Monday, July 9, 2007
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Organic Food really IS better
From the BBC:
Organic fruit and vegetables may be better for you than conventionally grown crops, US research suggests.
Organic food 'better' for heart
 Tomatoes contain compounds which are good for the heart |
A ten-year study comparing organic tomatoes with standard produce found almost double the level of flavonoids - a type of antioxidant.
Flavonoids have been shown to reduce high blood pressure, lowering the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Writing in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the team said nitrogen in the soil may be the key.
Dr Alyson Mitchell, a food chemist at the University of California, and colleagues measured the amount of two flavonoids - quercetin and kaempferol - in dried tomato samples that had been collected as part of a long-term study on agricultural methods.
Peter Melchett, Soil Association
They found that on average they were 79% and 97% higher respectively in the organic tomatoes than in the conventionally grown fruit.
New Scientist magazine reported that the different levels of flavonoids in tomatoes are probably due to the absence of fertilisers in organic farming.
Flavonoids are produced as a defence mechanism that can be triggered by nutrient deficiency, such as a lack of nitrogen in the soil.
The inorganic nitrogen in conventional fertiliser is easily available to plants and so, the researchers suggests, the lower levels of flavonoids are probably caused by over-fertilisation.
Conflicting evidence
Flavonoids have also been linked with reduced rates of some types of cancer and dementia.
The Food Standards Agency says there is some evidence that flavonoids can help to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and they are currently carrying out a study to look at the health benefits in more detail.
However, a spokesperson said there was no evidence that organic food was healthier.
"Our long-standing advice on organic food is there can be some nutrient differences but it doesn't mean it's necessarily better for you."
For example, a recent study found that organic milk had higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, but the FSA points out that these short-chain fatty acids do not seem to have the health promoting benefits offered by long-chain omega-3 oils found in oily fish.
Peter Melchett, Soil Association policy director said: "We welcome the now rapidly growing body of evidence which shows significant differences between the nutritional composition of organic and non-organic food.
"This is the second recent American study to find significant differences between organic and non-organic fruit.
"These findings also confirm recent European research, which showed that organic tomatoes, peaches and processed apples all have higher nutritional quality than non-organic."
"As further scientific evidence emerges from new research looking at differences between organic and non-organic food, the Soil Association will be asking the FSA to keep their nutritional advice to consumers under review."Friday, July 6, 2007
Knitting an iPhone? Cool!
Alfred sent this in. It's from DaddyTypes.com.
My Mom Hand-Knit An iPhone
My mom was insanely cool even before she knitted an iPhone. Last week, as the hype was peaking, I braced for reports of kids across the country grabbing for their parents' new iPhones; it was a drool-soaked disaster waiting to happen, like all those people who flung their Wii controllers into their flatscreens because they didn't think they really needed that wrist strap. Obviously, I thought, a kid needs his own iPhone so he won't play with his dad's. So I asked my mom if she could knit one. And she did. Frankly, I think it's cooler than the Steve Jobs version.
Here is her knitting saga, and the tips and details to help other knit-happy folks save $800.
Because it looked similar, I had forwarded a link to BitterSweet's instructions for knitting a Pop Tart cell phone cozy. Just change the colors, put buttons on instead of bead sprinkles, and you're done! I thought.
She tested a variety of yarns to get the best gauge. Some yarns that didn't work included a metallic silver and a fat, furry chenille. The frosting-as-screen never looked quite right, though, so she settled on making icons on an all-black face, and a black-and-grey back, using a slightly heavy gauge of wool.
Her iPhone is the same size as the original: 2.5 x 4.5 inches. She made it with #6 needles, and had 15 stitches, 6 per inch. The body is made using a stocking knit stitch, knit 1 purl 1, with 6" of black, and 3" of grey added to the end. This ends up being much easier than setting in a separate screen section.
The icons are sewn on with 2-ply tapestry yarn. Some little details are stitched using a single ply of the yarn; others are made using a 2-ply French knot. If you're giving this to a teeth-equipped kid, it's possible that the knots and icon stitches could get gnawed off. If anyone has another idea for icons and the screen--like recreating an image or wallpaper on it, for example--definitely share it below.
It's important to block the body flat before adding the icons; use a steam iron and cloth and press on the wrong/purl side. That makes the icons much easier to sew. [On the last test version, my mom sewed up three sides of the phone, then started embroidering the buttons. This was all insane and backwards. But the buttons on before you assemble the phone. [And double check the placement and orientation; you know the old saying, measure twice, knit once. Though she asked me about it a couple of times, I couldn't see exactly where the fold would be; as a result, the buttons are upside down. Moral: Listen to your mothers, especially on the subject of knitting.]
To assemble it, fold the body strip in half and sew around three edges. [In order to give it a consistent edge, she even sewed across the end where it's folded.] I cut a piece of slightly dense foam just larger than the dimensions and stuffed it into the knitted pocket. I thought of putting a rattle inside it, but it seemed annoying.
Then she sewed it closed. She used the same grey yarn to sew it together. In order to create the chromey edge, she chain-stitched around the black edges of the face. I think it really stood out nicely.
The PopTart, she figures, would take just 30-45 minutes to make. The iPhone was considerably longer. Not counting the various tests and unpicking, the time requirement breaks down as follows:
knitting: 0.5 hours
buttons: 3 hours
sewing, stuffing, edging: 1 hour-plus
Total: 4-5 hours
10 Politically Incorrect Truths
(From Alfred) This is from Psychology Today.
Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature
Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn't sexist, and blonds are more attractive.
Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature
Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn't sexist, and blonds are more attractive.
Human nature is one of those things that everybody talks about but no one can define precisely. Every time we fall in love, fight with our spouse, get upset about the influx of immigrants into our country, or go to church, we are, in part, behaving as a human animal with our own unique evolved nature—human nature.
This means two things. First, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are produced not only by our individual experiences and environment in our own lifetime but also by what happened to our ancestors millions of years ago. Second, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are shared, to a large extent, by all men or women, despite seemingly large cultural differences.
Human behavior is a product both of our innate human nature and of our individual experience and environment. In this article, however, we emphasize biological influences on human behavior, because most social scientists explain human behavior as if evolution stops at the neck and as if our behavior is a product almost entirely of environment and socialization. In contrast, evolutionary psychologists see human nature as a collection of psychological adaptations that often operate beneath conscious thinking to solve problems of survival and reproduction by predisposing us to think or feel in certain ways. Our preference for sweets and fats is an evolved psychological mechanism. We do not consciously choose to like sweets and fats; they just taste good to us.
The implications of some of the ideas in this article may seem immoral, contrary to our ideals, or offensive. We state them because they are true, supported by documented scientific evidence. Like it or not, human nature is simply not politically correct.
Excerpted from Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, to be published by Perigree in September 2007.
- Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
Long before TV—in 15th- and 16th- century Italy, and possibly two millennia ago—women were dying their hair blond. A recent study shows that in Iran, where exposure to Western media and culture is limited, women are actually more concerned with their body image, and want to lose more weight, than their American counterparts. It is difficult to ascribe the preferences and desires of women in 15th-century Italy and 21st-century Iran to socialization by media.
Women's desire to look like Barbie—young with small waist, large breasts, long blond hair, and blue eyes—is a direct, realistic, and sensible response to the desire of men to mate with women who look like her. There is evolutionary logic behind each of these features.
Men prefer young women in part because they tend to be healthier than older women. One accurate indicator of health is physical attractiveness; another is hair. Healthy women have lustrous, shiny hair, whereas the hair of sickly people loses its luster. Because hair grows slowly, shoulder-length hair reveals several years of a woman's health status.
Men also have a universal preference for women with a low waist-to-hip ratio. They are healthier and more fertile than other women; they have an easier time conceiving a child and do so at earlier ages because they have larger amounts of essential reproductive hormones. Thus men are unconsciously seeking healthier and more fertile women when they seek women with small waists.
Until very recently, it was a mystery to evolutionary psychology why men prefer women with large breasts, since the size of a woman's breasts has no relationship to her ability to lactate. But Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman's age (and her reproductive value) by sight—suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive.
Alternatively, men may prefer women with large breasts for the same reason they prefer women with small waists. A new study of Polish women shows that women with large breasts and tight waists have the greatest fecundity, indicated by their levels of two reproductive hormones (estradiol and progesterone).
Blond hair is unique in that it changes dramatically with age. Typically, young girls with light blond hair become women with brown hair. Thus, men who prefer to mate with blond women are unconsciously attempting to mate with younger (and hence, on average, healthier and more fecund) women. It is no coincidence that blond hair evolved in Scandinavia and northern Europe, probably as an alternative means for women to advertise their youth, as their bodies were concealed under heavy clothing.
Women with blue eyes should not be any different from those with green or brown eyes. Yet preference for blue eyes seems both universal and undeniable—in males as well as females. One explanation is that the human pupil dilates when an individual is exposed to something that she likes. For instance, the pupils of women and infants (but not men) spontaneously dilate when they see babies. Pupil dilation is an honest indicator of interest and attraction. And the size of the pupil is easiest to determine in blue eyes. Blue-eyed people are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine whether they are interested in us or not.
The irony is that none of the above is true any longer. Through face-lifts, wigs, liposuction, surgical breast augmentation, hair dye, and color contact lenses, any woman, regardless of age, can have many of the key features that define ideal female beauty. And men fall for them. Men can cognitively understand that many blond women with firm, large breasts are not actually 15 years old, but they still find them attractive because their evolved psychological mechanisms are fooled by modern inventions that did not exist in the ancestral environment.
- Humans are naturally polygamous
The history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally polygamous. Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare, but polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practiced in human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage. We know that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than women.
Among primate and nonprimate species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the degree to which males of a species are larger than females. The more polygynous the species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10 percent taller and 20 percent heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous.
Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the "winners" and the "losers" in the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against predators and other males.
In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, "The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one." Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)
- Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.
The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that's much better than not marrying anyone at all.
Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.
- Most suicide bombers are Muslim
Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, but according to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, when religion is involved, the attackers are always Muslim. Why? The surprising answer is that Muslim suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam or the Quran (except for two lines). It has a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.
What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.
So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.
However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.
The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.
It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single.
- Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce
Sociologists and demographers have discovered that couples who have at least one son face significantly less risk of divorce than couples who have only daughters. Why is this?
Since a man's mate value is largely determined by his wealth, status, and power—whereas a woman's is largely determined by her youth and physical attractiveness—the father has to make sure that his son will inherit his wealth, status, and power, regardless of how much or how little of these resources he has. In contrast, there is relatively little that a father (or mother) can do to keep a daughter youthful or make her more physically attractive.
The continued presence of (and investment by) the father is therefore important for the son, but not as crucial for the daughter. The presence of sons thus deters divorce and departure of the father from the family more than the presence of daughters, and this effect tends to be stronger among wealthy families.
- Beautiful people have more daughters
It is commonly believed that whether parents conceive a boy or a girl is up to random chance. Close, but not quite; it is largely up to chance. The normal sex ratio at birth is 105 boys for every 100 girls. But the sex ratio varies slightly in different circumstances and for different families. There are factors that subtly influence the sex of an offspring.
One of the most celebrated principles in evolutionary biology, the Trivers-Willard hypothesis, states that wealthy parents of high status have more sons, while poor parents of low status have more daughters. This is because children generally inherit the wealth and social status of their parents. Throughout history, sons from wealthy families who would themselves become wealthy could expect to have a large number of wives, mistresses and concubines, and produce dozens or hundreds of children, whereas their equally wealthy sisters can have only so many children. So natural selection designs parents to have biased sex ratio at birth depending upon their economic circumstances—more boys if they are wealthy, more girls if they are poor. (The biological mechanism by which this occurs is not yet understood.)
This hypothesis has been documented around the globe. American presidents, vice presidents, and cabinet secretaries have more sons than daughters. Poor Mukogodo herders in East Africa have more daughters than sons. Church parish records from the 17th and 18th centuries show that wealthy landowners in Leezen, Germany, had more sons than daughters, while farm laborers and tradesmen without property had more daughters than sons. In a survey of respondents from 46 nations, wealthy individuals are more likely to indicate a preference for sons if they could only have one child, whereas less wealthy individuals are more likely to indicate a preference for daughters.
The generalized Trivers-Willard hypothesis goes beyond a family's wealth and status: If parents have any traits that they can pass on to their children and that are better for sons than for daughters, then they will have more boys. Conversely, if parents have any traits that they can pass on to their children and that are better for daughters, they will have more girls.
Physical attractiveness, while a universally positive quality, contributes even more to women's reproductive success than to men's. The generalized hypothesis would therefore predict that physically attractive parents should have more daughters than sons. Once again, this is the case. Americans who are rated "very attractive" have a 56 percent chance of having a daughter for their first child, compared with 48 percent for everyone else.
- What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals
For nearly a quarter of a century, criminologists have known about the "age-crime curve." In every society at all historical times, the tendency to commit crimes and other risk-taking behavior rapidly increases in early adolescence, peaks in late adolescence and early adulthood, rapidly decreases throughout the 20s and 30s, and levels off in middle age.
This curve is not limited to crime. The same age profile characterizes every quantifiable human behavior that is public (i.e., perceived by many potential mates) and costly (i.e., not affordable by all sexual competitors). The relationship between age and productivity among male jazz musicians, male painters, male writers, and male scientists—which might be called the "age-genius curve"—is essentially the same as the age-crime curve. Their productivity—the expressions of their genius—quickly peaks in early adulthood, and then equally quickly declines throughout adulthood. The age-genius curve among their female counterparts is much less pronounced; it does not peak or vary as much as a function of age.
Paul McCartney has not written a hit song in years, and now spends much of his time painting. Bill Gates is now a respectable businessman and philanthropist, and is no longer a computer whiz kid. J.D. Salinger now lives as a total recluse and has not published anything in more than three decades. Orson Welles was a mere 26 when he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane.
A single theory can explain the productivity of both creative geniuses and criminals over the life course: Both crime and genius are expressions of young men's competitive desires, whose ultimate function in the ancestral environment would have been to increase reproductive success.
In the physical competition for mates, those who are competitive may act violently toward their male rivals. Men who are less inclined toward crime and violence may express their competitiveness through their creative activities.
The cost of competition, however, rises dramatically when a man has children, when his energies and resources are put to better use protecting and investing in them. The birth of the first child usually occurs several years after puberty because men need some time to accumulate sufficient resources and attain sufficient status to attract their first mate. There is therefore a gap of several years between the rapid rise in the benefits of competition and similarly rapid rise in its costs. Productivity rapidly declines in late adulthood as the costs of competition rise and cancel its benefits.
These calculations have been performed by natural and sexual selection, so to speak, which then equips male brains with a psychological mechanism to incline them to be increasingly competitive immediately after puberty and make them less competitive right after the birth of their first child. Men simply do not feel like acting violently, stealing, or conducting additional scientific experiments, or they just want to settle down after the birth of their child but they do not know exactly why.
The similarity between Bill Gates, Paul McCartney, and criminals—in fact, among all men throughout evolutionary history—points to an important concept in evolutionary biology: female choice.
Women often say no to men. Men have had to conquer foreign lands, win battles and wars, compose symphonies, author books, write sonnets, paint cathedral ceilings, make scientific discoveries, play in rock bands, and write new computer software in order to impress women so that they will agree to have sex with them. Men have built (and destroyed) civilization in order to impress women, so that they might say yes.
- The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of
Many believe that men go through a midlife crisis when they are in middle age. Not quite. Many middle-aged men do go through midlife crises, but it's not because they are middle-aged. It's because their wives are. From the evolutionary psychological perspective, a man's midlife crisis is precipitated by his wife's imminent menopause and end of her reproductive career, and thus his renewed need to attract younger women. Accordingly, a 50-year-old man married to a 25-year-old woman would not go through a midlife crisis, while a 25-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman would, just like a more typical 50-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman. It's not his midlife that matters; it's hers. When he buys a shiny-red sports car, he's not trying to regain his youth; he's trying to attract young women to replace his menopausal wife by trumpeting his flash and cash.
- It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they're male)
On the morning of January 21, 1998, as Americans woke up to the stunning allegation that President Bill Clinton had had an affair with a 24-year-old White House intern, Darwinian historian Laura L. Betzig thought, "I told you so." Betzig points out that while powerful men throughout Western history have married monogamously (only one legal wife at a time), they have always mated polygynously (they had lovers, concubines, and female slaves). With their wives, they produced legitimate heirs; with the others, they produced bastards. Genes make no distinction between the two categories of children.
As a result, powerful men of high status throughout human history attained very high reproductive success, leaving a large number of offspring (legitimate and otherwise), while countless poor men died mateless and childless. Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, the last Sharifian emperor of Morocco, stands out quantitatively, having left more offspring—1,042—than anyone else on record, but he was by no means qualitatively different from other powerful men, like Bill Clinton.
The question many asked in 1998—"Why on earth would the most powerful man in the world jeopardize his job for an affair with a young woman?"—is, from a Darwinian perspective, a silly one. Betzig's answer would be: "Why not?" Men strive to attain political power, consciously or unconsciously, in order to have reproductive access to a larger number of women. Reproductive access to women is the goal, political office but one means. To ask why the President of the United States would have a sexual encounter with a young woman is like asking why someone who worked very hard to earn a large sum of money would then spend it.
What distinguishes Bill Clinton is not that he had extramarital affairs while in office—others have, more will; it would be a Darwinian puzzle if they did not—what distinguishes him is the fact that he got caught.
- Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist
An unfortunate consequence of the ever-growing number of women joining the labor force and working side by side with men is the increasing number of sexual harassment cases. Why must sexual harassment be a necessary consequence of the sexual integration of the workplace?
Psychologist Kingsley R. Browne identifies two types of sexual harassment cases: the quid pro quo ("You must sleep with me if you want to keep your job or be promoted") and the "hostile environment" (the workplace is deemed too sexualized for workers to feel safe and comfortable). While feminists and social scientists tend to explain sexual harassment in terms of "patriarchy" and other ideologies, Browne locates the ultimate cause of both types of sexual harassment in sex differences in mating strategies.
Studies demonstrate unequivocally that men are far more interested in short-term casual sex than women. In one now-classic study, 75 percent of undergraduate men approached by an attractive female stranger agreed to have sex with her; none of the women approached by an attractive male stranger did. Many men who would not date the stranger nonetheless agreed to have sex with her.
The quid pro quo types of harassment are manifestations of men's greater desire for short-term casual sex and their willingness to use any available means to achieve that goal. Feminists often claim that sexual harassment is "not about sex but about power;" Browne contends it is both—men using power to get sex. "To say that it is only about power makes no more sense than saying that bank robbery is only about guns, not about money."
Sexual harassment cases of the hostile-environment variety result from sex differences in what men and women perceive as "overly sexual" or "hostile" behavior. Many women legitimately complain that they have been subjected to abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment by their male coworkers. Browne points out that long before women entered the labor force, men subjected each other to such abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment.
Abuse, intimidation, and degradation are all part of men's repertoire of tactics employed in competitive situations. In other words, men are not treating women differently from men—the definition of discrimination, under which sexual harassment legally falls—but the opposite: Men harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men and women.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
The posts from Alfred
Why Bush's commute was really a pardon
It's all about cause and effect.
SCOTUSblog explains it for us:
The federal judge who sentenced former vice presidential aide I. Lewis Libby for lying to federal investigators and a grand jury on Tuesday raised the possibility that Libby might not have to serve two years on "supervised release" after all. In a two-page order (found here), U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton told lawyers on both sides to file briefs on the issue by Monday.
When President Bush in granting clemency on Monday nullified the 30-month prison sentence Walton had imposed, the President said he would leave intact the part of the sentence that required two years of supervised release -- a form of probation. But Walton on Tuesday noted that the federal law governing such a requirement states that it is to be served "after imprisonment."
Expect Libby's lawyers to argue that it would be unprecedented for their client to go on "supervised release" if he never went to jail. They will want the probation waved.
Even if the probation is waved, Libby still has to pay the $250,000 fine. However, Libby's friends, such as Fred Thompson, are continuing to raise money for him -- which would more than cover the cost.
Bush will not even need to pardon Libby at all. He already has been pardoned. He is not going to jail. He might not serve probation. His friends will help him pay the $250,000 fine. So Justin was correct in reporting on Monday that Libby succeeded in "Getting Off 'Scoot' Free."
Sicko inspires grassroots action in Dallas cinema
Here's a first-hand account of a trip to see Michael Moore's Sicko in a suburban mall in Dallas, in which the audience of conservative cowboys were converted to health-care activists:
I kept my distance, as we all finished and exited at the same time. Outside the restroom doors… the theater was in chaos. The entire Sicko audience had somehow formed an impromptu town hall meeting in front of the ladies room. I’ve never seen anything like it. This is Texas goddammit, not France or some liberal college campus. But here these people were, complete strangers from every walk of life talking excitedly about the movie. It was as if they simply couldn’t go home without doing something drastic about what they’d just seen. My redneck compadre and his new friend found their wives at the center of the group, while I lingered in the background waiting for my spouse to emerge.
The talk gradually centered around a core of 10 or 12 strangers in a cluster while the rest of us stood around them listening intently to this thing that seemed to be happening out of nowhere. The black gentleman engaged by my redneck in the restroom shouted for everyone’s attention. The conversation stopped instantly as all eyes in this group of 30 or 40 people were now on him. “If we just see this and do nothing about it,” he said, “then what’s the point? Something has to change.” There was silence, then the redneck’s wife started calling for email addresses. Suddenly everyone was scribbling down everyone else’s email, promising to get together and do something… though no one seemed to know quite what.
I've seen this movie twice now -- once by downloading it from The Pirate Bay and once in the cinema, and it was incredibly moving and inspiring both times. This is the must-see movie of the summer. Link (via Making Light)
See also:
Moore's "Sicko" leaks onto P2P
Google to HMOs: pay us and we'll defuse "Sicko"
More on Google vs Sicko
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi
Australia 'has Iraq oil interest'
| Australia has about 1,500 military personnel in the Gulf |
Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has admitted that securing oil supplies is a key factor behind the presence of Australian troops in Iraq.
He said maintaining "resource security" in the Middle East was a priority.
But PM John Howard has played down the comments, saying it was "stretching it a bit" to conclude that Australia's Iraq involvement was motivated by oil.
The remarks are causing heated debate as the US-led Iraq coalition has avoided linking the war and oil.
Oil concerns
Australia was involved in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has about 1,500 military personnel still deployed in the region.
There are no immediate plans to bring them home.
In comments to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr Nelson admitted that the supply of oil had influenced Australia's strategic planning in the region.
"Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq but the entire region, is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world," he said.
"Australians and all of us need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq.
"It's in our interests, our security interests, to make sure that we leave the Middle East, and leave Iraq in particular, in a position of sustainable security."
| |
Brendan Nelson |
This is thought to be the first time the Australian government has admitted any link between troop deployment in Iraq and securing energy resources.
But Prime Minister John Howard was quick to play down the significance of his defence minister's comments.
"We didn't go there because of oil and we don't remain there because of oil," he told a local radio station.
"A lot of oil comes from the Middle East - we all know that - but the reason we remain there is that we want to give the people of Iraq a possibility of embracing democracy," he added.
Opposition criticism
Opposition politicians, though, have chastised Mr Howard's government over the comments.
"This government simply makes it up as it goes along on Iraq," Labor leader Kevin Rudd told reporters.
Anti-war protesters say the government's admission proves that the US-led invasion was more of a grab for oil rather than a genuine attempt to uncover weapons of mass destruction.
But ministers in Canberra have brushed aside the criticism, saying they remain committed to helping the US stabilise Iraq and combat terrorism.
They have also stressed that there will be no "premature withdrawal" of Australian forces from the region.
Republican Senators May Back Contempt Charge
By Elana Schor
The Hill
Tuesday 03 July 2007
As Democrats tangle with the White House over executive privilege, Senate Republicans must decide whether to block a criminal contempt charge against the administration or allow it and thus bring the constitutional clash before a federal judge.
Both chambers' judiciary committee chairmen have given the White House a July 9 deadline to explain in detail its executive-privilege claim to withhold subpoenaed documents on the mass firing of U.S. attorneys. If their deadline is not met, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) likely will pursue a contempt citation - and some Republicans are unlikely to bail out President Bush.
Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), vice chairman of the GOP conference, told The Hill on Friday that he thinks Republican cooperation with a criminal contempt finding will be required.
"It's just a formal process that sets up a legal challenge," Cornyn said. "We've got to cut out some of the politics and get this to the courts."
One Senate GOP aide, requesting anonymity, agreed that Republicans might approve a contempt finding as a procedural step. Should the White House continue to resist the subpoenas, only one of the two chambers has to approve a criminal citation before the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia can empanel a grand jury.
Yet the spectacle of Republicans turning on President Bush by finding his advisers in contempt could rub salt in the wounds of an already riven GOP. Senators who have blasted the U.S. attorneys investigation as a partisan charade would have an especially difficult time staying silent on a resolution of contempt.
"There isn't a Republican in Congress who's not thinking long and hard about how they can be a loyal member of the party and at the same time be faithful to their oath of office as a member of Congress," said Douglas W. Kmiec, professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine Law School and head of the Office of Legal Counsel under President Reagan.
Complicating the dilemma, several Senate Republicans have suggested letting the judiciary resolve the executive privilege dispute, setting themselves up for a Democratic campaign to support a criminal contempt finding.
"At the end of the day, this will be settled by the courts," Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said.
"I think this is an issue that's going to be handled by the courts," agreed Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).
"In the end, the courts will decide this anyway," said Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who has called for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's resignation in response to the firings.
"We can't have a Congress that's constantly bringing administration officials in to harass them," said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). "But it's a matter for the courts."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called a contempt vote "the last thing the country needs," but advised lawmakers to "let the courts fight this out."
In fact, two equally difficult options exist for Democrats to enforce the subpoenas without a chamber-wide contempt vote, according to former House general counsel Stan Brand. Senators can either pass a jurisdictional bill to send the dispute to court or ask the sergeant at arms to arrest White House officials named in the subpoenas and use a habeas corpus motion to bring the case before a judge.
Citing the precedent of a 1982 contempt citation, however, Brand noted another problem: "The U.S. attorney won't necessarily bring this matter to a grand jury. So it could be an act of futility."
In 1982, during current White House Counsel Fred Fielding's first stint in the position, the U.S. attorney declined to bring a contempt charge against a Reagan administration official, instead seeking an injunction against the House. But Leahy has predicted that the capital's sitting U.S. attorney would be hard-pressed this year to ignore a criminal finding.
The U.S. attorneys probe, which hinges upon Democratic allegations of improper politicization at the Department of Justice, has played out largely on the committee level up to this point. In addition, the complex legal questions surrounding the subpoenas are prompting many Republican senators to keep their powder dry, criticizing neither Democrats nor the Bush White House.
There is also the issue of timing: If the matter goes to the courts, it is unlikely to be resolved soon, perhaps winding down past the 2008 election.
"It's only theoretical at this point, so I wouldn't opine one way or the other," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said.
Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.), who is also chief of the Republican National Committee, called the investigation "all politics," but added, "I'm not sure how I'll deal with this."
Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) similarly declined to discuss his approach to the contempt vote, calling it "too big a leap to take at this time. I'm not ready to jump to conclusions."
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said he is unlikely to support a contempt finding but added that he would need to look more closely at the situation.
Meanwhile, a second subpoena standoff may be in store for the Senate as Leahy awaits a July 18 deadline for documents relating to the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. But Kmiec, the former Reagan administration counsel, sees a possible Republican endgame: support contempt in the U.S. attorneys inquiry, but defend White House prerogatives on the eavesdropping summonses.
"While it's true that the [attorneys] subpoenas relate to a core executive power … the executive has not done a good and sufficient job of explain[ing] why the dismissals were undertaken," Kmiec said.
By contrast, said Kmiec, the wiretapping inquiry may run into a stronger case for executive privilege due to the wartime and national-security context. By showing some "reasonableness" on the attorneys issue, Republicans could convince a few Democrats to join them in shunning a contempt finding for the second round of subpoenas, he added.
The White House did not return a request for comment on Fielding's response to next week's deadline. A senior administration official, briefing reporters last Thursday, declined to address the scenario of a contempt citation.
No Quick Debate in Iraq On Oil Law
By Mussab Al-Khairalla and Ahmed Rasheed
Reuters
Wednesday 04 July 2007
Iraq's parliament might take a week to start debating a key draft oil law, officials said on Wednesday, as complaints from Shi'ite and Sunni Arab politicians and Kurdish authorities signaled its passage could be rocky.
Washington has pushed Iraq for months to speed up passage of the law and other pieces of legislation seen as vital to curbing sectarian violence and healing deep divisions between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.
Presentation of the draft to parliament after the cabinet approved it on Tuesday was a big step towards meeting a key political target set by the United States.
But Mohammed Abu Bakr, head of parliament's media office, said the law had first to go to the energy and oil committee.
"We need seven days to get the draft on the agenda of parliament to discuss it," he said.
In fresh violence, a suicide car bomber killed seven people on Wednesday, including three policemen, when he drove into a police patrol that had pulled up at a restaurant for lunch in Baiji, 180 km (120 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
American soldiers backed by war planes killed 25 gunmen during a clash in Diyala province north of Baghdad, the military said. It said fighting took place during a three-day operation that ended on Monday. It did not specify the day of the clash.
The oil law is intended to ensure a fair distribution of the world's third largest oil reserves, which are located mainly in the Shi'ite south and the Kurdish north of Iraq.
Sunni Arabs, the backbone of the insurgency, live mainly in central provinces that have little proven oil wealth and have long feared they would miss out on any windfall.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki should have enough support in the 275-member parliament to get the law passed. But in a sign of trouble, the movement of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said it had rejected the draft.
Sadr's bloc, which has 30 parliamentary seats, said the law must state that no contracts may be signed with firms from countries with troops in Iraq, an official said.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said it had not seen nor approved the draft.
"We hope the cabinet is not approving a text with which the KRG disagrees because this would violate the constitutional rights of the Kurdistan region," the KRG said in a statement.
Iraq's cabinet originally approved the draft in February but faced stiff opposition from Kurdistan, which felt it was getting a raw deal.
The draft, which has not been made public, decides who controls Iraq's reserves and aims to provide a legal framework for foreign investment. The Kurds had previously said some of the law's annexes were unconstitutional.
Another complication could be Sunni Arab politicians, who have voiced concern about foreign domination of the industry.
Saleem al-Jubouri, spokesman for the main Sunni Arab bloc, the Accordance Front, said his group believed the cabinet had agreed to the changes too hastily and would seek amendments, although he added it was not trying to derail the measure.
The bloc is boycotting cabinet and parliament meetings over what it says is unfair treatment of its members.
Meanwhile, a hardline Sunni Arab clerical body, the Muslim Scholar's Association, issued a fatwa or religious edict saying the draft was "religiously prohibited" because it would allow foreigners to exploit Iraq's oil wealth.
A companion draft law that covers revenue sharing and which has been agreed by the Kurds would be approved by the cabinet soon and submitted to parliament next week, officials have said.
Parliament is running out of time to debate and approve the oil laws and other measures aimed at ensuring Sunni Arabs are cemented in the political process. It has extended its current session to the end of July, before legislators take a month off.
That leaves little time before the U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker have to present a much-anticipated report to Washington in the middle of September on Iraq's security and political progress.
House Balks at Bush Order for New Powers
By Jim Abrams
The Associated Press
Tuesday 03 July 2007
Washington - President Bush this month is giving an obscure White House office new powers over regulations affecting health, worker safety and the environment. Calling it a power grab, Democrats running Congress are intent on stopping him.
The House voted last week to prohibit the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from spending federal money on Executive Order 13422, signed by Bush last January and due to take effect July 24.
The order requires federal officials to show that private companies, people or institutions failed to address a problem before agencies can write regulations to tackle it. It also gives political appointees greater authority over how the regulations are written.
The House measure "stops this president or any president from seizing the power to rewrite almost every law that Congress passes, laws that protect public health, the environment, safety, civil rights, privacy and on and on," said Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., its sponsor.
"OIRA has quietly grown into the most powerful regulatory agency in Washington," the House Science investigations subcommittee, chaired by Miller, said in a report in April.
The administration contends Bush's order merely strengthens a similar directive issued by President Clinton in 1993 giving the White House budget office oversight of federal agency rulemaking.
Andrea Wuebker, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget, which manages the White House regulatory affairs office, said the order, along with an OMB good guidance bulletin, "will help increase the quality, accountability and transparency of agency guidance documents."
Bush's executive order:
- Requires agencies to identify "market failures," where the private sector fell short in dealing with a problem, as a factor in proposing a rule. The White House regulatory affairs office is given authority to assess those conclusions.
- States that no rulemaking can go forward without the approval of an agency's Regulatory Policy Office, to be headed by a presidential appointee.
- Directs each agency to provide an estimate of costs and benefits of regulations.
- Requires agencies to inform the White House regulatory affairs office of proposed significant guidance documents on complying with rules. Critics say this will create a new bottleneck delaying the issuance of guidelines needed to comply with federal regulations.
"This can only further delay implementing health, safety and environmental protections," said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a private watchdog group that joined numerous labor and good-government groups, including the AFL-CIO, Public Citizen and the Union of Concerned Scientists, in opposing Bush's order.
Miller tried unsuccessfully at a hearing in April to persuade the White House regulatory affairs office's former acting administrator, Steven Aitken, to reveal what private groups might have been involved in rewriting the Clinton-era order.
Aitken stressed that the Clinton order also used market failure as a criteria in advancing new rules and directing agencies to appoint regulatory policy officers, many of whom were political appointees. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., backed Aitken up at the hearing.
"The pattern is that we are challenging the president's authority, hoping to find a mistake and then making a lot of political hay about it," Rohrabacher said.
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service noted in an analysis last February that President Reagan made the White House regulatory affairs office the central clearinghouse for substantive rulemaking, reviewing 2,000 to 3,000 proposed regulations per year. With Clinton's 1993 order, White House reviews of proposed regulations dropped to between 500 and 700 a year, the researchers said.
Bill Kovacs, vice president for regulatory affairs with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the White House's regulatory affairs office now has about 35 people to keep track of the 4,000 rules federal agencies issue every year.
"It's only reasonable that you have some way of monitoring what your agencies are doing," Kovacs said, adding that the White House needs to assert control over the process.
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The House bill is HR 2829.
Text of Jan. 18 Executive Order 13422: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news
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Turns out Fred Thompson has a long history of helping the insiders. He's especially adept at helping those under investigation for serious crimes against the Constitution and betraying we the people.
I'm shocked! Shocked.
| Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, "At That Point in Time," Thompson said he acted with "no authority" in divulging the committee's knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon's resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson's actions. "Thompson was a mole for the White House," Armstrong said in an interview. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was." ... .. Not all would put a heroic sheen on Thompson's Watergate role |
So the man who wants to be president was a rat for Richard Nixon.
Having lived through Watergate, I find this incredibly disturbing. It illustrates to me a penchant by old Fred to support an executive branch that is an authority unto itself, not unlike Mr. Bush, though you'd have to have a Cheney type in place to make it complete.
Red flags, people. Big, bold red flags on Fred.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
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