Category: Issues of the Day

A really provocative, worthwhile posting from Joel Achenbach on psychiatry, Tom Cruise, science and drugs.

Richard Preston’s Demon in the Freezer (2002) is a terrifying study of both the anthrax scare of 2001 and the exponentially greater danger of smallpox, the worst disease man has known.

There is no natural immunity to smallpox. And the vaccines that those among us old enough once received provided immunity for just five years.

Or to put it another way, if there is an outbreak of smallpox we may be relying on a vaccine that was invented in 1796.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. You need to take up the challenges that we face as a nation and make them your own. Not because you have a debt to those who helped you get here, although you do have that debt. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate than you, although I do think you do have that obligation. It’s primarily because you have an obligation to yourself. Because individual salvation has always depended on collective salvation. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

U.S. Senator Barack Obama at Knox College

I’ll tell you an interesting story. I was at an automobile plant in Mississippi…. And I was with the line workers. And I said, how many of you all have 401(k)s? In other words, how many of you are managing your own money? And I bet 90 — I didn’t count, but a lot, 90 percent of the hands went up. These are people from all walks of life, all income groups.

President Bush at Social Security Conversation in Maryland.

Interesting automobile assembly line, what with all those walks of life working on it.

A divided Supreme Court ruled today that local governments may seize people’s homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.

The 5-4 ruling — assailed by dissenting Justice Sanday Day O’Connor as handing “disproportionate influence and power” to the well-heeled in America — was a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They had argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.

Los Angeles Times

O’Connor sided with Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas in the minority.

“I never said, She responded. I said I reviewed the court videotapes — the same ones the other doctors reviewed — and I questioned, Is her diagnosis correct?

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist
Today Show
June 16, 2005

***

“I have looked at the video footage. Based on the footage provided to me, which was part of the facts of the case, she does respond.”

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist
Senate Floor Remarks
March 17, 2005

Whiskey Bar: Second Opinion

Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday that a prosecutor has agreed to investigate why Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago, citing an alleged time gap between when her husband found her and when he called 911.

Bush said his request for the probe was not meant to suggest wrongdoing by Michael Schiavo. “It’s a significant question that during this ordeal was never brought up,” Bush told reporters.

In a statement issued by his lawyer, Schiavo called the development an outrage.

CNN.com

The Freeway Blogger.

Federal authorities may prosecute sick people who smoke pot on doctors’ orders, the Supreme Court ruled today, concluding that state medical marijuana laws don’t protect users from a federal ban on the drug.

The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug’s use to treat various illnesses.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.

The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case that it lost in late 2003. At issue was whether the prosecution of medical marijuana users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional.

Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state’s economic activity so long as it involves “interstate commerce” that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.

Los Angeles Times

And liberals are accused of being inconsistent.

The Bush administration tax cuts stand to widen the gap between the hyper-rich and the rest of America. The merely rich, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, will shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden.

The New York Times in a report on how the super rich are leaving every one else behind.

From Opinions You Should Have by Tom Burka:

Republicans today criticized Paul Revere for his famous ride, saying that he had violated professional colonial ethics by divulging military secrets in violation of his duty to his lord, the King of England.

“These were sensitive informations about military troop movements with which he had been entrusted,” said G. Gordon Liddy, an expert on ethics in government and a professor at several unaccredited law schools.

“Paul Revere was a traitor and a law breaker,” said Anakin Skywalker in a confidential interview shortly before his limbs were lopped off and he burst into flame.

Conservatives all over America pointed out that Revere also endangered people’s lives by riding willy nilly all over Massachusetts at a full gallop in the dark of night. “He could have trampled someone,” said Bill O’Reilly. “Paul Revere was a reckless and irresponsible nazi,” he added.

Pat Buchanan derided Revere as a “coward” and a “snake” who was unwilling to be direct with the British government regarding his complaints about the monarchy. “There were channels,” he said.

Peggy Noonan shook her head. “There’s nothing sadder than Americans who have no respect for the rule of law,” she said.

Isn’t a high-ranking official of the FBI leaking information to the press about an ongoing investigation some sort of crime? Or does merely confirming already established facts (as we were told Deep Throat did) mitigate the wrongdoing?

From Ed Bott:

Last month, I wrote about Sen. Rick Santorum’s bill to prevent the National Weather Service from freely sharing information it collects with the public. The beneficiary in this scheme would be private companies like AccuWeather, which just happens to be based in Santorum’s home state.

Today comes news that the timing of the bill was, shall we say, interesting:

Two days before Sen. Rick Santorum introduced a bill that critics say would restrict the National Weather Service, his political action committee received a $2,000 donation from the chief executive of AccuWeather Inc., a leading provider of weather data.

Asked about the connection, the Senator replied: “I don’t think there’s any coincidence between the two.”

A refreshing, although almost certainly accidental, bit of truth-telling.

Why Do They Hate Us? by Mark Fiore. [Video animated cartoon]

Nearly a dozen detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba told FBI interrogators that guards had mistreated copies of the Koran, including one who said in 2002 that guards “flushed a Koran in the toilet,” according to new FBI documents released today.

The summaries of FBI interviews, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of an ongoing lawsuit, also include allegations that the Koran was kicked, thrown to the floor and withheld as punishment and that guards mocked Muslim prisoners during prayers.

The Washington Post

Guess we can resubscribe to Newsweek now.

From the Los Angeles Times a gruesome, but well-told historical photo essay on the use of combat casualty photos.

From the article, Unseen Pictures, Untold Stories, which assesses the relative lack of casualty photographs from Iraq.

“Writing in a headline that 1,500 Americans have died doesn’t give you nearly the impact of showing one serviceman who is dead,” Van Hemmen said. “It’s the power of visuals.”

President Bush’s meticulously stage-managed presentations on Social Security have slowly shifted into a new phase, in which White House aides find misinformed young people to share the stage with the president and assert that Social Security won’t be there at all when they retire.

And rather than correcting them on their misconception — government estimates, after all, say that after 2041 Social Security will still be able to pay at least three-quarters of currently promised benefits without any changes — Bush congratulates them on their perspicacity.

White House Briefing

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A pregnant student who was banned from graduation at her Roman Catholic high school announced her own name and walked across the stage anyway at the close of the program.

Alysha Cosby’s decision prompted cheers and applause Tuesday from many of her fellow seniors at St. Jude Educational Institute.

But her mother and aunt were escorted out of the church by police after Cosby headed back to her seat.

“I can’t believe something like this is happening in 2005,” said her mother, Sheila Cosby. “My daughter has been through a lot, and I am proud of her. She deserved to walk, and she did.”

The school’s guidance counselor delivered Cosby’s degree to her house earlier Tuesday, but she still wanted to participate.

“I worked hard throughout high school, and I wanted to walk with my class,” she said.

Cosby was told in March that she could no longer attend school because of safety concerns, and her name was not listed in the graduation program.

The father of Cosby’s child, also a senior at the school, was allowed to participate in graduation.

Chicago Sun-Times

Don’t get an abortion but if you keep the baby we will shun you. Damn hypocrites.

Link via The American Street

Without a trace of irony, the powers that be have appropriated the Newspeak vernacular of George Orwell’s 1984. They give us a program vowing no child will be left behind, while cutting funds for educating disadvantaged children; they give us legislation cheerily calling for clear skies and healthy forests that give us neither, while turning over our public lands to the energy industry.

Bill Moyers

From Crooks and Liars the video of British House of Commons member George Galloway defending himself before a U.S. Senate committee Tuesday. The Senator he is addressing is Norm Coleman (R-MN).

I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.”

Strong stuff. Watch.

One way to think of a person’s position in society is to imagine a hand of cards. Everyone is dealt four cards, one from each suit: education, income, occupation and wealth, the four commonly used criteria for gauging class. [Click here to see where you fit in the American population.] Face cards in a few categories may land a player in the upper middle class. At first, a person’s class is his parents’ class. Later, he may pick up a new hand of his own; it is likely to resemble that of his parents, but not always.

Bill Clinton traded in a hand of low cards with the help of a college education and a Rhodes scholarship and emerged decades later with four face cards. Bill Gates, who started off squarely in the upper middle class, made a fortune without finishing college, drawing three aces.

Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide

And some get the joker and some the Old Maid.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has a Typology Test. Answer 25 questions about public policy plus a few personal indicators and get an assessment of yourself and your type. Interesting.

While we’re on the topic of Bush’s leisure time, anyone intent on criticizing the president for taking an hour and a half out of his day to mountain-bike should take the following as proof that he is indeed a busy man: In a photo taken just after the ride, Bush is holding what appears to be a copy of “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” the Tom Wolfe novel about debauchery on a college campus. In early February, Bush told reporters he was reading that same book — which, if he is almost done, averages to about seven pages a day.

— The Washington Post

Link via The Huffington Post.

Q: Might there be something wrong with protocols that render the president unnecessary when the alarm is going off at his house?

McCLELLAN: That’s not at all what occurred, Ken. And I would disagree strongly with the way you characterize it for the reasons I started earlier, and that I talked about. This was a situation where the president was in an off-site location. He was not in danger, a situation where protocols have been put in place to address the situation. The protocols were followed. …

Q: And those protocols are OK with the president despite the fact that his wife was in a situation where she might have been endangered?

McCLELLAN: She was taken to a secure location, as were some other officials.

Q: And wouldn’t he want to know about that as it was happening?

McCLELLAN: He was briefed about the situation.

Q: After it happened.

He was bike riding in Maryland.