ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all.

BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?

CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.

BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as -- abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.

CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.

BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --

CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.

BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He sold all his stock in HCA, which his father helped found, just days before the stock plunged. Two years ago, Mr. Frist claimed that he did not even know if he owned HCA stock.

According to a new U.S. government index, the effect of greenhouse gases is up 20 percent since 1990.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a 33-year-old Wall Street insider with little experience in regulation but close ties to drug firms, was made a deputy commissioner at the F.D.A. in July. (This story, picked up by Time magazine, was originally reported by Alicia Mundy of The Seattle Times.)

The Artic ice cap is shrinking at an alarming rate.

Two of the three senior positions at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are vacant. The third is held by Jonathan Snare, a former lobbyist. Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog group, reports that he worked on efforts to keep ephedra, a dietary supplement that was banned by the F.D.A., legal.

Sunni-led insurgents killed at least five people in a crowded vegetable market on Friday, the Muslim day of worship, police said. New information also emerged about coordinated suicide and mortar attacks the day before in another mostly Shiite city that left nearly 100 people dead.

Elsewhere, in the southern city of Basra, an Iraqi police convoy was ambushed late Thursday, killing four policemen and wounding one, said police Capt. Mushtaq Khazim.

The new surge of violence before an Oct. 15 referendum on Iraq's constitution has killed at least 190 people, including 13 U.S. service members, in the past five days.

The insurgents have vowed to wreck the referendum, whose passage is crucial to prospects for starting a withdrawal of American troops.

Al-Qaida in Iraq, the country's most feared insurgent group, has declared ``all-out war'' on the Shiite majority that dominates Iraq's government, and moderate Sunni Arab leaders have urged their community to reject the constitution, saying it will fragment Iraq and leave them weak compared to Shiites and Kurds.

On a day when the governor rejected 52 bills, he discarded proposals that would have helped consumers buy cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. He refused to expand punishments for employers that flout minimum wage laws, pay women less than men or resist paying workers' compensation claims.

He declined to protect nurses from being required to work overtime or having to lift patients on their own. And he vetoed legislation to allow workers locked out by employees during pay disputes to collect unemployment benefits.

The governor also vetoed a bill to create greater oversight of the state's $3-billion stem cell research program.

signed a measure intended to ensure that pharmacists do not deny women emergency contraception. The bill by Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, was prompted by publicized cases in which pharmacists, refused to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception known as "morning after" pills, out of moral concerns."

Der New 2005 California State Employee Handbook

By Arnold Schwarzenegger

Sick Days

Ve vill no longer accept a doktor's shtatement as proof of sickness.
If you are able to go to the doktor, you are able to come to verk.

Personal Days

Each employee vill receive 104 personal days a year. Dey are called
Saturday and Sunday.

Lunch Break

Skinny people get 30 minutes for lunch as they need to eat more, so
that dey can look healthy. Normal size people get 15 minutes for lunch
to get balanced meal to maintain their average figure. Fat people get
5 minutes for lunch, because dat's all der time needed to drink der
Shlim Fast.

Dress Code

It is advised that you come to verk dressed according to your salary.
If ve see you vearing $350 Prada sneakers, and carrying a $600 Gucci
Bag, ve assume you are doing vell financially and derefore you do not
need a raise. If you dress poorly, you need to learn to manage your
money better, so dat you may buy nicer clothes, and derefore you do
not need a raise. If you dress in-betveen, you are right vere you need
to be and derefore you do not need a raise.

Bereavement Leave

Dis is no excuse for missing verk. Dere is notting you can do for dead
friends, relatives, or co-verkers. Every effort should be made to have
non-employees attend to da arranchments. In rare cases vere employee
involvement is necessary, da funeral should be scheduled in da late
afternoon. Ve vill be glad to allow you to vork troo your lunch hour
and subsequently leave vone hour early.

Restroom Use

Entirely too much time is being spent in da restroom. Dere is now a
shtricht 3-minute time limit in der shtalls. At der end of tree
minutes, an alarm vill sound, der toilet paper roll vill retract, the
shtall door vill open and a picture vill be taken. After your second
offense, your picture vill be posted on der company bulletin board
under da "Chronic Offenders" category.

Tank you for your loyalty to our great shtate. Ve are here to provide
a positive employment experience.

Tank You, Der Governater

I am leaving jail today because my source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations relating to the Wilson-Plame matter. My attorneys have also reached agreement with the Office of Special Counsel regarding the nature and scope of my testimony, which satisfies my obligation as a reporter to keep faith with my sources.

This enables me to appear before the Grand Jury tomorrow. I'll say nothing more until after my testimony. I do, however, want to thank The New York Times, and my husband, family and friends, for their unwavering support. I am also grateful to the many fellow journalists and citizens from the United States and around the world, who stood with me in fighting for the cause of the free flow of information. It was a source of strength through a difficult three months to know they understood what I did was to affirm one of my profession's highest principles.

Politics is a team sport. Nobody can get anything done alone. But in today's Washington, loyalty to the team displaces loyalty to the truth. Loyalty to the team explains why President Bush doesn't fire people who serve him poorly, and why, as a result, his policies are often not well executed.

Loyalty to the team is why I often leave meals with politicians thinking "reasonable in private," but then I see them ranting like cartoon characters on TV. Loyalty to the team is why someone like Chuck Hagel is despised in Republican ranks even though, whether you agree or not, he is courageously speaking his mind.

Will we learn from DeLay's fall about the self-destructive nature of the team mentality? Of course not. The Democrats have drawn the 10-years-out-of-date conclusion that in order to win, they need to be just like Tom DeLay. They need to rigidly hew to orthodoxy. They need Deaniac hyperpartisanship. They need to organize their hatreds around Bush the way the Republicans did around Clinton.

Four hundred squat white trailers sat on train cars in the Norfolk Southern rail yard Tuesday, waiting for the long trip to the Gulf of Mexico. In Nappanee, 15 miles away, 200 or more are produced each day.

This is what $521 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency contracts looks like: Gulf Stream Coach Inc.'s bare bones Cavalier trailers. They have a steel chassis, a wood frame and white aluminum siding. There's a couch, a kitchen table, a three-burner stove, a double sink and a refrigerator. Each has an adult-size bed and a set of bunk beds, and they can be hooked up to air conditioning and sewer and water lines. A toilet, a shower, and a place to wash your face complete the unit.

Demand couldn't be greater.

"As fast as we can put them on there, they're moving them down there," said Gulf Stream marketing director Steven Lidy, watching the company's trailers being hitched for the ride to the rail yard Tuesday.

The giant award to Gulf Stream for 50,000 housing units is part of unprecedented federal spending to answer one of the basic needs caused by the hurricane disasters of Katrina and Rita: providing an estimated 600,000 displaced people with housing.

The trailers are emblematic of the scale and scope of the federal effort in the region. The spending is a window into the urgent, sometimes haphazard contracting process, much of it done with little or no competitive bidding, like Gulf Stream's contract.
(Bolds mine.)

A Travis County grand jury today indicted U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on one count of criminal conspiracy, prompting the Sugar Land Republican to give up his leadership post in Congress.

"I have notified (House Speaker Dennis Hastert) that I will temporarily step aside from my position as majority leader pursuant to rules of the House Republican Conference and the actions of the Travis County District Attorney today," DeLay said in a statement.

The charge, a state jail felony punishable by up to two years incarceration, stems from his role with his political committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, a now-defunct organization that already had been indicted on charges of illegally using corporate money during the 2002 legislative elections.

September 27, 2005

Office of the Chief

United States Park Police

Dwight E. Pettiford

1100 Ohio Drive S.W.

Washington, D. C. 20242

Dear Chief Pettiford:

I am writing to request information regarding the treatment of individuals arrested on September 26, 2005 in front of the White House and processed at the United States Park Police Anacostia Station.

Yesterday 384 protestors, including peace activist Cindy Sheehan, were arrested outside the White House and were brought to United States Park Police Anacostia Station. I was very surprised to learn that many of those arrested were kept handcuffed in vans and buses for up to 12 hours before they were charged and released. Some of those were released at 4:30 in the morning after being arrested at 4:00 the previous afternoon. Many of those held captive the longest were grandmothers and senior citizens. Those released after midnight were unfamiliar with Washington, DC and had no means to travel back to their hotels once the metro had closed. Anacostia is not frequented by taxicabs after midnight.

I have the following questions regarding the treatment of those arrested yesterday:

1. Why was the Anacostia Station chosen as the sole location to process all 384 arrestees when there were several other Park Police stations in the greater Washington, DC area?

2. In what other circumstances have arrestees been detained by U.S. Park Police for periods exceeding twelve hours before being charged with a crime?

3. In what other circumstances have arrestees been detained by U.S. Park Police, and kept handcuffed on buses for periods exceeding ten hours?

4. What is the established U.S. Park Police procedure for processing large numbers of arrestees in the Washington, DC area?

Please respond to the Judiciary Committee Minority Office at 2142 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, telephone number 202-225-6504, fax number 202-225-4423.

Sincerely,


John Conyers, Jr.

Ranking Member

House Committee on the Judiciary

"In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

"The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so."

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world's only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from " uniquely high" adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

Sheehan and several dozen other protesters sat down on the sidewalk after marching along the pedestrian walkway on Pennsylvania Avenue. Police warned them three times that they were breaking the law by failing to move along, then began making arrests.

Sheehan, 48, was the first taken into custody. She stood up and was led to a police vehicle while protesters chanted, "The whole world is watching."

Sheehan's 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in an ambush in Sadr City, Iraq, last year. She attracted worldwide attention last month with her 26-day vigil outside
President Bush's Texas ranch.

Blind trusts are designed to keep an arm's-length distance between federal officials and their investments, to avoid conflicts of interest. But documents show that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist knew quite a bit about his accounts from nearly two dozen letters from the trust administrators.

Frist, R-Tennessee, received regular updates of transfers of assets to his blind trusts and sales of assets. He also was able to initiate a stock sale of a hospital chain founded by his family with perfect timing. Shortly after the sale this summer, the stock price dived.

A possible presidential contender in 2008, Frist now faces dual investigations by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Securities and Exchange Commission into his stock sales.

Would I have been happier if Elizabeth died? The very absurdity of the question - what kind of romantic comedy would that be? - is evidence of the film's ingenuity. Who could possibly take the side of medical judgment when love, family, supernatural forces and the very laws of genre are on the other side? And who would bother to notice that the villainous, materialistic doctor, despite having the religiously neutral last name Rushton, is played by Ben Shenkman, a bit of casting that suggests a faint, deniable whiff of anti-Semitism? Similarly, it can't mean much that Elizabeth, the ambitious career woman, is sad and unfulfilled in contrast to her married, stay-at-home-mom sister. Or that the last word you hear (uttered by Jon Heder, first seen in "Napoleon Dynamite") is "righteous."

As recently as 10 days ago, when he resigned before his arrest, Mr. Safavian was the man who set purchasing policy for the entire federal government, including that related to Hurricane Katrina relief. The White House might as well have appointed a contestant from "The Apprentice." Before entering public service, Mr. Safavian's main claim to fame was as a lobbyist whose clients included Indian gaming interests and thuggish African regimes. Mr. Safavian now faces charges of lying and obstructing the investigation of Mr. Abramoff, the Tom DeLay-Ralph Reed-Grover Norquist pal who is being investigated by more agencies than looked into 9/11. Mr. Abramoff's greasy K Street influence-peddling network makes the Warren Harding gang, which operated out of its own infamous "little green house on K Street," look like selfless stewards of the public good.

You know that the arrest of Mr. Safavian, one of three known Abramoff alumni to migrate into the administration, is the start of something big. Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department announced it only after Mr. Safavian had appeared in court and had been released without bail. The gambit was clearly intended to keep the story off television, and it worked.

It won't for long. The Enron odor emanating from Mr. Safavian is of a piece with the rest of the cronyism in the Katrina preparedness package. The handing off of FEMA from President Bush's 2000 campaign manager, Joe Allbaugh, to Mr. Allbaugh's even less qualified buddy, Michael Brown, in 2003 is now notorious. (The two men have been friends for 25 years but were not college roommates, as I wrote here last week.) But that's only the beginning: the placement of hacks like "Brownie" and Mr. Safavian in crucial jobs hasn't been slowed one whit by what went down on their watch in New Orleans.

Witness the nomination of Julie Myers as the new head of immigration and customs enforcement at the Homeland Security Department. Though the White House attacked the diplomat Joseph Wilson for nepotism because he undertook a single pro bono intelligence mission while his wife was at the C.I.A., it thought nothing of handing this huge job to a nepotistic twofer: Ms. Myers is the niece of Gen. Richard Myers and has just married the chief of staff for the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff. Her qualifications for running an agency with more than 20,000 employees and a $4 billion budget include serving as an associate counsel under Kenneth Starr; in that job, she helped mastermind the costly and doomed prosecution of Susan McDougal, and was outwitted at every turn by the defense lawyer Mark Geragos.

Insurance Claims

Below are actual insurance claim form gaffes found by a UK insurance
company:

"I started to turn and it was at this point I noticed a camel and an
elephant tethered at the verge. This distraction caused me to lose
concentration and hit a bollard."

"On the M6 motorway I moved from the center lane to the fast lane but
the other car didn't give way."

"On approach to the traffic lights the car in front suddenly broke."

"Three men approached me from the minibus. I thought they were coming
to apologize. Two of the men grabbed hold of me by the arms, and the
first slapped me several times across the face. I knee'd the man in
the groin, but didn't connect properly, so I kicked him in the shin."

"I didn't think the speed limit applied after midnight."

"I was on my way to see an unconscious patient who had convulsions and
was blocked by a tanker."

"Mr. X is in hospital and says I can use his car and take his wife
while he is there. What shall I do about it?"

"No witnesses would admit having seen the mishap until after it
happened."

"I knew the dog was possessive about the car but I would not have
asked her to drive it if I had thought there was any risk."

"Windscreen broken. Cause unknown. Probably Voodoo."

"The car in front hit the pedestrian but he got up so I hit him
again."

"We had completed the turn and had just straightened the car when Miss
X put her foot down hard and headed for the ladies' loo."

"I had been driving for 40 years when I fell asleep at the wheel and
had an accident. I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at
my mother-in- law and headed over the embankment."

"Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I
don't have."

"The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its
intention."

"I thought my window was down, but I found out it wasn't when I put my
head through it."

"I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way."

"A truck backed through my windshield into my wife's face."

"A pedestrian hit me and went under my car."

"The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times
before I hit him."

"In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole."

"I had been shopping for plants all day and was on my way home. As I
reached an intersection a hedge sprang up obscuring my vision and I
did not see the other car."

"I was on my way to the doctor with rear end trouble when my universal
joint gave way causing me to have an accident."

"To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front I struck the
pedestrian."

"My car was legally parked as it backed into the other vehicle."

"An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car and vanished."

"I am sure the old fellow would never make it to the other side of the
road when I struck him."

"The pedestrian had no idea which way to run, so I ran over him."

"I saw a slow-moving, sad faced old gentleman, as he bounced off the
roof of my car."

"The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car
with a big mouth."

"I was thrown from the car as it left the road. I was later found in a
ditch by some stray cows."

1873 dead Americans, $144 billion wasted tax dollars, and an entire country's credibility and goodwill blown to bits around the planet and all they got was another lousy Islamic republic.

Level Funding to Community Health Centers.

This reform would level funding for these federal grants to help medically underserved populations. These programs should be funded locally, not with federal dollars.

I have long been persuaded that the news media collectively will be sent to hell not for our sins of commission, but our sins of omission. The real scandal in the media is not bias, it is laziness. Laziness and bad news judgment. Our failure is what we miss, what we fail to cover, what we let slip by, what we don't give enough attention to - because, after all, we have to cover Jennifer and Brad, and Scott and Laci, and Whosit who disappeared in Aruba without whom the world can scarce carry on.

Gene Robertson, a great news editor, says we tend to miss the stories that seep and creep, the ones whose effects are cumulative, not abrupt. This administration has drastically changed the rules on Freedom of Information Act requests; has changed laws that restrict public access to federal records, mostly by expanding the national security classification; operates in secret under the Patriot Act; and consistently refuses to provide information to Congress and the Government Accountability Office. The cumulative total effect is horrifying.

By a vote of 13-5, the Senate Judiciary Committee today recommended that the Senate confirm the nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. to be chief justice of the United States.

Three Democrats joined all 10 Republicans supporting the nomination. The full Senate is expected to vote on the nomination next week, with little doubt that Roberts will be confirmed, and in time to take his seat on the high court bench in time for its first session of the term, on Oct. 3.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, was among the last whose vote was in question to disclose her decision, as the committee began its final pre-vote debate on Roberts. She voted against confirmation.

She was joined by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Joseph Biden of Delaware, and Richard Durbin of Illinois, all Democrats. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the panel, and fellow Democratic Sens. Russell D. Feingold and Herbert Kohl, both of Wisconsin, voted in favor of confirmation.

Explaining her decision, Feinstein, a California Democrat who has at times aligned herself with the party's moderates, said she had been disappointed with answers Roberts had provided during committee hearings. She said he had had the opportunity to distance himself from particularly conservative approaches he had taken to social policy ad legal issues as young aide in the Reagan administration's Justice Department and White House.

She also said that when asked about abortion, he had answered that he had used language much like that of Justice Clarence Thomas, when Thomas was confirmed, indicating that he had no quarrel with the precedents the court had established.

"I became concerned that the phrase 'I have no quarrel' is a term of art of equivocation," Feinstein said, adding: "I'm the only woman on this committee and when I started I said that would be my bar, and he didn't cross that bar."

In a somewhat unexpected finding, societal male dominance over women -- patriarchy -- may help explain why men have a lower life expectancy than women worldwide.

British researchers analyzed rates of female murders and male death rates from all causes in 51 countries in Europe, Asia, Australasia, and North and South America. The prevalence of violence against women was used to indicate the extent of patriarchal control in each of the countries. Socioeconomic factors were also taken into consideration.

The study found that women lived longer than men in all 51 countries. The study also found that those countries with higher rates of female murders (indicating higher levels of patriarchy) also had higher rates for male death and shorter male life expectancies, compared to countries with lower female murder rates, the researchers said.

In fact, statistical analysis showed that variations between countries in rates of violence against women accounted for close to half (49 percent) of the variation in male death rates, the researchers noted.

For most of the young women who responded to e-mail questions, a major factor shaping their attitudes seemed to be their experience with their own mothers, about three out of five of whom did not work at all, took several years off or worked only part time.

Yet the likelihood that so many young women plan to opt out of high-powered careers presents a conundrum.

"It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?" said Marlyn McGrath Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, who served as dean for coeducation in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

It is a complicated issue and one that most schools have not addressed. The women they are counting on to lead society are likely to marry men who will make enough money to give them a real choice about whether to be full-time mothers, unlike those women who must work out of economic necessity.

It is less than clear what universities should, or could, do about it. For one, a person's expectations at age 18 are less than perfect predictors of their life choices 10 years later. And in any case, admissions officers are not likely to ask applicants whether they plan to become stay-at-home moms.

The survey shows signs of friction between the two most pressing concerns on Bush's agenda: the Iraq war and Katrina recovery.

A 54% majority says the best way for the government to pay for hurricane relief is by cutting spending for the war. Just 6% support spending cuts in domestic programs, as Bush has suggested.

Nearly two-thirds of those polled, 63%, say some or all of the U.S. troops in Iraq should be withdrawn. A record-high 59% say it was a mistake to invade.

After a year of my life spent at the intersection of pre-blog and post-blog political thinking, and with Bush getting the second term he craved, one question has preoccupied me since last November: What is the scope of netroots power? Put differently: How influential are bloggers?

It's a difficult question to answer. First, there's no consensus on metrics. Second, blogs serve many purposes, some of which are more social than political. Third, the use of the Internet in political campaigns cuts across so many areas that it's easy to confuse netroots influence in the communications and messaging realm with other Internet-based political applications such as organizing and fundraising. Fourth, 'influence' is a hazy term. (Bolding by Echidne)