Fascinating but not for the squeamish. My wife discovered this video on a blog written by a friend of my older son’s. Nothing political about it, but certainly shows how surprising nature can be.
[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7004909622962894202&hl=en[/googlevideo]
This story is all over the internets, but I can’t resist linking to it to. Read this great article by Murray Wass from the National Journal. It’s impossible to cherry pick a quote, there’s just too much there, but this gives a flavor of it:
The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove’s, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin’s appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove’s role in supporting Griffin.
It’s a complex story, but it boils down to this. At every possible opportunity the White House and the Justice Department have lied about every facet of this scandal. It’s almost as if they can’t help themselves.
More surprising that that is the fact that there may actually be someone within the executive branch who has some integrity:
Several of the e-mails that the Bush administration is withholding from Congress, as well as papers from the White House counsel’s office describing other withheld documents, were made available to National Journal by a senior executive branch official, who said that the administration has inappropriately kept many of them from Congress.
The senior official said that Gonzales, in preparing for testimony before Congress, has personally reviewed the withheld records and has a responsibility to make public any information he has about efforts by his former chief of staff, other department aides, and White House officials to conceal Rove’s role.
“If [Gonzales] didn’t know everything that was going on when it went down, that is one thing,” this official said. “But he knows and understands chapter and verse. If there was an effort within Justice and the White House to mislead Congress, it is his duty to disclose that to Congress. As the country’s chief law enforcement official, he has a higher duty to disclose than to protect himself or the administration.”
But before we jump to the crazy conclusion that someone in the executive branch has scruples, we must pause to consider that this might just be some sort of guerrilla warfare within the executive, or between the White House and Justice. If so, maybe that’s even better. Nothing beats watching your opponents devour each other.
Ferrets for Freedom (via Oliver Willis)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9S7o9Bju4k[/youtube]
Some time ago I was involved in a horrible case in which our client was accused of paying kickbacks to the representative of a firm that bought products from him. In essence, the buyer got a hidden percentage of each payment that the firm made to our client. I hated the case with a passion, for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that there was, shall we say, substantial evidence that the claims were true. That case is long over, and good riddance, but I thought about it today when I read this article (Doctors Reap Millions for Anemia Drugs) in Today’s Times:
Two of the world’s largest drug companies are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to doctors every year in return for giving their patients anemia medicines, which regulators now say may be unsafe at commonly used doses.
The payments are legal, but very few people outside of the doctors who receive them are aware of their size…
Industry analysts estimate that such payments — to cancer doctors and the other big users of the drugs, kidney dialysis centers — total hundreds of millions of dollars a year and are an important source of profit for doctors and the centers….
Neither Amgen nor Johnson & Johnson has disclosed the total amount of the payments. But documents given to The New York Times show that at just one practice in the Pacific Northwest, a group of six cancer doctors received $2.7 million from Amgen for prescribing $9 million worth of its drugs last year.
It’s hard for me to understand how this sort of kickback scheme can be legal, though I’ll take the reporter’s word that it is. How is it any different than the kickback scheme in which my client was (allegedly) involved? The patients are equivalent to the firm that was being ripped off, the drug companies are the equivalent of my client, and the doctors are the equivalent of the guy getting the kickbacks, supposedly acting in the best interests of the patients, but secretly pocketing almost one third of their drug costs.
There’s no moral distinction, and it’s hard to see the legal distinction. Morally, there’s no question that the doctors have a duty to their patients that they are breaching by taking these payments, and, most likely, prescribing drugs that are inappropriate for the patient because there’s money in it for them if they do so.
There ought to be a law, and maybe there is. Were I an Attorney General of a small New England State, I would consider using the Unfair Trade Practices Act. The behavior certainly seems to meet the immoral, unethical, oppressive or unscrupulous standard.
Is it just me? Am I the only person on earth who can’t figure out why someone about to be attacked would voluntarily divest himself of the only weapons that might give him a chance for victory. Have any of the people who push this theory ever explained why Saddam would have done this? Has anyone in a position to do so ever asked them for an explanation?
I would very much like to know what the position of the Religious Right might be on this current controversy in Minneapolis-St. Paul. It appears that most of the taxi drivers in the Twin Cities are Somali Muslims, who do not approve of alchohol. They have taken to refusing to accept passengers who show visible signs of possessing alcohol, e.g., a bottle purchased at the duty free shop. Apparently feeling that taxi driving Muslims should receive the same “accommodations” as Bible Thumping pharmacists the Metropolitan Airport Commission tried to fashion a “compromise” position:
After some wrangling, the airport agreed to designate certain cabs “alcohol free,” similar to “nonsmoking.” The public went nuts, saying the airport was accommodating the drivers too much and the passengers too little. In response to the outcry, the airport commission reversed itself: two weeks ago it voted unanimously on the sanctions.
The sanctions being the quite reasonable order that taxi drivers will lose their license if they insist on imposing their religious beliefs on others. (Some of the drivers simply dropped passengers in the middle of nowhere when they discovered, in transit, that the passengers were carrying alcohol) The drivers simply can’t understand the fuss. Says their unofficial spokesman:
“We are just regular people trying to live by our faith and do our jobs,” says Abdinoor Dolal, who is the cabbies’ unofficial spokesman. “Something so small as this, why can’t it be resolved? We don’t understand.”
Yes, it sure is hard to understand why a person would get upset at being stranded at an airport because a taxi driver, a common carrier, doesn’t approve of their entirely legal conduct.
If the deservedly short lived attempt to have “alcohol free” taxis had survived, why couldn’t a bigot of a different stripe demand the right to have a Jew-free taxi, or a black-free taxi, or, for that matter, an alcohol only taxi, thereby excluding Muslims. Somehow the concept of religious accomodation has become twisted. Religious zealots now believe that, because they themselves have religious beliefs, they have the right to discriminate against those who do not share those beliefs. Next we’ll be hearing about clerks at Borders who refuse to let people buy books by Richard Dawkins.
When the Christian pharmacists do it, they get a more or less respectful hearing. Christians are allowed to do all sorts of crazy things so long as they allege that Christ makes them do it. It will be interesting to see if the Christian wackos will rally round their equally irrational Muslim brothers. Short answer: they won’t. There are after all, a number of differences. First of all, the drivers are Muslims and their religion is not worthy of respect. Second, they are inconveniencing both men and women, and that just won’t do. They might improve their chances of getting right wing support if they laid off the alcohol and just required their women passengers to wear veils.
Since it’s the first Monday in May in an odd numbered year, it must be an election day, as indeed it was in the City of Groton (an entity distinct from the Town of Groton, for those of you unschooled in the Byzantine world of Groton politics). Dennis Popp was re-elected to his fifth term as Mayor, and the Dems swept all the other offices. The Dems have held power in the City for 8 years now. Below, the winning candidates:
Left to right (Councilors unless otherwise noted), Celeste Duffy, Michael Street, Marian Galbraith, Paul Duarte, David Hale, Mayor Popp, Treasurer Janice Waller-Brett, and Fritz Poppe. Not shown, City Clerk Deb Patrick, who was still at City Hall wrapping up the election when the picture was taken.
As in any election, the grunt work in this one was done by some folks behind the scenes. Here’s some of the election day volunteers.
Left to right: Former State Representative Nancy DeMarinis, Mary von Dorster, Liz Duarte (tireless uber-campaign manager), Nancy Driscoll, Kathy Harrington, and Shirley Dunbar-Rose.
One of these years the Town Democrats will follow their City brethren into the majority on the Town Council. Right now, if memory serves, the Town Council is the only governmental entity in Town that has a majority Republican membership (the RTM (I’m sure) and the Board of Ed (I think) are in the Dem camp).
Per usual, you can get a larger, better quality, image by clicking on the pictures above.
I have installed a smam blocker on the comments. As I understand it, anyone with Java installed on their browser will not notice anything. If you don’t have Java, you will have to type a number into a text box before posting a comment.
I’m feeling uninspired, so I’m going to confine myself to posting a few pictures I took this weekend. I was trying out a new camera. For those who know me, I want to add that the fact that I just got a new camera is not as inexcusable as it sounds at first blush. There is a reason, though I’m not sure how good it is. Anyway, here they are. You can view larger images by clicking on the picture of your choice.
Yesterday I took a bike ride, when I took the first two pictures. These are pretty standard tourist type shots, everyday views for the people who live around here, but maybe nice for those of you who don’t have the good fortune to live in Southeastern Connecticut. The first was taken on one of the back roads, the second across the river from Mystic Seaport.
Today, my wife and I went to Stonington, where these cannon commemorate the only Connecticut battle in the War of 1812.
And here’s a couple of street scenes.
The camera works great, by the way.
Back to real blogging tomorrow.
My son Peter sent this picture from the Health Care Rally in Hartford yesterday. You can click on it to view a larger version.
I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that we turned down his invitation to meet him up there. For reasons that don’t bear getting in to, I’ve been driving back and forth to Hartford on a far too frequent basis, and both my wife and I needed a day to relax.
