have teachers evaluated on test scores and other objective assessments, even for subjects such as music and art. A music test, for example, might involve playing a selection and asking students what type of music was played, officials said.

"We don't have all the answers today," Education Commissioner John Winn said when asked how music, art and special-education teachers will be evaluated. "But we will work with teachers to develop a system."

Although only the top 10 percent in each field will receive the 5 percent salary supplement, all public-school teachers in Florida will be affected by the new pay policy because their annual evaluations will rely "primarily" on "improved achievement by students," according to the new rules, a criterion that is expected to be often measured with standardized tests.

Shall I list all of the ways this is a disaster? Let's start with the obvious one... namely how do you get identified as top teacher.

Now, if you are judged by how much students improve, then there are two types of teachers that are going to be punished by this system.

First you have the teachers of the kids who do nothing. These are the ones who want a grade for simply registering a pulse (as Mr. Sutton used to say, "They believe that breathing successfully warrents a C."). You might be able to get some improvement if you can get them to do something. Now the critics of teachers would say that's your job, you are supposed to motivate them and you're right, but there are some kids that won't respond to anything. Heck, my student teacher threw snickers (tm) at my 4th period as part of a test review and 5 of them didn't even raise their heads.

Then you have those who teach the gifted kids. How much improvement is a 3rd grade teacher going to get out of students that are already reading at a 4th or 5th grade level, especially if they stick closely to their subject matter? If I thought that Florida was going to spring for two tests, one to test the kids before and one afterwards, I might feel better about this, but they aren't going to do that.

We aren't even touching on how you evaluate people like foreign languages or fine arts. And this is their solution??

Feeling Safer?

Secretary of Homeland Insecurity

Published: March 24, 2006

Sometimes it's hard to understand just how Michael Chertoff understands his title, secretary of homeland security. Take this week, when Mr. Chertoff appeared before executives of the chemical industry, whose plants remain one of the nation's greatest vulnerabilities more than four years after 9/11. Mr. Chertoff did not chastise the industry for failing to protect chemical plants adequately. He proposed weak federal safety standards. He did not even fully embrace a recently introduced bipartisan Senate bill that would create meaningful standards.

Instead, Mr. Chertoff seemed perfectly content to defer on key security matters to an industry that contributes heavily to Republican campaigns but has proved to be dangerously unwilling to take public safety seriously.

A terrorist attack on a chlorine plant could put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk. Yet, incredibly, the federal government has failed to enact reasonable safety standards for chemical plants. Despite all of the nice things the administration has been saying about the industry lately, it has not taken care of the problem on its own. Many plants lack perimeter fencing, lights and security guards. Too often, they use extremely dangerous chemicals close to high-density populations, when safer substances could be substituted.

It should be obvious to anyone concerned about public safety that the nation needs strong, mandatory government rules to reduce these dangers. Yet in his speech, Mr. Chertoff favored leaving crucial security decisions up to the chemical companies — a formula that puts too much weight on not inconveniencing industry, and too little on protecting the public.

Mr. Chertoff said requiring the industry to use safer chemicals would be "mission creep" — even though that would be precisely the kind of precautionary step that should be a core part of his department's mission. Mr. Chertoff also spoke approvingly of "pre-emption," the notion that if federal chemical plant safety rules are adopted, they should be written in a way that will invalidate tougher rules adopted at the state level. Pre-emption is high on the industry's wish list, but it is not in the public interest.

"Homeland security" is only for the robber barons, not for thee and me. But you knew that.

Right Here in River City

Red Cross Sifting Internal Charges Over Katrina Aid

By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: March 24, 2006

The American Red Cross, the largest recipient of donations after Hurricane Katrina, is investigating wide ranging accusations of impropriety among volunteers after the disaster.

John F. McGuire, the interim president and chief executive of the Red Cross, and Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said some of the actions might have been criminal.

The accusations include improper diversion of relief supplies, failure to follow required Red Cross procedures in tracking and distributing supplies, and use of felons as volunteers in the disaster area in violation of Red Cross rules.

There are no known official estimates of the cash or the value of supplies that might have been misappropriated, but volunteers who have come forward with accusations said the amount was in the millions of dollars. The Red Cross received roughly 60 percent of the $3.6 billion that Americans donated for hurricane relief. Mr. McGuire said the investigation started "a number of weeks ago" and was continuing.

"We're in the middle of this, and we're looking at a range of possible problems," he said, "from issues between a few people that are really nothing other than bad will, to failure to follow good management principles and Red Cross procedures that have caused a lot of waste, to criminal activity."

He said the organization would do everything in its power to hold wrongdoers accountable. "We need to bring this through to the proper and right conclusion," he said. "We owe that to donors and the people who needed our services."

Among the specific problems identified by volunteers were the disappearance of rented cars, generators and some 3,000 of 9,000 air mattresses donated by a private company, as well as the unauthorized possession of Red Cross computer equipment that could be used to add money to debit cards and manipulate databases.

Mr. McGuire said the investigation was being conducted by a team from the Red Cross ethics and compliance department. Because the inquiry is continuing, he said that he could not respond to specific accusations. When it is completed, he said, any finding of criminal activity will be turned over to the law enforcement authorities.
....
Willie A. Taylor, a volunteer from Michigan who owns a computer business, said he was part of a team that was asked to use a computer system to track every item from the time it was ordered until it was delivered to the end user.

He said the program revealed that roughly half of the "greenies," the requisition forms used to track supplies as they move through the system, could not be reconciled, meaning the supplies could not be accounted for.

"They asked me to do this," Mr. Taylor said, "we came up with a bulletproof process — and then they squashed it when it showed how big the problem was."

We're 67 days away from Hurricane Season 2006 and our disaster recovery system is deeply flawed and in trouble. I'm not feeling confident.

We really are on our own.

More Lies and Untruths

My wife forwarded this to me. There are some excellent links here.

Working Group on Community Right to Know E-Update

1. Report Shows Agencies Misleading the Public on Katrina

Government officials are providing inadequate safety information to citizens returning to New Orleans, according to a Feb. 23 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina deposited industrial byproducts in homes, yards, and schools across the region. State and federal agencies have assured returning residents that contamination levels in the city pose no "unacceptable" health risks, however the NRDC report, using EPA's own data, shows otherwise.

NRDC scientists analyzed hundreds of EPA soil samples from the New Orleans area. According to Dr. Gina Solomon, the NRDC scientist who oversaw the analysis, "It is stunning that the state's environmental agency can look at these results and say there's no problem. More than a third of the EPA samples in New Orleans had arsenic levels that exceed the Louisiana threshold level requiring an investigation or cleanup. Federal and state agencies have to clean up this toxic mess to ensure returning residents are safe."

.....

2. 100,000 Public Comments Against TRI Proposals (and counting!)

More than 100,000 people, according to preliminary estimates, have sent in comments opposing EPA's proposals that would relax chemical reporting requirements for large industrial facilities. The public comment period ended on Jan. 13, but comments are still coming in, according to EPA sources. EPA expects to issue a final rule sometime in Dec, but in the meantime, more and more lawmakers are taking notice.

On Feb. 23, Reps. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Hilda Solis (D-CA) hosted a Congressional Staff Briefing that showed how EPA's proposals would undermine first responder readiness, harm worker safety, interfere with state pollution prevention programs and hinder cancer research.

There are some excellent links there with far more information and ways that we can get involved. Please go over and take a look and pass it along to your friends.

A Few Small Steps

Propaganda and the Fear Factor(y)

by Gary Alan Scott
Published on Thursday, March 23, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

If you haven’t read George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World for awhile, now is a good time to pick them up and re-read them. I submit that American society today seamlessly blends the self-satisfaction of Huxley’s Soma with Orwell’s ubiquitous telescreens and the thought-control they engender. When people are afraid, they need the Soma all the more: fear produces anxiety and hysteria; Soma provides the escapism. It is a powerful 1-2 punch. In the remainder of this essay, I shall attempt to offer some antidotes to what is ailing American society today.

Here are a few steps people might take to liberate themselves from fear and propaganda:

1. Turn off the television!
Never forget this simple principle: The more television one watches, the more dangerous the world will seem to be. The author of the quote at the top of this article taught at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications for more than 30 years, and he believed that fearful people may even be lured to television precisely on account of their fear. Frightening images of house break-ins, car-jackings, murders, rapes, terrorists, viruses, natural disasters, and all manner of hysteria-producing hobgoblins have a seductive power to keep people watching and to keep people afraid, even paranoid.

2. Once one has taken this giant step, one may want to continue reading by digging into American history. I do not have in mind here the typical, sanitized history of the indoctrinating textbooks that present America as the shining city on a hill and its people as perpetually honorable innocents. I recommend instead some alternative histories that examine the underbelly of both our remote and recent past. I would recommend beginning with three books: WWII pilot and longtime Boston University professor, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States; then go on to William S. Greider’s Who Will Tell the People?; and finally, read M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival?. It may be interesting to explore a particular question, such as: How does a country’s rulers mobilize people (over and over again) to lay down their lives for some cause or other, while the rich and powerful are asked to make little or no sacrifice at all.

3. Take a course in self-defense.
I’m not talking about physical self-defense; I’m talking about intellectual self-defense, a self-defense course for the mind! Intellectual self-defense involves learning to think critically, to keep your eyes and ears open, and to flush those eyes and ears with a healthy dose of skepticism. If 100% or nearly 100% of media outlets are parroting the same line, saying the same thing about any issue, it is well to remember that even a small group of friends is likely to experience some disagreement on just about any issue, so why are all the pundits saying the same thing? Chances are, what you’re hearing is propaganda and spin.

4. Look beneath the surface.
Try to evaluate claims that people make. Learn to distinguish an assertion from an argument, a claim from proof, and learn to identify logical fallacies in what people say; then ask, Who benefits and who may be harmed? Dig into the matter and look for a reason, a warrant, a justification, and if you can’t find a convincing one, be skeptical. Don’t believe everything you hear. It will take much longer to be worn down by the constant repetition of the spin-meisters’ half-truths and outright falsehoods once one has turned off the television and cultivated a healthy skepticism.

Community Building And Bird Flu

Let me tell you this as you weigh your internal preparations for the upcoming hurricane and tornado season: there is no cavalry who will be riding to the rescue. Involve yourselves in your local EMS efforts if you want to have a say and bring in your neighbors.

When I was on an orchestra tour in Italy in 1980, one of our translators gave me a phrase I have found useful over the years. She said, "show up on time for your transfers or you will be 'da sola,' which means "on your own."

While we stockpile, I doubt that we really want to be "da sola," and this place has become a space to build community. Let's make sure that what we've started here spills over into our own networks.

I don't know what is going to happen with H5N1. What I do know is that I'm staring another possibly horrific hurricane season in the face. I'm prepping for weeks without power.

I'm having a terrible time getting my city council to pay attention and am working on the local newspaper editor, the council does listen to him.

Disaster preparedness has more than one face and nobody wants to look at it very much.

Bushisms

Former first lady's donation aids son

By CYNTHIA LEONOR GARZA
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
March 22, 2006

Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.

Since then, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

"Mrs. Bush wanted to do something specifically for education and specifically for the thousands of students flooding into the Houston schools," said Jean Becker, former President Bush's chief of staff. "She knew that HISD was using this software program, and she's very excited about this program, so she wanted to make it possible for them to expand the use of this program."

The former first lady plans to visit a Houston Independent School District campus using the Ignite program today to call on local business leaders to support schools and education.

The trip to Fleming Middle School is intended to showcase Bush's commitment to education for both Houston-area and New Orleans evacuee students, according to a press release issued Wednesday by Ignite.

Fleming, which has more than 170 New Orleans students, was one of eight area schools chosen by the Harris County Department of Education to receive a donated COW, or Curriculum on Wheels, multimedia program after Hurricane Katrina.

Neil Bush founded Austin-based Ignite Learning, which produces the COW program, in 1999.

Talk about chutzpah... I guess she figured no one would ask. Maybe the Red Cross just doesn't do enough of a good job. If you want more of a background on Neil's slush fund company check out some background information from Josh on them.

More Katrina Disaster

System makes storm cleanup cost more

Joby Warrick, The Washington Post
Mar 21, 2006

How many contractors does it take to haul a pile of tree branches? If it's government work, at least four: a contractor, his subcontractor, the subcontractor's subcontractor, and finally, the local man with a truck and chainsaw.
If the job is patching a roof, the answer may be five contractors, even six. At the bottom tier is a Spanish-speaking crew earning less than 10 cents for every square foot of blue tarp installed. At the top, the prime contractor bills the government 15 times as much for the same job.

For the thousands of contractors in the Katrina recovery business, this is how the system works -- a system that federal officials say is the same after every major disaster but that local government officials, watchdog groups and the contractors themselves say is one reason costs for the hurricane cleanup continue to swell.

"If this is 'normal,' we have a serious problem in this country," said Benny Rousselle, president of Plaquemines Parish, a hurricane-ravaged district downriver from New Orleans. "The federal government ought to be embarrassed about what is happening. If local governments tried to run things this way, we'd be run out of town."

Federal agencies in charge of Katrina cleanup have been criticized for lapses in managing the legions of contractors who do tasks ranging from delivering ice to rebuilding schools. On Thursday, Congress' independent auditor, the Government Accountability Office, said inadequate oversight had cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, by allowing contractors to build shelters in the wrong places or buy supplies that weren't needed.

But each week, many more millions are paid to contractors who get a cut of the profits from a job performed by someone else. In instances reviewed by The Washington Post, the difference between the job's actual price and the fee charged to taxpayers ranged from 40 percent to as high as 1,700 percent.

Consider the task of cleaning up debris. Just after the hurricane, the Army Corps of Engineers awarded contracts for removing 62 million cubic yards of debris to four companies: Ashbritt Inc., Ceres Environmental Services Inc., Environmental Chemical Corp. and Phillips and Jordan Inc.

Each of the four contracts was authorized for a maximum of $500 million. Corps officials won't reveal specific payment rates, citing a court decision barring such disclosures. But local officials say the companies are paid $28 to $30 a cubic yard.

Below the first tier, the arrangements vary. But in a typical case in Louisiana's Jefferson Parish, top contractor Ceres occupied the first rung, followed by three layers of smaller companies: Loupe Construction Co., then a company based in Reserve, La., which hired another subcontractor called McGee, which hired Troy Hebert, a hauler from New Iberia, La. Hebert, who is also a member of the state legislature, says his pay ranged from $10 to $6 for each cubic yard of debris.

"Every time it passes through another layer, $4 or $5 is taken off the top," Hebert said. "These others are taking out money, and some of them aren't doing anything."

Anyone who watched closely the "reconstruction" of Iraq knew this would happen. When Bush said he was "committed to rebuilding New Orleans" that was only as long as his buddies got a huge cut. It's a lot of waste, something I though "small government Conservatives" were against, and it's crippled the revitalization of the city.

The big question is how long the Democrats will go before calling this group of croooks out to the public and demand some accountability for this waste of taxpayers dollars.

A Preview of the Robert's Court

Roberts Dissent Reveals Strain Beneath Court's Placid Surface

By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: March 23, 2006

WASHINGTON, March 22 — A Supreme Court decision on Wednesday in an uncelebrated criminal case did more than resolve a dispute over whether the police can search a home without a warrant when one occupant gives consent but another objects.

More than any other case so far, the decision, which answered that question in the negative by a vote of 5 to 3, drew back the curtain to reveal the strains behind the surface placidity and collegiality of the young Roberts court.

It was not only that this case, out of 32 decided since the term began in October, provoked Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to write his first dissenting opinion. He had cast two earlier dissenting votes, and had to write a dissenting opinion eventually. And although there has been much commentary on the court's unusually high proportion of unanimous opinions, 22 so far compared with only 27 in all of the last term, few people expected that rate to continue as the court disposed of its easiest cases and moved into the heart of the term.

Rather, what was striking about the decision in Georgia v. Randolph, No. 04-1067, was the pointed, personal and acerbic tone in which the justices expressed their disagreement over whether the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches was violated when the police in Americus, Ga., arriving at a house to investigate a domestic dispute, accepted the wife's invitation to look for evidence of her husband's cocaine use.

The dueling opinions themselves were relatively straightforward; as has often been the case in the court's recent past, although not so far this term, the justices revealed their real feelings in the footnotes.

The Times does an excellent job of showing the new fault lines that have developed on the Court, with Justice Kennedy as the new swing vote. There is more excellent analysis here by Jeralyn on this case.

Rebasing their Faith

Grants Flow To Bush Allies On Social Issues

By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 22, 2006

For years, conservatives have complained about what they saw as the liberal tilt of federal grant money. Taxpayer funds went to abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood to promote birth control, and groups closely aligned with the AFL-CIO got Labor Department grants to run worker-training programs.

In the Bush administration, conservatives are discovering that turnabout is fair play: Millions of dollars in taxpayer funds have flowed to groups that support President Bush's agenda on abortion and other social issues.

Under the auspices of its religion-based initiatives and other federal programs, the administration has funneled at least $157 million in grants to organizations run by political and ideological allies, according to federal grant documents and interviews.

An example is Heritage Community Services in Charleston, S.C. A decade ago, Heritage was a tiny organization with deeply conservative social philosophy but not much muscle to promote it. An offshoot of an antiabortion pregnancy crisis center, Heritage promoted abstinence education at the county fair, local schools and the local Navy base. The budget was $51,288.

By 2004, Heritage Community Services had become a major player in the booming business of abstinence education. Its budget passed $3 million -- much of it in federal grants distributed by Bush's Department of Health and Human Services -- supporting programs for students in middle school and high school in South Carolina, Georgia and Kentucky.

Among other new beneficiaries of federal funding during the Bush years are groups run by Christian conservatives, including those in the African American and Hispanic communities. Many of the leaders have been active Republicans and influential supporters of Bush's presidential campaigns.

Programs such as the Compassion Capital Fund, under the Health and Human Services, are designed to support religion-based social services, a goal that inevitably funnels money to organizations run by people who share Bush's conservative cultural agenda.

"If what you are asking is, has George Bush as president of the United States established priorities in spending for his administration? The answer is yes," said Wade F. Horn, who as assistant secretary for children and families at HHS oversees much of the spending going to conservative groups. "That is a prerogative that presidents have."

Horn and other officials said politics has not played a role in making grants. "Whoever got these grants wrote the best applications, and the panels in rating these grants rated them objectively, based on the criteria we published in the Federal Register," he said. "Whether they support the president or not is not a test in any of my grant programs."

"These are just slush funds for conservative interest groups," countered Bill Smith, vice president of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, one of the most outspoken critics of abstinence-only sex-education programs. "These organizations would not be in existence if not for the federal dollars coming through."

H. James Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said politics plays no role in grant-making decisions. "We don't have that kind of calculation," he said.

To quote Cosby, "RRRRIIGGGGHHTTTT." Either Towey is an idiot or he believes that everyone reading this quote is one. Of course that calculation is made, that's a no brainer. There is even a Republican from Indiana who disputes this claim later in the article.

So, why aren't people speaking against this or is it that the majority of Americans don't care if this $157 million is spent on Conservative causes instead of more important problems?

No need to worry, right?

Dire Warning Not Urged for ADHD Drugs

AP Thursday, March 23, 2006

A federal advisory panel yesterday rejected recommending that popular drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder bear the strongest type of warning of the cardiovascular and psychiatric risks they pose.

The consensus move by the Food and Drug Administration's pediatric advisory committee leaves in doubt whether the agency will require the "black box" labels on the drugs, which include Ritalin. The panel, in recommending language on the labels that is easier to understand, broke with another committee that recommended last month that the drugs include the more dire warnings.

The pediatric advisory committee, without voting, did recommend adding more information to the labels for the benefit of doctors, patients and parents.

"I wouldn't use the word 'tougher,' " said the panel's chairman, Robert Nelson. " 'Clearer.' "

The agency is not required to follow the advice of its advisory committees but usually does.

Personally, I would prefer tougher. I would argue that more than 3.3 million kids under 19 are using these type of drugs.... the number is far larger and rather frightening. And that's not including the kids who "borrow" their friends drugs to experiment with them.

Bad Attitudes

Every physician I know complains about this and it has driven some of them out of the profession.

The Doctor Will See You for Exactly Seven Minutes

By PETER SALGO
Published: March 22, 2006

WHEN politicians speak of America's health care needs, they often miss an important point: the doctor-patient relationship has become frayed. Patients aren't unhappy just because health care costs too much (though they would certainly like it to be more affordable). Rather, people sense a malaise within the system that has eroded the respect they feel patients deserve.

There has been a shift in attitude within the profession. I see examples of it every day. I was making rounds in my intensive care unit recently when one of the interns presented a case. "This is the first admission for this 55-year-old male," he said.

"Stop," I said. "He is a man."

"That's what I said," the intern replied.

"Not exactly," I answered. Clearly, the intern didn't get it. Neither do a lot of other health care professionals anymore.

The problem has been sneaking up on us for almost two decades. As health-care dollars became scarce in the 1980's and 90's, hospitals asked their business people to attend clinical meetings. The object was to see what doctors were doing that cost a lot of money, then to try and do things more efficiently. Almost immediately, I noticed that business jargon was becoming commonplace. "Patients" began to disappear. They were replaced by "consumers." They eventually became "customers."

This may seem a trivial matter, but it is not. You treat "patients" as if they were members of your family. You talk to them. You comfort them. You take time to explain to them what the future may hold in store. Sometimes, that future will be bleak. But you assure them you will be there to help them face it.

You treat "customers" quite differently. Customers are in your place of business to purchase health care. You complete the transaction such a relationship suggests: health care for money. And then they aren't your customers any more. Taken a step further, you can make the case that the less time you spend with your customers, the better your bottom line will be. This gets everyone's attention.

Health care in this country (for those who can get it) is in deep trouble with the insurance companies dictating the way medical education is carried out.

Middle Class Crash

Will Your Job Survive?

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, March 22, 2006; Page A21

In case you've been worrying about how the war in Iraq will end, or the coming of avian flu, or the extinction of the universe as we drift into the cosmic void, well, relax. Here's something you should really fret about: the future of the U.S. economy in the age of globalization.

For a discussion of same, let me call your attention to an article in the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs by Princeton University economist Alan Blinder. The vice chairman of the Federal Reserve's board of governors from 1994 to 1996, Blinder is the most mainstream of economists, which makes his squawk of alarm all the more jarring. But the man has crunched the numbers, and what he's found is sure to induce queasiness.

In the new global order, Blinder writes, not just manufacturing jobs but a large number of service jobs will be performed in cheaper climes. Indeed, only hands-on or face-to-face services look safe. "Janitors and crane operators are probably immune to foreign competition," Blinder writes, "accountants and computer programmers are not."

There follow some back-of-the-envelope calculations as Blinder totes up the number of jobs in tradable and non-tradable sectors. Then comes his (necessarily imprecise) bottom line: "The total number of current U.S. service-sector jobs that will be susceptible to offshoring in the electronic future is two to three times the total number of current manufacturing jobs (which is about 14 million)." As Blinder believes that all those manufacturing jobs are offshorable, too, the grand total of American jobs that could be bound for Bangalore or Bangladesh is somewhere between 42 million and 56 million. That doesn't mean all those jobs are going to be exported. It does mean that the Americans performing them will be in competition with people who will do the same work for a whole lot less.
....
My own sense (which I develop at greater length in the April issue of the American Prospect) is that nothing short of a radical reordering of our economy will suffice if we're to save our beleaguered middle-class majority. Every other advanced economy -- certainly, those of the Europeans and the Japanese -- has a conscious strategy to keep its most highly skilled jobs at home. We have none; American capitalism, dominated by our financial sector, is uniquely wedded to disaggregating companies, thwarting unionization campaigns and offshoring work in a ceaseless campaign to impress investors that it has found the cheapest labor imaginable.

So, here are three immodest suggestions:

· We need to entice industry to invest at home by having the government and our public- and union-controlled pension funds upgrade the infrastructure and invest in energy efficiency and worker training.

· We need to unionize and upgrade the skills of the nearly 50 million private-sector workers in health care, transportation, construction, retail, restaurants and the like whose jobs can't be shipped abroad.

· And, if America is to survive American capitalism in the age of globalization, we need to alter the composition of our corporate boards so that employee and public representatives can limit the offshoring of our economy.

That failing, here come more divorce lawyers.

If we depopulate our middle class, we destroy our consumer class. American corporatism will devour itself when that happens.

Back to the Future

Hurricane season 2006 is 70 days away.

Evacuees' Lives Still Upended Seven Months After Hurricane

By SHAILA DEWAN, MARJORIE CONNELLY
and ANDREW LEHREN
Published: March 22, 2006

Nearly seven months after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans and forced out hundreds of thousands of residents, most evacuees say they have not found a permanent place to live, have depleted their savings and consider their life worse than before the hurricane, according to interviews with more than 300 evacuees conducted by The New York Times.

The interviews suggested that while blacks and whites suffered similar rates of emotional trauma, blacks bore a heavier economic and social burden. And even as both groups flounder, most said they believed that the rest of the nation, and politicians in Washington, have moved on.

"I don't think anybody cares, really," said Robert Rodrigue, a semiretired computer programmer who has returned to his home in the suburb of Metairie. "New Orleans is kind of like at the bottom of the country, and they just forget about us."

The Times study is the first major effort to examine the lives and attitudes of those displaced by the storm's devastation at the six-month point, a moment when many must decide whether to establish a life in a new place or return home.

Fewer than a quarter of the participants in the study have returned to the same house they were living in before the hurricane, while about two-thirds said their previous home was unlivable. A fifth said their house or apartment had been destroyed. Many have not found work and remain separated from family members.

Still, most of those interviewed favor returning to the city, expressing a sense of optimism about the recovery process or, more often, a fierce yearning for home, as if staying away from New Orleans were like trying to breathe air through gills.

The 337 respondents were chosen randomly from a Web database of more than 160,000 evacuees, sponsored by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was set up to help victims of the disaster reunite with their families. The interviews were conducted by telephone.

The Times used standard survey methods in asking the questions and recording the answers, but the interview project differs from a scientific poll. For one thing, the demographic characteristics of the full evacuee population cannot be determined, so the group cannot be sampled with the statistical precision of a poll. For that reason, no margin of sampling error could be calculated for the study, which was conducted from Feb. 16 to March 3.

Although the interviewees do not constitute a statistical sample, the racial makeup of the group, two-thirds black, was similar to that of the pre-hurricane population of the city. Those interviewed tended to be older and more predominantly female than the population as a whole.

The blacks interviewed were more likely to have had their homes destroyed or to have lost a close friend or relative. Although a majority of both blacks and whites left their homes before Hurricane Katrina hit, blacks were more likely to have been separated from family members.

And while a majority of whites and blacks reported that they had depleted their savings since the storm, blacks were more likely to have done so, and more likely to have been forced to borrow money. Whites were more likely to have kept their jobs or found similar or better employment, and were also more likely, by a wide margin, to have already returned to the New Orleans area.

A central question for New Orleans has been how much of its population would return, and 4 in 10 of those interviewed said they definitely or probably would. Another fourth were already back.

"New Orleans is in my blood; it's in my genes," said Jacob Mitchell, 67, a hospital maintenance man who is living for the time being with his daughter in Slidell, La. "It's like I'm married to New Orleans."

Of the rest of his family, scattered to four cities in three states, Mr. Mitchell said, "If they had a house to come back to, they'd be packing up tonight."

The subtexts I read into this story are several: all of our lives are much more fragile than we'd like to admit; our social systems are even more fragile; our sense of entitlement to live where we want to live is mostly illusory.

Social conservatives who don't understand how much of their lives are built on luck, rather than hard work, are living fictions.

Good News on the War On Terror

I hope this holds true.

Basque separatists declare ceasefire

Reuters
Wednesday, March 22, 2006

MADRID (Reuters) - Basque separatist group ETA on Wednesday declared a permanent ceasefire in its struggle for independence from Spain with effect from Friday, Basque newspaper Gara said on its Web site.

Gara is the group's usual vehicle for statements.

"ETA has decided to declare a ceasefire which will come into effect on Friday and will be permanent," Gara said in a special edition posted on its Web site www.gara.net.

A ceasefire would be the first step in a long-awaited peace process with ETA, which has killed 850 people since 1968 in its fight to carve an independent state out of northern Spain and southwestern France.

ETA, which is classed as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, previously declared a full ceasefire in September 1998. The group rescinded the ceasefire in December 1999.

Gara quoted a message from ETA saying its aim was "to move the democratic process forward in Euskal Herria (the Basque Country)."

It's hard to imagine a world where both the IRA and ETA use the political process instead of violence to affect change... but maybe something good has happened in this crazy world of ours.

...Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Learning to Love the Bomb

by William Greider

At the risk of damaging his reputation, I want to say a few words in praise of a New York Times reporter. David Sanger had a very smart piece in Sunday's "Week in Review" section titled "Suppose We Just Let Iran Have the Bomb." The President and Vice President continue to hint darkly that "all options" remain on the table until Iran surrenders its nuclear ambitions. Sanger punctured the unilateral bluster and never raised his voice.

That bold article required a reporter with considerable self-confidence--a rare quality these days, when most Washington reporters act like nervous bunny rabbits, always jumping out of the way. Sanger has an advantage. He understands the diplomatic complexities of nuclear proliferation--deeply, soberly--because he has been covering this story for many years. I surmise he has reached that sublime point in a reporter's career where he knows the subject far better than the passing-through "government officials" he covers.

Despite the "crisis" rumblings, Sanger coolly observes: "Some experts in the United States--mostly outside the administration--have been thinking the unthinkable, or at least the un-discussable: If all other options are worse, could the world learn to live with a nuclear Iran?"

The obvious answer is yes (especially if the only other option requires a second-front war in the Middle East). Iranians already seem to understand this. But do Americans?

It's time for a real public debate, Sanger suggests. He doesn't paint a happy picture as he lays out the new power equation of nuclear proliferation--Iran with the bomb becomes the dominant regional power in the Mideast--but he suggests the most plausible option may be "containment." Working out unsentimental relationships with Iran and other nuclear wannabes means terms that define clearly how far is too far to go. Muddling through sounds less satisfying than war-making, but it worked well enough during the decades of the cold war. At least nobody dropped the big one.

Having a real public debate and working things out is not on the Republican agenda. A tactical nuke strike on Iran may well be.

Stolen from Rome

I'm watching the Gilroy Garlic Festival (been there) Garlic cookoff on the Food Network. Here's my entry for next year's competition. This is for you if you really, really love garlic.

Garlic and Herb Fettucine Alfredo
For 6

2-16 oz. pkgs of fettucine (dried) or 24 oz. of fresh
6 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup evaporated skim milk
8 oz. finely grated Parmeggiano-Reggiano cheese
1/4 lb. unsalted sweet butter
scatter of freshly grated nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup finely chopped parsley
1 lb. fresh cremini mushrooms
2 Tbsp butter for sauting
the juice of a half lemon

Heat your oven to low, about 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Start hot salted water for cooking the pasta on the stove top in a pasta pot or dutch oven, uncovered. Oil the surface of the water to keep the starch from frothing.

While the stove is heating and the water is working toward a boil, coarsely chop the garlic on the cutting board or in a food processor. Use the pulse method to keep from turning it into paste. To the garlic, add the dairy products and pulse into a thick sauce. Add the parsley and mix, along with the salt, pepper and nutmeg. Blend. Turn the sauce out into the warmed serving dish and return to the oven.

When the pasta water boils, put the pasta into the water and cook according to the package directions. When you put the pasta into the water, slide the serving dish/platter into the slow oven to warm. While the pasta is cooking, saute the mushrooms in butter. When they are just beginning to throw off water, they are done. Remove them to a paper towel to drain and top with lemon juice.

When the pasta is al dente, drain it well but don't rinse it. Put the hot pasta onto the serving dish with the sauce and toss. The heat of the pasta will "cook" the sauce. Top the tossed dish with the sauteed mushrooms and bring to the table.

This is a recipe I adapted from the now out of print Metropolitan Museum Cookbook many years ago. The curator at the Met who contributed it says that they claim that it is cadged from Alfredo's in Rome. I don't know about that, but I have had the original, and this is a decent copy. I cut down on some of the fat, but this is not a low-fat version by any stretch of the imagination. Of all the things I cook, this recipe is the one repeat guests ask for the most.

You'll need to taste this before the sauce goes into the oven platter. I use no salt at all in my cooking and if you have a taste for it, my food will be bland to you.

Pass additional parmesan at the table.

The Big Disconnect

The Planet of Unreality

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, March 21, 2006; Page A17

This is not good. The people running this country sound convinced that reality is whatever they say it is. And if they've actually strayed into the realm of genuine self-delusion -- if they actually believe the fantasies they're spinning about the bloody mess they've made in Iraq over the past three years -- then things are even worse than I thought.

Here is reality: The Bush administration's handpicked interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, told the BBC on Sunday, "We are losing each day an average of 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. Iraq is in the middle of a crisis. Maybe we have not reached the point of no return yet, but we are moving towards this point. . . . We are in a terrible civil conflict now."

Here is self-delusion: Dick Cheney went on "Face the Nation" a few hours later and said he disagreed with Allawi -- who, by the way, is a tad closer to the action than the quail-hunting veep. There's no civil war, Cheney insisted. Move along, nothing to see here, pay no attention to those suicide bombings and death-squad murders. As an aside, Cheney insisted that his earlier forays into the Twilight Zone -- U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators, the insurgency is in its "last throes" -- were "basically accurate and reflect reality."

Maybe on his home planet.

With Gene Robinson, I wonder if they really believe this stuff or are cynically lying. If they believe it, then we are truly being ruled by psychopaths.

Predictable Disasters

The Clock's Ticking on Red Cross Overhaul
Mentality Shift Sought Before Hurricane Season

By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 21, 2006; A04

John "Jack" McGuire lives with a deadline.

As the interim chief of the American Red Cross, he has exactly 72 days until the onset of hurricane season, when changes in the organization -- forced by its uneven performance in last year's storms -- are supposed to be in place.

The giant charity has launched its biggest overhaul in decades after complaints about how it reacted to the epic hurricane season, criticism of its treatment of minority evacuees and unhappiness from Congress about how it governs itself.

In interviews last week, McGuire and Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, chairman of the Red Cross board of governors, defended the organization's performance but also outlined ambitious plans to revamp the $3 billion charity's disaster response in time for the new hurricane season.

Changes include redesigning how it gets cash to victims, partnering with more faith-based groups and revamping its system for moving supplies.

With Hurricane Katrina, McGuire said, the Red Cross's biggest sin was reacting based on its response to previous hurricanes.

"I hate to use the word 'failure' because, in fact, many of our people really did great stuff," McGuire said last week. But "we had a failure of imagination. We didn't think big enough."

As a result, McGuire, who has applied to get the Red Cross's top job permanently, has vowed to change the "we've always done it this way" mentality that prevails in parts of the 125-year-old organization.

To illustrate, McGuire waved his hand around in his office in the ornate marble Red Cross headquarters across from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

"Part of our culture is here in this room," he said, gesturing toward the formal furnishings, the stiff oil painting of founder Clara Barton over the fireplace and a 1951 poster advertising a Red Cross Cold War program.

Some critics are skeptical of Red Cross promises to improve, noting that it has made similar pledges before.

"It's like you're dealing with an active alcoholic," said Peter Dobkin Hall, a lecturer in nonprofit management at Harvard University. "They make all kinds of promises to change, and it doesn't happen because they're not willing to do the work."

But McElveen-Hunter said the organization is serious. "This is part of what we have to do and need to do to be more transparent and to be more open," she said.

We'll see. When I met with both Red Cross and NOAA/FEMA reps a couple of weeks ago, I was struck by their lack of urgency. For those of us in the risk assessment and mitigation business, I'm aware that we have some hard targets staring us in the face that we don't control: possible infectious disease pandemics and the first landfalling hurricane of the season. We don't have forever to get this right; we have a few months.

Very Interesting....

Economic Ties to Top Agenda at Hu-Putin Talks

By Mark Magnier, Times Staff Writer
March 21, 2006

BEIJING — When Yu Jia entered the China-Russia trading business more than a decade ago, the players were mostly grubby small-time merchants hauling suitcases across the border by train. The prospects looked so bleak, the former Russian language teacher recalls, that she had real second thoughts about giving up her secure job at the university.

Over the last decade, however, business has expanded rapidly even as its participants have computerized and become exponentially more polished and professional.

Yu, a manager at Hua Sheng International Transport Service, says business has expanded tenfold since 1996, with her company now shipping 18 truckloads and two planeloads of appliances, garments, shoes and accessories a week to Moscow, Vladivostok and other points north.

President Hu Jintao plays host to Russian counterpart Vladimir V. Putin in Beijing today, the fifth meeting between the two leaders in less than a year, and economic ties are high on the agenda.

Yu is on the front lines of a move to strengthen those ties, part of a goal to boost two-way trade beyond $60 billion by 2010 from $29.2 billion in 2005.

"In the past, the relationship between Beijing and Moscow was described as politically hot, but economically cold," said Jiang Zhenjun, professor at the Institute of Russian Studies at Heilongjiang University. "Without strong economic ties, it's hollow inside, a strategic relationship with no content. Building the economic base is a main focus."

Also binding the two are expanded political and military ties and shared discomfort with a world dominated by a single superpower, the United States.

On the economic front, a focal point of the two-day meeting will be energy. With the United States, Japan, China and other major energy consumers vying for supply, China has long salivated over an oil pipeline deal with its resource-rich neighbor.

This month, Russia's Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Nuclear Supervision signed off on a route for a 2,550-mile Siberian pipeline to the Far East.

Chinese analysts saw this as a good sign that Beijing's pipeline dreams might finally be realized after years of jockeying with Japan. Currently, Russian oil travels to China aboard rail cars, an inefficient and expensive proposition.

"The Japanese have largely retreated from this battle," said Cheng Jian, a professor in Russian studies at East China Normal University. "I think we've won."

In addition to oil, China will be looking for natural gas contracts, greater cooperation on nuclear power plants and expanded sales of Russian electricity to light up Chinese cities along their shared border.

I have no idea what to make of this except that we shouldn't let this slip off our radar while distracted with everything going on in the Middle East. Perhaps some of the Bumpers who know more about this than I can chime in.

Environmental Tipping Point

There are a couple of articles out recently, much like the one on the Artic Ice that describe what a precarious situation the environment is in. Now, no one will mistaken me for a rabid environmentalist, but it's clear that our leaders need to make serious efforts to preserve the environment instead of abusing it.

UN warns of worst mass extinctions for 65m years

David Adam, environment correspondent
Tuesday March 21, 2006

Humans have provoked the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65m years ago, according to a UN report that calls for unprecedented worldwide efforts to address the slide.

The report paints a grim picture of life on earth, with declining numbers of plants, animals, insects and birds across the globe, and warns that the current extinction rate is up to 1,000 times faster than in the past. Some 844 animals and plants are known to have disappeared in the last 500 years

Released yesterday to mark the start of a UN environment programme meeting in Curitiba, Brazil, the report says: "In effect, we are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of earth." A rising human population of 6.5bn is wrecking the environment for thousands of other species, it adds, and undermining efforts agreed at a 2002 UN summit in Johannesburg to slow the rate of decline by 2010. The global demand for biological resources now exceeds the planet's capacity to renew them by 20%.

This is pretty depressing to read. There is some good news though and many things that governments can do. The BBC has a good summary of what some of those things are.

The report stresses that despite the gloomy trends, the target set by the Convention - involving a stabilisation, not a reversal of these losses - is still within reach.

"Meeting the 2010 target is a considerable challenge, but by no means an impossible one," the GBO notes.

"Unprecedented additional efforts are needed, and these must be squarely focused on addressing the main drivers of biodiversity loss."

These "drivers" are identified as:

the loss of habitat, largely through the expansion of agriculture
climate change

the introduction of alien species which can badly disrupt ecosystems after being
carried across the world, often accidentally in ship ballast tanks

over-exploitation of wildlife, for example through overfishing

the build-up of nutrients through chemical fertilisers, sewage and air pollution

The great challenge in meeting the biodiversity target comes in the fact that these pressures are currently projected to remain constant or to accelerate in the near future - so slowing the extinction slide would involve major changes over wide areas of human activity.

In the jargon, this requires "mainstreaming" of biodiversity concerns into areas of policy well beyond the remit of the environmental officials and ministers from more than 180 countries meeting in the Brazilian city of Curitiba over the next fortnight.

I guess the question is where is the political will for this? Most of these would involve some significant change, but if there were targeted economic incentives to do it wouldn't many people be willing to change or am I being simpleminded?

Epoch B

I came to Washington in 1985 to take a job at temp place a friend offered when I was out of work and nearly out of a house. I stayed to get married, find work on The Hill, change jobs a half dozen times, and do the work I do now from my living room, no longer married.

The work of Bump is connecting you with the news you care about and with each other. Every comment you leave is a track in the sand to greater connectedness. This is the promise of the Internet and what I signed up for 20 years ago. In the best of all possible worlds, we get to build the best of all possible worlds. And that starts here, with you.

More rareties for those you love

When I was growing up, roasted beef was a Sunday treat we had once or twice a month. We didn't have a lot of money, but mom refused to buy crummy beef. When we ate it, she sought out butchers who knew what they were cutting and custom cut it for her.

Mom learned to make yorkshire puddings from Canadian friends, and they became part of the Sunday ritual. In British cooking, a single big pud would be portioned and served under the roast beef with horseradish sauce. Mom made them in individual muffin tins and passed the bread basket around the table. We'd slice them up with our beef, and the leftovers (beef and puds) found their way into my bag lunches on Monday and Tuesday (and, if the roast was big enough, Wednesday). Most things are better the second day.

If you are going to make the financial committment to a prime rib roast, this is the classic treatment to serve with it. Get the center cut of the ribs, like 5-9, for the tenderest beef. A good butcher can help you make the most of this pricey cut. Leave the ribs in and roast it standing up for the most flavorful treatment. Remove some of the tallow on the tenderloin side and give the whole thing a good rub of salt and pepper, that's all it needs. When it is finished roasting, let it rest for ten minutes. Remove the ribs in one piece (save for soup) and carve it against the grain.

On the side serve these flavorful beef popovers.

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
2/3 cup milk at room temperature
2/3 cup water at room temperature
3 large eggs
4 tablespoons roast beef pan drippings

In a bowl combine flour and salt. With a handheld mixer add the milk, in a stream, until smooth. Add water and eggs and beat until combined well and bubbly. Let stand, covered, at room temperature for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Divide drippings among eight muffin pan cups. Heat the cups in the oven until almost smoking. Beat batter until bubbly and divide among muffin cups. Bake 10 minutes in lower third of the oven without opening the oven door. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F and continue to bake for another 10 minutes until puffed, crisp and golden brown. Serve immediately.

Once the roast is resting before carving, turn up the heat in the oven and finish the puddings with the pan drippings you scavenged from the bottom of the roasting pan.

These are heavenly. Some of the best memories of my childhood are what was in the brown paper bag I carried to school everyday.

Food IS love, and that's why I share these memories with you.

Steak, Elevated

I learned about Demi-Glace Gold from my brother the chef. This is one of those things that professional chefs know about and we don't. Thanks to the internets, these professional ingredients are now available to the home cook. This is one that my kitchen is never without and my local grocery now carries it at my request (talk to your manager, they really DO want to know what you want.)

With this wonderful base, you can create reductions that would take a lot more sweat and time. Here's a favorite of mine, from their website, and doctored to my specs. I like this because you can make a classic butter sauce with 'way less butter. This ain't low fat but it is damn good. This is high-end restaurant quality.

Pan-Seared Steak with Cabernet Butter Sauce

* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* 4 6- to 8-oz. shell steaks, blotted dry
* 1/4 cup chopped shallots
* 3/4 cup good quality Cabernet Sauvignon
* 1 tablespoon Demi-Glace Gold + 1/2 cup hot water
* 4-5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
* 1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley, to garnish
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
* If desired (and I do), 2 cloves of garlic, halved

Procedure:

Heat a platter or plates in a slow oven. On the stove, heat a large cast iron skillet over high heat until very hot. Add olive oil and garlic until just browned, then remove and add the steaks, and sauté meat until desired doneness (2 minutes on each side for rare, 3 minutes for medium-rare).

Transfer steaks to oven and discard excess fat from pan. Sauté shallots in pan for 20 seconds, then pour in wine and diluted stock, stirring to incorporate all browned cooking bits into liquid. Boil liquid until reduced to 2 to 3 tablespoons.

Off the heat, whisk in butter a tablespoon at a time. Add chopped parsley. If desired, cut the steak into slices across the grain of the meat. Spoon sauce onto meat and serve.

This sauce is also terrific as a cracked peppercorn sauce. Add an 1/8th cup cracked peppercorns while you are reducing the sauce for a quick steak au poivre.

Me, I want mashed and piped Duchess potatoes with these, just barely browned under the broiler or salamandar, if you have one, and topped with butter and parsley.

I like barely wilted spinach with a balsamic vinaigrette on the side and a sprinkle of pine nuts.

This demi-glace will have you creating dishes that you thought were beyond the reach of the home cook. It is amazing stuff. Want to make a gravy for holiday meals that will have your friends and family begging for your secret? This is it. I never liked gravy and never ate it until Leigh started using this stuff. Now I look at the rest of a holiday meal as a way to convey gravy into my pie hole.

I always thought that any sauce on a steak was for wimps, unless it was bernaise. No more. This elevates pan drippings into something approaching the nectar of the gods.

Chill Chaser

The weather here is making a turn back into winter on the second day of spring: snow tomorrow and cold and raw the rest of the week, in spite of the fact that today was the first day of spring. With that thought in mind, I turn to heartier soups to chase the chill and damp. Lentil with sausage soup is one of my favorites and it is easy and relatively quick.

1 Tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, finely minced
1 medium onion, chopped
4 celery stalks, sliced
6 oz smoked sausage ( such as kielbasa), coarsely chopped and casing removed.
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
3 cups water
2 cups green lentils
1 strip (3 inches long) orange rind
1 tsp crumbled dried marjoram
1 tsp crumbled dried savory
3 carrots, peeled and sliced
3 potatoes, peeled and diced
salt and pepper
2 bay leaves

In large heavy saucepan, heat oil over medium heat; add onion and
cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add celery and sausage;
cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add stock, water, lentils, orange rind, marjoram, bay leaves and savory; bring to
boil. Reduce heat, cover partially and simmer for 30 minutes.
Add carrots and potatoes; cover partially and simmer, stirring
occasionally, for 35 minutes or until lentils are tender. Discard
orange rind and bay leaves. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

This is a favorite lunch dish for me, served with crusty artisanal bread and herbed olive oil. With a pot of hot tea, it will chase the chills right out of your bones.

You can make this as a lentil side dish by halving the water and broth and using only one bay leaf. It will take about 90 minutes to cook down, uncovered, on low heat (not above a simmer.)

Diebold Anticts

Whistle-Blower or Thief in Diebold Case?

By Hemmy So
Times Staff Writer
March 18, 2006

A whistle-blower to some, a thief to others, Stephen Heller says he's a regular guy, not an activist or a member of any political group.

But charged last month in Los Angeles with three felonies for allegedly stealing damaging documents about voting machine manufacturer Diebold Election Systems, Heller has become a hero to digital rights and political activists who say he helped expose a threat to the election system.

My wife would never describe me as someone on the front lines of anything, and I wouldn't either," Heller said in a recent interview. "I'm not politically active except I've voted since I was 18."

Prosecutors say Heller, a 43-year-old actor and resident of Van Nuys, took more than 500 pages of Diebold-related documents, including memos from the company's attorneys at the Jones Day law firm. The memos suggested that the company might have broken state law by providing Alameda County with voting machines that had not been certified by the state.

"This case is not about whistle-blowing. It's about theft of attorney-client privileged material from an attorney's office," Los Angeles County district attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said.

But activists and bloggers — including the California Voter Foundation; Black Box Voting, an electronic voting group; and the liberal http://www.huffingtonpost.com website — say the purloined documents, some of which turned up on the Oakland Tribune website, helped spur a state crackdown on Diebold.

"People should be thanking Stephen Heller because ultimately he helped our secretary of state stop illegal acts by Diebold," said Cindy Coen, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group based in San Francisco.

Heller has pleaded not guilty to three counts of felony access to computer data, commercial burglary and receiving stolen property.

Although state law protects whistle-blowers from retaliation by employers, it does not preclude criminal prosecution.

.......

Heller began a three-month stint as a temporary worker at the Los Angeles office of Jones Day in December 2003. One of his assignments was transcribing an attorney's tapes on legal issues facing a major client: Diebold.

The name was familiar because of media attention surrounding the company and its new touch-screen voting systems. Heller, a news junkie, said he had had no prior dealings with the company.

Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, told investigators that Heller met her in a park in Ventura County in early 2004 and gave her the documents, which she turned over to the secretary of state and the Oakland Tribune.

"What Stephen did was the best of citizenry," Harris said.

Harris and fellow activist Jim March, later joined by the state attorney general, had already sued Diebold in 2003 for allegedly failing to certify the voting system.

The lawsuit gained traction when Diebold's touch-screen systems failed in March 2004. Because of a battery drain, the screens could not display the proper ballot, and poll workers in San Diego County had to turn away some early voters. Alameda County residents had to use paper ballots.

Diebold eventually settled the suit for $2.6 million. The state banned use of its machines, but the ban was reversed this year and the machines were certified for use in 17 counties

Since when is the protection of a citizen's basic right to participate in government a crime?

Another Bush Success!

Afghans may execute man who converted

By Daniel Cooney, Associated Press
March 20, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws, a judge said yesterday.

The trial is believed to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan and highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam should take here four years after the ouster of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.

The defendant, 41-year-old Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada said in an interview. Rahman was charged with rejecting Islam and his trial started Thursday.

During the one-day hearing, the defendant confessed that he converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, Mawlavezada said.

''We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law," the judge said. ''It is an attack on Islam."

Mawlavezada said he would rule on the case within two months.

Afghanistan's constitution is based on Shariah law, which is interpreted by many Muslims to require that any Muslim who rejects Islam be sentenced to death, said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, deputy chairman of the state-sponsored Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

While I understand that the concept of free religion is difficult for many of Bush's supporters, it's not for those of us who understand the Constitution.

I was all for invading Afghanistan and doing something with the Taliban. Their human rights record was simply deplorable. So how are the 33% that follow Bush without question going to handle that his one, arguable, success is a reestablished nation that excecutes people for becoming Christians?

Somehow I don't think that will play well in Peoria....

Spin, Spin, Spin

On Anniversary, Bush and Cheney See Iraq Success

By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
Published: March 20, 2006

WASHINGTON, March 20 — On the third anniversary of a war that they once expected to be over by now, President Bush and senior officials argued Sunday that their strategy was working despite escalating violence in Iraq, even as a former Iraqi prime minister once favored by the White House declared that a civil war had already started.

The death toll from the sectarian violence described by the former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, continued to mount, as nine more bodies were found in Baghdad this morning, an official in the Interior Ministry said. Fifteen bodies had been found on Sunday and more than 200 people are believed to have died in tit-for-tat sectarian killings over the last few weeks.

Also today, three Iraqi police commandos were killed along with three suspected insurgents when a bomb struck a police convoy carrying suspects in southern Baghdad, the official said.

Politicians in Baghdad moved incrementally forward on Sunday on forming a unified government.

The struggle over the mood on the home front was set to continue today, as President Bush traveled to Cleveland to deliver an address on the war shortly after noon, and the Senate's top Democrat, Harry Reid of Nevada, scheduled a briefing on the subject late this morning.

The American officials who marked the anniversary on Sunday — including Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld — displayed a carefully calibrated mix of optimism about eventual victory and caution about how long American troops would be involved, sounding much as they had on the first anniversary of the invasion. At that time, the rebuilding effort had just begun, the insurgency was far less fierce, and the American occupation had suppressed, temporarily, the sectarian violence scarring Iraq today.

The picture painted by the administration clashed with that of Mr. Allawi, once hailed by Mr. Bush as the kind of fair-minded leader Iraq needed. He declared in an interview with the BBC that the country was nearing a "point of no return."

"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war," said Mr. Allawi, who served as prime minister after the American invasion and now leads a 25-seat secular alliance of representatives in Iraq's 275-seat National Assembly. "We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people through the country, if not more."

"If this is not civil war," he said, "then God knows what civil war is."

Those of us in spreading middle age well remember Gen. William Westmoreland getting on TV every night in 1971 and 72 and telling us how well the war in Viet Nam is going. This is the same song, second verse.

More Warming Trends

After reading this, I think the family farm in Maxton, NC may actually be worth something one day as beachfront property. I knew there was a reason not to sell it...

Arctic Ice Isn't Refreezing in the Winter, Satellites Show

Adrianne Appel
for National Geographic News

March 17, 2006

For the second year in a row a large amount of Arctic sea ice did not refreeze during the winter as it normally does, a team of scientists reports.

This trend may indicate an overall shrinking of Arctic ice cover due to rapid global climate change.

Mark Serreze is a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center based at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who monitors Arctic sea ice.

"Some calculations say that by 2070 we will have no sea ice left," he said.

"It's always dangerous to make predictions, but we are right on schedule" for this to occur.

The ice that floats on top of the Arctic Ocean typically melts a bit in the spring and builds up again in the winter.

Animals such as polar bears, seals, and walruses make their homes on the ice, and people living in the region rely on the ice pack for fishing and travel.

But this year and last year the winters were too warm for the ice to re-form normally, the scientists say.

"It's getting so warm in the Arctic now that the ice is not growing back in winter the way it used to," Serreze said.

Needless to say, the rest of the article isn't that encouraging. I guess it is a good thing that the administration's ignoring of EPA regulations was tossed out by the courts. Still, I'm sure the VP can tell us how well the environment is doing.

Democracy Inaction

US pushed groups to shun Hamas-led govt: Hamas

Reuters
Monday, March 20, 2006

SANAA (Reuters) - Palestinian militant group Hamas accused the United States on Monday of putting pressure on rival Palestinian groups to shun a Hamas-led government, leaving the Islamic group to govern alone.

But President Mahmoud Abbas's mainstream Fatah movement and other PLO factions denied bowing to U.S. pressure and said serious differences over Hamas' political program prevented them from joining the new government.

The group's leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal, in Yemen as part of a tour to drum up political and financial support, said Israel could use a government solely run by Hamas as a pretext to launch strikes at Palestinians.

"The United States placed pressure on ... Palestinian factions to not participate in the government so that the government will be purely Hamas and Israel can justify carrying out its plan to attack the Palestinian people," Meshaal told reporters in Sanaa.

Palestinian Prime Minister-designate Ismail Haniyeh gave the names of his cabinet to Abbas late on Sunday after Hamas failed to persuade rival factions to join.

Fatah and independent parliamentary blocs have demanded a Hamas-led government accept peace deals with Israel.

I have no idea if these accusations are true, but what does it say about our foreign policy that a leader can make such a claim and have people take him seriously? Ok, I'll grant you that we acted pretty much the same way during the Cold War (Guatemala anyone?), but that's still no excuse especially for an Administration that uses the creation of democracies as a pretext to attack anyone they want.

Hearts and Minds

Via Susie:

'Iraq was awash in cash. We played football with bricks of $100 bills'

At the beginning of the Iraq war, the UN entrusted $23bn of Iraqi money to the US-led coalition to redevelop the country. With the infrastructure of the country still in ruins, where has all that money gone? Callum Macrae and Ali Fadhil on one of the greatest financial scandals of all time

Monday March 20, 2006
The Guardian

In a dilapidated maternity and paediatric hospital in Diwaniyah, 100 miles south of Baghdad, Zahara and Abbas, premature twins just two days old, lie desperately ill. The hospital has neither the equipment nor the drugs that could save their lives. On the other side of the world, in a federal courthouse in Virginia, US, two men - one a former CIA agent and Republican candidate for Congress, the other a former army ranger - are found guilty of fraudulently obtaining $3m (£1.7m) intended for the reconstruction of Iraq. These two events have no direct link, but they are none the less products of the same thing: a financial scandal that in terms of sheer scale must rank as one of the greatest in history.

At the start of the Iraq war, around $23bn-worth of Iraqi money was placed in the trusteeship of the US-led coalition by the UN. The money, known as the Development Fund for Iraq and consisting of the proceeds of oil sales, frozen Iraqi bank accounts and seized Iraqi assets, was to be used in a "transparent manner", specified the UN, for "purposes benefiting the people of Iraq".

For the past few months we have been working on a Guardian Films investigation into what happened to that money. What we discovered was that a great deal of it has been wasted, stolen or frittered away. For the coalition, it has been a catastrophe of its own making. For the Iraqi people, it has been a tragedy. But it is also a financial and political scandal that runs right to the heart of the nightmare that is engulfing Iraq today.

Diwaniyah is a sprawling and neglected city with just one small state paediatric and maternity hospital to serve its one million people. Years of war, corruption under Saddam and western sanctions have reduced the hospital to penury, so when last year the Americans promised total refurbishment, the staff were elated. But the renovation has been partial and the work often shoddy, and where it really matters - funding frontline health care - there appears to have been little change at all.

In the corridor, an anxious father who has been told his son may have meningitis is berating the staff. "I want a good hospital, not a terrible hospital that makes my child worse," he says. But then he calms down. "I'm not blaming you, we are the same class. I'm talking about important people. Those controlling all those millions and the oil. They didn't come here to save us from Saddam, they came here for the oil, and so now the oil is stolen and we got nothing from it." Beside him another parent, a woman, agrees: "If the people who run the country are stealing the money, what can we do?" For these ordinary Iraqis, it is clear that the country's wealth is being managed in much the same way as it ever was. How did it all go so wrong?

When the coalition troops arrived in Iraq, they were received with remarkable goodwill by significant sections of the population. The coalition had control up to a point and, perhaps more importantly, it had the money to consolidate that goodwill by rebuilding Iraq, or at least make a significant start. Best of all for the US and its allies, the money came from the Iraqis themselves.

Because the Iraqi banking system was in tatters, the funds were placed in an account with the Federal Reserve in New York. From there, most of the money was flown in cash to Baghdad. Over the first 14 months of the occupation, 363 tonnes of new $100 bills were shipped in - $12bn, in cash. And that is where it all began to go wrong.

"Iraq was awash in cash - in dollar bills. Piles and piles of money," says Frank Willis, a former senior official with the governing Coalition Provisional Authority. "We played football with some of the bricks of $100 bills before delivery. It was a wild-west crazy atmosphere, the likes of which none of us had ever experienced."

The environment created by the coalition positively encouraged corruption. "American law was suspended, Iraqi law was suspended, and Iraq basically became a free fraud zone," says Alan Grayson, a Florida-based attorney who represents whistleblowers now trying to expose the corruption. "In a free fire zone you can shoot at anybody you want. In a free fraud zone you can steal anything you like. And that was what they did."

A good example was the the Iraqi currency exchange programme (Ice). An early priority was to devote enormous resources to replacing every single Iraqi dinar showing Saddam's face with new ones that didn't. The contract to help distribute the new currency was won by Custer Battles, a small American security company set up by Scott Custer and former Republican Congressional candidate Mike Battles. Under the terms of the contract, they would invoice the coalition for their costs and charge 25% on top as profit. But Custer Battles also set up fake companies to produce inflated invoices, which were then passed on to the Americans. They might have got away with it, had they not left a copy of an internal spreadsheet behind after a meeting with coalition officials.

The spreadsheet showed the company's actual costs in one column and their invoiced costs in another; it revealed, in one instance, that it had charged $176,000 to build a helipad that actually cost $96,000. In fact, there was no end to Custer Battles' ingenuity. For example, when the firm found abandoned Iraqi Airways fork-lifts sitting in Baghdad airport, it resprayed them and rented them to the coalition for thousands of dollars. In total, in return for $3m of actual expenditure, Custer Battles invoiced for $10m. Perhaps more remarkable is that the US government, once it knew about the scam, took no legal action to recover the money. It has been left to private individuals to pursue the case, the first stage of which concluded two weeks ago when Custer Battles was ordered to pay more than $10m in damages and penalties.

But if you are a Bush family friend, like Custer Battles, you hold the get out of jail free card. And ignoring those dying women and babies is not really very hard work, now, is it?

Over the Top

Dr. Cole lists the Top Ten Catastrophes of our three year misadventure in Iraq. Just go read, please.

The stunning incompetence might get your attention.

Overwhelmed

I hope you'll forgive me for crashing early once in a while. Staring down a pandemic virus 15-18 hours a day is really hard work, the kind W. works off by clearing bush at his ranch. I don't have a ranch and I'm not wealthy like he is, I have my little condo and a computer and that is all. Here at Bump, we unnerstand what the real stakes are and that lives might be on the line. The Boy in the Bubble sure as hell doesn't care about that.

If you are still trying to convince family and friends that they need to pay attention and take action, visit Flu Wiki. There are a lot of documents you can print out, most of them are from the CDC and other trusted agents.

We're in this together.

IgNobel

Mad Science
No question is too crazy to snare a prize

By Joel Achenbach
Sunday, March 19, 2006; W11

We're entering the science fair season, when schools teach children about science by making their parents conduct experiments. Across America, grown men and women will be watching crystals grow, grapes shrivel, pennies corrode and scuzz form in petri dishes -- except for the most ambitious parents, who, out of love for their children and a desire to see them advance to science fairs at the city, regional, national, global and galactic level, will build fully operational communications satellites and nuclear fusion reactors.

But it all starts with the Question. Many students may worry that the best questions (like, "Why does a can of Diet Coke float in water while regular Coke sinks?") have already been asked.

Balderdash. There are an infinite number of good questions. For example, there's the one Vicki Silvers Gier, a psychologist at Central Missouri State University, asked a few years ago: What happens when you read material that has been incompetently highlighted with a yellow marker?

Scientists had already shown that students benefit from highlighting their own reading material. But Gier and a colleague were the first to show that students who read material that has been badly highlighted by someone else (with unimportant words marked and important words not marked) will have dramatically reduced comprehension -- even if they're warned in advance that the highlighting will be terrible. "You cannot ignore it," she says. "Even when you try to ignore it, it's there."

Scientific conclusion: Stupid people make us dumber.

Just in case you had any questions about that.

Third Anniversary

A Top-Down Review for the Pentagon

By PAUL D. EATON

Fox Island, Wash.

Mr. Rumsfeld has put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego, his cold warrior's view of the world and his unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower. As a result, the Army finds itself severely undermanned — cut to 10 active divisions but asked by the administration to support a foreign policy that requires at least 12 or 14.

Only Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff when President Bush was elected, had the courage to challenge the downsizing plans. So Mr. Rumsfeld retaliated by naming General Shinseki's successor more than a year before his scheduled retirement, effectively undercutting his authority. The rest of the senior brass got the message, and nobody has complained since.

Now the Pentagon's new Quadrennial Defense Review shows that Mr. Rumsfeld also fails to understand the nature of protracted counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq and the demands it places on ground forces. The document, amazingly, does not call for enlarging the Army; rather, it increases only our Special Operations forces, by a token 15 percent, maybe 1,500 troops.

Mr. Rumsfeld has also failed in terms of operations in Iraq. He rejected the so-called Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force and sent just enough tech-enhanced troops to complete what we called Phase III of the war — ground combat against the uniformed Iraqis. He ignored competent advisers like Gen. Anthony Zinni and others who predicted that the Iraqi Army and security forces might melt away after the state apparatus self-destructed, leading to chaos.

It is all too clear that General Shinseki was right: several hundred thousand men would have made a big difference then, as we began Phase IV, or country reconstruction. There was never a question that we would make quick work of the Iraqi Army.

The true professional always looks to the "What's next?" phase. Unfortunately, the supreme commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, either didn't heed that rule or succumbed to Secretary Rumsfeld's bullying. We won't know which until some bright historian writes the true story of Mr. Rumsfeld and the generals he took to war, an Iraq version of the Vietnam War classic "Dereliction of Duty" by H. R. McMaster.

"Lessons learned?" There haven't been any.

More of the Same

Before and After Abu Ghraib, a U.S. Unit Abused Detainees

By ERIC SCHMITT and CAROLYN MARSHALL
Published: March 19, 2006

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In June 2004, Stephen A. Cambone, a top Pentagon official, ordered his deputy, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, to look into allegations of detainee abuse at Camp Nama.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.

Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.

The story of detainee abuse in Iraq is a familiar one. But the following account of Task Force 6-26, based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people, offers the first detailed description of how the military's most highly trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuses.

It adds to the picture of harsh interrogation practices at American military prisons in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as at secret Central Intelligence Agency detention centers around the world.

The new account reveals the extent to which the unit members mistreated prisoners months before and after the photographs of abuse from Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, and it helps belie the original Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists at Abu Ghraib.

The abuses at Camp Nama continued despite warnings beginning in August 2003 from an Army investigator and American intelligence and law enforcement officials in Iraq. The C.I.A. was concerned enough to bar its personnel from Camp Nama that August.

It is difficult to compare the conditions at the camp with those at Abu Ghraib because so little is known about the secret compound, which was off limits even to the Red Cross. The abuses appeared to have been unsanctioned, but some of them seemed to have been well known throughout the camp.

For an elite unit with roughly 1,000 people at any given time, Task Force 6-26 seems to have had a large number of troops punished for detainee abuse. Since 2003, 34 task force members have been disciplined in some form for mistreating prisoners, and at least 11 members have been removed from the unit, according to new figures the Special Operations Command provided in response to questions from The New York Times. Five Army Rangers in the unit were convicted three months ago for kicking and punching three detainees in September 2005.

Some of the serious accusations against Task Force 6-26 have been reported over the past 16 months by news organizations including NBC, The Washington Post and The Times. Many details emerged in hundreds of pages of documents released under a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union. But taken together for the first time, the declassified documents and interviews with more than a dozen military and civilian Defense Department and other federal personnel provide the most detailed portrait yet of the secret camp and the inner workings of the clandestine unit.

They're just ragheads. The American military is as racist and sexist as the rest of society, don't expect them to be any different. The same forces that wanted to bomb the entire ME back to the stone age out here are present in the Armed Forces.

The Big, Wide World

Bush's Agenda Loses Focus
The White House staff has failed to formulate a clear domestic policy, some in the GOP say, and the administration is suffering because of it.
By Peter Wallsten and James Gerstenzang, Times Staff Writers
March 19, 2006

WASHINGTON — A growing Republican chorus is calling for a staff overhaul inside President Bush's beleaguered White House, but some conservatives say such a change would stop far short of fixing what they view as a serious flaw: an unfocused domestic agenda.

The war in Iraq is dominating the attention of Bush and his top aides, these critics say, while the recent departure of the president's top domestic policy advisor after just one year has left the White House without an obvious conductor to direct the sometimes disparate policy-making machine.

"You mean they have a domestic policy?" quipped Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Tanner, an author of the failed Social Security plan that was Bush's No. 1 domestic priority last year, lamented the lack of a "policy czar" setting clear goals. He described the administration as "exhausted" and "rudderless" on the domestic front.

"There doesn't seem to be an endpoint for what they're doing," he said. "They need to decide what they're going to do for the next three years…. Staff changes are necessary but not sufficient. If they're just rearranging chairs and office plaques, that's not going to do anything."

Although Bush first campaigned on a largely domestic agenda, experts either said he had achieved much of what he had set out to accomplish or said he had put aside priorities at home to devote time, energy and government resources to the war on terrorism.

Gee, LAT, you mean that the fact that he has failed to completely undo the social safety net means he has no domestic agenda? I might see that as a good thing.

Gawd, getting a little context out of you journos is like pulling teeth. The problem is that you don't know any history, sociology, or anything beyond the tiny little bit of shit they taught you in J school. Which means you don't have a liberal education and don't know anything beyond people of your own class. If you ever got out of your own comfortable suburbs it would probably kill you.

The LAT may be the most classist of the major three, but on any given day the race to the bottom is always an open marketplace. Of course the NYT, with "times select" which I can't afford, assumes pride of place.

WaPo is the most blogger friendly and I give them points for that, but for the most part these are papers and ed boards who hew to "conventional wisdom" and take very few risks. The risky stuff is left to us bloggers and then they convene a blogger ethics panel to take us to task.

I'll be in Philly next weekend to go over the blog/newsie relationship next weekend in a forum crafted by my friend Susie and some folks at The Daily News. Let's talk about it. How dangerous can that be? ;-)

Scaleback

Sinclair Scales Back News Central

Katy Bachman

MARCH 16, 2006

Sinclair Broadcast Group is scaling back its News Central operation, created in 2002, opting to seek out news share arrangements with local TV stations in its markets. Beginning March 31, Sinclair will no longer feed live, anchored prime-time newscasts to its stations. News Central will act like a wire service, sending daily feeds of news content, coordinating coverage of major events and providing Internet and digital news solutions to the 20 of its 58 stations that produce local news.

In keeping with its new strategy, KVWB-TV (Sinclair's WB in Las Vegas) has partnered with Sunbelt Communications' NBC affiliate KVBC-TV for a 10 p.m. hour-long newscast. The program will be produced by KVBC beginning April 6. On weekends, KVBC will produce a half-hour newscast airing 10-10:30 p.m.

"Because the costs to produce high quality local news are so significant, moving to a news sharing partnership with a strong network affiliated station can provide an effective means to bring additional news coverage to the market," said a Sinclair statement.

Sinclair was the group who was going to run the anti-Kerry smear during the 2004 election but not give eqaul time to the Kerry campaign. They are extremely pro-Republican, to the point their editorials parrot the right-wing talking points.

Still, there may be more involved with this shut down then just ratings. As the Raleigh paper notices :

Sinclair's "News Central" concept, which paired a local anchor -- in the case of WB22, Bob Vernon -- with an anchorperson based at the corporate headquarters in suburban Baltimore, has been criticized for trying to appear completely "local" when much of the broadcast originated elsewhere. "News Central" is aired on many of the company's 56 stations nationwide.

When a nonprofit group challenged Sinclair's broadcasting licenses in North Carolina and South Carolina in 2004, one of the arguments was that Sinclair was ignoring its obligation to address the needs of local communities by providing "generic 'local news' from a centralized studio located at the company's Baltimore headquarters." That challenge is pending, but it is extremely rare for the Federal Communications Commission to deny renewal of a broadcaster's license.

There is one less obvious piece of propaganda out there.

Keeping Hope Alive

Creating a new democracy

Ryan Blethen / Times editorial columnist
Editorials & Opinion: Friday, March 17, 2006

The tethers of our democracy are visibly frayed. Eroding forces abound from the falsehoods used to justify war in Iraq and government spying on Americans, to voters so rabid they cannot hear divergent opinion, or worse, are woefully detached. The press has become so beholden to profit it struggles to play the watchdog role needed for democracy to flourish.

Luckily, not everybody is sedated by the constant numbing glow of American culture. I was reminded of this last week by a class of college students and again this week by a report from a Seattle group focused on 20- and 30-somethings, an age group to which I belong.

The finale for the 92 students enrolled in American Press and Politics at the University of Washington was titled the Metamorphosis Conference. The students were broken into groups and asked a question that dealt with the press and democracy.

The students impressed me. They were clearly passionate about democracy and their place in the system. They spoke of the importance of an independent press, of being informed, of how technology could help inform more people, especially their generation.

Dr. Taso Lagos, the architect of the conference, became emotional talking about his students during an interview. His goal for the class was not to instill a particular political belief in the students, but to make sure they are empowered to make choices in our democracy. Lagos knows well what happens when choice and voice are taken away by government. His family fled Greece in 1967 after a military junta.

Lagos says democracy is at a "crossroads." It can either wither or adapt to a modern world filled with more choices than ever before.

"We are so comfortable with what we have it just seems that democracy is too much of a bother," Lagos said. "The question is what kind of choices are we going to make."

The message was not lost on his students. Linda Tomko entered the class pessimistic about democracy, but left with a new democratic energy. The soft-spoken Tomko said the problem with politics is that issues important to her generation, such as gay marriage and education, are defined by sound bites.

"If you can make the issues more relevant to younger voters, they will get involved," Tomko said.

Emphasis mine.

Water Water everywhere and...

Protesters Say Water Wars Turning Deadly

By MARK STEVENSON
The Associated Press
Friday, March 17, 2006

MEXICO CITY -- Water is worth fighting for _ even to the death, activists holding an "alternate" forum outside the world water summit said Friday. That attitude might seem strange in developed countries, where water flows at the touch of a faucet. But it isn't nearly as accessible in the developing world.

And water wars aren't an apocalyptic vision of the future. They're already starting to happen, the protesters say.

"We've been beaten, we've been jailed, some of us have even been killed, but we're not going to give up," said Marco Suastegui, who marched alongside about 10,000 protesters Thursday outside a convention center where the international Fourth World Water Forum is being held.

Suastegui is leading the battle against a dam being built to supply water for the Pacific coastal resort of Acapulco. Opponents fear the dam will dry up the nearby Papagayo River.

"We will defend the water of the Papagayo River with our lives, if need be," Suastegui said.

Protesters on Friday organized an alternate forum in Mexico City, miles from the convention site, in which they accused the official summit of serving as cover for companies that want to privatize water services.

"The Fourth World Water Forum doesn't represent us," said Audora Dominguez of the nongovernmental Mexican Committee for the Defense of Water Rights. "It's a forum where you have to pay to speak. It's a forum where the poor aren't included."

On Thursday, youths in ski masks attacked journalists and fought with police, smashing a patrol car and hurling rocks during largely peaceful water forum protests involving about 10,000 marchers. The disturbances appeared to be carried out by mostly radical youths not directly involved with the groups demonstrating against the forum.

Many of the battles over water in Mexico don't involve people who would otherwise be considered radicals. Those on the front lines are residents of low-income neighborhoods in Mexico City who get in fistfights over water-truck deliveries, or housewives who can no longer stand the stink of untreated sewage flowing beside their homes.

And then there are the Indian families whose crops are ruined by the diversion of water to feed a nearby city, while their children go without safe drinking water.

For farmers and fishermen whose river is about to be dammed, or a rural resident who sees his town overrun by tens of thousands of new housing units in the space of a few years, water is a fighting issue.

"We will fight for the rest of our lives. For us, fear doesn't exist," said Victoria Martinez Arriaga, a 33-year-old Mazahua Indian woman who led a militant protest in 2004 to demand safe drinking water for local families. The demonstration temporarily cut off part of Mexico City's water supply.

Thankfully, this isn't an issue for many of us in the United States, though it could be in the future. The companies producing bottled water aren't making things any easier in dealing with the water issue, and neither are the US multinational which are running many of the water treatment plants in the 3rd world.

Project Censored has run articles on this many times over the past couple of years. Check out their archives to see what other things are out there.

Site News

This is going to be a work day for me, and a pretty intense one at that. I invite the colleague bloggers to bring their skills and ideas into the mix as I'll probably be tied up for the bulk of the day.

A Good Walk Spoiled

Golf Digest's Brian Wacker weighs in on this week's Bay Hill Classic, frequently the temperature of the spring majors. Brian writes:

The Bay Hill Invitational is mostly a bomber's paradise. Not to say short hitters have no chance at Arnie's place, but eight of the last nine winners -- Kenny Perry, Chad Campbell, Tiger Woods (four times), Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson -- can all crank it pretty deep.

One other note: Perry won't be able to defend the title he won last year because of surgery earlier this week to repair torn cartilage in his knee. He's expected to be out 4-6 weeks.

Bay Hill Invitational
Thurs-Sun, Orlando, Fla.
Bay Hill Club
(7,267 yards, par 72)
Purse: $5.5 million. Winner's share: $990,000
Television: USA (Thursday-Friday, 3-6 p.m. ET), NBC (Saturday-Sunday, 2:30-6 p.m. ET)
Last Week: Luke Donald won his first tournament since 2002 with a two-stroke victory over Geoff Ogilvy at the Honda Classic.
Last year: Kenny Perry became the fourth player over the age of 40 to win the Bay Hill Invitational with a two-stroke victory over Vijay Singh and Graeme McDowell.
Field | Tee Times
Who's Hot
To say Woods has a good track record at Bay Hill is kind of like saying U2 is a pretty good band. Rather than taking on the name of host Arnold Palmer beginning in '07, this Invitational might as well be named for Tiger Woods -- he only won it four straight times from 2000 to 2003. If there is a chink in Tiger's Bay Hill armor it's that when he doesn't win, he doesn't exactly contend. Of the five times he wasn't victorious, only once has he finished in the top 10.

Vijay Singh must have "fixed a few things," as he promised to do recently. Otherwise, the Big Fij wouldn't be playing this week. After Doral, Singh said he needed to go back to the drawing board and said that if his game wasn't in the shape he wanted, he'd take this week off, too. Singh has never won at Bay Hill, but he was a runner-up last year and tied for fourth in '01 to go with two other top-15 finishes.

One other player who rolls into Orlando hot this week: Lucas Glover. Though there's been much focus on 20-somethings J.B. Holmes, Bubba Watson and Camilo Villegas, the 26-year-old pal of Watson has four top 10s in seven events this season. This is Glover's first Bay Hill Invitational, but he's won on tour before and hits it long and straight off the tee and into the green. If he's in contention Sunday, both could be critical come the par-4 18th hole, one of the toughest holes on tour all of last year.

Who's Not
It's too bad for Stuart Appleby the tour doesn't play every event in Hawaii. Continuing a trend he started in 2004 with his first of three Mercedes Championships, Appleby is winless outside the Aloha state since then. He comes to Bay Hill having not played since the Match Play, where he was disposed of in the first round by Tom Lehman, 4 and 2. The week before that he finished in a tie for 51st at Nissan.

This season hasn't exactly been what we expected from another Aussie, either. Mark Hensby, who registered 11 top 10s the last two years, is still looking for his first in '06 after a first-round loss to Davis Love III at the Match Play and a T-68 at Nissan. Hensby's trip to Bay Hill last year was just as forgettable. At nine-over on the 18th hole in the second round, he hooked his tee shot out of bounds, marked "X" on his card for the hole and DQed himself.

Don't bet on anyone to win their first title here, either. Only five times has someone made Bay Hill their inaugural victory. The last man to do it? Paul Goydos in 1996. And in the last 15 years, only three players without a win finished as high as runner-up.

Item That May Interest Only Me
Holmes, who is currently 10th on the money list by $58,000 over Love, needs a strong showing here and at next week's Players Championship to secure an invitation to the Masters. Villegas, at 14th on the money list, is in a more precarious position. He'll need to finish fourth or better just to make it to the Players. If Holmes makes the cut this week, Villegas needs to finish third or better. And if he's not in the Players, Villegas won't be going to the Masters either.

Pick to Win
Sergio Garcia's putting is still a problem, but he has a solid track record at Bay Hill -- Garcia tied for eighth there last year, ninth in 2002 and fourth in 2001. Length and accuracy, plus course knowledge, are what's needed at Bay Hill, and Sergio has both. I expect him to hit it close enough on his approach shots that putting won't be a problem this week and for Garcia to pick up his first win since last year's Booz Allen Classic.

Do I know who is going to win? Hardly. If I knew that they wouldn't have to play the game. Is this going to be a great golf weekend? Ya think?

Open Thread

Yes, I know I haven't been around much today. I'm starting a new and very absorbing job soon and I was caught up with employment issues today. The co-bloggers filled in my gaps with interesting posts.

I'll be around some over the weekend, but not as much as normal. I'm still negotiating the terms of agreement and we have to have a contract by Monday.

Yes, I'm going to be working for a living again. Yes, I'm wildly happy. And so is my mortgage company. This is an open thread.

Public Health issues

Ill. Education Board to Deep-Six Junk Food

The Associated Press
Thursday, March 16, 2006

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Vending machine candy, chips and soda will be history when the state's elementary and middle schools students start classes this fall.

The Illinois State Board of Education voted Thursday to ban schools from offering junk food during the school day for pupils through eighth grade in an effort to keep unhealthy food out of the hands of youngsters.

.......

Local school officials had complained about the plan, saying they get crucial revenue from vending machine sales. The plan originally included high schools, but they were exempted.

Three cheers for the school board! Now where they will get the money to replace the lost revenue is another story, but they made the right decision.

Of course, it's a crime that we should have to depend on soft drink contracts and candy sales to provide our kids with basic supplies and extra activities (especially when we know the academic and social beneifts of groups like band or clubs). Heck, we are selling candy right now to be able to pay for the $1000 it will cost our Odyssey of the Mind group to attend state competition next month. I don't want to know how many M&M;'s it will take to go to World Competition in Iowa...

Accountability?

Hiring of private audit firms puts records off limits

Associated Press
Mon, Mar. 13, 2006

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A company hired to examine the state's unorthodox $50 million investment in rare coins doesn't have to make its files public because state law exempts work done by private businesses for the state.
Auditor Betty Montgomery hired Chicago-based Crowe Chizek & Co. to audit the investment managed by coin dealer Tom Noe for the state insurance fund for injured workers.

Noe is charged with dozens of state counts accusing him of stealing money from the funds, and the Feb. 22 audit found that $13.5 million in state money was misspent.

Montgomery denied a request for the work papers attached to the audit by The Columbus Dispatch, saying state law prohibits their release.

The newspaper had questions about possible discrepancies in the numbers reported in the audit, but Montgomery's office hasn't been able to answer those questions, in part because Crowe Chizek did the work.

The firm has been told not to discuss the findings because it is part of the criminal investigation of Noe and others involved in investments at the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, said company spokeswoman Suzanne Robinson.

Open government advocates say the law is misguided and any work done by a private entity with taxpayer dollars should be open.

Curiouser and Curiouser....

The Real March Madness

The NCAA Tournament is a welcome respite from the insanity surrounding us in the realms of politics and (non-)government in America. The cloud of darkness enveloping this country (and the world) is so thick that it's hard to know what to say anymore. Evil is that numbing sometimes.

But just the other day, we got a dose of March Madness--from Washington, D.C., not a basketball court--that was so astounding that it has to be met with some kind of voice, some semblance of the Christian ethos that is so agonizingly absent from the leaders of our country, who call themselves Christian. (Give me one person not named Joe Lieberman who claims a religious affiliation other than Christian and yet holds a prominent place in the public eye as a major official, legislator or power broker.)

George Bush reaffirmed the merits of pre-emptive war.

Can Christians in all walks of life, but especially those in leadership positions, manage to muster up a principled, Bible-based refutation of pre-emptive war? Can we draw a line in the sand? Can we regain some moral footing and reclaim the notion that torture is not debatable as a matter of evil? When pre-emptive war and torture are considered debatable points, what does that say about the kind of God a lot of Americans--and American leaders--believe in?

Can we take a stand? Please?

Democrats? Hello? Anyone home?

Yes, this is the real March Madness.

Another Day Older And Deeper In Debt

Senate Approves Budget, Breaking Spending LimitsBy CARL HULSE
Published: March 17, 2006

WASHINGTON, March 16 — The Senate narrowly approved a $2.8 trillion election-year budget Thursday that broke spending limits only hours after it increased federal borrowing power to avert a government default. Skip to next paragraph Related Roll Call Vote: Debt Limit Increase

The budget decision at the end of a marathon day of voting followed a separate 52-to-48 Senate vote to increase the federal debt limit by $781 billion, bringing the debt ceiling to nearly $9 trillion. The move left Democrats attacking President Bush and Congressional Republicans for piling up record debt in their years in power.

Despite calls by Republican deficit hawks to hold the line, Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to approve more than $16 billion in added spending for social, military, job safety and home-heating programs, exceeding a ceiling established by President Bush.

In separate action, the House advanced $92 billion in war spending and hurricane recovery money.

Even with the added money, the Senate approved the $2.8 trillion budget by only 51 to 49 with five Republicans defecting. Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana was the sole Democrat to back the budget after winning agreement for a new $10 billion effort for levee rebuilding and coastal protection to be paid for out of oil royalties and other sources. Her vote saved Vice President Dick Cheney from having to break a tie.

Federal debt ceiling: $9,000,000,000,000
Senate avoids default, then plumps up budget plan
Friday, March 17, 2006
Andrew Taylor
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — The Senate passed an election-year budget plan yesterday forsaking President Bush’s tax cuts and Medicare curbs, hours after lifting the ceiling on the national debt to $9 trillion.

The spending blueprint, approved 51-49, little resembles Bush’s proposal last month for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

To the disappointment of budget hawks, the Senate’s measure would break Bush’s proposed caps on spending for programs such as education, low-income heating subsidies and health research.

Vice President Dick Cheney was on hand for a possible tie-breaking vote, but that proved unnecessary.

Senators earlier voted 52-48 to send Bush a measure that would allow the government to borrow an additional $781 billion and prevent a first-ever default on Treasury notes.

I'm going out for breakfast. They take cash.

The Ultimate Wrap

File this in your "hot enough to make me sweat" file. They will do that, while being still tasty. The dipping sauce is a treat you'll want to make with other of your personal favorites. This is good stuff.

Grilled Shrimp in Lettuce Leaves with Serrano-Mint Sauce

1 pound large shrimp (about 36), peeled and deveined
3 tablespoons canola oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
12 leaves green curly leaf lettuce
Serrano-Mint Sauce, recipe follows
Chili oil, for drizzling, optional
Fresh cilantro leaves

Preheat the grill to medium-high. In a large bowl, toss shrimp in oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill the shrimp for 1 to 2 minutes on each side or until just cooked through. Be careful not to overcook the shrimp, or they will be tough and rubbery. Remove from the grill.

Place about 3 shrimp in each lettuce leaf. Drizzle with the Serrano-Mint Sauce and with a little chili oil, if desired. Sprinkle with a few cilantro leaves. Roll up the lettuce leaves, and eat immediately.

Serrano-Mint Sauce:
1 cup tightly packed mint leaves, plus more for garnish
2 serrano chiles, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 (1-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons fish sauce
Salt

Place all ingredients, except for salt, in a blender. Pulse until smooth. Season, to taste.

This is extremely fun finger food to make at the table. As a first course, this is a hoot.

Morning Has Broken

I hardly ever eat eggs. Every one of you will have to make up your own mind about what your lipitor presciption can handle. But I do eat them when I go out for breakfast once or twice a year. Here's a favorite I would not hesitate to serve to friends.

Country-Style Scrambled Eggs

2 cups coarsely chopped tiny new potatoes
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
3 tablespoons margarine or butter
6 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 cup diced fully cooked ham
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

In a large non-stick or well-seasoned skillet, cook and stir the potatoes, onion, and green pepper in margarine or butter over medium heat for 8 to 10 minutes or till tender, stirring often.

Beat together eggs, milk and pepper; stir in ham. Pour egg mixture over potato mixture. Cook, without stirring, till mixture begins to set on the bottom and around edge. Using a large spoon, lift and fold the partially cooked eggs mixture so uncooked portions flows underneath. Continue cooking about 4 minutes more or till eggs are cooked throughout but still glossy and moist.

Remove from heat and sprinkle with cheese. Let stand till cheese melts. This is an American fritatta.

Makes 4 servings

Sunday Morning Meeting

This is my favorite Sunday morning meal. I scale it down for me alone, but it is easy for a crowd. Use a cast iron skillet and your oven.

What? You don't own a cast iron skillet? Go. I have no commercial connection with Lodge, but I've been using their stuff since I inherited it from my grandmother.

Temper your cast iron this way and you'll be able to pass it on to your grandchildren.

Now cook this herb fritatta

8 eggs, cracked and beaten
1/4 cup marjoram leaves, plus 1/4 cup
1/4 cup parsley leaves, plus 1/4 cup
1/4 cup basil, whole leaves, plus 1/4 cup
1 tablespoon freshly chopped thyme
1 tablespoon freshly chopped rosemary
1 tablespoon freshly chopped sage
2 tablespoons butter

In a mixing bowl, whip together eggs with 6 herbs and season with salt and pepper.

In a 8 to 10-inch non-stick saute pan, melt the butter over medium heat until just turning brown. Add egg mixture and cook slowly for 12 to 15 minutes, until set on bottom. Carefully flip over and continue cooking 6 to 7 minutes, until set. Allow to cool and serve cut into wedges with a salad made of herbs, dressed lightly in olive oil and red wine vinegar.

Heavenly with a fresh bisquit and a little fruit. Heavenly, I tell you.

Tired Blogger Open Thread

I've been in meetings all day, hence the dearth of postings. I'm so tired that my hair hurts. This is your space. Fill it up with what's on your mind.

33%

Preemptive Strike Out

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, March 16, 2006; 1:03 PM

This morning's news that President Bush is reasserting his doctrine of preemptive war is a bit of a surprise because, well, I think most people thought the Bush Doctrine was dead.

How can Bush still argue for attacking another country based on his suspicions about their intentions -- when the first time he tried it, his public case turned out to be so utterly specious?

The idea that the American public or the international community would tolerate such behavior once again seems highly unlikely at this point in time. The American people, for one, won't be keen on putting troops in harm's way again on spec anytime soon.

Winning support for the application of a doctrine of preemption requires enormous credibility. It requires public trust in intelligence and motives. And that trust isn't there.

The rearranging of the intelligence community's deck-chairs has not resulted in any great surge of confidence in the nation's intelligence gathering or, more importantly, any assurance that policymakers will not abuse that intelligence.

In fact, the more we know about the run-up to war in Iraq, the more evidence there is that the doctrine of preemption (and the cherry-picking and manipulation of intelligence used to make the case for it) was just a pretext for an invasion that Bush and his top aides had already decided on for other reasons.

See, for instance, the recent Foreign Affairs article by Paul R. Pillar, the former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year.

He wrote: "It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized."

At a recent talk to the Council on Foreign Relations , Pillar said, "I really believe this: that the main motivation for Operation Iraqi Freedom was to stir up the politics and economics of the Middle East and use regime change in Iraq as a stimulus for regime change and other kinds of changes elsewhere in the region, leading to more open political and economic structures."

Others, of course, suggest that Bush's primary motivation was revenge against Saddam for the indignities suffered by his father, or simply a desire to kick someone's butt after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

But in either case, few people in Washington now believe that pre-emption of Saddam's alleged WMD threat was anything more than a post-decision rationalization for the invasion.

And then there's the fact that close watchers of Bush's ever-evolving foreign policy have seen no recent indication that the doctrine of preemption or, in fact, any of the other elements of what has become known as the Bush Doctrine, were still operative.

Gideon Rose , the managing editor of Foreign Affairs, wrote in the New York Times in August that "the Bush doctrine has collapsed, and the administration has consequently embraced realism, American foreign policy's perennial hangover cure."

Rose illustrated just how "all three pillars of the supposedly revolutionary Bush doctrine - pre-emption, regime change, and a clear division between those 'with us' and 'against us'- came crashing down."

Nevertheless, here is the White House's hot-off-the-presses National Security Strategy.

From the section on preemption : "There are few greater threats than a terrorist attack with WMD.

"To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense. The United States will not resort to force in all cases to preempt emerging threats. Our preference is that nonmilitary actions succeed. And no country should ever use preemption as a pretext for aggression. . . .

"Our strong preference and common practice is to address proliferation concerns through international diplomacy, in concert with key allies and regional partners. If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self defense, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. When the consequences of an attack with WMD are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize. This is the principle and logic of preemption. The place of preemption in our national security strategy remains the same. We will always proceed deliberately, weighing the consequences of our actions. The reasons for our actions will be clear, the force measured, and the cause just."

So who's next? Could it be, perhaps, Iran?

WaPo is Fishwrap

Lawyer in 9/11 Case Placed on Leave

By Jerry Markon, Carol Morello and William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 16, 2006; 11:39 AM

The Transportation Security Administration lawyer who has thrown the death penalty trial of Sept. 11, 2001, conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui into turmoil by improperly contacting witnesses has been placed on administrative leave by her agency, a TSA spokesman said today.

Carla J. Martin, a former flight attendant whose legal career has been devoted to defending aviation security secrets, continues to be employed by the TSA, although she faces potential legal liability for improperly coaching government witnesses during preparations for the Moussaoui trial, which began last week in a federal courtroom in Northern Virginia.

Excuse me? What the fuck does the fact that she used to work as a flight attendent before she went to law school have to do with this story? She has a JD and, presumably, passed the Bar exam. This is extraordinarily shitty reporting.

War Porn

It makes no never you mind to CNN that, whatever is going on in Iraq today, it involves killing people and breaking things. That's what the military does. "Strategy for victory" my ass, Scotty McClellan.

The Torture Files

Few Rules in Use of Abu Ghraib Dogs, an Officer Testifies

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 16, 2006

FORT MEADE, Md., March 15 — The Army lacked clear rules for using dogs in interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, its former military intelligence chief acknowledged Wednesday during a court-martial of a dog handler. Skip to next paragraph

The officer, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and early 2004, was the highest-ranking witness scheduled to testify at the trial of the dog handler, Sgt. Michael J. Smith, who is charged with abusing detainees at the prison in Iraq.

Colonel Pappas, testifying for the defense under a grant of immunity, said he regretted having failed to set "appropriate controls" at the prison, where detainees were bitten by dogs and assaulted and sexually humiliated by guards.

"In hindsight, clearly we probably needed to establish some definitive rules and put out some clear guidance to everybody concerned," Colonel Pappas said. Nevertheless, he said under cross-examination that a photograph showing Sergeant Smith's unmuzzled dog straining at its leash just inches from the face of a terrified prisoner was not consistent with any policy or guidance.

Colonel Pappas provided few details about the genesis of harsh interrogation tactics that included exploiting "Arab fear of dogs," a technique recommended in a policy dated Sept. 14, 2003. But he said the dogs were to be used "to assist in setting conditions for interrogations."

The policy required interrogators to get case-by-case approval from Colonel Pappas's supervisor, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and required dogs to wear muzzles and to be controlled by their handlers.

The alternative media got there well ahead of the NYT.

In "The Abu Ghraib Files," Salon presents an annotated, chronological version of these crucial CID investigative documents -- the most comprehensive public record to date of the military's attempt to analyze the photos from the prison. All 279 photos and 19 videos are reproduced here, along with the original captions created by Army investigators. They have been grouped into chapters that follow the CID's timeline, and each chapter has been narrated with the facts and findings of the Taguba, Schlesinger, Fay-Jones and other Pentagon investigations (see sidebar).

Salon is making this available without the usual pay/ad firewall.

FCC Intimidation

US TV stations face record fines

Thursday, 16 March 2006
BBC

More than 100 US television stations face record fines for transmitting an "indecent" episode of the missing persons drama Without A Trace.
The Federal Communications Commission proposed a $3.6m (£2.1m) penalty to be shared among stations affliated to CBS.

They screened an edition of the series based on a possible rape, which showed teenagers involved in sexual activity.

The FCC said the "numerous graphic, sexual images" were "impermissible" under its rules.

The regulator has cleared a backlog of more than 300,000 complaints for programmes transmitted between 2002 and 2005.

It ruled that the Fox Television Network violated decency standards during the Billboard Music Awards in 2002 and 2003.

On the first occasion, singer Cher used an expletive which the FCC described as "vulgar".

The following year, actress Nicole Ritchie used two swear words which it said were "among the most offensive words in the English language".

It imposed no fine, saying these were "isolated" occurrences

Mr. FCC that's #@$&%$! . If you really want to be partisan and attack networks that dare to question the President, then that's fine but don't insult us with idiotic explainations.

I think we've seen one episode of Without a Trace, and there may have been something... daring, but this isn't groundbreaking television. Honestly, if they aren't worried about Gabrielle doing the teenage yard worker on ABC or reality TV shows everywhere, then how can we think they are serious about decency on television?

What's Going On

Subpoena List of Officials Is Inadvertently Disclosed

By DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: March 14, 2006

WASHINGTON, March 13 — A subpoena list identifying Bush administration officials including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as prospective defense witnesses in a federal criminal trial in Virginia was briefly posted on a computer court docket on Friday before being modified and sealed, court records show.

The trial is of two former lobbyists, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, who are accused of disclosing classified information. Entries in a computer docket at the court in Alexandria, Va., named Ms. Rice and nine others who had been sought as potential witnesses by lawyers for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group.

The two men, whose trial is scheduled to begin next month, are accused of receiving classified information about terrorism and Middle East strategy from a Defense Department analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, and passing it to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. Mr. Franklin has pleaded guilty.

Later, a check of the computer docket showed that each name had been replaced with the word "Witness." In each case, the entry contained a notation that said the docket had been "modified," but there was no explanation for the removal of the names nor was there any indication that the modification involved deletion of names of potential witnesses.

Among other current and former Bush administration officials identified were Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser; Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state; and Elliott L. Abrams, a deputy national security adviser who has focused on the Middle East.

Others are David M. Satterfield, deputy chief of the American mission to Iraq, and William J. Burns, the American ambassador to Russia and a former official working on Middle East issues at the State Department.

It is not known whether the judge in the case, T. S. Ellis III, has approved the issuance of any of the subpoenas. A judge's authorization is required before high-ranking government officials can be subpoenaed to testify in criminal cases.

The criminal court docket is kept by the clerk's office for the District Court, but it is not clear why the names of the officials were removed or who ordered them placed under seal. The deletion of the names is part of the tight secrecy that Judge Ellis has imposed on pretrial court proceedings in the case, even over matters like the prospective witnesses, which are not usually kept secret.

The removal of the names from the docket was first reported on Sunday by The Associated Press.

On Monday, a clerk in the chamber of Judge Ellis would not discuss the matter, saying that no one in the judge's office spoke to reporters. Edward A. Adams, the public information officer for the court, said, "The docket speaks for itself."

????

Protesting the Administration

March to New Orleans to protest Iraq war

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tuesday, March 14, 2006

MOBILE, Ala. -- Hurricane victims and war veterans set out Tuesday on a march to New Orleans to protest the war in Iraq and what they view as a lack of relief aid for storm victims.

Paul Robinson, the local chapter president of Veterans for Peace, said the 140-mile "Walkin' to New Orleans" march is scheduled to end Saturday.

He said marchers, including several victims of Hurricane Katrina, are demanding not only an end to the war but also a large increase in resources to help hurricane victims rebuild their lives. He expected about 300 marchers to join in, some walking the entire distance and other joining at the end.

Let's hope the media decides to pick this up. It's a nice way to tie in both disasters and the way the Bushies mismanaged their responses to both of them.

Trickle Down Ethics

Embattled Lawyer Had Limited Role in 9/11 Trial

By Jerry Markon and Carol Morello
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 16, 2006

The government lawyer who has thrown the death penalty trial of Sept. 11, 2001, conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui into turmoil by improperly contacting witnesses was supposed to be playing a limited role and was never to be involved with legal strategy or litigating the case.

Carla J. Martin, a former flight attendant whose legal career has been devoted to defending aviation security secrets, was a legal go-between -- a conduit, officials said.

The Transportation Security Administration lawyer located files and arranged witness interviews -- she "made no substantive decisions," prosecutors said, likening her to "outside counsel," and not a member of the decision-making team.

But by taking it upon herself to strategize with potential witnesses, she has violated basic tenets of criminal procedure, prosecutors and outside lawyers say. The veteran government lawyer is accused of what a judge called "egregious errors" -- sending e-mails to witnesses and improperly sharing testimony with them in violation of a court order.

"In this sea of Government attorneys and agents who have assiduously played by the rules, Ms. Martin stands as the lone miscreant," prosecutors wrote yesterday in court papers. "Her aberrant and apparently criminal behavior should not be the basis for undoing the good work of so many."

How this happened to a lawyer generally regarded as an expert in her field, who has worked on such high-profile cases as the Lockerbie bombing and the shoe bomber, is difficult to determine. Her attorney, Roscoe C. Howard Jr., declined to comment, and she has not responded to several requests for an interview.

After prosecutors pointed out her actions, a federal judge Tuesday banned the testimony of all seven witnesses she contacted and struck all aviation-related evidence. The ruling devastated the case for Moussaoui's execution that prosecutors have spent four years building.

Yesterday, the prosecutors implored U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema to reverse her decision in a filing that was sharply critical of Martin, whom they characterized as "at best peripherally involved in this matter."

Legal specialists said Martin's conduct undermined Moussaoui's fundamental constitutional rights. She violated an order from Brinkema barring most witnesses from attending or following the trial and from reading transcripts. The judge, experts said, was trying to ensure that witnesses did not alter their sworn testimony to conform with what others had said.

"The evil here, the corruption of the system, is that through the intermediation of Ms. Martin, witnesses were able to change their testimony to corroborate other witnesses," said Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University Law School. "You want the raw experiences of other witnesses, untainted and uninfluenced by the views of others."

Brinkema's instructions were so routine that experts were stunned that any lawyer would ignore them. Nearly all federal judges invoke what is known as the "rule on witnesses," which says that witnesses cannot watch the trial. Brinkema's order differed only in its ban on reading transcripts, an element unique to the heavily publicized Moussaoui case, where testimony is accessible on the Internet.

"Almost every criminal case in the federal system has an order like this," said Robert P. Mosteller, an expert on criminal procedure at Duke University Law School.

This is 2nd year law school stuff here gang... it's not some complicated set of instructions that no one has ever heard from. Of course, with role models like Chertoff and Gonzales, it's a wonder that any of their subordinates even bother to pay attention to the rule of law.

Let's see how this plays out in the court of public opinion... one of the words that many people used in the latest Pew Poll the word most people associate Bush with is... incompetent.

Hey, I wish y'all had been around back in 2004. Welcome to the party... I just hope there is something left over once this clown is done damaging the place.

Site News

Instead of making yourself crazy by trying to print out the recipes and cut and paste, get a little blog wisdom, courtesy of Movable Type.

If you find a recipe you want, click on the time stamp at the bottom of the post. That will isolate the post/recipe and allow you to print it out alone from the permalink. Does that make your life better?

Morning Has Broken

This is another of those breakfast recipes I learned from the B&B; cooks in the inns of Virginia which will feed a hungry crowd in the morning. This serves 8-10, but can easily be scaled down.

Morning Mess

12 ounces mild bulk sausage
12 ounces hot bulk sausage
10 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup sour cream
1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 zucchini, chopped
16 ounces mushrooms, sliced
2 cups cubed American cheese

Salt, pepper and a grind of fresh nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Cook sausage. Drain grease and set aside to cool slightly.
In a large, deep baking dish, add sausage, eggs, sour cream, onion, peppers, zucchini, mushrooms, spices and cheese and stir to mix. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden color.

Serve with toasted english muffins drenched in butter with berry compote:

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 pint strawberries, quartered
* 1 pint blueberries, rinsed and drained
* 1 pint fresh blackberries, rinsed and drained
* 1 pint fresh raspberries
* 1 pint red currants
* 1 tablespoon white sugar
* 3 tablespoons chopped fennel greens

DIRECTIONS:

In a large bowl combine strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and currants. Sprinkle with sugar and gently stir in fennel. Refrigerate for about 20 minutes. Serve cold.

Top with plain, unflavored nonfat yoghurt which has been left to sit overnight in a coffee filter over a glass in the refridge. Stir a 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla into the remaining cheese and top the fruit with the mixture. You will be surprised at how good this is.

A Little Mandarin Action

This is fun, this is Kung pao beef, and making it at home beats the crap out of ordering out. It is simple and cheaper, and I do love cheaper.

1 1/2 pounds boneless beef sirloin
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon rice wine or sherry
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons peanut or corn oil
4 dried red chiles, split
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 tablespoon grated ginger
1 teaspoon Szechwan pepper, toasted and crushed
2 scallions, cut in 1/2-inch pieces
1 red bell pepper, cut in pieces
2 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons rice wine or sherry
2 tablespoons Chinese black vinegar or balsamic
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup chicken broth
1 tablespoon cornstarch, dissolved in 2 tablespoons water
1/3 cup roasted peanuts

Trim fat from the steak and cut into 1-inch cubes. Combine the soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine/sherry, egg white and salt in a glass bowl. Add the beef and stir to coat. Marinate for 1 hour, covered in the refrigerator.
Place peanut/corn oil in a wok, swirling to coat the sides, and place over high heat. Add the chilies and cook until they begin to darken. Add the garlic, ginger and Szechwan pepper; continue to cook to infuse the oil. Add the scallions and bell pepper. Remove the steak from the marinade and add it to the wok. Stir-fry the beef for 3 minutes until brown. Blend in soy sauce, rice wine, Chinese vinegar, sugar and chicken broth. Dissolve the cornstarch slurry and add it to the sauce, stirring, to thicken. Sprinkle in the peanuts and stir to coat. Serve over rice.

Cook your rice like this and sit back and bask in the compliments.

Down, Down, Down

Bush Approval Falls to 33%, Congress Earns Rare Praise
Dubai Ports Fallout

Released: March 15, 2006

Summary of Findings

In the aftermath of the Dubai ports deal, President Bush's approval rating has hit a new low and his image for honesty and effectiveness has been damaged. Yet the public uncharacteristically has good things to say about the role that Congress played in this high-profile Washington controversy.

Most Americans (58%) believe Congress acted appropriately in strenuously opposing the deal, while just 24% say lawmakers made too much of the situation. While there is broad support for the way Congress handled the dispute, more Americans think Democratic leaders showed good judgment on the ports issue than say the same about GOP leaders (by 30%-20%).

The new Pew survey underscores the public's alarm over the prospect that an Arab-owned company could have operated U.S. ports. Fully 41% say they paid very close attention to news about the debate, which is unusually high interest for a Washington story and is only slightly lower than the number tracking Iraq war news very closely (43%). There was broad opposition to the proposed deal from across the political spectrum, including two-to-one disapproval among conservative Republicans (56%-27%).

Bush's overall approval measure stands at 33%, the lowest rating of his presidency. Bush's job performance mark is now about the same as the ratings for Democratic and Republican congressional leaders (34% and 32%, respectively), which showed no improvement in spite of public approval of the congressional response to the ports deal.

It's Pew, and they've done their usual fine job of summarizing and demonstrating their methodology on the link. Read the whole thing.

Bird Flu News

Our frightening and talented little virus is proving to be quite the world traveler:

Bird Flu Hits Sweden; Afghans Suspect It

Sweden recorded its first case of the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain on Wednesday, saying European laboratory tests confirm two wild birds found dead in the southeast were infected with the virus. Afghan authorities, meanwhile, said preliminary test results from a U.N. lab left them "99 percent certain" that the country's first bird flu outbreak was the deadly H5N1 strain.

Danish authorities said they too had found a wild bird infected with an aggressive strain of bird flu, but it was not immediately whether it was the deadly H5N1 strain. If confirmed as H5N1, it would be the first case of the virus in Denmark.

Also Wednesday, Myanmar announced it had culled 5,000 poultry to prevent the spread of bird flu, as authorities in western India prepared to slaughter tens of thousands of chickens.

Further tests at the lab in Rome in the next 24 hours are expected to confirm the Afghan outbreak, said Mustafa Zahir, the director of the government's environment department.

"We are 99 percent certain," he told a press conference in Kabul.

Concerns over the global spread of bird flu were heightened again this week when the Azerbaijan reported three people killed by the virus, which also has killed 98 other people in Asia, the Middle East and Turkey since 2003, according to March 13 figures from the World Health Organization.

There is as yet no sustained human to human transmission, but as our friend DemfromCT has demonstrated, the number of human cases, presumptly acquired from birds or close family contact, has been ramping up since spring of last year. It's time for heightened awareness, greater preparation, greater communication but not panic, okay?

Return to 1984

Dan Froomkin's Live Chats at the WaPo every two weeks almost redeem all of the other bad stuff the ed board does. This is from today's event:

Columbus, Ohio: Given this administration's goal of almost absolute power for the Commander in Chief during war time and its amazing success with Congress in achieving that goal, are we possibly headed to a time where presidents would feel inclined to be perpetually at war? Is Iraq a lead-in to our eventual war with Oceania?

Dan Froomkin: Well, even Orwell never anticipated a "war on terror." Talk about perpetual. Terror is a tactic. You can't defeat a tactic. And you don't need to worry about an accidental victory either. So in short, Bush out-Orwelled Orwell.

And, They Vote

Interesting Times

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, March 15, 2006; 11:39 AM

It may rank up there as one of the greater Bush understatements of all time.

Taking his talk-show-style, no-dissenters-allowed road show to upstate New York yesterday -- this time to defend his administration's Medicare prescription drug benefit -- President Bush uncorked a whopper about the program's botched rollout:

"Anytime Washington passes a new law, sometimes the transition period can be interesting," he said.

David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times: "That was something of an understatement. The White House was flooded with complaints about retirees who could not obtain their drugs at the promised discount, and [as Robert Pear reported on Monday,] independent pharmacists from Texas complained in recent days to Karl Rove, the president's deputy chief of staff and political strategist, that they had been forced to give out millions of dollars of prescription drugs and had not been reimbursed."

"Interesting isn't the word senior citizen advocates use to describe it," writes Judith Graham in the Chicago Tribune.

" 'It's an enormous mess . . . a real nightmare,' said Jeanne Finberg, an attorney at the National Senior Citizens Law Center."

Graham got an up-close look at the kinds of problems Medicare recipients are facing when she tried to help Frank Cartalino, a transplant patient, figure out why his pharmacy had suddenly billed him $500 for the drugs he needs to stay alive, and that used to be covered.

"It took more than a dozen phone calls for the Tribune to sort through the mind-numbing complexities of Medicare and figure out where things had gone wrong," she writes.

"Days of research revealed the root of his problem: Staff members working with pharmacies, insurance plans and government agencies don't really understand how Medicare's new drug benefit coordinates with other parts of the vast health program. And thousands of patients with organ transplants and other illnesses are getting caught in the middle."

Here's some more background on the "interesting period":

Ceci Connolly wrote in The Washington Post in January: "Two weeks into the new Medicare prescription drug program, many of the nation's sickest and poorest elderly and disabled people are being turned away or overcharged at pharmacies, prompting more than a dozen states to declare health emergencies and pay for their life-saving medicines."

Local papers have chronicled the debacle in their backyards.

Peggy O'Farrell wrote in the Cincinnati Enquirer last month: "Eight weeks after coverage started, seniors are confounded by the fine print and confused by what's covered and what's not. . . .

"Locally, seniors say the sheer number of plans makes it impossible to methodically choose the right coverage. They're frustrated by an inability to access Medicare's Web site for help and to get through on Medicare's toll-free phone line to enroll. When they do reach workers at the agency's call centers, seniors say answers are likely to conflict with each other."

Kathleen O'Dell writes in the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader: "Pharmacists went to bat for bewildered seniors when the Medicare prescription drug program began Jan. 1. For weeks on end they intervened by phone and fax so customers got their drugs, at the price they were promised.

"Now independent pharmacists are having problems of their own with Medicare Part D, and they say it could force some of them to drop their hallmark small-town service or close their doors for good."

Christopher Snowbeck writes in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "For potentially thousands of lower-income Medicare recipients, the benefit of free drugs from pharmaceutical companies is suddenly becoming a burden.

"If they decide to stay with the free drugs and not enroll in the new Medicare Part D drug program by May 15, they'll have to pay an increasingly large penalty to get in later should their medical needs or the pharmaceutical companies' programs change.

"The Catch-22 situation is another example of how the new benefit, which promises help to people who previously lacked drug coverage, has created confusing or difficult decisions for beneficiaries already receiving some sort of pharmacy benefit."

According to a Kaiser Health poll , senior citizens are now "almost twice as likely to say they view the benefit unfavorably (45%) as favorably (23%)."

And in the New York Times last month, Robin Toner traced the rocky start to the underlying vision, "an effort to blend a classic big government program from the Great Society with the conservative, market-oriented philosophy of the Republicans in power. . . .

"Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health research group, calls it 'a compromise between competing ideologies shoehorned into a fixed budget.' He added, 'I think it was preordained from the moment they passed it that it would be historically complicated to implement.' "

In other words, a clusterfuck.

Same Old

This is depressingly familiar to those of us who came of age in the 1960's and '70's.

FBI Took Photos of Antiwar Activists in 2002

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 15, 2006; Page A05

An FBI agent in Pittsburgh photographed members of an antiwar activist group in 2002, according to documents released yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said the disclosure marks the latest incident in which the FBI has monitored left-leaning groups.

An FBI report from November 2002 indicates that an agent photographed members of the Thomas Merton Center as they handed out leaflets opposing the impending war in Iraq. The report called the group a "left-wing organization advocating, among many political causes, pacifism."

The same memo notes that one of the leaflet distributors "appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent" but that no other participants appeared to be from the Middle East.

"All we were doing was handing out leaflets, which is a perfectly legal way to spend an afternoon," said Tim Vining, the center's former executive director, who said he participated in the Nov. 24, 2002, protest monitored by the FBI. "All we want to do is exercise our First Amendment rights . . . Is handing out fliers now considered a terrorist activity?"

The FBI said in a statement that the agent was "acting with all appropriate investigative authorities" as part of an ongoing terrorism probe. The photos were destroyed once the agent determined that a person under investigation was not in attendance at the event, the FBI said.

Why is the FBI surveilling ordinary Americans doing perfectly legal things? Aren't there some bad guys out there that need to be caught?

Helping the Helping Professions

Study Links Nurse Shortage to Pay That Lags Behind Inflation

Wednesday, March 15, 2006; Page A02

How can hospitals attract and keep much-needed nurses? The answer is simple, according to a new study based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Increase nurses' wages at a rate that keeps them from falling behind inflation.

The study found that between 1996 and 2000 -- a period when hospitals began to complain of a serious nurse shortage -- average pay for nurses declined by 1.5 percent when inflation was taken into account. But wages after inflation increased by 2.4 percent for hospital nurses in 2001, and the result was a flood of job applications -- with staff size increasing by 9.2 percent. Nurses' salaries continued to increase until 2003, when wages and the number of practicing nurses began to decline again.

Working conditions like mandatory overtime and seniority based scheduling also have a role to play.

Neither Here Nor There

Iowa's Residency Rules Drive Sex Offenders Underground

By MONICA DAVEY
Published: March 15, 2006

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — One cornfield beyond the trim white farmhouse where the Boland family lives and a road sign warns, "Watch for children and dogs," is a faded motel.

The Ced-Rel Motel in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was home to 26 registered sex offenders by early March. Many other places either will not take them, or, under state law restricting where offenders may live, cannot.

State law bars sexual offenders from most of Dubuque, Iowa.

For years a layover for budget-conscious motorists and construction crews, the motel has lately become a disquieting symbol of what has gone wrong with Iowa's crackdown on sexual offenders of children. With just 24 rooms, the motel, the Ced-Rel, was home to 26 registered sex offenders by the start of March.

"Nobody wants to have something associated with sex offenders right beside them," said Steve Boland, a farmer and father of two who learns about his newest neighbors every few weeks when sheriff's deputies stop by with photographs of them.

"Us showing the kids some mug shots sure wasn't going to help," Mr. Boland said. "How were they going to remember that many faces?"

The men have flocked to the Ced-Rel and other rural motels and trailer parks because no one else will, or can, have them. A new state law barring those convicted of sex crimes involving children from living within 2,000 feet of a school or day care center has brought unintended and disturbing consequences. It has rendered some offenders homeless and left others sleeping in cars or in the cabs of their trucks.

And the authorities say that many have simply vanished from their sight, with nearly three times as many registered sex offenders considered missing since before the law took effect in September.

"The truth is that we're starting to lose people," said Don Vrotsos, chief deputy for the Dubuque County sheriff's office and the man whose job it is to keep track of that county's 101 sex offenders.

The statute has set off a law-making race in the cities and towns of Iowa, with each trying to be more restrictive than the next by adding parks, swimming pools, libraries and bus stops to the list of off-limits places. Fearful that Iowa's sex offenders might seek refuge across state lines, six neighboring states have joined the frenzy.

"We don't want to be the dumping ground for their sex offenders," said Tom Brusch, the mayor of Galena, Ill., which passed an ordinance in January.

But even as new bans ripple across the Midwest, the rocky start of the Iowa law — one of at least 18 state laws governing the living arrangements of those convicted of sex crimes — has led to a round of second-guessing about whether such laws really work.

"Nobody wants sex offenders in their area, and on its face, it makes sense that people wouldn't want them near day cares and schools," said Scott Matson, a research associate at the Center for Sex Offender Management, a nonprofit project financed by the federal Department of Justice. "But there are consequences of removing them."

While some of the Iowa's largest cities, like Des Moines, have become virtually off limits for those convicted of sex crimes involving children, the new rules have pushed many to live in groups away from their families, in places like the Ced-Rel, or the Red Carpet Inn in nearby Bouton, where nine offenders rent rooms.

Michele Costigan, whose driveway is right across Highway 30 from the Ced-Rel in this rural stretch just outside Cedar Rapids, said she had stopped leaving any of her four children at home alone, had told them to dial 911 if anyone they did not recognize pulled into the family driveway, and was considering moving.

I don't have any answers here, only more questions. While this story has significance on its face, it also is a place holder for some larger questions about crime and punishment, treatment and recidivism and why the US has the largest segment of its citizenry in the criminal justice system of any country in the industrialized West.

If pedophiles can't be safely released back into the community, then let's offer them some other setting which leave our communities free from fear and the released convict some kind of dignity. This netherworld of existence is good for none of us.

Southern Style

A while back, I printed up my mother's recipe for macaroni and cheese, that sturdy midwestern version that starts with a roux. There is more than one way to make everything, of course, and I've been looking around for a southern recipe with no flour. I found it and this is so good that I think it will be the new house favorite. I also like to make this as a four cheese mac, with extra sharp cheddar, colby, jack and provolone with a sprinkling of parmesan across the top to add to the crust.

This is easy and makes a main course for six. This is not skinny food.

4 cups cooked elbow macaroni, drained
2 cups grated Cheddar
3 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup sour cream
4 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Once you have the macaroni cooked and drained, place in a large bowl and while still hot and add the Cheddar. In a separate bowl, combine the remaining ingredients and add to the macaroni mixture. Pour macaroni mixture into a casserole dish and bake for 30 to 45 minutes. Top with additional cheese, if desired, and the paprika, olives and onions.

In the American south, this is a traditional side dish. In the midwest, with the addition of finely cubed ham, it is a main dish. Either way, it is a calorie and fat splurge and that needs to be planned for, unless, of course, mental health requires the ultimate comfort food for dinner. I crave this after a particularly hard day and the stuff that comes out of the blue Kraft box just isn't as satisfying.

Opening the Menu Door

This is super-light and refreshing pasta first course. It is an excellent way to begin a meal which will feature a light poultry or seafood main course.

Fettuccine with Grilled Vegetables

1 small eggplant peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
2 large fresh portobello mushrooms stems removed, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 large green sweet pepper cut into 1-inch pieces
1/2 cup dry white
1/4 cup water
2 teaspoons instant vegetable bouillon granules
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon snipped fresh basil OR 1 teaspoon dried basil crushed
2 teaspoons snipped fresh savory OR 1/4 teaspoon dried savory crushed
2 teaspoons snipped fresh thyme OR 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme crushed
8 ounces packaged dried spinach fettuccine
OR plain fettuccine
1 small tomato chopped (1/2 cup)
1/2 cup shredded reduced-far mozzarella cheese (2 ounces)
2 tablespoons finely shredded parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
If you are using wooden skewers, soak them in water overnight to prevent them from burning on the hot grill. For an eye-catching presentation, arrange the grilled vegetables over a combination of plain and spinach fettuccine.

Thread the eggplant cubes, mushroom pieces, and sweet pepper pieces
alternately onto eight 12-inch-long skewers; set aside.

For sauce, in a saucepan combine wine, water, bouillon granules, cornstarch, basil, savory, and thyme. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly; cook and stir for 1 minute more. Keep warm.

Brush kabobs with 1 to 2 tablespoons sauce. Grill kabobs on the rack of an uncovered grill directly over medium coals for 8 to 10 minutes or until vegetables are just tender, turning once. (Or, to broil kabobs, spray an unheated broiler pan with nonstick coating. Place the kabobs on broiler pan. Broil 3 to 4 inches from the heat for 8 to 10 minutes or until vegetables are crisp- tender, turning once.) Meanwhile, cook pasta according to package directions, except omit any oil or salt. Drain and keep warm.

To serve, toss pasta with remaining wine sauce -and arrange on 4 dinner plates. Slide the vegetables from skewers onto each serving of pasta. Sprinkle each serving with chopped tomato, mozzarella cheese, Parmesan cheese, and black pepper.

Can you tell that the weather has been warm enough that I'm starting to pine for the grill?

London Broil

I don't eat red meat very often, so when I do, I want it to be good. Like most other rare meat eaters, I love filet mignon with bernaise sauce, but, until I win the lottery, that's going to be a rare visitor to my kitchen. The cut of beef I prepare the most is top round London broil. My grocery has it on special every couple of weeks. It's a cut of meat that responds to a variety of techniques and flavors, cooks up nicely medium rare. This is one of my favorite ways to cook it and it is equally as successful on my stovetop grill, the oven broiler or the outdoor barbecue. Serve it with grilled veggies and twice baked potatoes.

4 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 lb (1 1/4-inch-thick) top round London broil
3 small red onions (3/4 lb total)

Special equipment: about 24 wooden picks; an instant-read thermometer

Marinate steak and prepare onions:
Stir together garlic, 3 tablespoons vinegar, 1 1/2 tablespoons oil, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper and pour into a 1-quart sealable plastic bag.

Add steak to marinade, turning to coat, and marinate, chilled, turning bag occasionally, at least 4 hours.

Bring to room temperature, then remove steak from marinade and discard marinade.

Trim root ends of onions slightly, leaving them intact, then halve lengthwise and cut halves lengthwise into 3/4-inch-thick wedges. Insert 1 wooden pick horizontally through each wedge (to keep it intact while grilling). Whisk together remaining tablespoon vinegar and 1 1/2 tablespoons oil and salt and pepper to taste in a bowl and add onions, tossing gently to coat.

To cook steak using a charcoal grill:
Open vents on bottom of grill. Light a large chimney starter of charcoal (80 to 100 briquettes) and pour lit charcoal onto bottom rack, leaving about one quarter of bottom rack free of charcoal and banking remaining coals across rest of bottom rack so that coals are about 3 times higher on opposite side. Charcoal fire is medium-hot when you can hold your hand 5 inches above thickest layer of coals for 3 to 4 seconds. 3Sear steak on lightly oiled grill rack over thickest layer of coals, uncovered, 1 minute on each side, then move steak to area over fewer coals and grill, uncovered, turning occasionally and moving to coolest area of grill if browning too quickly, until thermometer inserted horizontally 2 inches into meat registers 120°F, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer to a plate and let stand 10 minutes (steak will continue to cook, reaching medium-rare).

To cook steak using a gas grill:
Preheat all burners on high, covered, 10 minutes.

Sear steak on lightly oiled grill rack, uncovered, 1 minute on each side, then reduce heat to moderate. Grill steak, covered, turning occasionally, until thermometer inserted horizontally 2 inches into meat registers 120°F, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer to a plate and let stand 10 minutes (steak will continue to cook, reaching medium-rare).

To grill onions by either method:
While steak is standing, grill onions (covered only if using a gas grill) over moderate heat, turning over once, until tender, about 6 minutes.

Serve onions with steak; cut steak crosswise into thin slices, holding knife at a 45-degree angle.

Overwhelmed

Looking for a Villain

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, March 14, 2006; 12:42 PM

President Bush always does better against an enemy. His strongest public support has come when demonizing Osama bin Laden (not hard), Saddam Hussein (a bit harder) -- and then John Kerry (his finest achievement).

But as the morass in Iraq seems to worsen day by day, identifying the enemy there has become increasingly difficult. Is it Sunnis? Shiites? Foreign terrorists? The insurgency? Saddamists? Independent militias? Is it us?

Yesterday brought two strong signs that even as Bush is trying -- and failing -- to placate the public about Iraq, he's increasingly keen to focus attention on a new villain: Iran.

Building up public support for military action against Iran seems like an uphill battle right now. For one, Bush would need to better explain how Iran, even if it had nuclear weapons, was a threat to the United States. And it's not likely that the public -- or the press -- will take his assertions on face value this time.

But if Bush's ability to govern, in either Iraq or his own country, has been overestimated at times, the same cannot be said for his ability to campaign and stoke a nation to war.

A Bush who appears embattled, defensive and quite possibly overwhelmed inevitably leads to lower and lower public approval ratings.

But White House aides are abundantly aware that there's something about the image of a fearless American president boldly kicking butt that seems to fill the public with an enthusiasm that transcends even the issue of whose butt it may be.

The body part in question is our collective derierre, I believe.

Hate Speech

Still, lets remember that it's only Liberals that engage in hate specch, for others it's a first Amendment issue.

Robertson finds radical Muslims 'satanic'

By SONJA BARISIC
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

Monday 14, 2006

NORFOLK, Va. -- Television evangelist Pat Robertson said Monday on his live news-and-talk program "The 700 Club" that Islam is not a religion of peace, and that radical Muslims are "satanic."

Robertson's comments came after he watched a news story on his Christian Broadcasting Network about Muslim protests in Europe over the cartoon drawings of the Prophet Muhammad.

He remarked that the outpouring of rage elicited by cartoons "just shows the kind of people we're dealing with. These people are crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it's motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it's time we recognize what we're dealing with."

Robertson also said that "the goal of Islam, ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, is world domination."

In a statement later Monday, Robertson said he was referring specifically to terrorists who want to bomb innocent people as being motivated by Satan. In the news story, he noted, radical Muslims were shown screaming: "May Allah bomb you! May Osama Bin Laden bomb you!"

Angell Watts, a Robertson spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview that the news segment also included comments from a moderate Muslim in the United Kingdom saying radicals don't represent most Muslims in that country.

Robertson's Virginia Beach-based network did not include his remarks when it posted the program on its Web site, however. That decision was made out of concern Robertson's remarks could be misinterpreted if viewed out of context, Watts said.

Monday's comments were similar to remarks he made on his program in 2002, when he said Islam "is not a peaceful religion that wants to coexist. They want to coexist until they can control, dominate and then, if need be, destroy."

Personally, I'd hate to be his spokesman. Can you imagine trying to come up with rational sounding explainations for the nonsense that comes out of his mouth. Aren't there some FCC regulations against comments like this... one would think that this would be a better topic to investiage than shows like Las Vegas.

And this is the guy that the TV "experts" come to when they want to know what Christians think... no one why many Liberals think we are insane.

Despoilation

Burst oil pipeline causes 'catastrophe' in Alaska
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 14 March 2006

A burst pipeline in Alaska's North Slope has caused the Arctic region's worst oil spill, spreading more than 250,000 gallons of crude oil over an area used by caribou herds and prompting environmentalists again to question the Bush administration's drive for more oil exploration there.

The leak was first spotted by a British Petroleum worker 11 days ago, and was reported to have been plugged a few days later. Initial hopes expressed by BP that the spill was limited to a few tens of thousands of gallons proved to be over-optimistic. Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation has steadily increased its estimate of the size of the spill, the latest estimate putting it at around 265,000 gallons.

The leak, whose cause is unknown, occurred in a remote part of the most sparsely populated state in the United States, and it remains to be seen what damage, if any, it has done to ecosystems. It does, however, give grist to groups who have challenged Washington's assertion that oil can be prospected and shipped while leaving only the gentlest of "footprints" on the landscape.

"This historic oil spill is a catastrophe for the environment," Natalie Brandon, of the Alaska Wilderness League, said in a statement. "Tone-deaf politicians in Congress should now stop trying to push for more drilling through sneaky manoeuvres ... The fact that the oil spill occurred in a caribou crossing area in Prudhoe Bay is a painful reminder of the reality of unchecked oil and gas development across Alaska's North Slope."

The biggest battle has been over the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, also on the North Slope, which the White House wants to open up. The initiative, championed from the moment the Bush administration took office in 2001, has been consistently blocked by Congress but is periodically revived.

A second battle, meanwhile, is taking place in a previously untouched corner of the National Petroleum Reserve on the North Slope. The Bush administration has allowed oil companies to prospect for oil and gas in an area covering 389,000 acres. Environmental groups have responded with a federal lawsuit, filed last Friday, in which they contend that the Department of the Interior has violated the Endangered Species Act and other laws in an area noted for its flocks of migratory geese.

It is not just environmentalists who oppose the administration's plans. Several prominent energy analysts, as well as Washington politicians, argue that the likely yield in unexplored areas of the North Slope is not large enough to justify the intrusion.

Alaskan politicians and industry lobby groups are heavily in favour of expanding exploration as it would bring jobs and other benefits to the state economy. The Bush administration, meanwhile, argues that further domestic exploration is essential if the United States wants to decrease its dependence on oil and gas from the Middle East.

Accidents and leaks have periodically occurred on the North Slope, and along the trans-Alaska pipeline that takes crude from Prudhoe Bay across two mountain ranges to the port of Valdez on the shores of the North Pacific. Saboteurs blew up a section of pipeline shortly after it opened in the 1970s, starting a major spillage. A hunter accidentally fired into the pipeline five years ago, causing $7m (£3.6m) worth of damage.

This is the country we are bequeathing to our children. Pretty, ain't it?

Selling It Off

Storm-Wracked Parish Considers Hired Guns
Contractors in Louisiana Would Make Arrests, Carry Weapons

By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 14, 2006; Page A01

ST. BERNARD PARISH, La. -- Maj. Pete Tufaro scanned the fenced lot packed with hundreds of stark white trailers soon to be inhabited by Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Shaking his head, he predicted the cramped quarters would ignite fights, hide criminals and become an incubator for crime, posing another test for his cash-strapped sheriff's department, which furloughed 206 of its 390 officers after the storm.

Tufaro thinks the parish has the solution: DynCorp International LLC, the Texas company that provided personal security to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and is one of the largest security contractors in Iraq. If the Federal Emergency Management Agency approves the sheriff's department's proposal, which would cost $70 million over three years, up to 100 DynCorp employees would be deputized to be make arrests, carry weapons, and dress in the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Department khaki and black uniforms.

"You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between us and them," said Tufaro, who developed the proposal.

But while the plan is for the DynCorp employees to eat and live with the other deputies in the same trailer camp, the hired guns would earn "significantly more" than the $18,000 annual salary of an entry-level deputy and the $30,000-a-year salary of a seasoned officer.

For DynCorp and other private security companies, the post-Katrina Gulf Coast, like Iraq, is a land of opportunity. Hired shortly after the storm to protect several New Orleans hospitals, its first domestic security job, the Texas firm has earned about $14 million from work in the Gulf Coast since Katrina, not all of which has involved security.

Blackwater USA, which protected the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and lost four employees in a brutal ambush in Fallujah in 2004, earned about $42 million through the end of December on a contract with Federal Protective Service, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, to provide security to FEMA sites. Most of the 330 contract guards now working in Louisiana are employed by the company.

The Homeland Security Department's Inspector General said the company's costs in its FEMA contract -- it earns $950 a day for each employee -- were "clearly very high," and it expressed hope that competition would lower them. But costs are not the only concerns raised by critics of the companies.

"Katrina broke all of the rules. It was the first time you had the deployment of armed private security contractors in the U.S.," said Peter W. Singer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry."

Singer said the proposed contract with DynCorp raises a number of questions, including whether the DynCorp officers will be properly supervised, whether the pay difference will cause tension in the sheriff's department and whether it suggests that even government jobs that assume a level of public service can be done by private corporations.

Lessee $260,000 a year versus $18-30,000. Hmm, I'll bet that's going to leave a mark. Why not just re-hire the furloughed officers? This doesn't make any sense, other than as another opportunity for Bush friends to loot the government further.

It's Over

From "staying the course" to "cut and run."

Bush Sets Target for Transition In Iraq
Country's Troops to Take Lead This Year

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 14, 2006; Page A01

President Bush vowed for the first time yesterday to turn over most of Iraq to newly trained Iraqi troops by the end of this year, setting a specific benchmark as he kicked off a fresh drive to reassure Americans alarmed by the recent burst of sectarian violence.

Bush, who until now has resisted concrete timelines as the Iraq war dragged on longer than he expected, outlined the target in the first of a series of speeches intended to lay out his strategy for victory. While acknowledging grim developments on the ground, Bush declared "real progress" in standing up Iraqi forces capable of defending their nation.

"As more capable Iraqi police and soldiers come on line, they will assume responsibility for more territory with the goal of having the Iraqis control more territory than the coalition by the end of 2006," he said in a speech to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "And as Iraqis take over more territory, this frees American and coalition forces to concentrate on training and on hunting down high-value targets like the terrorist [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi and his associates."

The president made no commitments about withdrawing U.S. troops, but he repeated his general formula that Americans could come home as Iraqis eventually take over the fight. He also used the speech to urge Iraqis to form a unity government three months after parliamentary elections, and he accused Iran of providing explosives to Shiite militias attacking U.S. forces in Iraq.

The beginning of a new campaign to rally Americans behind the war effort nearly three years after the U.S.-led invasion comes at a time of deepening public misgivings about the campaign in Iraq and Bush's leadership of it. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll this month, 34 percent of Americans surveyed said they think the president has a plan for victory in Iraq, six percentage points lower than in December and the lowest level recorded by that poll. By contrast, 65 percent said Bush has no Iraq plan.

How meaningful or achievable the president's new goal is seems uncertain. In the speech, Bush said Iraqi units today have "primary responsibility" over 30,000 square miles of Iraqi territory, an increase of 20,000 square miles since the beginning of the year. As a country of nearly 169,000 square miles, Iraqi forces would need to control about 85,000 square miles to fulfill Bush's target.

All of Bush's statements are fairy stories, of course. This is a debacle in every possible way.

Goetterdaemmerung

via Juan Cole:

US postwar Iraq strategy a mess, Blair was told

Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Tuesday March 14, 2006
The Guardian

Senior British diplomatic and military staff gave Tony Blair explicit warnings three years ago that the US was disastrously mishandling the occupation of Iraq, according to leaked memos.

John Sawers, Mr Blair's envoy in Baghdad in the aftermath of the invasion, sent a series of confidential memos to Downing Street in May and June 2003 cataloguing US failures. With unusual frankness, he described the US postwar administration, led by the retired general Jay Garner, as "an unbelievable mess" and said "Garner and his top team of 60-year-old retired generals" were "well-meaning but out of their depth".

Article continues
That assessment is reinforced by Major General Albert Whitley, the most senior British officer with the US land forces. Gen Whitley, in another memo later that summer, expressed alarm that the US-British coalition was in danger of losing the peace. "We may have been seduced into something we might be inclined to regret. Is strategic failure a possibility? The answer has to be 'yes'," he concluded.

The memos were obtained by Michael Gordon, author, along with General Bernard Trainor, of Cobra II: the Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, published to coincide with the third anniversary of the invasion.

The British memos identified a series of US failures that contained the seeds of the present insurgency and anarchy.

The mistakes include:

· A lack of interest by the US commander, General Tommy Franks, in the post-invasion phase.

· The presence in the capital of the US Third Infantry Division, which took a heavyhanded approach to security.

· Squandering the initial sympathy of Iraqis.

· Bechtel, the main US civilian contractor, moving too slowly to reconnect basic services, such as electricity and water.

· Failure to deal with health hazards, such as 40% of Baghdad's sewage pouring into the Tigris and rubbish piling up in the streets.

· Sacking of many of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party, even though many of them held relatively junior posts.

Mr Sawers, in a memo titled Iraq: What's Going Wrong, written on May 11, four days after he had arrived in Baghdad, is uncompromising about the US administration in Baghdad. He wrote: "No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis."

He said the US needed to take action in Baghdad urgently. "The clock is ticking." Both Mr Sawers, who is now political director at the Foreign Office, and Gen Whitley see as one of the biggest errors a decision by Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, and General Tommy Franks, the overall US commander, to cut troops after the invasion.

Mr Sawers advocated sending a British battalion, the 16th Air Assault Brigade, to Baghdad to help fill the gap. Although the US supported the plan, Downing Street rejected it weeks later.

The British diplomat is particularly scathing about the US Third Infantry Division, which he describes as "a big part of the problem" in Baghdad. He accused its troops of being reluctant to leave their heavily armoured vehicles to carry out policing and cites an incident in which British Paras saw them fire three tank rounds into a building in response to harmless rifle fire.

The US Army is really good at breaking things and killing people. That is also the only thing it is good at. From the start this was going to be a disaster, as I've told you from the day we signed on the air. It isn't getting better.

I've told you from Day One all of the reasons why this was going to be a disaster of historic proportions, and I've usually had to use the foreign media to tell you. The American press are so ignorant of history that they are a complete failure as war reporters (with a couple of exceptions at Knight Ridder) to give this debacle any kind of context. Americans themselves have no knowledge of their own history and the press is a follow-on poodle which feeds American prejudices for quick and easy and entertaining solutions to complex problems. Americans want their news to be black and white and that is mostly what they get from the entertainment companies which supply our "news." This is all about good guys and bad guys in the US press. It's "cowboys and indians" with the white and black hats drawn as caricatures. That's all the American people want, and that's all they will get.

There is a reason why Bush's us v. them rhetoric has been successful. It plays into the American mythos of our exceptionalism against the world. We can now see how flawed that is.

Slow Food

FRIED MOZZARELLA WITH ANCHOVIES, CAPERS, AND GARLIC SAUCE

2 8-ounce balls fresh water-packed mozzarella cheese, drained, each cut into four 1/3- to 1/2-inch-thick rounds, should be no more than one day old
All purpose flour
1 large egg, beaten to blend
3cups panko (japanese bread crumbs) or italian bread crumbs
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup (packed) fresh Italian parsley leaves
1/2 cup olive oil
1/3 cup drained capers
anchovy paste
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

I 10 oz. package mixed lettuces

Coat cheese in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs. Place on baking sheet. Cover and refrigerate until cold, at least 2 hours.

Meanwhile, melt butter in small skillet over low heat. Add garlic; sauté about 3 minutes. Transfer mixture to processor. Add parsley leaves, 1/4 cup oil, capers, anchovy paste, and lemon juice. Blend until coarse paste forms. Season with salt and pepper. (Cheese and sauce can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover separately; chill. Rewarm sauce slightly over low heat before serving.)

Heat 1/4 cup oil in large skillet over high heat. Working in batches, fry cheese until brown, about 2 minutes per side.

Transfer fried cheese to plates covered with lettuces. Spoon warm sauce over cheese.

Makes 8 first-course servings.

Oh. My. These are good. This is a stunning first course with roast poultry. Make sure to pass artisinal breads with herbed olive oil to clear out some of those clogged arteries, and pass the kalamata olives. I rarely have time to bake often anymore, so identifying a great local baker is part of my cooking strategy. I also have small merchants in the family and like to support my own small businesses here in my little city. The Bread House is now supplying artisanal breads to most of the good restaurants in my little city. It is comforting to take one of their warm loaves home. Find yourself a good bakery if you don't have time to bake for your household and give the hardworking baker (the day routinely starts before 4, when I was doing morning sign on radio, I was up with the bakers) some of your custom. Good bread is simply more satisfying than the factory baked stuff. Buy the multigrain versions and it is better for you, too.

Fresh bread can be stored in a zip lock bag for a day after baking on the kitchen counter or bread box. After that, it needs to go into the fridge to retard spoilage. It will keep better and longer if you don't pass it through the slicer machine at the grocery, and cut your slices with a good bread knife when you need them. Yeah, I know, slow food takes longer. But it tastes better and that is the point, isn't it?

Old Fashioned Chinese

I'm a big fan of quick meals on weeknights, particularly when they are good enough to say to a friend, "Hey, come for dinner tonight." This is one of those. You must enjoy hoisin sauce to appreciate this recipe, not everyone does. Cut it with a little spicy Chinese mustard if you want a hotter finish.

I remember the first time I had mu shu in a restaurant. It was with my friend Deborah, a Jewish girl who grew up in one of the Jewish neighborhoods outside of Minneapolis. Where I grew up, there was an Americanized Chinese takeout from which my family ordered "chow mein" once a month or so, and real Hong Kong style Chinese food was quite the revelation. Deborah was the person who taught me to seek out the ethnic restaurants (and introduced me to deli cuisine) when I was in college. Jews have a relationship with Chinese food that WASPS like me don't have; traditionally, Jews go out for Chinese on Christmas. Many Chinese don't celebrate Christmas and the restaurants are open. On December 25, American Jews are their best customers.

Mu Shu in Minutes

1/4 cup peanut or vegetable oil
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons finely grated peeled fresh ginger
2 garlic clovew, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
1 (16-oz) bag coleslaw mix, or one head of chopped napa cabbage
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon Asian sesame oil
2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro
3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1 bunch scallions, coarsely chopped
8 won ton skins
2 1/2 to 3 cups coarsely shredded cooked chicken, without skin (from a 2-lb rotisserie chicken) or chopped cooked pork

Accompaniments: hoisin sauce; chopped scallions

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over high heat until hot but not smoking, then cook eggs, stirring, until just cooked through. Transfer scrambled eggs to a plate. Add remaining 3 tablespoons oil to skillet and heat until hot but not smoking, then cook ginger, garlic, and red pepper flakes, stirring, until garlic is golden, about 1 minute. Add coleslaw mix and 2 tablespoons water and cook, covered, stirring occasionally, until coleslaw is wilted, about 5 minutes.

Stir together soy sauce, sesame oil, remaining 2 tablespoons water, and hoisin sauce in a small bowl. Add to coleslaw mixture along with scallions and eggs and cook, stirring, 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Immediately put won tons between 2 dampened paper towels on a microwave-safe plate and microwave on high power until won tons are hot and flexible, about 30 seconds.

To assemble, spread hoisin on each won ton skin and top with mu shu mixture, chicken, and scallions, then roll up.

Makes 4 servings.

Stop to pick up some carry out hot and sour soup on the way home, and dinner is served!

For vegetarians, firm tofu can be treated the same way as the meat and this is a very attractive and interesting vegetarian dish.

Go to your favorite Chinese restaurant and ask the chef which hoisin to buy if you don't already have a favorite yourself. I'm partial to Koon Chun, but that might be because it was the first one I ever had.

Traditionally, the hoisin sauce is spread on the pancakes or wonton skins with green onions.

Looking for Marvin

I hope we can locate the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator before it's too late.

Of course, there is a sister site in case you are looking to book some tour dates when a space elevator is finally created.

Day Brightener

This is a delicious variation on your standard French Toast. It's a wonderful company brunch dish.

Baked French Toast Cassarole

1 loaf French bread (13 to 16 ounces)
8 large eggs
2 cups half-and-half
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Dash salt
Praline Topping, recipe follows
Maple syrup

Slice French bread into 20 slices, 1-inch each. (Use any extra bread for garlic toast or bread crumbs). Arrange slices in a generously buttered 9 by 13-inch flat baking dish in 2 rows, overlapping the slices. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, half-and-half, milk, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt and beat with a rotary beater or whisk until blended but not too bubbly. Pour mixture over the bread slices, making sure all are covered evenly with the milk-egg mixture. Spoon some of the mixture in between the slices. Cover with foil and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Spread Praline Topping evenly over the bread and bake for 40 minutes, until puffed and lightly golden. Serve with maple syrup.

Praline Topping:
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and blend well. Makes enough for Baked French Toast Casserole.

This will serve 4-6.

Rule of Law

A Tale of Two Felonies

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, March 13, 2006; 12:42 PM

What explains the different White House reactions to the criminal charges lodged against two top aides?

The embarrassed response to felony theft charges against Claude Allen -- President Bush's recently departed top domestic policy adviser -- contrasts sharply with the protective response to the October indictment of former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby on charges of intentionally obstructing the investigation into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

Spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday night that if the allegations against Allen are true, "no one would be more disappointed, shocked and outraged" than the president.

Bush spoke about Allen in a Saturday morning photo op . "If the allegations are true," Bush said, "Claude Allen did not tell my Chief of Staff and legal counsel the truth, and that's deeply disappointing. If the allegations are true, something went wrong in Claude Allen's life, and that is really sad. When I heard the story last night I was shocked. And my first reaction was one of disappointment, deep disappointment that -- if it's true -- that we were not fully informed. But it was also one -- shortly thereafter, I felt really sad for the Allen family."

In short, the White House response was entirely reasonable. It's the sort of reaction you'd expect from the chief executive of any enterprise, upon finding out that a trusted lieutenant has been criminally charged by the government.

But it was starkly different than the response to Libby's indictment. In that case, the White House didn't express any misgivings whatsoever. There was no acknowledgement of how serious the charges were, or what it would mean if they were true. There was no expression of even hypothetical disappointment, shock or outrage. There was no suggestion that anyone in the White House might have been lied to. There were no regrets -- except, of course, that Libby had to resign.

Here is the text of Bush's remarks about Libby: "Scooter has worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people and sacrificed much in the service to this country. He served the Vice President and me through extraordinary times in our nation's history."

Here is the text of Vice President Cheney's remarks at the time, not surprisingly even more pugnacious: "Mr. Libby has informed me that he is resigning to fight the charges brought against him. I have accepted his decision with deep regret."

Now that the White House has demonstrated the ability to respond in the conventional way to criminal charges filed against a member of its senior staff, it becomes even more abundantly clear that in the Libby matter, it assertively chose not to do so.

The inescapable conclusion is that either Bush and Cheney think Libby's innocent -- or they don't think what he's accused of doing was in any way wrong.

Actually, scratch that. If they thought he was innocent, they could just say so. Nothing wrong with saying: We don't think he did it, but let's allow the legal system to do its job. So that leaves only option B: They don't think that what Libby is accused of doing was wrong.

I think it is pretty obvious by now that the Bushies think they are simply above the law.

Protecting those who can't Protect Themselves

I have to agree with my wife, the picture associated with this article is one of the most heartbreaking ones I've ever seen on the front of a newspaper. The story that accompanies it isn't any better.

State: Women faced exposure to toxins in fields

Kristin Collins
News and Observer
March 12, 2006

Two field workers who gave birth to deformed babies were illegally exposed to pesticides more than 20 times each while they picked tomatoes in Eastern North Carolina, N.C. Department of Agriculture data show.
A third worker, who spent most of her pregnancy working in Florida, was exposed four times during the less than six weeks she worked in North Carolina, the data show.

All worked for Ag-Mart, a Florida-based tomato grower, and they were illegally exposed to a host of chemicals as often as three times a week, the documents show. Three of the 15 chemicals are linked to birth defects in lab animals.

One baby had no arms or legs. Another had a deformed jaw. The third had no nose and no visible sex organs and died soon after birth.

The women's exposures were illegal because they worked fields too soon after pesticides were sprayed, agriculture data show. To protect workers from harmful effects, many pesticides require that workers be out of the fields for anywhere from a few hours to two days after spraying.

Ag-Mart says that none of its workers were illegally exposed to pesticides and that the Agriculture Department misinterpreted its records.

Andrew Yaffa, a lawyer who represents the three women, said the documents tell only part of the story.

"Sometimes it was more than once a day," Yaffa said. "They would come out of the fields covered. Their clothes would be green with pesticides. Their throats would be dry. They would be coughing. They were suffering from skin ailments."

Ag-Mart, which is privately held, grows about 1,100 acres of grape tomatoes in Brunswick and Pender counties, 125 miles southeast of Raleigh. The company employs about 500 people there during the growing season. It sells tomatoes under the brand name Santa Sweets.

State officials have been investigating Ag-Mart for nearly a year. The Agriculture Department has charged the company with 369 violations of state pesticide law, the largest pesticide case in state history. The company will have a hearing before the state Pesticide Board on March 28.

The state Department of Health and Human Services is investigating whether the three babies' deformities are linked to pesticides. That report is expected in the next few weeks.

While it may be very difficult to prove that this particular child has defects due to the pesticides, it's not as difficult to show that their mothers were exposed to them.

I have no idea what type of justification the home company has for spraying while their own workers were on the field. It's not like they can claim that they didn't know about the effect of pesticides on people... anyone remember DDT?

Excuses, Excuses

Senior White House Staff May Be Wearing Down

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 13, 2006; Page A04

Andrew H. Card Jr. wakes at 4:20 in the morning, shows up at the White House an hour or so later, convenes his senior staff at 7:30 and then proceeds to a blur of other meetings that do not let up until long after the sun sets. He gets home at 9 or 10 at night and sometimes fields phone calls until 11 p.m. Then he gets up and does it all over again.

Of all the reasons that President Bush is in trouble these days, not to be overlooked are inadequate REM cycles. Like chief of staff Card, many of the president's top aides have been by his side nonstop for more than five years, not including the first campaign, recount and transition. This is a White House, according to insiders, that is physically and emotionally exhausted, battered by scandal and drained by political setbacks.

"By the time you get to year six, there's never a break . . . and you get tired," said Ed Rollins, who served five years in President Ronald Reagan's White House. "There's always a crisis. It wears you down. This has been a White House that hasn't really had much change at all. There is a fatigue factor that builds up. You sometimes don't see the crisis approaching. You're not as on guard as you once were."

To Rollins, the uproar over an Arab-owned firm taking over management of some American ports represents a classic example. Bush and his staff did not know about the arrangement approved by his administration, and after congressional Republicans revolted, issued an ineffective veto threat that only exacerbated the dispute, which climaxed with the collapse of the deal last week. "This White House would not have made this mistake two years ago," Rollins said.

Bush's problems go beyond the fatigue factor. An unpopular foreign war, high energy prices and the nation's worst natural disaster in decades have dragged his poll ratings down to the lowest level of any second-term president, other than Richard M. Nixon, in the last half-century. Lately it seems to many in the White House that they cannot catch a break -- insurgents blow up a holy shrine in Iraq, tipping the country toward civil war; Vice President Cheney accidentally shoots a hunting partner; a former top Bush adviser is arrested on theft charges.

But at a time when Bush needs his staff to be sharp to help steer past these political shoals and find ways to turn things around, he still has the same core group working since he turned his sights toward the White House. That group includes Card, deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, senior adviser Michael J. Gerson, counselor Dan Bartlett, budget director Joshua B. Bolten, press secretary Scott McClellan and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley.

Sorry, Peter, but this is just egregious bullshit. The Bush record of corruption and incompetence can't be placed on lack of sleep. These people are all crooks and liars and that's what the problem is.

Watching the Watchers

Judge Unexpectedly Recesses Moussaoui Trial

By Jerry Markon and Timothy Dwyer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 13, 2006; 10:42 AM

A federal judge indicated today that she might throw out the death penalty case against Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui after prosecutors disclosed that a government attorney had violated the court's rules about discussing witness testimony.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema called it "the most egregious violation of the court's rules on witnesses'' she had seen "in all the years I've been on the bench.''

Her comments came after prosecutors said a Federal Aviation Administration attorney had discussed the testimony of FAA witnesses with them before they took the stand and also arranged for them to read a transcript of the government's opening statement in the case. Both actions were banned by the judge in a pre-trial order.

Defense attorneys immediately urged Brinkema to throw out the death penalty as a possible punishment for Moussaoui and sentence him to life in prison. Moussaoui pleaded guilty last April to conspiring with al Qaeda in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He is the only person convicted in the United States on charges stemming from Sept. 11. Since last week, a jury has been hearing testimony about whether he should be sentenced to death.

"This is not going to be a fair trial anymore, your honor, because of what a lawyer did in an absolute abrogation of your rules,'' said defense lawyer Edward B. MacMahon Jr. "Showing transcripts to one of the key government witnesses was an obvious attempt to shape their testimony.''

Assistant U.S. Attorney David J. Novak agreed that the actions of the attorney, whose full name had not been disclosed, were "horrendously wrong." He indicated that the discussions the attorney had with FAA witnesses concerned whether the government could have stopped Sept. 11, through heightened airport security, if Moussaoui had confessed his knowledge of the plot when he was arrested in August 2001. Prosecutors are arguing that Moussaoui should be executed because he lied to and misled the FBI.

Novak said prosecutors had discovered the error late Friday and begun an immediate investigation.

With the jury out of the courtroom, Brinkema then recessed the trial in order to decide what to do. "This is the second significant mistake by the government affecting the constitutional rights of this defendant and . . . impacting the criminal justice system in this country," she said. "In the context of a death case, I have to think about this issue."

Brinkema was referring to a rebuke she gave the government on Thursday after prosecutors questioned why Moussaoui had not contacted the FBI to offer information after he was jailed in Minnesota in August 2001. At the time, Moussaoui had stopped speaking with agents and had asked for an attorney, and defense lawyers said the prosecution's question violated Moussaoui's constitutional rights against incriminating itself.

Brinkema warned the government on Thursday that it was "treading on very delicate legal ground."

This is base incompetence on the part of the prosecutors, who are actually begging for sanctions from the judge. She's being rather leniant with them, and could be sanctioning them in person.

Feingold leads, who will follow?

Feingold Seeks Senate Censure of Bush

Associated Press
Monday, March 13, 2006

A liberal Democrat and potential White House contender is proposing that the Senate censure President Bush for authorizing domestic eavesdropping, saying the White House misled Americans about its legality.

"The president has broken the law, and, in some way, he must be held accountable," Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said.

A censure resolution, which simply would scold the president, has been used just once -- against Andrew Jackson in 1834 over a dispute about banking.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called the proposal "a crazy political move" that would weaken the United States during wartime.

The five-page resolution to be introduced today contends that Bush violated the law when he set up the eavesdropping program within the National Security Agency. Bush says that his authority as commander in chief and a September 2001 congressional authorization to use force in the fight against terrorism gave him the power to authorize the surveillance.

The White House had no immediate response.

This is a start. Should we settle for a censure? NO! This does keep the idea of "Bush is a failure" alive and well in the media. The public knows this, but they need a leader who is willing to articulate it and one who has the credibility to do so. Feingold is just such a leader.

Laying Down the Law

Sectarian Fighting Changes Face of Conflict for Iraqis

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 13, 2006; Page A01

BAGHDAD, March 12 -- Forced by Sunni Arab insurgents to flee his home, Bassam Fariq Daash, a 34-year-old Shiite auto mechanic, bid a weeping goodbye Tuesday to the Sunnis who had been his neighbors for a lifetime.

Forced by marauding Shiite militiamen to defend his home, Firas Ali, a 28-year-old Sunni Arab medical technician, takes up an AK-47 and joins his Sunni and Shiite neighbors every night between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. at garden gates, at roadblocks made of felled palm trunks and on the roof of his mosque.

The past two weeks have changed the war in Iraq, shifting its focus from a U.S.-driven fight against Sunni insurgents to a direct battle for power and survival between Iraq's empowered Shiite majority and disempowered Sunni minority. On Sunday, three car bombings in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City killed about 50 people, the deadliest string of sectarian attacks since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra touched off a wave of retaliatory killings.

The bombing, which blew the gold-plated dome of the Askariya mosque into naked gray concrete, did not set off the battle between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite blocs. Their enmity stretches back centuries, and ever since U.S. troops overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, the two sides have been grappling to find their new footing.

But the bloodshed that has followed the shrine bombing, as Shiite religious parties unleashed their militias on a large scale in Baghdad for the first time, laid bare the sectarian rift -- and worsened it. Some Iraqis and international figures have expressed worry whether Iraq, having come to the brink of civil war, can keep itself from sliding in.

Last week, Daash fled his predominantly Sunni village of Awad, north of Baghdad on the edge of the Sunni town of Taji, after what he said were too many death threats from Sunni insurgents after the mosque bombing, and too many bodies of Shiite men left bullet-riddled on roadsides. "I will never go back," he said.

Iraqis have prided themselves on intermarriages as the glue that would always keep Iraq from splitting apart. They point to the mingling of Shiite, Sunni and Christian, and of Arab and Kurd. But sitting in a school converted into a refugee center in the Shiite neighborhood of Shoula in north Baghdad, Daash found himself unable to imagine ever living among his Sunni neighbors again, or ever again visiting an aunt and cousin in Tikrit who are married to Sunnis.

"I don't think that it will be possible to go back to the way we were," he said.

It's called civil war. If you don't know much about the history of Lebanon, now might be a good time to do a little reading.

Chlorine Trains Still Rolling Through D.C.

Haven't posted here in awhile, but when I saw Melanie hadn't had a chance to post on this (and I haven't seen hide nor hair about it elsewhere in the blogsphere today), I thought I'd better step up.

This would have been freakin' crazy, six months after 9/11. That these trains are still rolling, four years and six months after 9/11, pretty much tells you how much Bush cares about protecting us against terrorists, compared to how much he cares about the bottom lines of fat-cat industries.

Hell on Wheels

What if I told you that:

· On average, six rail cars a week carrying 90 tons of chlorine, one of the most lethal gases in the world, pass within 20 blocks of the U.S. Capitol?

· If terrorists attacked the rail cars, escaping gas could kill or injure tens of thousands -- about 100 people a second?

· Depending on the wind, a chlorine spill would be lethal to people within two to five miles and would endanger people within 14 miles?

· The chlorine passing through Washington is not for use here?

· The rail cars basically are unprotected and are emblazoned with placards announcing that they carry hazardous cargo -- including the specific code for chlorine?

It doesn't have to be this way. CSX Transportation (CSXT) could reroute these cars. So why doesn't it? Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3) have asked that very question. Biden and Markey have introduced bills requiring the railroads to reroute the most hazardous materials away from vulnerable cities. A bill that Patterson authored about a year ago (and that was signed by Mayor Williams) demands that rail companies reroute hazardous materials away from Washington.

CSXT's response to Patterson's bill was to sue the District, with the departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Transportation filing statements in its support. Patterson says the case might go to trial this fall. Meanwhile, rail cars carrying chlorine gas roll through Washington.

{snip}

Alternative routes are available, but a railroad official has testified that rerouting is expensive.

Peggy Wilhide, vice president for communications for the Association of American Railroads, says that rerouting hazardous cargo actually lessens safety because the added travel time increases the chances of a leak or an accident. The railroads also do not want to set a precedent for the government to dictate how they do business.

Umm, don't we kinda need government dictates when it comes to protecting our country from the terrorists? Or should every airline, every port operator, etc., only do as much security-related precautions as they feel like doing?

As for the pathetic "added travel time increases the chances of a leak or an accident," if we can't afford the risk of trains operating for an extra hour out in the boonies, then we certainly can't afford the risk of them operating for any hour in heavily populated areas. (Duh.)

Now, for the quintessence of the Bush Administration position on domestic terror precautions:

Earlier this month Darrin Kayser, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration at the Department of Homeland Security, mistakenly said that CSXT had rerouted all chlorine shipments that had gone through Washington. When told that only the route closest to the Capitol had been discontinued, he said, "Our goal is to balance the needs of security with commerce. We need to look at all of the threats through that lens."

And he nails the dismount! One must balance the risk of tens of thousands of deaths against CSX's bottom line, and it's a slamdunk for CSX. Sweet dreams, D.C.!

Too bad Quinn concludes with this bit of airheadedness:

If the railroads won't reroute hazardous shipments voluntarily, then what's the answer? It's simple: President Bush could pick up the phone and demand that they do so.

So why isn't the president making that call?

Because he's on CSX' side, not ours. Jeez Louise, how dumb are these people??

Site News

Posting by me will be light today. I've got meetings and things while I'm still trying to get rid of the respiratory sequelae of the flu. I have The Cough Which Refuses To Die. You wouldn't want me on an airplane next to you.

I'll be strategizing with the bird flu crew this afternoon. If you have questions, park 'em in comments below and I'll go looking for answers.

The Bad News

A Rising Tide?

Sunday, March 12, 2006; Page B06

THIS NATION prefers not to discuss inequality. Lacking a unifying religion, ethnicity or even language, it is held together by an appealing faith: that anyone who works hard and plays by the rules can attain the American dream, sharing the fruits of economic progress. But the trends of the past quarter-century compel a reexamination of this creed. When President Kennedy promised that "a rising tide lifts all boats," he was correct. Today that claim could be disputed.

A few numbers show why. In the 25 years from 1980 to 2004, a period during which U.S. gross domestic product per person grew by almost two-thirds, the wages of the typical worker actually fell slightly after accounting for inflation. So, too, did wages for the 50 percent of the work force that earned less than the typical, or median, employee. The rising tide helped only workers at the top. Wages for workers in the 90th percentile -- that is, workers who earned more than 90 percent of their peers -- jumped by more than a quarter.

Other measures tell variants on this story. More women are working, so household income, as distinct from individual wages, has risen. The value of health benefits has increased, so counting these plus other non-wage income from investments also paints a brighter picture. Between 1980 and 2003, total after-tax income for the bottom fifth of households rose 8 percent, and the second-bottom fifth gained 17 percent; in other words, all boats did rise, albeit by less than 1 percent per year. But it's hard to celebrate such modest gains when the top fifth advanced 59 percent over the 24-year period.
....
This isn't just irrational. Riches and poverty are partly relative concepts. The more unequal a society, the more citizens in the bottom half will experience hardship. When people at the top gain more disposable income, they bid up the prices of goods in limited supply -- homes in top school districts, or places at top colleges. Tuitions at four-year colleges have more than doubled since 1980, with the result that gaps in enrollment by class and race, which declined in the 1960s and 1970s, are as wide now as 30 years ago. The wealth of people in the top half also bids up the common understanding of what a middle-class lifestyle entails. People feel obliged to spend more on birthday gifts, children's sneakers or a suit for the next job interview. Since 1980, the median size of a newly built house has increased by a third -- even while the household savings rate has fallen to about zero.

Let's see: in the last 50 years we've watched the purposeful destruction of the union movement by corporate interests, the dismantling of the health care system and the skewing of the tax code toward wealth over work. And we wonder why the ordinary guy can't get ahead?

Some of the blame has to be placed on the poorly educated, poorly informed and insulated American voter/consumer, of course. We accept unquestionably the propaganda the US TV networks pump out.

The Poverty Project Man

A profile of Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, co-creator of the Millennium Villages Project to end poverty in Africa

Millennium Man

STEPHANIE NOLEN
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

The whole development discussion has become unhinged from ground realities. There is endless discussion about process and corruption and governance, as if these are realities of life in Africa — and it's all deflected attention away from things like growing food, and drinking water," he said.

He sees condescension at the root of the argument that all aid is futile. "It starts from the fundamental idea that the problem in Africa is that people just don't take care of themselves or their money, and if we could just give them courses in decency . . ."

"The problem here," he adds with a sigh, "is extreme poverty and biophysical conditions — soil depletion, malarial endemicity. It's not about people's decency or not. That's the case for aid."

His argument has found some support from British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other European leaders, who have proposed a hike in aid to Africa. Britain and France have committed to increasing their aid spending to 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product.

However, the biggest donors, the United States and Japan, flatly reject the idea. Washington, in particular, continues to harp on about corruption and waste — the issues that so gall Prof. Sachs.

Canada also refuses to commit to the 0.7 target, and it increasingly emphasizes "program support" — giving a government an annual cheque, in essence, to bolster its budget. Kenyans are the ones best able to determine their needs, the thinking goes. The mantra in development is that this will help governments develop a greater capacity to govern.

Prof. Sachs considers this cockamamie thinking too. "Capacity for what? Deliver what? Train people with no supplies? Capacity has to be in the context of a real project."

Otherwise, he said, aid will be wasted. "The original good idea is to move beyond individual donors funding individual projects thought up in northern capitals. But to hand over a cheque and say, 'We trust you to make good use of it.' There's not a government in the world, not yours and not mine, that I would trust with that. That's not how good deals are made.

"We need larger aid flows, but with strict accountability. A cheque to the bottom line of the budget is inherently untrackable."

He said aid must go for "direct deliverables," subject to straightforward monitoring: So many thousand dollars to purchase so many bed nets, resulting in so many fewer cases of malaria, for example — rather than an overall grant to a ministry of health for an anti-malaria campaign.

The accounting on the Sachs End Poverty Plan breaks down like this: It's going to take about $100 per person per year.

Prof. Sachs said local governments, and in a few cases the people involved, can afford to contribute about $45. Donor countries already give about $10. That leaves $45 more per person.

Add that all up, and it's $150-billion of additional development assistance every year.

Not that much, really, Prof. Sachs argued. It's far more than the governments of poor countries themselves could ever afford but, as he likes to point out, rather less than the $900-billion world military budget or the $30-trillion combined economy of developed nations.

"When you're below subsistence, you can't save for the future. You have to use all your income to stay alive. So what happens? They mine the environment, take the nutrients out of the soil, cut down the trees, exhaust the fisheries — what looks like a constant level of poverty is in fact losing ground.

"But if you're above survival level, anywhere in the world, then you can save. You can do microfinance. Instead of using your whole farm for maize, you can do dairy or beekeeping. You go from being subsistence farmers to an agricultural community with a mix of income-generating activities. You're on the first rung of the ladder. You start to get a surplus to save."

When Prof. Sachs says it, loudly and at top speed, it all sounds irrefutably logical.

He said the criticism he hears most often is that the program lacks community participation (another mantra these days in the development world). The plan is being imposed by outsiders, and therefore doomed to fail from a fatal lack of "buy-in."

He dismissed this charge as nonsensical. "Yes, we can bring fertilizer, but 1,000 farmers have to be weeding and distributing it."

Yet James Shikwati, an economist who heads the Inter-Regional Economic Network in Nairobi, is not impressed: If you turn up in front of a whole lot of people plagued by malaria and offer bed nets, he said, of course they will want bed nets. That does not mean they share your whole future vision.

And the program does raise long-term questions: What happens in five years? Is that enough time to make enough change, solid enough that the kind of sideswiping events that lurk in a place such as Sauri can't undermine it?

What happens, for example, when Edwina Odit's granddaughters start secondary school, but then have sex with an older village man to get money to pay for textbooks and end up with HIV? What happens when Ms. Odit needs surgery, can't afford it, dies, and there is no one left to use the new fertilizer and the farming techniques and grow more food?

What will carry them through a season — or more — when the rains fail? Or when locusts come? Or when they grow ground nuts, but every other village does too, and the price collapses?

And on a larger scale, there is the bottom-line question: Where will the money come from? Angered by the millionaires' tours of model villages, Prof. Shikwati said Prof. Sachs is "turning Africans, and particularly these people in Sauri, into wild animals to be looked at. They lose human dignity. . . . [The way] you get out of poverty is not supposed to be an undignified strategy."

But Prof. Sachs said the real onus is on donor countries. He heaps scorn on Canada, for the failure to meet 0.7, and on the Group of Eight industrial countries in general, which he said outright lie about their commitments to ending poverty, making huge pledges at summits and refusing to pony up any of the money.

Rather than Prof. Sachs's rhetoric about the moral imperative to end poverty, Prof. Shikwati would rather talk business. "My counterapproach is, find the people who say [that] if they come to Africa, they will make profits. They will solve Africa's problems."

But Prof. Sachs said that argument lacks context: Profit-oriented investment is irrelevant in Sauri until the playing field is far more level.

And with the same brazen confidence that has carried him through 20 years of telling people what to do, he is sure his plan will work.

"There's something real and achievable that's very magical," he confided over a bowl of dry corn flakes the day he left Kenya. "We're dealing with people of great dignity and great talent and great energy. They just happen to be poor, but they're not without talent and energy — they're just without means.

"There's no such thing as a culture that doesn't care about their children and want them to be healthy. The idea that somehow the poor have themselves to blame and there's nothing we can do. . . . We got on the wrong track actually, and we never understood that there were things we could do with a little confidence in each other."

Please read the entire article. I think this is a very important look at what actually works to confront and solve the poverty problem.

From 'Way Back

One of my favorite comfort foods is the old fashioned Denver sandwich, nothing more than an omelet between a couple of slices of bread. It is the only thing I eat ketchup with, and it has to be served in a puddle on a corner of the plate. Ketchup and me don't get near fries (it has to be malt vinegar or nothin'), burgers or hot dogs. But for my Denver sandwich, I need room to dunk.

Here's your basic Denver for a crowd. I grew up eating them on Roman Meal Bread.

# 4 slices bacon, fried
# 1/4 chopped medium onion
# 5 eggs
# 1/4 cup milk
# 1 can (4 oz.) sliced mushrooms
# 1/4 cup chopped green pepper
# 3/4 cup shredded cheese
# 8 sliced sourdough bread
# 2 tablespoons butter

Method:
Preheat oven to 325 F. Fry bacon until crisp, remove excess grease and add onion; sauté until onion is transparent and tender. Cool onion mix.

Beat eggs and add to onion; stir in milk, add mushrooms and green pepper. Pour into greased 9x9 baking pan. Sprinkle with shredded cheese. Bake omelet at 325 F for 20 minutes or until egg is set in middle.

While egg is cooking, butter both sides of bread and grill in a hot frying pan until golden brown.

To serve, cut egg into 4 squares. Place square of egg on grilled bread and top with second layer toast. Serves 4.

NOTES: Vary omelet ingredients to suit personal taste. This is a nice recipe for a crowd; increase portions to desired servings. Bake eggs in 9x13 or larger pan. Bread may be toasted in oven.

This is a nice sunday brunch dish served with a salad or a soup. It makes the transition from breakfast to lunch very nicely.

Red Meat for the Base

Some people have an aversion to raw meat. I don't, although my brother the chef says that he won't eat any unless he's prepared it himself. Point taken. I am picky about where I order my sushi. I adore ceviche, but I'm careful about where I order it. Beef is a little less touchy than fish, but I only eat organic beef which has been prepared a little more carefully than your basic supermarket stuff. These days, everything is available on line if I'm not happy what's on offer at my local Whole Foods (usually, I'm not.)

Here is a classic Italian carpaccio, which is one of my favorite first courses. Top the beef slices with a drizzle of wine vinegar, olive oil and a toss of capers.

1 lb lean beef top round, trimmed of all fat

Spicy sauce:
1/2 cup vinaigrette
2 salt anchovies, filleted, soaked in water for 30 minutes, drained and patted dry
1 tablespoon capers rinsed
1 tablespoon finely chopped onion
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon chopped sour gherkins

Directions:
Chill the meat in the freezer for about one hour. Slice the meat across the grain in paper thin slices and arrange the slices side by side on a platter. Pound the pailliards with a meat mallet between two pieces of plastic wrap if you need to get them thinner, they should be about 1/8" thick. Blend all the sauce ingredients in a food processor for one second. Serve the meat and sauce separately.

Top the beef roundels with some olive oil, red wine vinegar and extra capers and present with sprigs of parsely and lemon slices. Have plenty of freshly ground black pepper and Kosher salt on the table.