Friday: Tabitha Takes The Red-Eye

Tabitha grabs a bit of sun...

By the way, much of the vision in her right eye, thought to be lost over a year ago, has returned!

Steve
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Giving Me The Boot - UPDATED

Actually, they sold it to me, at a fairly steep price. This boot (an actual boot, by size and shape) replaced the "boot" (to my mind, a shoe) I was originally provided to stabilize my foot and ankle in the process of healing the wound on my right foot, which I mentioned some weeks ago. The initial "boot" did not work, and indeed did not hold up very well in the process. I have somewhat higher hopes for the actual boot I am wearing now, though it is an awkward, ungainly, unattractive bastard compared to anything I've ever worn before in my life.

In any case, I've been instructed to wear it all the time while I am awake, and to remove it only for sleeping and showering. In other words, I spend probably 18 of 24 hours in an uncomfortable device that, in spite of that, may very possibly lead to the successful healing of my foot wound. (Stella, a real trooper, rebandages the wound once a day; I could not survive without her efforts.)

In turn, all of this implies that I feel like absorbing unpleasant politics and writing blog posts about it approximately as much as I feel like pounding the wounded foot against a concrete block. I plan to forgo the pleasure/pain of both of those activities for a while. Thanks for your patience. By no means am I giving up blogging, but this time, I really, really do need a break, during which I hope my body can heal. Over the next week or two, I'll visit and comment on other blogs. I may post here, but please forgive me if I don't write the great American blog post. Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE: I know I said I wasn't going to write much, but Carl of Unpopular Ideas requested a picture of the boot. It's a DH Off Loading Walker™, and I am wearing one just like the one in the picture at this very moment. Stylish, no? Actually, the primary functional component is not shown in the photo: an inner sole made of some spongy material divided into hexagonal cells, some of which are manually removed to conform to the wound on the sole of my foot. Clever... and effective. [CORRECTION: it is shown. Enlarge the pic in your favorite editor to view the cells.]

Steve
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Good News, Bad News

Good news: House Narrowly Passes Landmark Climate Bill

Bad news: Report: Obama Admin Drafts Memo To Detain Terror Suspects Indefinitely

I'm afraid that on the whole, the bad outweighs the good. The climate change legislation seems to me unlikely to pass the Senate, while the indefinite detention without trial... the most un-American of Bush's measures, to be extended by Obama... seems pretty likely to become reality. It is, of course, unconstitutional. Given our current Supreme Court, that may... or may not... eventually make a difference in whether it is implemented. Either way, the fact that two presidential administrations, one Republican and one Democratic, have proposed this measure is a sign of the direction in which our civil liberties are being dragged kicking and screaming. This is not an aspect of the America I have advocated literally all my life; indeed, it is its antithesis. What's next? Who knows. The shit has hit the fan; where it flies and whether it sticks remain to be determined.

Steve
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Idiot? Imbecile? No... Moran!

Via Attaturk of Firedoglake, here's Nightline anchor Terry Moran in the hours immediately after Farrah Fawcett's death:

One final, and perhaps very sad, note:

According to the American Cancer Society, the leading cause of anal cancer (the kind that killed Farrah Fawcett) is the human papilloma virus (HPV), the same virus that is thought to cause most cervical cancers. Twenty million Americans are currently infected with HPV, with more than six million new infections every year.

It is fair to say (and sad to say) that Farrah Fawcett, an American pin-up icon and sex symbol of the first post-sexual revolution generation, most likely died as a result of a acquiring a sexually transmitted disease.

"It is fair to say (and sad to say)" that Terry Moran, a right-wing wholly owned corporate tool thrust in our faces five nights a week thanks to ABC's cameras, most likely committed all of his egregious verbal atrocities as a result of a sexually transmitted phenomenon: birth. If his father had never had vaginal sex with his mother, none of this would ever have happened... and the world would be a better place.

Hey, Moran: people get STDs from their lawfully wedded spouses, too; indeed, from what I read in the early days of the spread of AIDS, that's one of the most common vectors for all kinds of STDs. So are you saying that every woman who ever has sex with anyone is a slut? And are you a complete incompetent at your alleged craft, capable only of looking things up on Google?

Are we supposed to tolerate a "journalist" who engages in pure, unsupported speculation, unlabeled as such, with no actual supporting evidence, only a general statement by the ACS... on-air, in an alleged "news" magazine?

I want the motherfucker fired. At least. I'd also like to see him drained of his wealth by a lawsuit by the Fawcett family, though as our libel laws are written, that is highly unlikely. And finally, seeing him rendered physically unable to transmit HPV would be no bad thing, either... is anybody here wearing a good, stiff, pointy-toed boot?

Steve
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Rain!

We had about a half hour of it this evening, good and steady, soaking the lawns and beds. Only the weather geeks (and Houstonians) among you will have any idea how long it's been since it has rained here. And we had about a week of near-100°F temperatures (99, 100, 101, even 102 I believe) in the afternoon. For my amusement, I sat on the front step, looking up as the storm approached. My very first awareness of its arrival was a large raindrop... splat! ... directly in one eye. I literally laughed aloud.

The only excitement was the moment I thought there was a fire across the street due to a lightning strike. Fortunately, it was only steam off a roof. Being as paranoid as I am, I went outside to see which it was. I think my new orthotic shoe may dry out in a day or two. Ah, rain! We really needed that!

Steve
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A Really Old Flute

Here. (H/T Catherine.)

Steve
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The CultureGhost...

... has some really good news!

Steve
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Political Reality Today

Teddy Partridge of Firedoglake quotes from a Bill Maher video:

Every time Obama tries to take on a progressive cause, there is a major political party standing in his way -- the Democrats.

To be fair, it's not as if Obama has been rushing to take on progressive causes...

I'm leaving that quote in the banner for a few days for the one or two of you who still stop by to read the site, in case there's one person left who still doesn't understand why I've dropped the word "Democrat" from the display name of the blog. Personally, I feel as if I am the remaining actual Democrat, and the party full of Blue Dogs has utterly abandoned the party's liberal/progressive tradition that stood for decades from at least FDR forward. Your mileage may vary.

For a shining example (shining in the way rotting things sometimes shine), please read Fallenmonk's posts (the linked post and especially the several posts downstream of it) about the Democrats' complete abandonment of any actual "public option" (i.e., single-payer system) among the plans being debated. We've been had, once again, by the private insurance industry, and despite an NBC/WSJ poll showing 76 percent public support for a public option, the Democratic Party is doing nothing... nothing... toward such an option.

When the Democrats are antidemocratic, you know democracy is dead in America. Welcome to corporate rule, naked and undisguised more than it has ever been before. Hello, Harry. Have a seat, Louise.

Steve
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Stella's New Computer

I haven't been around the blogs much because we've been busy setting up Stella's new computer. There wasn't much choice: the motherboard went bad on her four-year-old previous computer. She did not lose data. The only thing noteworthy from my perspective is that this is the first computer in the house that uses any version of Windows Vista. All I can say is that I'm glad Vista is almost obsolete; I won't miss it when it's gone. When Step 1 of a maintenance procedure is "first, change any Windows XP domains and workgroups to match ours," there's a serious attitude problem at Microsoft. What else is new, eh?

Steve
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Andante Is Gone

andante... blogger on Collective Sigh, musician, choir director, writer of prose both good-natured and astringent as the occasion demanded, mother, wife, adopter of four-legged critters... has departed our midst. This is my third approach to that sad subject today, and the third time I have shed tears at her untimely death due to cancer. Cat blogging can wait; tonight, I offer prayers for andante and condolences to her family. She was kind enough to pay attention to an aspiring Texas blogger near the beginning of her and my online careers, and to this day I remember that kindness. andante retained one overt, literally blinking statement on her blog pretty much from beginning to end, and in her memory, I repeat it here:

Give, dammit!

Do it in andante's memory, to whatever liberal charity you think best. "[We] shall not look upon [her] like again."

Steve
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Big Brother Is Still Watching You

Glenn Greenwald reviews the status of NSA warrantless wiretapping in considerable detail. Here is the short version: despite all of Obama's grand statements on the subject during the campaign, and AG Holder's pronouncements during his and Obama's term, the Bush system of illegal warrantless wiretapping is still largely in place... in many cases legalized by acts of Congress and defended by Holder's DoJ.

Face it: if you are the one being tapped, all the congressional expressions of "concern" and assertions that the actions are "troubling" are useless to you. The simple fact is that the United States is now the largest, most efficient, most fully projected surveillance state in the history of the world. How is all this collected data being used? We don't know, and we probably won't ever know. But it has been my observation over forty years as an IT professional that data once collected is never wholly deleted. So in this case, anything you say on the phone, and especially anything you email to a friend, a colleague or (especially) a political co-worker could well come back to haunt you... even 20 or 30 years later. It doesn't matter which political party is in charge at a given moment; both seem up to their noses in this stuff, and it clearly isn't changing. Now that the technology is there, all the powerful people are using it.

What about the Constitution, with its Fourth Amendment requirement of a warrant? What was it Bush shouted about the Constitution? "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!" And today, under Obama? Same song, second [*redacted*].

Enjoy your brave new world!

Steve
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O Bury Me Not

... on the lone prai-rie or anywhere else. Cremate me and scatter my ashes. Forbid any and all (wo)men of the cloth from coming within a mile of the event, and if any of them draws breath to begin to preach, place a large cork in their mouth (and another wherever you think it may help).

We planted Mr. S. yesterday "on the lone prai-rie," if a flawlessly maintained Earthman cemetery may be so described without evoking laughter from Dog and everyone. I have no complaints with Earthman; they did their jobs, and without them, Stella and her family would all be in a trembling heap after the experience. And I certainly admire Stella's family, both for their fortitude in the situation and their spoken moving tributes to Mr. S, even if the latter in his open casket was not moved to respond to the praise he received.

All of that was well and good. What I will never comprehend, to my own dying day, is the sheer complexity of the series of steps some fundamentalist Christians see as necessary to their being "saved," and the length to which their ministers feel compelled to go to explain those steps to any captive audience. I admit I'm not the most appropriate person to evaluate either the steps or the explanations: long ago, I decided that the entire body of information concerning an afterlife (pleasant or otherwise) is necessarily inaccessible to humans living on this Earth, and that all attempts at explanations can best be summarized in a single sentence:

Something is a myth.

As to salvation, my Universalist forebears simplified matters considerably: they believed everyone is saved, no soul is lost or damned, and who am I to say otherwise. As I noted above, there is no way for a living human to know. But there certainly are ways for particular living humans to preach for literally hours on the subject. Not 21^st-century UUs, of course; we've got to get on to the coffee, or lunch, or whatever. But Mr. S's sect is into preaching for hours. Ah, well; to each his or her own.

When we eventually moved on to the meal, I must admit, Stella's people can cook! It was very satisfying Southern-style church meeting cooking, and there was plenty for vegetarians. The cooking, if not the theology, continues to sustain me today. It only seems a pity that Mr. S. was no longer equipped to enjoy it with us.

Steve
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Read Frank Rich - UPDATED

... on the uptick of right-wing violence in America.

Then pause for a few minutes to cry for your country.

Or go out and buy a gun. Several guns. A whole bloody arsenal. I mean, hey, it's a free country. Do whatever makes you feel safe.

Happy Flag Day!

UPDATE: Bill Moyers offers an essay on gun violence. Maybe... just maybe... there's more to be said about the use of guns in our society than what the NRA repeats endlessly (especially to congressional campaign fundraisers).

Stella's father's funeral is Monday, but family gatherings, church services, etc. are taking up much of this weekend as well. Blogging may resume Tuesday. Or I may be practicing with my new firearms and learning right-wing rhetoric...

Steve
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Confidence In His Work

Would you climb inside this 18-foot monstrosity, which can be used,
Waldo-fashion, to move itself and various things around? Its builder, Carlos Owens, a 31-year-old ex-Army mechanic, does exactly that. The "mecha" mimics the operator's motions. Click the photo to read the Popular Science article and view a bigger image. (H/T Prometheus 6 for the link.)

Steve
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DHS: Coal Ash Too Dangerous To Debate

Ryan Grim at HuffPo:

Just how bad has the coal ash situation gotten in the United States? So bad that the Department of Homeland Security has told Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that her committee can't publicly disclose the location of coal ash dumps across the country.

The pollution is so toxic, so dangerous, that an enemy of the United States -- or a storm or some other disrupting event -- could easily cause them to spill out and lay waste to any area nearby.

     ...

So let me get this straight: coal ash piles are so toxic that they could destroy nearby communities (size and distance not specified), so easily reached that they could be the target of terrorists, so unregulated... UNREGULATED? you read that right... that they cannot be controlled to improve public safety, and so secret... SECRET? you read that right, too... that a U.S. Senator is forbidden by DHS to talk to the public about them, for fear of... well, exactly what that fear is, is a good question.

What is wrong with this picture?

From the Reagan era forward, secrecy and government infringement of free speech on nonmilitary matters have become effectively standard, and public safety has clearly suffered from this effective dismantlement of the First Amendment. Free speech is a nice virtue in and of itself, of course, but the primary reason that it leads the list of our fundamental rights is that free speech is essential to effecting good government. When an agency with effectively dictatorial powers can suppress the speech even of a U.S. Senator (and hardly a radical Senator at that), the general welfare suffers dramatically. Clearly, someone profits from this... and it isn't the American public.

UPDATE: more info: NYT, Reuters, NPR.

Steve
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Friday Cat Circles Blogging

These are much easier to photograph than crop circles, or at least more accessible...

On the other hand, Tabitha and Samantha really do still need to put in some time practicing their cat-in-the-round poses...

Stella is in that stage of extreme busyness that our society pushes family members into when a close relative dies. On the one hand, it's good that she has something to occupy her; on the other hand, when the reality occasionally strikes her that her father is gone, it is often a surprising blow that takes her unawares. Long periods of focused organization... Stella's normal state... are punctuated by sudden if brief bursts of tears. If my own experience is a guide, those tearbursts will emerge for quite a while, though with decreasing frequency. At the moment, her role in her family serves to center her; after the funeral (Monday), it will be up to me and the girlz to ground her in her daily reality, and ours.

Completely off topic: AT&T has finally repaired the major problems in my phone and DSL, though I suspect it is likely the faults will return at some point. The symptoms: the phone rings; I reach to answer it, but before I am able to do so, the ringing stops, the line goes offhook ("line in use" is in the display), and the dial tone is replaced by a constant crackling sound. DSL continues to function, albeit badly and with frequent disconnects. The latest reported cause: a faulty connection in a box connecting lines on our nearest major street to the central office. Stella's phone and DSL were never affected... go figure. I did establish that we can in fact run the LAN off of her DSL (although at only about 1/4 the connection speed... we pay for only one high-speed line), so I shouldn't be offline for so long if it happens again.

Steve
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Stella's Father

Stella's father passed away at about 3:30 A.M. after an extended illness. He was almost 80 years old. He died at home, under hospice care, with his wife at his side. Stella is understandably very, very sad, but the death is hardly unexpected; all of us had some time to prepare for this. In his honor, here is a poem by the poet and priest George Herbert, published in 1633:

Vertue

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridall of the earth and skie:
The dew shall weep thy fall to night;
    For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angrie and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:
Thy root is ever in its grave
    And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet dayes and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie;
My musick shows ye have your closes,
    And all must die.

Onely a sweet and vertuous soul,
Like season’d timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
    Then chiefly lives.

George Herbert (1633)      

R.I.P., Mr. S.; you were one of the genuinely good ones. We will all miss you.

Steve
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Obama Appoints Anti-Contraception Director

Frances Kissling of Salon:

Jun. 07, 2009 |

President Barack Obama's appointment of Alexia Kelley, founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, as director of the Department of Health and Human Services' Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives took the pro-choice movement by surprise. On Thursday, the day that news of the appointment leaked out, Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center and a quintessential Washington insider, told me that she "hadn't heard anything about it till today, and we are trying to get to the bottom of it."

What Greenberger and others will want to know is why the post, which includes oversight of the department's faith-based grant-making in family planning, HIV and AIDS and in small-scale research into the effect of religion and spirituality on early sexual behavior, has gone to someone who both believes abortion should be illegal and opposes contraception. That's right -- Kelley's group of self-described progressive Catholics takes a position held by only a small minority, that the Catholic church is right to prohibit birth control. Were there no qualified religious experts who hold more mainstream views on family planning and abortion, views that are consistent with those of President Obama?

The HHS budget for family-planning services grants to faith-based and community groups is more than $20 million. Can pro-family-planning religious groups expect a fair deal from a director who believes that birth control, even for married couples, is immoral? Will programs that provide contraception to adolescents get funded? Obama's Feb. 5 Executive Order establishing a new Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships gave the office and its 11 satellites in federal agencies a policy role on the issues that are at the core of HHS's sexual and reproductive health work: addressing teen pregnancy and reducing the need for abortion. How can an opponent of the single most effective way to do both -- contraception -- lead that effort in HHS enthusiastically and effectively?

     ...

(Emphasis mine.)

OK, that does it. When Obama was elected, I felt relieved that he wasn't John McCain. I was willing to cut him some slack with his "postpartisan" rhetoric until I saw what he actually accomplished in the opening months of his first term. Now we have seen that. And for many Americans, e.g., for women, it's downright ugly. It wasn't enough for Obama to nominate a sixth Catholic Supreme Court Justice: now he has to place an anti-abortion, anti-contraception woman in charge of budgeting HHS grant money to faith-based groups for family planning purposes. Ms. Kissling's question is precisely the right one: can pro-choice or even pro-contraception religious groups expect a fair deal from Ms. Kelley? I don't care what political tradeoffs Obama thinks he has accomplished in making this appointment: he has placed a sharp stick against the eye of women who wish to control their own reproductive status... and shoved that stick, hard. I will not forget that act.

(Anti-choice, anti-contraception trolls: forget it. You will regret posting here, I promise you.)

(H/T echidne.)

Steve
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Greenwald On Tapper's Boumediene Interview

Most of you remember the occasion in 2008 on which the Supreme Court ruled, in a 5-4 decision in Boumediene v. Bush, that significant portions of the Military Commissions Act were unconstitutional and that habeas corpus rights must be granted to Guantanamo detainees. Moreover, it became evident that Boumediene himself, who was held for almost eight years at Guantanamo, was completely innocent of any acts against the U.S. whatsoever, but was regularly and severely tortured anyway during his imprisonment.

Now Jake Tapper of ABC News has interviewed Boumediene (link to YouTube video), and Glenn Greenwald examines the significance of Boumediene's arrest (at Bush's behest... and if you want to call it "kidnapping" rather than "arrest" I won't object) after Boumediene was cleared by a Bosnian court, his detention without trial or opportunity to challenge his imprisonment at Gitmo, his torture (as Boumediene says, what else can one call it) by the American military guards, a Bush-appointed federal judge's ruling that there was no credible evidence on which to base Boumediene's detention, his eventual release to France and reunion with his family, and finally his decision to sue for compensation for the eight years of his life taken from him with no due process.

Worst of all... Obama seems determined to continue to deprive detainees of habeas rights, ship them to distant places and detain them ("preventive detention") with no opportunities to challenge their detention. Yes, that's right: the Obama administration seems determined to do that. Here's Greenwald:

     ...

(3) If Boumediene has been shipped from Bosnia to Bagram rather than to Guantanamo, then -- according to the Obama administration -- he would not have had any rights at all to any judicial review. As disgraceful as his plight is -- almost 8 years in a cage for no reason -- his case is actually one of the better ones when compared to those who have been shipped from far away places to be imprisoned in Afghanistan, where the Obama administration continues to argue they have no habeas rights of any kind.

     ...

I am ashamed of my country. Ashamed. If you think I should not be ashamed, you are one sick fuck. Our nation... first Bush and now Obama... are betraying every principle of fundamental justice under law that Americans have claimed to stand for for over two centuries. Who in our government stands for the rule of law? anyone? or are our alleged leaders so consumed by fear and paralyzed by political calculation that they are willing to do anything to anyone in order to retain power? Shame! Shame!

Steve
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Big Pharma, Big Insurance Attack Public Option

Corporate crybabies that they are, Big Pharma and Big Insurance don't like the pressure an actual "public option" would place on their business. Therefore they're using their money... i.e., your money, the money you pay them for their alleged "product" ... to try to kill the public option or burden it with so many legal requirements that it affords no advantage to the healthcare-consuming public. Ah, witness the wonders of competitive capitalism at work! Why should they compete when they can buy a few members of Congress? Robert Reich has details.

You may want to shout at your congresscritter about this one. Of course, my congressGOPer is John Culberson, who I'm quite certain is already bought and paid for many times over, but if yours is not, let them hear from you. As Reich points out, whatever comes out of this process will be with us for a long, long time.

Steve
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Vague Filibuster Threat Against Sotomayor Again

Mitch McConnell is at it again:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate's top Republican said Friday it's "way too early to know" whether his party will try to block a vote on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation, leaving open a possibility that a so-far mild debate on her confirmation could turn bitter.

Sen. Mitch McConnell appeared to break with others in his party who have said they don't foresee using Senate rules to try to stop Sotomayor. The Kentucky Republican said he believes blocking votes on judges is a "bad idea," but that Democrats established a precedent for doing so under former President George W. Bush.

"I'm not predicting it. I think it is way too early to even know. But I do think if you look at all the tools available, it's clearly one of them that may or may not be employed at some point" against Sotomayor, McConnell told reporters.

     ...

Oh, yeah. You do that, Mitchie-boy. Go ahead; make my day. Drive the GOP from its currently approximately 20 percent public support down almost to zero. Assure that the Party of Lincoln turns into the Party of Stinkin'. We don't need no Stinkin' GOP... and a filibuster against Sotomayor ought to finish it for good and all. What're you waiting for, man? Do it!

Steve
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Friday Tabby Leopard Blogging

Samantha naps in the bedroom on her fake leopard-skin mat, perhaps dreaming of being that grand feline:

If any domestic cat could pull it off... masquerading as a big cat... Samantha could.

(Posted early. I'm really tired...)

Steve
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MedPAC?

You've never heard of it? neither had I. A political action committee? no. A government committee? yes, one created by a Republican Congress. What authority does Obama propose to give this committee in matters of medical cost containment?

That's the scary part.

dday explains at length. If you thought you knew all the dynamics of the healthcare funding debate, but you didn't know about MedPAC, you're in for some unpleasant surprises.

Just remember one thing: there is nothing the private medical insurance industry will not do to continue to siphon gravy for itself from the medical care system... nothing. Expect the worst of them, expect your pocket to be picked by them privately or publicly, and you won't be wrong. MedPAC is just another mechanism.

Does Obama understand that fact? What do you think?

Steve
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What's Up, Doc? Medical Costs

These days we speak of "the public option," of a "single-payer system," of every conceivable funding mechanism for healthcare costs. For the record, I consider these discussions time well spent, and I have personally concluded that a single-payer system (choose your favorite cute name for it... Medicare for All or whatever) is utterly essential to delivering affordable healthcare to the American public. That's about as far from today's funding system as one could imagine.

But let's assume for a moment that somehow, miraculously, a universal single-payer healthcare funding system has been achieved: Everyone pays for their healthcare largely through some sort of progressive tax, and everyone has access to all the healthcare they need. Does that mean we have an effective and efficient healthcare system? do people stay healthy better, get healthy quicker when they are sick, spend more of their time and energy pursuing their jobs and interacting with their families and less of their waking hours filling out forms and waiting in lines, all for a portion of their family income and wealth they can truly afford? That is the other question, isn't it, the one we seldom discuss, the elephant in the room... the actual cost and effectiveness of the healthcare delivery system itself, quite apart from how it is paid for.

One might think that medicine is practiced much the same across the United States, as technologies provide practitioners in even the smallest towns with the tools formerly available only to those in the largest institutions in the biggest cities. One might think that a small community in which medical outcomes match or exceed the average for the nation as a whole would be a model of healthcare delivery.

One might be right... or wrong... in thinking that. Regular New Yorker writer Atul Gawande provides a long, densely packed article, The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care, full of details and examples, not about how our healthcare dollars are obtained, but about how they are spent. Because Gawande interviews so many physicians, clinic directors and CEOs of medical institutions, I was initially suspicious of the possibility that the article would become a hit piece on publicly funded healthcare. I needn't have worried. The article examines, in great detail, what practices... medical practices and financial practices... lead to the best results for people who use medical services. The good news is that there are venues out there, clinics such as Mayo Clinic and whole towns such as Grand Junction, CO, that achieve stellar results, as best they can be achieved under the current healthcare funding practices and quite independently of how the results are paid for. The bad news is that achieving those results involved changing the mental frame of reference of the doctors who work in those places: those doctors whose self-description includes the term "entrepreneur" will need to adjust the extent and context of that part of their self-image. But those results can be achieved, and nothing in the necessary changes conflicts with the equally necessary changes in healthcare funding toward a single-payer system.

If you are at all interested in and affected by healthcare in America... and what American isn't... this article is a must-read. It's long and a bit chatty, but you'll be glad you took the time.

(H/T commenter sparrow on AMERICAblog for the link to the New Yorker article.)

Steve
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Crunch Time

The UK's latest not-so-hot potato:

EDITORIAL OBSERVER
The Lord Justice Hath Ruled: Pringles Are Potato Chips
By ADAM COHEN
Published: May 31, 2009

Britain’s Supreme Court of Judicature has answered a question that has long puzzled late-night dorm-room snackers: What, exactly, is a Pringle? With citations ranging from Baroness Hale of Richmond to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lord Justice Robin Jacob concluded that, legally, it is a potato chip.

The decision is bad news for Procter & Gamble U.K., which now owes $160 million in taxes. It is good news for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs — and for fans of no-nonsense legal opinions. It is also a reminder, as conservatives begin attacking Judge Sonia Sotomayor for not being a “strict constructionist,” of the pointlessness of labels like that.

     ...

Do you think the British, for whom "chips" are quite another form of potato, had any idea that the New York Times would use a Lord Justice's decision on a simple product classification for tax purposes as an example in the debate over the appointment of a Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court?

Let's look at the decision another way. What framing of the issue gains the NYT the most readers of a rather silly opinion piece? Perceived in that way, the decision is, um, a snap. Pringles are less than half potatoes and are absolutely useless, when it comes to the crunch, for dipping in any sort of dip, but it would be silly to argue that they are aimed at anything other than typical potato chip buyers. The NYT editorial admires the Lord Justice Jacob for calling the matter as he sees it, and offers the following assessment of America's self- proclaimed "conservatives" opposing Sotomayor:

Conservatives like to insist that their judges are strict constructionists, giving the Constitution and statutes their precise meaning and no more, while judges like Ms. Sotomayor are activists. But there is no magic right way to interpret terms like “free speech” or “due process” — or potato chip. Nor is either ideological camp wholly strict or wholly activist.      ...

In the end, as Lord Justice Jacob noted, a judge can only look at the relevant factors and draw an overall impression. His common-sense approach was a rebuke not only to Procter & Gamble, but to everyone out there who insists that the only way to read laws correctly is to read them strictly.

Common sense in evaluating Sotomayor's case record would lead a reasonable person (whatever his or her politics) to the conclusion that Sotomayor is as centrist as they come. Indeed, common sense would lead most people to the question of why her nomination is being so vehemently opposed (there is now a resurrected threat of a filibuster). But common sense must be the worst-named commodity within reach of today's GOP. Common nonsense, perhaps...

Steve
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Judge: Government Must Release Gitmo Evidence

This ruling is a real victory for due process, if it stands on appeal:

US judge: Guantanamo evidence must be made public
Mon Jun 1, 2009 7:03pm EDT
[...]
By James Vicini

WASHINGTON, June 1 (Reuters) - A federal judge rejected on Monday a U.S. government request to keep secret the unclassified evidence that it says justifies the continued imprisonment of more than 100 Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ruled the government cannot keep the documents known as factual returns from public disclosure and must seek court approval to keep specific information secret.

"Public interest in Guantanamo Bay generally and these proceedings specifically has been unwavering," Hogan wrote. "Publicly disclosing the factual returns would enlighten the citizenry and improve perceptions of the proceedings' fairness."

     ...

Note that this is unclassified evidence the government is attempting to keep secret. That alone, to my mind, is evidence of bad faith on their part. What security interest could possibly be protected by hiding unclassified evidence? On the other hand, one can certainly see the government's using such secrecy to cover its own misdeeds. One can only hope this isn't undone by a Bush-appointed judge higher up... although Obama's Justice Department hasn't exactly been forthcoming with information in his term either.

By the way, in light of recent events, is everyone understanding why we need the ACLU?

Steve
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Anti-Choice Terrorists

They aren't usually of Middle Eastern ancestry, they don't wear a keffiyeh, and they are mostly American by birth and upbringing, but they are terrorists just the same. I'm talking, of course, about murderers of women's healthcare clinic doctors who perform abortions among their many services. Am I using the term "terrorist" merely to inflame the issue? I don't think so: terrorists intend to impose their cause on the rest of the world by public murder; terrorists are willing to die in pursuit of their religious or patriotic goals; terrorists often have a moral certainty of their own rectitude that frees them of the constraints that prevent most members of society from using murder to achieve their aims; terrorists have no regard for secular law, sometimes claiming a higher authority. In what way are these murderers of doctors not terrorists?

As I've often mentioned, my first independent contract as a programmer was for the local Planned Parenthood, and it was a labor of love as surely as a paid gig. Clinics like that provide services to women, especially indigent women, far beyond abortion. Many women receive their only gynecological care... some receive their only medical care, period... because of Planned Parenthood. Thanks to Planned Parenthood, many women bear healthy babies who otherwise would have had problem pregnancies or, in many cases, miscarriages... or would even have died in childbirth. Clinics like this are a joy to people who love women and love children; they save far more babies than they ever abort.

And in my opinion, that's why the anti-choice terrorists hate them: because the terrorists have nothing but contempt for women, and resent the very notion that a woman may have independent control of her body. Watch those people abusing (there's no other word for it) the women entering a clinic, and you will immediately understand that complete control of another person is their game and terror is their means. It doesn't surprise me one bit that they resort to murder. They have an agenda and a doctrine as surely as does Osama bin Laden, and a willingness to impose that agenda and doctrine violently on the rest of us. And regrettably, like the more familiar terrorists, they are willing to die in order to kill for their cause. As established in Roe, a woman's right to choose abortion is constitutionally protected... but these terrorists are their own law.

This is the first such murder in many years. I'd like to think it will be the last ever, but I do not believe that, because terrorist fanatics do not have the usual disincentives for murder. All we can do is deplore the cowardly act, prosecute the hell out of the alleged killer, express our sympathies to the family of Dr. George Tiller... and remember all the women and babies he saved in his tragically shortened lifetime.

(Note: comments will be moderated. I will not provide a forum for fanatics.)

Steve
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