Obama to get his first Supreme Court appointment

Apparently Justice Souter is planning to retire this year.

A rare kudo to George W. Bush on Torqopia

I was pleasantly surprised when he announced his plan to fight AIDS in Africa in his 2003 State of the Union address. A study from Stanford finds that Bush's PEPFAR may have saved a million lives there.

Some dreams never die

I am apparently behind the times as I've just learned from my friend Romaine about the new international singing sensation, Susan Boyle.

I have to say, she gave me the chills with her performance on Britain's Got Talent.

Connective tissue for the day: bone

Reading this short piece on bone reminded me of being captivated by those "I Am Joe's [insert body part here]" stories in Reader's Digest when I was a kid.

I think they overstate the energy requirements for bone maintenance, but otherwise pretty interesting. :-)

State secrets ruling

Marc Ambinder comments on today's state secrets court ruling:

A bottom-line read of the decision: the government can assert the privilege for any piece of evidence in any case. It just can't assert the privilege as an immunity doctrine -- or a justiciability doctrine -- as a way to end the case before it begins.

The case involved five men who underwent "extraordinary rendition" and subsequent torture; they allege that there flights were handled by a subsidiary of Boeing. The Bush administration had argued that state secrets were involved, invalidating the lawsuit. Today's ruling doesn't eliminate the ability of the government to declare something "secret," but it does say that the government can't throw a case out of court simply by making that claim.

Obama's first 100 days

Wednesday marks Obama's 100th day as president. It's pretty obvious to me that we've seen some real change in Washington, DC, but his campaign has put together a website which helps to reveal the impact for each state. Check it out here.

Meanwhile, a new poll finds that two-thirds of Americans believe that Obama is not a typical politician. He also enjoys high personal approval, numbers higher in many cases than for his specific policies. He's already being compared to Reagan on his ability to be liked even by those of different political leanings.

Obama, what about torture?

The ACLU has a campaign to urge White House correspondents to ask President Obama the following question in Wednesday's "100th Day" press conference:

The so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” exposed in the torture memos include keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, dousing them with cold water and placing them naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. One prisoner -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- was waterboarded 183 times in a month. Do you believe that a country - or a president - can afford to look at shocking evidence of illegal torture and simply look away?

Think about that: our government waterboarded a man--poured water over his face to give him the feeling of being drowned--ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THREE TIMES in one month. What would you tell your interrogators if you were in his position?

The ACLU has been instrumental in holding the Bush administration accountable for its decision to use torture. From the email they sent me:

• Today, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the ACLU in an important case against Jeppesen Data Plan -- a subsidiary of Boeing. Jeppesen was responsible for organizing extraordinary rendition flights used repeatedly by the CIA to move detainees to countries where they could be tortured.
• In response to a long-standing ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Department of Defense has agreed to release a substantial number of photos depicting the abuse of prisoners by U.S. personnel by May 28.
• In another crucial ACLU case, a federal judge has rejected the CIA’s attempt to withhold records related to the agency’s destruction of 92 videotapes that depicted the harsh interrogation of CIA prisoners.

A Democrat is born

Wow, wasn't expecting this: Arlen Specter has switched parties and is now a Democrat. Vice President Biden has been lobbying Specter to make the change; Specter faced a tough GOP primary next year from a rightwing challenger. President Obama promised to support Specter in his Democratic run.

I've always respected Specter's moderate voice in the Senate. Too bad that the Republican Party no longer has room for anyone with such a mindset.

Incidentally, this particular Democrat was actually born a long time ago. Specter started out as a Dem and switched parties the first time back in the '60s.

Ticking time bomb in the White House: selling the Iraq War

Frank Rich paints an ugly picture... President Bush and VP Cheney approved of the use of torture in their efforts to sell Congress and the American people on invading Iraq:

Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.

Read his full column here.

Bea Arthur dies

Bea Arthur has been a fixture in my life for so long that it seems like she's one of the "old ladies" who used to hang around my Granny Jean's kitchen table. From All in the Family to Maude to Golden Girls to a little theater in San Francisco, she's always been there.

She died today (obit here).

It was in that little SF theater where she told the hilarious story of being on Broadway in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank. Anne was played by none other than a young Pia Zadora who was, Bea said, so bad that when the Nazis came knocking at the door, the entire audience rose in unison and yelled, "She's in the attic!"

:-)

A torture timeline

Someone has taken the time to construct a timeline from 2001-2009 documenting what we know about our government's involvement in torturing people.

I have to admit to being a bit overwhelmed by all of the stories swirling about on the topic. It was one thing to be one of those people on the sidelines saying, "Hey, this is something important that's being ignored." Now that it's seeing the light of the day, it's so horrifying that you just want to look the other way. But Bush, Cheney, & Co. did this in our names. It's our responsibility to pay attention.

I'm reading an article about the torture and murder perpetrated as part of the Mexican drug wars, and I'll be writing something more about that--and our own actions--soon.

Unemployment in America

Here's a graphic showing the county-by-county unemployment rates across the U.S. (you can also click a link to see the percentage change over the last year).

On an unrelated note, sure is funny how people got tired of making counties as time went on... they are small in the eastern half of the U.S., big in the western half. Sort of like the states. :-)

Earth and dust

Yesterday Terry Gross interviewed the filmmakers responsible for Earth, Disney's new movie which looks at life on our planet (in particular, polar bears, elephants, and humpback whales).

Looks like a must see.

(Video link (click on "HD" for high-def))

MEANWHILE, dust storms are on the rise in the American West, a sign of climate change and rising population density.

Education and the economy

Thomas Friedman discusses education in America and the findings of a recent McKinsey study:

If America had closed the international achievement gap between 1983 and 1998 and had raised its performance to the level of such nations as Finland and South Korea, United States G.D.P. in 2008 would have been between $1.3 trillion and $2.3 trillion higher. If we had closed the racial achievement gap and black and Latino student performance had caught up with that of white students by 1998, G.D.P. in 2008 would have been between $310 billion and $525 billion higher. If the gap between low-income students and the rest had been narrowed, G.D.P. in 2008 would have been $400 billion to $670 billion higher.

David Brooks had his own column about education last month, noting his belief that Obama is sincere in his desire to reform our educational system.

There's a reason Obama has linked education, energy, and healthcare to our economy: they are all fundamental challenges that will cripple our ability to compete as a nation in the future. There are many other reasons to act on all three of Obama's budget priorities, but you can't ignore the dollars and cents impact of inaction.

Danger in Pakistan

The Pakistani Taliban is consolidating control of the Buner district, just 70 miles from Pakistan's capital:

Last year when the militants encroached into Buner, killing policemen, the local people fought back and forced the militants out. But now, with a beachhead in neighboring Swat and a number of training camps for fresh recruits, the Taliban was able to carry out what amounted to an invasion. A local politician, Jamsher Khan, said by telephone: “We felt stronger as long as we thought the government was with us, but when the government showed weakness, we too stopped offering resistance to the Taliban.”

The advance had been building for weeks, with the assistance of sympathizers and even a local government official who was appointed on the recommendation of the militants, a senior law enforcement official said. But Buner’s final capitulation was rapid.

On Wednesday, officials and residents said that heavily armed Taliban militants had begun patrolling villages and that the local police had retreated to their station houses in much of the district. Staff members of local nongovernmental organizations had been ordered to leave, and their offices were looted, residents said. Pakistani television news channels showed Taliban fighters triumphantly carrying office equipment out of the offices of the organizations.

I've read that one of the methods that Pakistan uses to secure its nuclear warheads is keeping the various components in separate locations, but that they've been reluctant to share those locations with the U.S. More on that here.

Don't let the bed bugs bite

I'd heard a year or two ago that bed bugs were on the rise again, even in nice hotels, but there were stories on the BBC and in the New York Times this week, so... beware.

Luckily these nasty critters don't seem to cause disease, but I was alarmed to learn that a hungry bed bug measures about 3/8" long, and a well-fed one can be a half inch long. Ugh!

Sensible quote for the day

From Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking about the problem of piracy off the Somali coast:

“There is no purely military solution to it,” Mr. Gates said at the Marine Corps War College. “And as long as you’ve got this incredible number of poor people and the risks are relatively small, there’s really no way in my view to control it unless you get something on land that begins to change the equation for these kids.”

Full story here.

In a post-Twitter world...

There's Flutter:

(Video link)

Poolside...

Time to get some sun!

The woman who might have prevented this disaster

A decade ago, Stanford law school graduate Brooksley Born headed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As she learned more about the derivatives market that was rapidly growing in the financial industry, she was alarmed by the lack of transparency into what was going on as well as the fact that the market was completely unregulated.

She proposed some very basic steps that would have helped the government to better understand the risks involved but was met with stiff resistance from Clinton administration officials Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, not to mention Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan. Ultimately, Congress passed legislation preventing Born from taking any steps to regulate this new and profitable market.

You know the rest of that story, but here's the story of Born, the woman who might have averted it all.

Song of the day

Fastball's "The Way" from 1998...

(Video link)

After all of these years

I haven't been listening to enough music lately, and I suspect it's affecting my mood.

Tonight I'm listening to Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor. One hundred and ninety six years after Mozart wrote it, it was the first piece of music that we studied in my introduction to music class my freshman year of college. And 25 years later, I'm still loving it.

Here's the first movement:

(Video link)

I'm on an electoral roll

My candidates for Henderson mayor and city council were the top two vote-getters in today's primary, though reached the 50% mark to avoid the June 2nd run-off.

First Obama, now this! LOL

The role of the court's in marriage equality

Andrew Sullivan notes a couple of key quotes regarding the role of the courts in the road to marriage equality for gays and lesbian's here; the original post from AnonymousLiberal.

Once upon a time...

I thought Glenn Beck was slightly odd. Those were the days when he was on CNN's Headline quote-News-unquote.

Now that I've seen his show on Fox News, I'd have to say that, at best, he's a jackass and, just possibly, a dangerous idiot.

Yo, Vermont!

Vermont becomes the first state in the union to legalize gay marriage via the legislature, today overturning the governor's veto of the new law which takes effect September 1.

Woohoo!

My new favorite apple

I discovered Cameo apples in the last couple of weeks... so yummy! And I just google'd them expecting to learn that they were an old heirloom variety. Not so: they were just introduced in 1998.

Oh, well. Still tasty. ;-)

Election day in Henderson, Nevada

Get the right vitamin D

Since it's hard to get enough vitamin D through your diet (or through exposing your skin to sunlight, especially in the winter), a supplement is a good idea. Just make sure you are getting the right kind: vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). Studies are finding that vitamin D2 doesn't seem to help the body as much, at least with respect to strengthening bones.

Pakistan... are we too late?

With Obama we finally seem to have a president who understands the risk that a failed state in Pakistan would represent. But after reading this article, I'm worried that Bush may have wasted too much time in Iraq and that it may be too late for Pakistan:

Some analysts here [Islamabad] and in Washington are already putting forward apocalyptic timetables for the country. “We are running out of time to help Pakistan change its present course toward increasing economic and political instability, and even ultimate failure,” said a recent report by a task force of the Atlantic Council that was led by former Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. The report, released in February, gave the Pakistani government 6 to 12 months before things went from bad to dangerous.

A specialist in guerrilla warfare, David Kilcullen, who advised Gen. David H. Petraeus when General Petraeus was the American commander in Iraq, offered a more dire assessment. Pakistan could be facing internal collapse within six months, he said.

General Petraeus, in Congressional testimony last week, called the insurgency one that could “take down” the country, which is home to Qaeda militants and has nuclear arms.

Those pesky 3am phone calls

Seems that both Obama and Hillary Clinton are having to get up to answer those calls in the middle of the night... this time because of North Korea's missile launch:

... The president was awakened at 4:30 a.m. by his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, with news of North Korea’s defiance.

The president quickly began talks with senior officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, his former rival who offered up the now famous “It’s 3 a.m. and the telephone rings” campaign advertisement that was meant to show that Mr. Obama was not prepared to deal with an international crisis.

Mrs. Clinton talked to South Korean, Russian, Chinese and Japanese officials, administration officials said. Mr. Obama, meanwhile, got on the phone with Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman. He also spoke by phone to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and huddled with Gen. James L. Jones, his national security adviser...

A world without nukes

Nursing my funk, I almost missed the significance of Obama's call for the world to work towards a day when nuclear weapons could be eliminated:

The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light. Cities like Prague that had existed for centuries would have ceased to exist. Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued. Black markets trade in nuclear secrets and materials. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one. Our efforts to contain these dangers are centered in a global nonproliferation regime, but as more people and nations break the rules, we could reach the point when the center cannot hold. . . Just as we stood for freedom in the 20th century, we must stand together for the right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the 21st. And as a nuclear power -as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon - the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it. So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.

More from the Los Angeles Times.

The truth on torture

I just saw Rachel Maddow's interview with former Secretary of State Colin Powell. She pressed him on whether he was present at meetings with other Bush administration "principals" when the interrogation--and torture--of detainees at Guantamo was discussed.

Maddow displays a lot more journalistic integrity than most reporters these days, give it a watch:

(Video link)

And if you think we need to know more about what was done in our name, you can sign an ACLU petition here asking Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate whether actions were taken that violate U.S. laws against torture.

Tech support and service plan hell

Last night my hard drive failed on my PC. I wasn't surprised: I had heard the telltale noises. And I wasn't terribly worried since I run a nightly backup.

I started to look for a PC repair place today when I noticed that I had paid $90 for a two-year service plan when I bought the computer from HP. So I called them thinking I was pretty smart.

Four hours later (almost all of it spent with me on the phone), the HP service department had finally agreed to send me a replacement drive. They estimated delivery on April 8th.

Somehow I think it would have been easier and faster to just take the PC somewhere this morning for a local repair!

Getting married in Iowa is...

now and option for gays and lesbians. The Iowa Supreme Court today ruled that the state's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional:

“We have a constitutional duty to ensure equal protection of the law,” the Iowa justices wrote in their opinion. “If gay and lesbian people must submit to different treatment without an exceedingly persuasive justification, they are deprived of the benefits of the principle of equal protection upon which the rule of law is founded.”

“The concept of equal protection, is deeply rooted in our national and state history, but that history reveals this concept is often expressed far more easily than it is practiced,” the court wrote.

Iowa has enforced its constitution in a series of landmark court decisions, including those that struck down slavery (in 1839) and segregation (cases in 1868 and 1873), and upheld women’s rights by becoming the first state in the nation to allow a woman to practice law, in 1869.

Any attempt to amend Iowa's state constitution would take at least two years, and the state has no requirement that people obtaining a marriage license be state residents.

Quality of life at the end of life

I heard the first half of Terry Gross' interview with Dr. Robert Martensen on Fresh Air today. Martensen's new book, A Life Worth Living, examines the peculiarities of healthcare in America that lead to difficult choices for families when a love one is near death. The program is definitely worth a listen.

I've been thinking for awhile that I needed to update my healthcare durable power-of-attorney and living will since moving to Nevada, and I did so as soon as I got home. (Nevada residents can do this online here and file a copy with the state of Nevada here.)

The U.S. healthcare system's default stance is to prolong life whenever possible, regardless of the quality of the life that the patient is experiencing. One impact is that end of life healthcare costs shoot up (especially in the four months before death) as seen in this graph from "Longevity and Healthcare Expenditures," an article in The Journals of Gerontology:

Dr. Martensen noted on the program that if a physician spends an hour or so talking to an elderly patient and his or her family about what is important to the person and their desires with regard to end-of-life treatment, Medicare will reimburse the doctor $18! But if the doctor spends 15 minutes with the patient and then orders a bunch of tests, the doctor receives a lot more compensation. The incentives for doctors are all screwed up in our current system... one more reason we need healthcare reform!

Big day of political news

But I've got a biochem test this morning so you'll have to read it all at First Read. :-)