Minnesota mystery of the day solved -- for now: Norm Coleman Senate offices ordered closed

Doug Grow
MinnPost

UPDATE: Around midday, the offices of Sen. Norm Coleman were officially closed, though whether they'll stay closed pending results of a recount and any possible court cases remains unclear.

About 20 Coleman staffers had showed up for work at the senator's Washington office today, but they were ordered to close the office around midday by Howard Gantman, staff director for the Senate Rules and Administration committee.

Gantman said that Coleman's staff could NOT carry on Senate business. The senator's term had officially expired on Saturday.

But the senator released a statement indicating that the seemingly clear order might be subject to debate:

"Without question, this is a unique situation in the history of the Senate and specifics are still to be determined as to the future of the Senate office,'' Coleman said in the statement.

(More here.)

A 50-Year Farm Bill

By WES JACKSON and WENDELL BERRY
NYT

THE extraordinary rainstorms last June caused catastrophic soil erosion in the grain lands of Iowa, where there were gullies 200 feet wide. But even worse damage is done over the long term under normal rainfall — by the little rills and sheets of erosion on incompletely covered or denuded cropland, and by various degradations resulting from industrial procedures and technologies alien to both agriculture and nature.

Soil that is used and abused in this way is as nonrenewable as (and far more valuable than) oil. Unlike oil, it has no technological substitute — and no powerful friends in the halls of government.

Agriculture has too often involved an insupportable abuse and waste of soil, ever since the first farmers took away the soil-saving cover and roots of perennial plants. Civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland. This irremediable loss, never enough noticed, has been made worse by the huge monocultures and continuous soil-exposure of the agriculture we now practice.

To the problem of soil loss, the industrialization of agriculture has added pollution by toxic chemicals, now universally present in our farmlands and streams. Some of this toxicity is associated with the widely acclaimed method of minimum tillage. We should not poison our soils to save them.

(More here.)

No defending the Defense of Marriage Act

The author of the federal Defense of Marriage Act now thinks it's time for his law to get the boot -- but for political reasons, not in support of gays.

By Bob Barr
LA Times
January 5, 2009

In 1996, as a freshman member of the House of Representatives, I wrote the Defense of Marriage Act, better known by its shorthand acronym, DOMA, than its legal title. The law has been a flash-point for those arguing for or against same-sex marriage ever since President Clinton signed it into law. Even President-elect Barack Obama has grappled with its language, meaning and impact.

I can sympathize with the incoming commander in chief. And, after long and careful consideration, I have come to agree with him that the law should be repealed.

The left now decries DOMA as the barrier to federal recognition and benefits for married gay couples. At the other end of the political spectrum, however, DOMA has been lambasted for subverting the political momentum for a U.S. constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In truth, the language of the legislation -- like that of most federal laws -- was a compromise.

DOMA was indeed designed to thwart the then-nascent move in a few state courts and legislatures to afford partial or full recognition to same-sex couples. The Hawaii court case Baehr vs. Lewin, still active while DOMA was being considered by Congress in mid-1996, provided the immediate impetus.

(More here.)

Obama's First Test

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, January 5, 2009

For the past eight years, Congress has had a remarkably consistent record. When something was important to President Bush -- particularly if it was even vaguely related to national security -- Congress pretty much always caved. The combination of blindly loyal Republicans and cowering Democrats provided Bush with a winning margin time and again, even when the Democrats were ostensibly in charge, and even when Bush was demanding retroactive approval for laws he had brazenly violated.

The relationship between President Obama and Congress will inevitably take on an very different dynamic. But even though his fellow Democrats have solidified their control of both houses, it's not clear that Obama will be able to put together a coalition as effective as Bush's.

The president-elect's first test will be the economic stimulus and job-creation package he is championing. Much like Bush after 9/11, Obama faces an undeniable crisis and has public sentiment solidly behind him. Some sort of stimulus package will inevitably win Congressional support -- though not, as some Democrats had initially hoped, in time for Obama to sign it on the first day of his presidency.

But will an Obama victory only come at the cost of kowtowing to Republicans? Will soon-to-be White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel successfully wield the threat of an angry electorate against his former colleagues? Or will Obama really be able to find some sort of post-Bush, post-partisan consensus on a pragmatic, balanced approach to any number of important issues?

(More here.)

Minnesota Supreme Court Rules Against Coleman

By Michael Falcone
NYT

Closing another door on Norm Coleman’s bid to wrest the lead in the Minnesota Senate recount from Al Franken, the state Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Coleman campaign’s petition to count several hundred additional absentee ballots.

After this weekend’s tally of mistakenly rejected absentee ballots, Mr. Franken, the Democrat, was holding on to a 225-vote lead. And now that the Supreme Court has declined the Mr. Coleman’s appeal to consider 654 more ballots, the State Canvassing Board could certify the results of the recount as early as today.

But even the election panel’s stamp of approval is unlikely to bring an end to the contest. A lawyer for the Coleman campaign, Fritz Knaak, issued a statement today calling the court’s ruling “disappointing and disheartening” and vowed to challenge the outcome of the recount.

(More here.)

Styrofoam sucks...

I've just returned from a foray on the beach cleaning up styrofoam pieces of all kinds — from cups, packing materials, insulation, whatever. And judging from just the little bit that has washed up on the small strip of sand in front of my family's beach house, there must be a hell of a lot of the stuff in the world's oceans.

'Smatter of fact, cleaning up the lightweight litter irritated me so much that I went right to my computer to see if the URL styrofoamsucks.com were available for purchase. But alas! It was taken.

By whom? I wondered. A militant group of environmentalists perhaps? Some liberated chemistry sudents maybe? I even imagined a group of little old ladies who were tired of going to their local coffee house and receiving styrofoam cups instead of porcelain mugs.

As it turns out, none of the above. For clicking on styrofoamsucks.com sends the visitor to this webpage owned by none other than Dow Chemical Company, the trademark holder of Styrofoam the product.

I will admit as a matter of practicality (as well as not to get sued) that styrofoam does provide many benefits to human civilization. But like so many of the products we have created to render humans a "better" lifestyle, it has its downside as well. Below are a few websites that detail how styrofoam impacts our environment in ways that we'd rather it not:

• Polystyrene Foam Report
• How is styrofoam bad for the environment?
• 10 million tons of trash floating in the Pacific — Money quote: "The simple fact is that when you drop a Styrofoam cup onto the street, you're causing more damage than you would by dropping a stick of dynamite into the ocean." — Captain Paul Watson, www.seashepherd.org
• Reduce Ocean Pollution from Environment California — Money quote: "Plastic like Styrofoam doesn't biodegrade, it just gets broken into smaller pieces. Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and marine debris expert in Seattle, says one pound of plastic turns into 100,000 small pieces of plastic if left in the ocean."
• Ocean Pollution - Great Pacific Garbage Patch
  

P.S. Anyone up for registering styrofoamsucks.org?

Eyeless in Gaza

Marty Kaplan
HuffPost

First I saw a young protester telling a CNN reporter in Trafalgar Square, "Every single day, as soon as we turn on the TV, we see children there die in the hospitals, adults dying, children dying on the floor. Why, why, why? Why do children have to die? Why do innocent children have to die on the floor? Why?"

And I thought, She's right, those children in Gaza are innocent, every human life is precious, civilians aren't combatants. Doesn't everyone deserve basic human rights like food and water and life itself?

But then I thought, Where was she when 80 or 90 Hamas rockets a day were raining down on Israel? Where were all the television cameras when innocent children in Ashkelon and Sderot were being maimed and killed?

(More here.)

Activist Unmasks Himself as Federal Informant in G.O.P. Convention Case

By COLIN MOYNIHANN
NYT

When the scheduled federal trial begins this month for two Texas men who were arrested during the Republican National Convention on charges of making and possessing Molotov cocktails, one of the major witnesses against them will be a community activist who acted as a government informant.

Brandon Darby, an organizer from Austin, Tex., made the news public himself, announcing in an open letter posted on Dec. 30 on Indymedia.org that he had worked as an informant, most recently at last year’s Republican convention in St. Paul.

“The simple truth is that I have chosen to work with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” wrote Mr. Darby, who gained prominence as a member of Common Ground Relief, a group that helped victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

He added, “I strongly stand behind my choices in this matter.”

(More here.)

Fighting Off Depression

By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT

“If we don’t act swiftly and boldly,” declared President-elect Barack Obama in his latest weekly address, “we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment.” If you ask me, he was understating the case.

The fact is that recent economic numbers have been terrifying, not just in the United States but around the world. Manufacturing, in particular, is plunging everywhere. Banks aren’t lending; businesses and consumers aren’t spending. Let’s not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression.

So will we “act swiftly and boldly” enough to stop that from happening? We’ll soon find out.

We weren’t supposed to find ourselves in this situation. For many years most economists believed that preventing another Great Depression would be easy. In 2003, Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago, in his presidential address to the American Economic Association, declared that the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes, and has in fact been solved for many decades.”

Milton Friedman, in particular, persuaded many economists that the Federal Reserve could have stopped the Depression in its tracks simply by providing banks with more liquidity, which would have prevented a sharp fall in the money supply. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, famously apologized to Friedman on his institution’s behalf: “You’re right. We did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”

(More here.)

Panel to declare Franken winner of Senate race

From Chris Welch
CNN

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (CNN) -- A state election board on Monday will announce Democrat Al Franken has defeated Republican incumbent Norm Coleman in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race, state officials told CNN Sunday.

The canvassing board on Monday will say a recount determined Franken won by 225 votes, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie told CNN.

However, Coleman's campaign, which contends the recount should have included about 650 absentee ballots it says were improperly rejected in the initial count, has indicated it will challenge the certification.

Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan said his team believes the recount process was broken and that "the numbers being reported will not be accurate or valid."

"The effort by the Franken campaign, supported by the secretary of state, to exclude improperly rejected absentee ballots is indefensible and disenfranchises hundreds of Minnesota voters," Sheehan said.

After the results are certified, Coleman's campaign will have seven days to file a challenge.

(More here.)

Community meeting in Minneapolis

BRINGING BUSH & CO. TO JUSTICE: HOW DO WE PROCEED?

Peace and justice activists have been enormously frustrated by the failure to impeach and remove Bush and Cheney from office. After January 19 what actions under U.S. and international law can we take against them, other culpable members of their administration, and their cohorts in the private sector? Who could those persons be? Under what codes and in what courts could they be charged? What support do we need from the Obama administration, Congress and the public?
Two superb people will address these and other questions:

FORMER FBI CHIEF COUNSEL COLEEN ROWLEY and PROFESSOR BARBARA FREY

COLEEN ROWLEY received a B.A. in French from Wartburg College, graduated with honors from the University of Iowa College of Law, and passed the Iowa Bar Exam. Became a FBI Special Agent in 1981 and worked on organized drug crime in New York, Italy, France and Canada. In 1990 became the Chief Division Counsel in Minneapolis, "blew the whistle" on pre-9/11 "lapses," was named a "Time Magazine Person of the Year," left the FBI in 2004, and is now a dynamic advocate for the rule of law.

BARBARA FREY directs the Human Rights Program in the College of Liberal Arts at the U. of Minnesota. She is a well known international human rights teacher, advocate and scholar who has won numerous awards for her work. She served as the Executive Director of the UN Commission on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights (2000-'03) and as the Sub-commission's Special Rapporteur to study human rights abuses with small arms (2000-'06).

Third Thursday Global Issues Forums are co-sponsored by the Social Concerns Committee of Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, United Nations Association of Minnesota, and Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers.

CITIZENS FOR GLOBAL SOLUTIONS
MINNESOTA - THIRD THURSDAY GLOBAL ISSUES FORUMS

January 15, 2009, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Free and open to the public at
Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church
811 Groveland Ave., Minneapolis (Lyndale & Hennepin, park in the rear lot).

Bonfire of the profanities

By William Safire
International Herald Tribune
Sunday, January 4, 2009

Today we are going to deal with the media coverage of profanities, expletives, vulgarisms, obscenities, execrations, and epithets, nouns often lumped together by the Bluenose Generation as coarseness, crudeness, bawdiness, scatology or swearing. But roundheeled readers should stop rubbing their hands because the deliberately shocking subject can be treated with decorum, in plain words, without the titillating examples of "dirty words."

If you want to fulminate about such prissiness about prurience in print, feel free to express your outrage with the typographical device to which cartoonists have resorted for generations: !#*&%@%!!!

The need for today's review is the coverage given to the participial modifier employed with great frequency and immortalized on recordings of telephone conversations made by the FBI as its shocked - shocked! - agents eavesdropped on Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor. His favorite intensifier was reproduced in many newspapers and Internet sites with dashes as "----ing" or with asterisks as "****ing" and was substituted in broadcasts and Netcasts as a word descriptive of the sound called bleep.

Here's how The Washington Post handled it (with italics mine): "The governor, whose alleged dishonesty was matched only by his profanity, was secretly recorded by federal investigators saying that the Senate seat is 'a (expletive) valuable thing, you don't just give it away for nothing.' (Prosecutor Patrick) Fitzgerald, in his news conference Tuesday, thoughtfully replaced each of the governor's obscenities with 'bleep' or 'bleeping."' But in trying not to use the same word twice, the writer used three words with related but different meanings and etymologies.

(More here.)

NYT editorial: Exit, Stonewalling

True to its mania for secrecy, the Bush administration is leaving behind vast gaps in the most sensitive White House e-mail records, and with lawyers and public interest groups in hot pursuit of information that deserves to be part of the permanent historical record.

E-mail messages that have gone suspiciously missing are estimated to number in the millions. These could illuminate some of the administration’s darker moments, including the lead-up to the Iraq war, when intelligence was distorted, the destruction of videotapes of C.I.A. torture interrogations, and the vindictive outing of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

The deep-sixed history also includes improper business conducted by more than 50 White House appointees via e-mail at the Republican Party headquarters. Historians and archivists are suing the administration. We should be grateful for their efforts. Entire days of e-mail records have turned up conveniently blank at the offices of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Cheney, of course, retreats from sunshine with the wariness of Alucard; he is fighting to the last the transfer of his records to the National Archives, as required by law. He recently argued in court that he “alone may determine what constitutes vice presidential records or personal records.” As in: L’etat c’est Dick.

(More here.)

The End of the Financial World as We Know It

By MICHAEL LEWIS and DAVID EINHORN
NYT

AMERICANS enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics. We’ve been viewed by the wider world with mistrust and suspicion on other matters, but on the subject of money even our harshest critics have been inclined to believe that we knew what we were doing. They watched our investment bankers and emulated them: for a long time now half the planet’s college graduates seemed to want nothing more out of life than a job on Wall Street.

This is one reason the collapse of our financial system has inspired not merely a national but a global crisis of confidence. Good God, the world seems to be saying, if they don’t know what they are doing with money, who does?

Incredibly, intelligent people the world over remain willing to lend us money and even listen to our advice; they appear not to have realized the full extent of our madness. We have at least a brief chance to cure ourselves. But first we need to ask: of what?

To that end consider the strange story of Harry Markopolos. Mr. Markopolos is the former investment officer with Rampart Investment Management in Boston who, for nine years, tried to explain to the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernard L. Madoff couldn’t be anything other than a fraud. Mr. Madoff’s investment performance, given his stated strategy, was not merely improbable but mathematically impossible. And so, Mr. Markopolos reasoned, Bernard Madoff must be doing something other than what he said he was doing.

(More here.)

Franken-Coleman recount: Al whips Norm in absentee ballot count, and end is near ... it sure seems

By Jay Weiner
MinnPost
Saturday, Jan. 3, 2009

It was practically hypnotic.

Hear the word "Franken" 481 times and it will make you dizzy.

If you're Norm Coleman and his advocates, it will definitely get your head spinning and your mood changing.

"Obviously ... I've had better days, and so have we," said Fritz Knaak, Coleman's top lawyer, after today's tabulation of formerly rejected absentee ballots.

Soon after, when asked about a legal contest beyond the count, Knaak seemed to back off from his pretty strong fightin' words Friday about a legal contest.

At that time, he had said, "An election challenge is inevitable. There's no doubt in my mind, that's the case."

Barely 24 hours later, he said, "If necessary ... we are prepared to go forward to take whatever legal action necessary to remedy this artificial lead ..."

(More here.)

Global Warming Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

By James R. Lee
WashPost
Sunday, January 4, 2009

The Cold War shaped world politics for half a century. But global warming may shape the patterns of global conflict for much longer than that -- and help spark clashes that will be, in every sense of the word, hot wars.

We're used to thinking of climate change as an environmental problem, not a military one, but it's long past time to alter that mindset. Climate change may mean changes in Western lifestyles, but in some parts of the world, it will mean far more. Living in Washington, I may respond to global warming by buying a Prius, planting a tree or lowering my thermostat. But elsewhere, people will respond to climate change by building bomb shelters and buying guns.

"There is every reason to believe that as the 21st century unfolds, the security story will be bound together with climate change," warns John Ashton, a veteran diplomat who is now the United Kingdom's first special envoy on climate change. "The last time the world faced a challenge this complex was during the Cold War. Yet the stakes this time are even higher because the enemy now is ourselves, the choices we make."

Defense experts have also started to see the link between climate change and conflict. A 2007 CNA Corp. report, supervised by a dozen retired admirals and generals, warned that climate change could lead to political unrest in numerous badly hit countries, then perhaps to outright bloodshed and battle. One key factor that could stoke these tensions is massive migration as people flee increasingly uninhabitable areas, which would lead to border tensions, greater demands for rescue and evacuation services and disputes over essential resources. With these threats looming, the U.N. Security Council held a precedent-setting debate on climate change in April 2007 -- explicitly casting global warming as a national security issue.

(More here.)

A New Cigarette Hazard: ‘Third-Hand Smoke’

By RONI CARYN RABIN
NYT

Parents who smoke often open a window or turn on a fan to clear the air of second-hand smoke, but experts now have identified another smoking-related threat to children’s health that isn’t as easy to get rid of: third-hand smoke.

That’s the term being used to describe the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing, not to mention cushions and carpeting, that lingers long after smoke has cleared from a room. The residue includes heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if they’re crawling or playing on the floor.

Doctors from MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston coined the term “third-hand smoke” to describe these chemicals in a new study that focused on the risks they pose to infants and children. The study was published in this month’s issue of the journal Pediatrics.

“Everyone knows that second-hand smoke is bad, but they don’t know about this,” said Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

(More here.)

If This Isn’t Slavery, What Is?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NYT

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Barack Obama’s presidency marks a triumph over the legacy of slavery, so it would be particularly meaningful if he led a new abolitionist movement against 21st-century slavery — like the trafficking of girls into brothels.

Anyone who thinks it is hyperbole to describe sex trafficking as slavery should look at the maimed face of a teenage girl, Long Pross.

Glance at Pross from her left, and she looks like a normal, fun-loving girl, with a pretty face and a joyous smile. Then move around, and you see where her brothel owner gouged out her right eye.

Yes, I know it’s hard to read this. But it’s infinitely more painful for Pross to recount the humiliations she suffered, yet she summoned the strength to do so — and to appear in a video posted online with this column — because she wants people to understand how brutal sex trafficking can be.

(More here.)

Omg! Drunk Amok Nr 50-yd Line

By FRANCIS X. CLINES
NYT

The football playoffs begin this weekend with the two worlds of fandom on sadly discordant display. On television, the games play on with balletic grace. It’s another story up in the stands, where drunken louts can be heard vilely abusing and threatening fans of the opposing team, and lewdly harassing women who dare to root for the visitors.

For years, season-ticket holders across the league have paid top dollar to put up with the overlay of thuggery at games. The crudeness grows with colder weather and heightened alcohol intake, as bibulous loudmouths celebrate their primacy, pretending to be one with the muscular entertainment down on the field.

There’s no getting used to this, even by making protective earplugs part of the game-day apparel. Most disheartening is to see families with small children suffering through the vulgarity. Anyone who considers objecting — by daring to summon a security guard — runs the risk of facing gang retaliation, for the Alpha male bellowers rarely have the guts to stand alone.

But hope is on the way. The National Football League, aware that the stadium experience has soured, has instituted an electronic lifeline. Cellphone texters can privately dial a number displayed at the stadium and complain to security offices without fear of retaliation. The accused disrupter can then be discreetly observed and ejected from the game if guards confirm the abuse.

(More here.)

Samuel Huntington and the Positivity of Power Thinking

TM Note: I discovered Huntington's “Political Order in Changing Societies” as I lived thru (and reported on) the Ethiopian Revolution starting in 1974. It didn't take long to discover that Huntington had it right, and second, that his insights could help predict the directions the revolution would take, the hardest of problems for a political analyst.
______________

By LEE SIEGEL
NYT Week in Review

Standing at the beginning of a new year, two weeks before a new president is inaugurated, and amid expectations of major political and economic change, we are, you might say, at a Huntington moment.

Samuel Huntington, the political theorist who died on Dec. 24 at the age of 81, was a power thinker, one of the breed of “big idea” men whose major works didn’t just explain historical transformation but seemed to crystallize it — in ways that altered how the rest of us looked at the world, for better and also for worse.

In provocative books like “Political Order in Changing Societies” and “The Clash of Civilizations,” Mr. Huntington’s talent — some would say weakness — for the grand synthesizing theory is most strikingly on display. In 1968, when “Political Order” was published, most political scientists held that the key to democracy was modernization. As backward societies caught up with the more advanced ones, they would also develop more inclusive political systems. But Mr. Huntington made a contrary argument: since modernization often brought chaos, the actual sine qua non of a successful society was order. It alone could contain the demons set loose by social change and also create the conditions for gradual political reform. By this calculation, any system that imposed order, even authoritarian order, was legitimate.

In the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States, “the government governs,” Mr. Huntington wrote. All three “have strong, adaptable, coherent political institutions: effective bureaucracies, well-organized political parties.”

(More here.)

A President Forgotten but Not Gone

By FRANK RICH
NYT

WE like our failed presidents to be Shakespearean, or at least large enough to inspire Oscar-worthy performances from magnificent tragedians like Frank Langella. So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat. He’s the reckless Yalie Tom Buchanan, not Gatsby. He is smaller than life.

The last NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Bush’s presidency found that 79 percent of Americans will not miss him after he leaves the White House. He is being forgotten already, even if he’s not yet gone. You start to pity him until you remember how vast the wreckage is. It stretches from the Middle East to Wall Street to Main Street and even into the heavens, which have been a safe haven for toxins under his passive stewardship. The discrepancy between the grandeur of the failure and the stature of the man is a puzzlement. We are still trying to compute it.

The one indisputable talent of his White House was its ability to create and sell propaganda both to the public and the press. Now that bag of tricks is empty as well. Bush’s first and last photo-ops in Iraq could serve as bookends to his entire tenure. On Thanksgiving weekend 2003, even as the Iraqi insurgency was spiraling, his secret trip to the war zone was a P.R. slam-dunk. The photo of the beaming commander in chief bearing a supersized decorative turkey for the troops was designed to make every front page and newscast in the country, and it did. Five years later, in what was intended as a farewell victory lap to show off Iraq’s improved post-surge security, Bush was reduced to ducking shoes.

(More here.)

Portrait Emerges of Anthrax Suspect’s Troubled Life

By SCOTT SHANE
NYT

FREDERICK, Md. — Inside the Army laboratory at Fort Detrick, the government’s brain for biological defense, Bruce Edwards Ivins paused to memorialize his moment in the spotlight as the anthrax panic of 2001 reached its peak.

Dr. Ivins titled his e-mail message “In the lab” and attached photographs: the gaunt microbiologist bending over Petri dishes of anthrax, and colonies of the deadly bacteria, white commas against blood-red nutrient.

Outside, on that morning of Nov. 14, 2001, five people were dead or dying, a dozen more were sick and fearful thousands were flooding emergency rooms. The postal system was crippled; senators and Supreme Court justices had fled contaminated offices. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation was struggling with a microbe for a murder weapon and a crime scene that stretched from New York to Florida.

But Dr. Ivins was chipper — the anonymous scientist finally at the center of great events. “Hi, all,” he began the e-mail message. “We were taking some photos today of blood agar cultures of the now infamous ‘Ames’ strain of Bacillus anthracis. Here are a few.” He sent the message to those who ordinarily received his corny jokes and dour news commentaries: his wife and two teenage children, former colleagues and high school classmates. He even included an F.B.I. agent working on the case.

(More here.)

Would You Pay $103,000 for this Arizona Fixer-Upper?

That Was Ms. Halterman's Mortgage on It; 'Unfit for Human Occupancy,' City Says

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
Wall Street Journal

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- The little blue house rests on a few pieces of wood and concrete block. The exterior walls, ravaged by dry rot, bend to the touch. At some point, someone jabbed a kitchen knife into the siding. The condemnation notice stapled to the wall says: "Unfit for human occupancy."

The story of the two-bedroom, one-bath shack on West Hopi Street, is the story of this year's financial panic, told in 576 square feet. It helps explain how a series of bad decisions can add up to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Less than two years ago, Integrity Funding LLC, a local lender, gave a $103,000 mortgage to the owner, Marvene Halterman, an unemployed woman with a long list of creditors and, by her own account, a long history of drug and alcohol abuse. By the time the house went into foreclosure in August, Integrity had sold that loan to Wells Fargo & Co., which had sold it to a U.S. unit of HSBC Holdings PLC, which had packaged it with thousands of other risky mortgages and sold it in pieces to scores of investors.

(More here.)

Franken Jumps Out to 225-Vote Lead on Strength of Absentee Ballots

from FiveThirtyEight.com

Minnesota took until 5 PM today to begin actually counting rejected absentee ballots, as the Canvassing Board sorted through various legal objections, underwent the arduous task of physically opening more than 900 ballots, and then gave the campaigns a chance to review the back of the ballots for identifying marks. Once they finally got underway, however, with election officials calling out the names of the candidates one ballot at a time, Franken went on a long winning streak and essentially never looked back.

All told, Franken gained a net of 176 ballots from the 952 under review according to The Uptake's unofficial count, putting him 225 votes ahead in the recount overall. Excluding disqualified ballots, Franken won 53.7 percent of the votes counted today, Coleman 34.1 percent, and other candidates 12.4 percent. Franken's 225-vote advantage is now slightly larger than the one Norm Coleman held before the recount began, when he led by 215 votes based on the certified Election Night tally.

Although the absentee ballots were expected by all observers to help Franken's prospects, the nearly 20-point margin that he ran up on Coleman today was surprisingly large; the only pre-election poll that surveyed absentee voters had Franken winning that group by 8 points. It should also be remembered, however, that the Democrats made a large nationwide push for early and absentee voters this year, with Barack Obama overperforming by as many as 20-30 points among those voters in certain states.

The other possibility, of course, is that the Franken campaign did a more effective job of using its veto power on absentee ballots, perhaps by taking better advantage of voter lists.

Either way, a number of legal stratagems that might have seemed appealing to the Coleman campaign might now be somewhat mooted. For instance, even if all 130 ballots that the Coleman campaign claimed were double-counted for Franken were removed from his tally (but no ballots at all had been double-counted for Coleman), Franken would maintain a significant advantage. With Franken doing so well among the absentee ballots that were counted today, moreover, any Coleman attempts to get more absentee ballots counted would seem to have a high risk of backfiring.

EDIT: It appears that Franken's lead is now 225 votes, not 223 as previously reported, based on an a count provided orally by state officials in St. Paul today.

-- Nate Silver at 5:56 PM

Bush Remembered For Not-So-Smooth Talk

Jan. 3, 2009(AP) President George W. Bush will leave behind a legacy of Bushisms, the label stamped on the commander in chief's original speaking style. Some of the president's more notable malaprops and mangled statements:

• "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." - September 2000, explaining his energy policies at an event in Michigan.
• "Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?" - January 2000, during a campaign event in South Carolina.
• "They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the commander in chief, too." - Sept. 26, 2001, in Langley, Va. Bush was referring to the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.
• "There's no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail." - Oct. 4, 2001, in Washington. Bush was remarking on a back-to-work plan after the terrorist attacks.
• "It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber." - April 10, 2002, at the White House, as Bush urged Senate passage of a broad ban on cloning.
• "I want to thank the dozens of welfare-to-work stories, the actual examples of people who made the firm and solemn commitment to work hard to embetter themselves." - April 18, 2002, at the White House.

(More here.)

This oil man favors a gas-tax hike

If the government raises the cost of driving, it surely would be bad for the energy business. So what's the CEO of Western Refining thinking?
By Nicholas Varchaver, senior editor

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It's not often you hear a corporate executive advocate a tax on the product he sells, particularly not in the oil business, where opposition to gasoline taxes is fervent. But Paul Foster, the chairman and CEO of El Paso-based Western Refining, is (dare we use the word after the presidential campaign?) a maverick.

Foster, 51, is a conservative Republican who has spent his entire career in the energy industry. He founded Western Refining (WNR, Fortune 500) in 1997 and in a decade built it into a $7.3 billion giant (No. 342 on the Fortune 500) that refines various fuels and also sells gasoline to consumers, mostly in the Southwest under the Giant and Mustang brand names.

Foster contends that the country needs to raise the federal gas tax significantly. He points out that, in real terms, we're paying less than we did decades ago. (At 18.4 cents per gallon, the federal tax is currently 16% lower, adjusted for inflation, than it was in 1970.)

Foster argues that the levy should be increased, in steps, to $2 per gallon or more. He's even willing to credit the Europeans with a good idea or two on this score, as he explains in an interview with Fortune.

(More here.)

On wine: News you can use....

Robert Parker's Vintage Chart 2000-2006

The renowned wine expert breaks down major wine-growing regions by year and ranking to help you find the best — and avoid the worst — wines

By Robert Parker
Business Week

Above find our Wine Advocate Vintage Guide for the last seven vintages. Vintage charts should be regarded as a very general overall rating slanted in favor of what the finest producers were capable of producing in a particular viticultural region. Such charts are often filled with exceptions to the rule: astonishingly good wines from skillful or lucky vintners in years rated mediocre and thin; diluted, characterless wines from incompetent or greedy producers in great years. However, knowing what the best vintages are does make a difference, and stacks the odds in favor of the consumer who is choosing from a restaurant's wine list or going into a wine shop totally blind. Print and take along the next time you buy wine. Enjoy!

Robert Parker is the world's most influential wine critic. Visit www.eRobertParker.com to see tens of thousands of tasting notes, buy his books, or subscribe to his newsletter, The Wine Advocate.

(The article is here.)

LP note: There are many in the wine industry — primarily the traditionalists — who feel that too much importance has been given to Mr. Parker's evaluations. While his meticulous ratings and the publicity given them have enhanced wine understanding for consumers, these evaluations — and I'm sure Mr. Parker would be the first to admit it — are purely the opinion of one man... with the help of a handful of associates.

I know several small vintners who do not submit their wines to Mr. Parker for evaluation, because their taste profiles, while highly regarded by many enophiles, do not fall within the taste parameters promoted by Mr. Parker and wine publications like The Wine Spectator.

The bottom line is this:

Like art, the appreciation of wine is highly subjective. As a friend of mine who owns a pinot noir vineyard, the wine from which fetches up to $100 a bottle in well-known restaurants, says: "If the wine in the glass you are holding is the best wine you've ever had, then it is for you, at this moment, the best wine in the world, regardless of price, type, or whatever anyone else says about it."

U.S.-installed Iraqi ex-PM says Bush "utter failure"

Sat Jan 3, 2009 9:49am EST

By Khalid al-Ansary

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Former U.S.-installed Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has denounced the policies of President George W. Bush as an "utter failure" that gave rise to the sectarian venom that ravaged his country.

In an interview published on Saturday in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, Allawi found fault with American management of Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 as well as the government of present Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Allawi ruled Iraq for almost a year after U.S. occupation officials handed power to him in 2004 as prime minister of an interim government. He was selected by a council hand-picked by Washington after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

"Yes, Bush's policies failed utterly," said Allawi, describing the U.S. administration that once backed him. "Utter failure. Failure of U.S. domestic and foreign policy, including fighting terrorism and economic policy."

(More here.)

Risk Mismanagement

Post-Bubble Portraits The great housing-fueled market bubble couldn’t burst, could it? The best Wall Street minds and their best risk-management tools failed to see the crash coming.

By JOE NOCERA
NYT Magazine

"The story that I have to tell is marked all the way through by a persistent tension between those who assert that the best decisions are based on quantification and numbers, determined by the patterns of the past, and those who base their decisions on more subjective degrees of belief about the uncertain future. This is a controversy that has never been resolved." — FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO "AGAINST THE GODS: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF RISK," BY PETER L. BERNSTEIN

THERE AREN’T MANY widely told anecdotes about the current financial crisis, at least not yet, but there’s one that made the rounds in 2007, back when the big investment banks were first starting to write down billions of dollars in mortgage-backed derivatives and other so-called toxic securities. This was well before Bear Stearns collapsed, before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the federal government, before Lehman fell and Merrill Lynch was sold and A.I.G. saved, before the $700 billion bailout bill was rushed into law. Before, that is, it became obvious that the risks taken by the largest banks and investment firms in the United States — and, indeed, in much of the Western world — were so excessive and foolhardy that they threatened to bring down the financial system itself. On the contrary: this was back when the major investment firms were still assuring investors that all was well, these little speed bumps notwithstanding — assurances based, in part, on their fantastically complex mathematical models for measuring the risk in their various portfolios.

There are many such models, but by far the most widely used is called VaR — Value at Risk. Built around statistical ideas and probability theories that have been around for centuries, VaR was developed and popularized in the early 1990s by a handful of scientists and mathematicians — “quants,” they’re called in the business — who went to work for JPMorgan. VaR’s great appeal, and its great selling point to people who do not happen to be quants, is that it expresses risk as a single number, a dollar figure, no less.

VaR isn’t one model but rather a group of related models that share a mathematical framework. In its most common form, it measures the boundaries of risk in a portfolio over short durations, assuming a “normal” market. For instance, if you have $50 million of weekly VaR, that means that over the course of the next week, there is a 99 percent chance that your portfolio won’t lose more than $50 million. That portfolio could consist of equities, bonds, derivatives or all of the above; one reason VaR became so popular is that it is the only commonly used risk measure that can be applied to just about any asset class. And it takes into account a head-spinning variety of variables, including diversification, leverage and volatility, that make up the kind of market risk that traders and firms face every day.

(More here.)

Israel has plenty of tactics for war, but none for peace

A leadership dazzled by its own military might ignores the political reality and believes the only solutions lie in force

Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian

All those involved, and most of those following the bloodshed in Gaza from afar, are sure who is in the right and who is in the wrong. They know who the innocent victims are and who are the wicked perpetrators. These certainties are held equally firmly by those who will be demonstrating in solidarity with the Palestinians in London today and those who plan to stage similar shows of support for Israel later this month.

Both sides see the conflict in moral terms. For supporters of the Palestinians, it could not be clearer. Israel is committing a war crime, killing people in their hundreds, hammering a besieged population from the sky (and soon perhaps on the ground too), claiming to aim only at Hamas but inevitably striking those civilians who get in the way.

Israel's cheerleaders are just as clear. Israel is the victim, hitting out now only belatedly and in self-defence. Its southern citizens have sat terrorised in bomb shelters, fearing the random rockets of Hamas, since 2005, longer than any society could tolerate without fighting back.

Both sides say they would have maintained the six-month ceasefire that had held - albeit imperfectly - until December 19 had the other side not broken it first. And who did break the deal first, Hamas with its rockets or Israel with its blockade? Both sides point at the other with equal vehemence, a Newtonian chain of claimed action and reaction that can stretch back to infinity.

(More here.)

Dem leaders out of step with voters on Israel's attack on Gaza

January 3, 2009

BY GLEN GREENWALD
Chicago Sun-Times

A new Rasmussen Reports poll -- the first to survey American public opinion specifically regarding the Israeli attack on Gaza -- strongly bolsters the severe disconnect between American public opinion on U.S. policy toward Israel and the consensus views expressed by America's political leadership.

Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally "are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip" (44 percent to 41 percent, with 15 percent undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive -- by a 24-point margin. By stark contrast, Republicans, as one would expect (in light of their history of supporting virtually any proposed attack on Arabs and Muslims), overwhelmingly support the Israeli bombing campaign (62 percent to 27 percent).

It's not at all surprising that Republican leaders -- from Dick Cheney and John Bolton to virtually all appendages of the right-wing noise machine -- are unquestioning supporters of the Israeli attack. After all, they're expressing the core ideology of the overwhelming majority of their voters and audience.

Much more notable is the fact that Democratic leaders -- including Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi -- are just as lock step in their blind, uncritical support for the Israeli attack, in their absolute refusal to utter a word of criticism of, or even reservations about, Israeli actions.

While some Democratic politicians who are marginalized by the party's leadership are willing to express the views that Democratic voters overwhelmingly embrace, the suffocating, fully bipartisan orthodoxy which typically predominates in America when it comes to Israel is in full force with this latest conflict.

(More here.)

House Rules Package Could Curb Minority’s Power, End Term Limits for Chairmen

By Alan K. Ota,
CQ Staff

An early partisan skirmish is likely in the House next week, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to move a rules package that would curb the GOP’s ability to derail legislation through a parliamentary maneuver it has used over the past two years.

Democrats may also end the current three-term limit for committee chairmen — a limit adopted by Republicans when they took over the House in 1995 and retained in the House rules adopted by Democrats when they regained the majority in the 110th Congress.

A senior House Democratic aide said Pelosi was expected to discuss the two proposed rules changes with Democrats on Monday and had not made a final decision on moving them.

Still, Democratic leaders are taking a hard look at preventing the minority party from scoring easy political points with motions to recommit a bill to committee with instructions to make contentious language changes and then report it back to the House “promptly.” In the outgoing Congress, “promptly’’ has meant an indefinite hold, because committees were not willing to adopt poison-pill amendments sponsored by the minority.

(More here.)

U.S. Debt Expected To Soar This Year

$2 Trillion Increase May Test Federal Ability to Borrow

By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 3, 2009

With President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats considering a massive spending package aimed at pulling the nation out of recession, the national debt is projected to jump by as much as $2 trillion this year, an unprecedented increase that could test the world's appetite for financing U.S. government spending.

For now, investors are frantically stuffing money into the relative safety of the U.S. Treasury, which has come to serve as the world's mattress in troubled times. Interest rates on Treasury bills have plummeted to historic lows, with some short-term investors literally giving the government money for free.

But about 40 percent of the debt held by private investors will mature in a year or less, according to Treasury officials. When those loans come due, the Treasury will have to borrow more money to repay them, even as it launches perhaps the most aggressive expansion of U.S. debt in modern history.

With the government planning to roll over its short-term loans into more stable, long-term securities, experts say investors are likely to demand a greater return on their money, saddling taxpayers with huge new interest payments for years to come. Some analysts also worry that foreign investors, the largest U.S. creditors, may prove unable to absorb the skyrocketing debt, undermining confidence in the United States as the bedrock of the global financial system.

(More here.)

The Year-End Quiz

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

Despite all the carping, there’s a lot that is good to say about 2008. The presidential election was great. Britney seems to be improving. George W. Bush is leaving. Eventually. That collider in Switzerland didn’t create a universe-gobbling black hole. So far.

Before we move on, one last blast from the past. See how much you’ve failed to repress about the year:

1. During his farewell interview with Charles Gibson, President Bush said:

A) “The economy thing sure took me by surprise.”
B) “I think I was unprepared for war.”
C) “Obviously, Katrina caught my guys off-guard.”
D) “In retrospect, I totally didn’t know what I was doing.”

(More here.)

Democrats Debate Methods to End Stem Cell Ban

By CARL HULSE
NYT

WASHINGTON — Thwarted by President Bush in their efforts to expand federal spending on embryonic stem cell research, Democrats are now debating whether to overturn federal restrictions through executive order or by legislation when they assume full control of the government this month.

Both President-elect Barack Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have made repealing Bush administration restrictions announced in 2001 a top priority. But they have yet to determine if Mr. Obama should quickly put his stamp on the issue by way of presidential directive, or if Congress should write a permanent policy into statute.

The debate is not academic. Democrats who oppose abortion say such a legislative fight holds the potential to get the year off to a difficult beginning, even though the outcome is certain given solid majorities in both the House and the Senate for expanded embryonic stem cell research.

“It is a very divisive issue, and it is a tough way to start,” said Senator Ben Nelson, a moderate Democrat from Nebraska. “You don’t want to stumble out of the box.”

(More here.)

Obama’s View on Power Over Detainees Will Be Tested Early

By ADAM LIPTAK
NYT

WASHINGTON — Just a month after President-elect Barack Obama takes office, he must tell the Supreme Court where he stands on one of the most aggressive legal claims made by the Bush administration — that the president may order the military to seize legal residents of the United States and hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime.

The new administration’s brief, which is due Feb. 20, has the potential to hearten or infuriate Mr. Obama’s supporters, many of whom are looking to him for stark disavowals of the Bush administration’s legal positions on the detention and interrogation of so-called enemy combata