“MMM, MMM, MMM! Barack Hussein Obama.” No, this isn’t another preschool presidential paean, but a doleful Democrat Dirge, according to The Christian Science Monitor:

 

Remember Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky?

 

Anyone over a certain age who follows politics does. She was the first-term Democratic congresswoman from Pennsylvania who cast the decisive 218th House vote for President Clinton’s budget reconciliation bill in 1993 – and then went on to lose reelection in 1994.

 

Today, as the Democrats work to lock down just enough votes to pass an unpopular healthcare reform bill, “MMM” isn’t far from thought. No one wants to be the MMM of 2010. But there are several who could suffer that fate.

 

Remember when voters and pundits alike thought President George Bush’s “stubbornness” was a problem? Now, The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz writes about Obama’s “grim determination” to pass the Dems’ healthcare legislation.

 

The president “shows no signs of rethinking his approach,” according to USA Today:

 

Despite the qualms of Congress and the public, “I'm going to be stubborn on this issue,” [the president] said.

 

He demonstrated his persistence again … when he gave another speech promoting changes he wants to make … “My strategy is pretty simple: Explain the problem to the American people, and keep explaining it and explaining it.” …

 

[The president] doesn't have a lot to show for the 18 weeks in which he's been making regular speeches to promote his … proposals. … Polls show support has dropped since he's been promoting the plan. …

 

“There's no doubt in my mind that I'm doing the right thing on this issue," he said in a speech.

 

The year was 2005, the president was Bush and the proposal was to allow younger workers to invest part of their taxes in stocks and bonds. Repubs let an unpopular plan die on the vine.

 

Health insurance “reform” is Social Security privatization all over again, but instead of killing the bill and starting from scratch, Dems plan to resort to arcane, shifty-sounding parliamentary maneuvers.

 

Despite all of Obama’s jaw-boning, polls show that disapproval of his signature domestic policy initiative has hardened, and using the “Slaughter solution” to pass the Senate healthcare legislation without an up-or-down vote will “do little to keep Democrats from getting butchered in November,” as Investor’s Business Daily so pithily puts it.

Update: In a Washington Post op-ed, Margolies writes that “I had no idea that when I voted for the Clinton budget, I was writing the first line of my obituary” and that “I voted my conscience” on Hillarycare. She adds: “I am your worst-case scenario. And I'd do it all again.” Though she admits she was “a lousy politician,” Margolies urges Congressional Dems to “simply to cast the vote you can be proud of next week, next year and for years to come.” The Stiletto is sure she will soon be regaling her grandchildren with stories of how their other grandfather’s and grandmother’s domestic agenda derailed her budding political career, but that it all turned out OK in the end since she has them to love.

        

† A To Z Approach On Illegal Immigration In AZ: A Washington Post editorial terms the most recent attempts of AZ state legislators to keep forged documented aliens on their side of the U.S.-Mexico border “official malice,” and contends that proposed laws defining illegal entry into the U.S. as “trespassing,” criminalizing the hiring of undocumented workers and requiring local law enforcement help enforce federal immigration laws are meant to “harass, intimidate and hound the state's several hundred thousand undocumented residents.” The WaPo adds: “No other state has gone so far to usurp the federal government's authority over immigration enforcement.”

 

† States’ Rights Vs. The Feds: AZ’s insistence on asserting control over what is legal within its borders has become a flash point with the Obama administration. So too, mandatory health insurance coverage. The VA Legislature is poised to pass legislation that will be “one of the greatest tests of federal power over the states since the civil rights era,” reports The Boston Globe:

  

Virginia’s lawmakers are focused on constitutional questions and the power of states to run their own affairs.

 

“The administration is trying to shift from a government by social compact, agreement between elected officials and citizens, to a government where the leaders tell the subjects what to do,’’ said Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall, a Republican and chief sponsor of the measure. “That is not what the American Revolution was about.’’

 

The National Conference of State Legislatures says similar bills or state constitutional amendments are being proposed in at least 32 states. …

 

In Arizona, for example, voters will have a chance to approve a constitutional amendment this fall that would “preserve the freedom of all residents of the state to provide for their own health care.’’

 

Obama won Virginia in the presidential election, but that was followed by the 2009 election of McDonnell as governor, which was interpreted partly as an ebb in enthusiasm for the president’s policies.

 

The effort to reject a federal mandate is not only a challenge to Obama’s proposal but also to Obama himself. The president is a former constitutional law professor who has rejected claims from Republicans that his proposed mandate is unconstitutional. …

 

But opponents insist an insurance mandate is not legal because there is nothing in the Constitution that gives the federal government the right to penalize citizens for failing to purchase something. That is different, proponents says [sic], from specifically enumerated federal powers such as taxation, raising an army, or regulating commerce. …

 

Clint Bolick, a litigation specialist with the conservative Goldwater Institute who wants to test the mandate in the US Supreme Court if it passes, said Obama’s plan to mandate insurance coverage is nothing more than an effort to require one group of people to subsidize insurance for another.

 

According to The New York Times, states’ rights proponents “are on a roll”:

 

Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a Republican, signed a bill into law on Friday declaring that the federal regulation of firearms is invalid if a weapon is made and used in South Dakota.

 

On Thursday, Wyoming’s governor, Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, signed a similar bill for that state. The same day, Oklahoma’s House of Representatives approved a resolution that Oklahomans should be able to vote on a state constitutional amendment allowing them to opt out of the federal health care overhaul.

 

In Utah, lawmakers embraced states’ rights with a vengeance in the final days of the legislative session last week. One measure said Congress and the federal government could not carry out health care reform, not in Utah anyway, without approval of the Legislature. Another bill declared state authority to take federal lands under the eminent domain process. A resolution asserted the “inviolable sovereignty of the State of Utah under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.” …

 

Alabama, Tennessee and Washington are considering bills or constitutional amendments that would assert local police powers to be supreme over the federal authority, according to the Tenth Amendment Center, a research and advocacy group based in Los Angeles. And Utah, again not to be outdone, passed a bill last week that says federal law enforcement authority, even on federal lands, can be limited by the state.

 

The Times quotes legal scholars who warn that such laws run afoul of Article 6 of the Constitution, because federal law is supreme. But Tenth Amendment Center founder Michael Boldin counters that states successfully legalized medical marijuana despite marijuana use and possession remaining illegal under federal law.

 

† Obama Doctrine Taking Shape: Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, makes the case that President Hussein Obama “has worse relations overall with American allies than George W. Bush did in his second term” because it has devoted disproportionate time and attention to:

 

[T]the failed first-year attempt to improve relations with Iran; the ongoing attempt to improve relations with Russia; the stalled effort to improve cooperation with China; and the effort - fruitless so far - to prove to the Arab states that the United States is willing to pressure Israel to further the peace process. Add to these the efforts to improve relations with Syria, engage Burma and everything with Af-Pak, and not much has been left for the concerns of our allies.

 

This is bad enough, but compounding the problem has been the administration's evident impatience with allies who don't do as they are told. Europeans get spanked for a pallid commitment to NATO defense spending even as they contribute 30,000 troops to a distant war that European publics mostly don't believe in. Japan gets spanked when its new government insists on rethinking some recent agreements. In both cases, the administration has a point, but it's always easier to hammer allies when they misbehave than to hammer tough competitors such as Russia or China.

 

The president has shown seemingly limitless patience with the Russians as they stall an arms-control deal that could have been done in December. He accepted a year of Iranian insults and refusal to negotiate before hesitantly moving toward sanctions. The administration continues to woo Syria and Burma without much sign of reciprocation in Damascus or Rangoon. Yet Obama angrily orders a near-rupture of relations with Israel for a minor infraction like the recent settlement dispute - and after the Israeli prime minister publicly apologized. …

 

This administration pays lip-service to "multilateralism," but it is a multilateralism of accommodating autocratic rivals, not of solidifying relations with longtime democratic allies.

 

† Employers Hiring Forged Documented Aliens Are Lawbreakers In Other Ways, Too): The Washington Post reports that “there are signs that the recession has prompted more employers to shortchange their workers, either by failing to pay the promised amount or by offering less than minimum wage in the first place”  and that those who are most vulnerable to being exploited are “[c]onstruction, restaurant and janitorial workers … especially if they are immigrants who don't speak English or lack legal status.”

 

† All The News That’s Fart To Print (ninth item): In what can only be described as sheer lunacy, environmentalists are now taking issue with another body cavity. A reader purportedly wrote to The Washington Post's "The Green Lantern" fretting that the disposable pads and tampons she uses while menstruating could be bad for the planet. She was advised to consider using maxi pads that aren't individually wrapped, tampons without applicators or pads and tampons made with organic cotton instead of rayon. But if she is “willing to make a really radical change” she should use “machine-washable fabric maxi pads, for example, sold under brand names like Lunapads and GladRags” or “menstrual cups, which catch the flow internally and can be cleaned and reused.” It would appear that to save the planet, women have to turn the clock back to the 19^th Century, before disposable feminine hygiene products were invented. Hmm. What would Gaia do?

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws): Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is cutting the federal government’s losses on the "virtual fence" along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border and plans to divert $50 million of stimulus funds that would have gone to the glitch-plagued project in favor of spending the money on “more proven and cost-effective security technology,” reports The Washington Times:

 

The decision to pull back funding on the initiative aimed at protecting the U.S. from terrorists, violent drug smugglers and illegal immigrants comes on the heels of a series of damning reports by the Government Accountability Office, and as Ms. Napolitano attempts to justify to lawmakers a 30 percent budget reduction for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the midst of a raging drug war along the Southwest border.

 

To date, the U.S. government, through the Secure Border Initiative, has paid Boeing Co. more than $1 billion to build less than 700 miles of barriers between ports of entry, and a costly but flawed system of radar towers, ground sensors and cameras known as SBInet, a $4 billion project that appears to be in jeopardy.

 

"Not only do we have an obligation to secure our borders, we have a responsibility to do so in the most cost-effective way possible," Ms. Napolitano said. "The system of sensors and cameras along the Southwest border known as SBInet has been plagued with cost overruns and missed deadlines."

 

Ms. Napolitano said the department will instead … buy security technology such as mobile surveillance, thermal-imaging devices, body scanning units, mobile radios, cameras and laptops for pursuit vehicles.

 

At a time when taxpayers are being tapped to bail out failing corporations, corporations failing to provide goods and services the federal government has paid for with our tax dollars should refund our money.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Is Hasan A Crazy Terrorist, Or A Terrorist Crazy?): The Washington Times reports more evidence that because of political correctness nothing was going to stop the U.S. Army from promoting Nidal Malik Hasan through the ranks no matter how unfit he was for duty, citing internal e-mails between residency director Maj. Scott Moran and his superiors. Time and again Moran raised red flags about Hasan’s performance (“He is a chronically somewhat unprofessional officer with a somewhat poor work ethic”) and time and again his concerns were brushed aside: 

 

The communications are the latest in a series of early signs that showed officers had reason to suspend Maj. Hasan's training, and perhaps re-evaluate his suitability as a military physician, but failed to do so. …

 

In May 2007, as a then-Capt. Hasan approached a June 30 date to complete his residency in psychiatry, his direct supervisor warned higher-ups he had failed a physical by being overweight. …

 

Maj. Moran said he was preparing to put Maj. Hasan on probation and extend his residency.

 

But the superior rejected the idea, saying it would prompt a total re-evaluation of Maj. Hasan.

 

The superior wrote back to Maj. Moran: "Please don't go forward on anything yet. If you put him on probation, even administrative, will require me to convene a relook board." …

 

Then came Maj. Hasan's research project that was required for completing the residency … "Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military." The slide presentation promoted Islamic law over the U.S. Constitution.

 

At first, Maj. Moran was appalled. "This is not scholarly project level," he e-mailed other staff members. "[We] are going to meet with him this AM and counsel him." …

 

One staff supervisor was ecstatic. "Dr. Hasan does an excellent job speaking without 'reading' slides!" he wrote on a "resident evaluation."

 

"His balance of academic knowledge and personal awareness is remarkable." …

 

Charles Gittins, attorney for Maj. Moran, said the e-mails show his client was trying to hold Maj. Hasan to Army standards.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, There's No Such Thing As Free Healthcare): In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Galen Institute president Grace-Marie Turner takes issue with former MA Gov. Mitt Romney’s recent assertion that the health reform plan he stuck the state’s residents with in 2006 is "the ultimate conservative plan." She adds that the “likely 2012 presidential aspirant … has been on the wrong side of the defining political battle of our time”:

 

[T]here are many similarities between it and the ObamaCare loathed by conservative voters.

 

Both have an individual mandate requiring most residents to have health insurance or pay a penalty. Most businesses are required to participate or pay a fine. Both rely on government-designed purchasing exchanges that also provide a platform to control private health insurance. Many of the uninsured are covered through Medicaid expansion and others receive subsidies for highly-prescriptive policies. And the apparatus requires a plethora of new government boards and agencies. …

 

[I]nsurance companies are required to sell "just-in-time" policies even if people wait until they are sick to buy coverage. That's just like the Obama plan. There is growing evidence that many people are gaming the system by purchasing health insurance when they need surgery or other expensive medical care, then dropping it a few months later. …

 

Mr. Romney insists that in Massachusetts, "We didn't do what President Obama's doing, which is putting controls on our system of premiums for private insurance companies."

 

But that is what's happening now: Faced with soaring medical expenses, Gov. Deval Patrick, Mr. Romney's successor, wants to cap insurance rate increases at 4.8%, not the 8% to 32% increases the companies have requested for April 1. Three of the four major health insurers in Massachusetts showed operating losses for 2009. If their rates are capped, they say they'll be forced to cut payments to health providers, putting further pressure on doctors and fragile hospitals. 

 

Turner also calls bullsh*t on Romney for claiming in his book "No Apology" that “everyone in Massachusetts now has access to "portable, affordable health insurance":

 

68% of the newly insured since 2006 receive coverage that is heavily or completely subsidized by taxpayers. …

 

Another 140,000 remained uninsured in 2008 and were either assessed a penalty or exempted from the individual mandate because the state deemed they couldn't afford the premiums.

 

Mr. Romney's promise that getting everyone covered would force costs down also is far from being realized. … Per capita spending is 27% higher than the national average.

 

Turner urges Romney to be “more honest” about his healthcare “experiment and its failings.”

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Putting The “Boo” In Boomer): Our grandparents and parents rely on Medicare to get treatment for arthritis, broken hips and other infirmities of old age, as well as for stroke, Alzheimer’s and other serious and debilitating ailments. The availability of high-tech (and expensive) diagnostic imaging tools like functional MRI and cutting-edge (and expensive) post-stroke rehab, for instance, has improved the quality of life of our elders, and lengthened their lifespans. That’s why cuts to Medicare are such a touchy subject. But costs of keeping the Baby Boomer generation alive on their terms will end up ruining a good thing for everyone else. These aging hippies never stopped using illicit drugs recreationally, so Medicare has to cover the cost of drug abuse treatment, as well as the cost of the heart attacks and strokes that would not have occurred but for drug abuse. Now, The Associated Press reports that “people in their 60s, 70s and 80s coming to terms with the truth that they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.” So does this mean that in the coming years Medicare will be paying for tens of thousands of “gender reassignment” surgeries for transgender Baby Boomers? The Stiletto long resigned herself to the likelihood that Social Security and Medicare will not be available when she needs it, but was somewhat comforted by the thought that these programs would take care of her parents’ needs. But not if the perennially selfish Baby Boom generation has anything to say about it. 

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on Erez Lieberman-Aiden, 30-year-old graduate student at MIT and Harvard who, CNN reports, “had a nagging feeling that his grandmother's death, which occurred after a hard fall, could have been prevented”:

 

Lieberman-Aiden invented a high-tech shoe insole to help older people manage their balance before a catastrophic fall occurs. His "iShoe" sneaker insoles track a person's balance patterns using digital sensors. The battery-powered footbeds transmit data to computers about a person's walking and standing stability.

 

"The model of 'I go into my doctor once every six months or once a year to get a check up' is kind of more the speed of a society where people write long letters to each other every three months to be in touch," he said. "Now information can travel all over the place in real time. ... That model is beginning to influence medicine as well." …

 

"There are interventions people can engage in in order to improve their balance," he said. "It's kind of like, in some sense, heart disease, where you're increasingly prone to it as you age, but there are treatments that can improve the situation."

 

The key to a person's balance, it turns out, is not in how well they walk but how well they stand still, he said. So the iShoe takes particular note of how much a person shifts his or her weight while standing. A well-balanced person might shift weight every 40 seconds, he said, but a person with potentially dangerous balance problems might shift weight constantly, or every second.

 

The iShoe spits out balance data sets that can be interpreted by doctors, or potentially by patients themselves, he said. It uses a Bluetooth connection to transmit the info from a person's shoes to a computer.

 

Lieberman-Aiden was among four students awarded the Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prize awarded to “inventive and entrepreneurial” students attending MIT, Caltech, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Illinois. He plans to use the $30,000 prize money “to further his research efforts, help with baby expenses and, possibly, to buy a new couch.”

        

Police responding to a 9-1-1 call found a 24-year-old man with a gunshot wound in his lower left leg sitting in a black Honda Accord in the parking lot of Seward Park who claimed to be the victim of a robbery attempt. But when the police found the proverbial smoking gun in the bushes, his story started to fall apart, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

 

"When questioned about the incident, (the man) stated that he had set a booby trap as an anti-theft device by placing his loaded .38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver with the hammer in the cocked position under his steering wheel," Gang Unit Detective Rob Thomas wrote in a police document.

 

"When he returned to his vehicle after jogging in the park he attempted to disarm his booby trap, accidentally set off the gun and shot himself in the leg."

 

Police discovered the man has had five felony convictions since 2005, two of them for firearms violations. It’s a fair bet that he’s looking at a third felony conviction for firearms violations.

        

Psychopaths' Brains May Focus Solely On Reward

- HealthDay News, March 16, 2010

        

For Better Relationships, Just Be Yourself

- LiveScience.com, March 15, 2010

        

NY Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Spinner ruled that Wells Fargo had "perpetrated a trespass" against Steven Tyson by changing the locks on his Greenlawn, NY, home and repeatedly entering without notice or permission, reports New York Law Journal:

 

"[T]he conduct of Plaintiff was nothing short of oppressive and would best be described as heavy handed and egregious, to say the least," Justice Spinner wrote in Wells Fargo v. Tyson. …

 

Tyson claimed his door's lock cylinders had been drilled out and was told that his property had been "inspected and secured" because it had allegedly been abandoned. recount

 

Tyson, who appeared pro se, said he was advised that such an entry was "standard procedure" but was given a new key to the premises. He testified that he told the bank to stay away from his home and was assured no other unauthorized entries would occur.

 

But approximately one month later, the property was entered again. … Later that day, [Tyson] returned to find his garage open and numerous items missing, prompting him to file a police report.

 

Spinner ordered the bank to pay $200 for the trespass, $4,892 for the lost property, and $150,000 "as an appropriate deterrent to any future outrageous, improper and unlawful deeds."

 

Wouldn’t it be great if Tyson used the money to pay off his mortgage and get Wells Fargo off his back once and for all?

        

† DIY Profiling: In the immediate aftermath of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s being foiled in his attempt to blow Northwest 253 out of the sky on Christmas Day by the passengers and crew on the flight, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano famously said, “the system worked.”

 

The take-away message for Navy veteran, Washington attorney and frequent flier Ray Hartwell, who has been “patted down, scanned and searched” thousands of times: air travelers realize the “system” depends on all of us being alert, aware and ready to spring into action, if necessary. But are we all on the same page about when and how to act? Having questioned 15 to 20 fellow passengers he is “pretty comfortable that I know the lay of the land” and details what he’s learned in this op-ed for The Washington Times:

 

[W]e have limited options. We have no ability to deny boarding to someone linked to terrorists … Similarly, we have no control over the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) choice of screening equipment.

 

Perhaps most important, we cannot force TSA personnel to look at people carefully and actually think about their characteristics and behavior. Yet this option - screening and profiling - is the only one that directly presents an opportunity for effective passenger action. There is much we cannot do, but we can - our very own selves - look at our fellow passengers and pay attention to their demeanor and their actions. …

 

Most focus first and foremost on men of military service age who appear to be Middle Eastern or Arabic, wearing Muslim attire or are bearded. Others say they don't "profile" on appearance but rather on behavior: "We have to stop Tim McVeigh as well as Richard Reid." All are alert for conduct that "doesn't look right" ("DLR," as one put it). …

 

Suspicious or provocative behavior in the terminal or after boarding should be reported to airline personnel, TSA and law enforcement authorities. If this is not feasible or if … strong suspicions are ignored, most said, don't board the plane and, if on board already, demand that if Mr. Abdulmutallab and friends are allowed to fly, you must be allowed to get off.

 

And in flight? … There was unanimity that directions from the flight crew should be followed except in extremis. Flight attendants - and passengers who assist them - should be granted broad immunity from liability for subduing and placing in restraints passengers who are disruptive, willfully disobedient or engaging in threatening behavior.

 

Although passengers see physical action as a last resort, they're willing to act because they know a failure to do so could have deadly consequences. … Most think the virtual certainty that fellow passengers will join in quickly turns the odds in favor of the good guys.

 

Let the headless chickens at TSA run around in circles issuing and retract regulations about blankets and bathroom visits. As usual, the American people are more sensible than – and way ahead of – Washington bureaucrats.

 

† The Pluck Of The Irish: On Wednesday Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen - who has “been laboring to put debt-saddled Ireland back into the black” - will meet with President Barack Hussein Obama in Washington, D.C. “as a global spokesman for fiscal restraint,” reports The Washington Post:

 

He has been slashing public-sector salaries - including his own - and making cuts in social services to assure foreign investors that Ireland can meet its obligations.

 

Thus far, the pain is paying off, with Ireland largely avoiding the debt crisis seen in Greece as well as the surge in borrowing costs that hit other financially troubled countries in Europe, including Spain and Portugal. But Cowen's government has paid a hefty price: Its approval ratings are among the lowest in recent Irish history. …

 

"I don't think any country has a choice. When you have such pressure on public finances, you simply have to confront these issues."

 

Part of Cowen’s plan to grow his country’s economy is to “lure” U.S. companies with a 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, which puts him on a collision course with the Obama administration’s plans to grow the U.S. economy by trying to keep jobs from migrating overseas, notes The WaPo.

 

† That Dog Won’t Vote (second item): The Washington Post profiles a fresh, new candidate for public office: Murray Hill, who is “young, bold, media-savvy, a Washington outsider eager to reshape the way things are done in the nation's capital.” What Hill isn’t: Human. The WaPo explains:

 

Murray Hill is actually Murray Hill Inc., a small, five-year-old Silver Spring public relations company that is seeking office to prove a point (and perhaps get a little attention).

 

After the Supreme Court declared that corporations have the same rights as individuals when it comes to funding political campaigns, the self-described progressive firm took what it considers the next logical step: declaring for office.

 

"Until now, corporate interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence-peddling to achieve their goals in Washington," the candidate, who was unavailable for an interview, said in a statement. "But thanks to an enlightened Supreme Court, now we can eliminate the middle-man and run for office ourselves." …

 

The firm, whose clients include labor unions and environmentalists, is seeking to enter the Republican primary for the 8th District seat held by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D).

 

The firm "wanted to run as a Republican because we feel the Republican Party is more receptive to our basic message that corporations are people, too," Klein said, adding that his client has no particular beef with Van Hollen. …

 

The WaPo notes that Murray Hill may not meet minimum requirements to run for Congress. The Montgomery County Board of Elections rejected the candidate’s voter registration application because Hill is not a U.S. citizen of at least 18 years of age. And the U.S. Constitution requires candidates for Congress to be at least 25 years old, which means that the Maryland State Board of Elections is not likely to issue a Certificate of Candidacy to put Hill’s name on the state’s Primary ballot.

 

Someone should tell Klein tht Republicans also believe fraudulent ballots should not be permitted to dilute the ballots cast by legitimate voters, and it is comforting to know that the officials we entrust with keeping our elections honest are doing their jobs. Maybe Hill can get elected to the board of ACORN – or whatever the voter-fraud promoting group is calling itself these days.

 

† The Cruiser Of The Future: Not willing to cede the high-tech patrol car business to upstart Carbon’s E7 without a fight, Ford is phasing out the Crown Vic and will replace the venerable cruiser with the Police Interceptor, “designed to be faster, safer and stronger, and … packed with advanced technology,” reports The Los Angeles Times:

 

The Crown Victoria police car, which debuted in 1983, will not be going away any time soon. Ford will be making them until late next year - about the same time that Police Interceptors will start coming off the production line. …

 

The Police Interceptor will be built on the same platform as Ford's 2010 Taurus.

 

But company spokesman Said Deep said that about 90% of the Police Interceptor has been engineered specifically for law enforcement use. …

 

It will have a V-6 engine that produces 263 horsepower. Ford said it will have 25% better fuel efficiency than the Crown Victoria police car, which has a V-8 engine. …

 

Switching to a new model is a risk for Ford, which has dominated the law enforcement market since the mid-1990s, when General Motors stopped making its Chevrolet Caprice police car.

 

The major competitors that remain are Chevy Impala and Dodge Charger police cars.

 

The Crown Vic has a base price of around $27,000 and it’s not likely that cash-strapped police departments will upgrade to the new cruisers any time soon if there is a significant  cost differential.

 

† Should Glenn Beck Practice What He Preaches?: Politics aside, this Associated Press story explains why several otherwise practicing Catholics of The Stiletto's acquaintance no longer attend church:

 

Germany's sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese disclosed that while he was archbishop a suspected pedophile priest was transferred to a job where he later abused children.

 

The pontiff is also under increasing fire for a 2001 Vatican document he later penned instructing bishops to keep such cases secret.

 

The revelations have put the spotlight on Benedict's handling of abuse claims both when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977-1982 and then the prefect of the Vatican office that deals with such crimes - a position he held until his 2005 election as pope.

 

And they may lead to further questions about what the pontiff knew about the scope of abuse in his native Germany, when he knew it and what he did about it during his tenure in Munich and quarter-century term at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. …

 

An Irish government-authorized investigation into the scandal and cover up harshly criticized the Vatican for its mixed messages and insistence on secrecy in the 2001 directive and previous Vatican documents on the topic.

 

"An obligation to secrecy/confidentialtiy on the part of participants in a canonical process could undoubtedly constitute an inhibition on reporting child sexual abuse to the civil authorities or others," it concluded.

 

One U.S. attorney representing several victims says the church’s insistence on secrecy amounts to “an international criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice."

 

† John Edwards: The King Of Heels Now And Forever:  John Edwards’ paramour and the mother of his youngest child, Rielle Hunter, has hitherto kept a low profile. But now, she tells her side of the story to GQ. (“I feel comfortable talking now, because Johnny went public and made a statement admitting paternity. I didn't feel like I could ever speak until he did that.”)

 

In the Q&A interview she says she and the two-timing two-time candidate for national office are not engaged and never discussed wedding plans. She also says that: “[w]e love each other very much … and I believe that will be till death do us part”; she did not recognize him when they first met; they slept together the night they met; four days later, after nightly four-hour phone calls she was “[h]ead over heels in love”; she has not been with another man since falling in love with Edwards; because her father died of cancer, she has “such compassion” for Elizabeth Edwards; she is “not a mistress by nature … I fell in love with him … that was the role that was available to me”; Edwards had cheated on Elizabeth with other women over the years; she was already pregnant when Edwards renewed his wedding vows with Elizabeth; she was 43 and had never been pregnant and she “felt with all of my being that I needed to bring this little child into the world … I was blessed”; Quinn calls Edwards Da-da; it was Andrew Young’s idea to claim paternity of Quinn; she has no idea where the money for her, Quinn’s and the Young family’s living expenses came from, and that Young and his wife pocketed some of it; if she could do things differently, she never would have agreed to Young claiming paternity; and she expects Young to be indicted, but not Edwards.

Now that you've speed-read through Hunter's interview, you have time to read this description of the sex tape Edwards and Hunter made, and then to go take a shower.

 

† Erin Andrews’ Stalker Arrested: After Michael David Barrett, 49, admitted that he stalked the ESPN reporter for 18 months and followed her to at least three hotel rooms in three states in 2008 to spy on and film her, U.S. District Judge Manuel Real sentenced him to 2½ years in federal prison and ordered him to pay Andrews $7,366 in restitution.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: Politico reports that “[m]oderate House Democrats facing potentially difficult reelections this fall have a message for President Barack Obama: Don’t call us; we’ll call you”:

 

Interviews with nearly a dozen congressional Democrats on the ballot this year reveal a decided lack of enthusiasm for having Obama come to their districts to campaign for them - the most basic gauge of a president’s popularity. …

 

While these members aren’t necessarily attempting to distance themselves from the administration, there is nevertheless a noticeable reluctance to embrace the president among a certain class of incumbent, now that Obama’s approval rating has fallen to a new low - 46 percent in the latest Gallup survey.

 

It’s not an unusual development - President George W. Bush suffered a similar fate. As his popularity dipped and he became a more polarizing figure, few moderate Republicans wanted to be seen with him in their states for fear the association would be used against them by their rivals.

 

The difference, however, is that Bush was narrowly elected twice in a country divided between red and blue states, while Obama shredded that map. With his success in the interior West and upper South, Obama was thought to be such a political asset that he could play almost anywhere in the country.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): From April 13^th-15^th Michelle Obama will visit Mexico City, her first solo trip abroad as first lady. In case she has missed previous installments of The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in her consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador, here’s one for the road from reader Pam Siegfried:

 

Last month, an Uncle Joe’s Pizzeria manager came into the Anchorage convenience store where she works and said that one of his drivers saw an elderly woman walking along the road after dark without a coat or sweater. It had snowed roughly a foot that day, and the temperature was around 20 degrees at the time. The driver picked her up, apparently intending to drive her home. But he had to call the police, because she could not tell him her name or where she lived. The police eventually coaxed her name out of her and were able to contact her son.

Editorial Note: Rielle Hunter interview item updated.

        

A Hispanic woman in her 20s brandishing a semi-automatic handgun demanded money from 11 customers at La Chicanita Market in Thermal, CA, and made off with a grand total of $6.00, reports The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA):Riverside, California Riverside, California

 

The gunwoman was last seen climbing into the front passenger seat of an old, two-door Honda or similar car. It was black with white spots, witnesses said. No one was hurt.

 

The robber was wearing a jacket and a headdress over her head and face. Anyone with information may call deputies at 760-863-8990.

 

On the one hand, the victims were lucky she didn’t get ticked off at the piss-poor haul and kill one or more of them. On the other hand, she may have figured out that her overhead – the cost of gas and bullets  – was equal to or higher than what she netted, so she would have been in the hole had she shot anyone.

        

Obesity, Drinking A Double Threat To The Liver

- HealthDay News, March 12, 2010

        

Happy From Your Vacation? It Won't Last

- HealthDay News, March 12, 2010

        

Federal prosecutors have charged Park Avenue Bank CEO Charles Antonucci with fraud, bribery, embezzlement and stealing from a church to further his application for $11.3 million in federal bailout money, “the first such executive to be so charged,” reports Crain’s New York Business:

 

A 10-count complaint against the 59-year-old Mr. Antoncci, who served as Park Avenue Bank's top executive from 2004 until last October, describes a three-year trail of criminal activity driven by the CEO's efforts to shore up his teetering bank and line his pockets at the same time.

 

Antonucci was released was released from federal custody on personal recognizance.

 

[Hat Tip: The Heel, an Ivy-educated attorney with a prestigious New York firm, and occasional contributor to this blog.]

        

† Is This Any Way To Run A Transition?: Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse. Trade lawyer Eric Hirschhorn - tapped by President Barack Hussein Obama to head a Commerce Dep’t division that monitors exports of technology, software and items that can be used for both commercial and military purposes - represented a U.S. client that made shipments to Iran, Sudan and Syria. Two other clients were Hong Kong firms on the Commerce Department's "entity list" of companies subject to strict export licensing rules, because of their ties to a company in Dubai that manufactured parts found in roadside bombs that have killed and maimed American soldiers and civilians in Iraq, reports The Washington Times.

 

† The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws: James Tomsheck, an assistant commissioner with U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Office of Internal Affairs, testified before a Senate subcommittee that the agency lacks funds and personnel to perform polygraph tests and background checks on new hires. As a result, corrupt agents are manning checkpoints along the southwest border. The Associated Press reports:

 

[O]nly about one in 10 of the new hires for agency jobs are given polygraph tests, and of those, 60 percent are deemed unsuitable for employment. …

 

"That 60 percent number is alarming to me," said U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., who chaired the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration.

 

An AP investigation tallied corruption-related convictions against more than 80 enforcement officials at all levels - federal, state and local - along the southwest border since 2007.

 

Since 2003, 129 customs officers and Border Patrol agents have been arrested on corruption charges, said Tom Frost, the Department of Homeland Security's assistant inspector general for investigations. That figure included the northern border and other ports of entry. …

 

The corruption activities "encompass almost every layer of the DHS border security strategy," including employees stationed away from the border, but with access to sensitive information.

 

They have used that access to "to [sic] vet drug trafficking organization members, track investigative activity, and identify individuals cooperating with the government," Frost said.

 

† Only The Little People Pay Taxes: According to U.S. Labor Department data, as the ax was falling at corporations from coast to coast, the public sector has been largely untouched. In addition, government workers earn significantly more on average than the taxpayers who are paying their salaries, reports The Washington Times:

 

The average government wage and salary per hour of $26.11 was 35 percent higher than the average wage and salary of $19.41 per hour in the private sector. But the percentage difference in benefits was much higher. Benefits for state and local workers averaged $13.49 per hour, nearly 70 percent higher than the $8 per hour in benefits paid by private businesses. …

 

After shedding 3.8 million net jobs during 2008, private employers slashed an additional 4.7 million last year. During the same two-year period, the public sector, including the federal government, gained more than 100,000 jobs. The combined work forces of state and local governments added 35,000 jobs during the 2008-09 period.

 

While private-sector jobs declined in every state except North Dakota over the previous 12 months, public-sector employment increased in 23 states, the Labor Department report showed. Even in North Dakota, as the private work force gained 300 jobs over the past year, the government sector surged by 1,000 new workers.

 

† Putting The “Boo” In Boomer: Or, should that be getting the poo out of boomers? Prune juice purveyor Sunsweet Growers “wants to capture the growing ranks of boomers who may be increasingly in need of the the [sic] product's digestive properties” reports brandchannel:

 

“The timing is perfect” for a new marketing push behind prune juice, Stephanie Harralson, Sunsweet Juice product manager, told brandchannel, “because people are looking for natural solutions for their health, and prune juice is just prunes and water – so it’s a totally natural product that works."

 

Sunsweet published a freestanding insert in newspapers nationwide last summer and “had a really good response from it,” Harralson said. And now the brand plans to contemporize the packaging of its prune juice in a way that plays to its “taste appeal,” she said.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Always Remember And Don’t Ever Forget): The Swedish parliament has voted in favor of a resolution to recognize the Armenian Genocide. The motion also calls the mass murders of Chaldeans, Syrians, Assyrians and Pontian Greeks by Ottoman Turks a genocide – and rightly so (the Christians were killed off, which is why modern Turkey is 99.8 percent Muslim). Four center-right politicians voted with the opposition, and the resolution passed by one vote, reports The Local, an English-language news site based in Stockholm:

 

Left Party foreign policy spokesperson Hans Linde expressed his view that the time had come for Sweden to take a stand on the issue.

 

"Firstly, to hinder any repeat and to learn from history. Secondly, to encourage the development of democracy in Turkey - which includes dealing with their own history. Thirdly, to redress the wrongs committed against the victims and their descendants," Linde said. …

 

According to Sweden's Living History Forum, most researchers are now in agreement that the massacres constituted genocide according to the accepted 1948 UN definition. The exception to this is Turkish researchers. The Turkish government has never recognized the events as a genocide and it is illegal in Turkey to claim that it occurred.

 

The Living History Forum is a Swedish public authority which works with issues on tolerance, democracy and human rights from both a national and international perspective.

 

Predictably, Turkey recalled its ambassador to Sweden, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan canceled his visit to Stockholm next week for a summit between Sweden and Turkey.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Mortgage Loan Modification Less Than Advertised): The Washington Post reports that the housing market will be hurting for years to come:

 

About 5 million to 7 million properties are potentially eligible for foreclosure but have not yet been repossessed and put up for sale. Some economists project it could take nearly three years before all these homes have been put on the market and purchased by new owners. And the number of pending foreclosures could grow much bigger over the coming year as more distressed borrowers become delinquent and then, if they can't obtain mortgage relief, wade through the foreclosure process, which often takes more than a year to complete. …

 

This "shadow market" reflects the increasing lag between defaults and foreclosures. Many lenders are struggling to keep up with the overwhelming number of borrowers who can't make their payments, and they're reluctant to rush repossessed homes onto the market when prices are depressed. …

 

The borrowers in trouble now are, for the most part, people who have better credit and safer loans and have become delinquent because they've lost their jobs or are dealing with other economic setbacks, economists said. More than 75 percent of the borrowers who are now seriously delinquent - meaning they have missed at least three monthly payments - have traditional prime loans, according to First American CoreLogic. …

 

It can take a borrower six to seven months to find out whether he or she qualifies for a permanent loan modification under the federal foreclosure relief program, Making Home Affordable, according to Barclays Capital. …

 

"Lenders are deluged by late-stage delinquencies. The pent-up foreclosure inventory is there," said Massoud Ahmadi, director of research for the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development.

 

The uptick in foreclosure sales is helping depress Maryland home prices, he said. "We have seen that home sales are on an upswing, but prices are on a downswing. That is the impact of the shadow inventory. It is keeping prices down," Ahmadi said. …

 

[T]he backlog will hang over some communities for years. By the end of 2012, 39 percent to 50 percent of home purchases in Phoenix will still be foreclosed properties, J.P. Morgan Chase has estimated. In Los Angeles, they'll account for 28 percent of home sales.

 

†Updates To Previous Posts (ninth item, Garbage In, Garbage Out: Part II): The Kansas City school board is closing down 28 of its 61 schools – and this time, the move is being welcomed by education experts and the local teachers’ union, reports The New York Times:

 

Students have been leaving the Kansas City public schools in droves. Close to 18,000 students exited to better suburban districts or charter schools in the last 10 years alone. The student enrollment is now 17,400 children, who are mostly black and impoverished. …

 

Fewer than a third of elementary students in the city schools read at or above grade level. And in most of the schools, fewer than a quarter of students are proficient at their grade levels.

 

Faced with a $50 million deficit in its $300 million budget, the district decided to close the schools. The plan also calls for the elimination of 700 of 3,000 jobs, including teaching positions.

 

Education experts praised the new schools superintendent, John Covington, who was hired in April from the Pueblo, Colo., school district where he was also superintendent, for pushing for change. A former principal and teacher, Dr. Covington spent months researching and writing the Right-Sizing plan, and managed to win a 5-to-4 majority from the board.

 

Previous superintendents had failed in similar efforts to downsize the district. …

 

“We have buildings that are half empty,” said Andrea Flinders, the union president. “We recognized that schools needed to be closed, but the board wasn’t willing. This board is different.”

 

If the schools had fallen into bankruptcy, as was predicted before the closings, the state would have seized control, and made changes as it saw fit.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II): The Washington Times comments on all the heat that packing heat has generated:

 

If you want to have a nice, relaxing cup of coffee in a safe environment, try Starbucks. … Starbucks is letting customers openly carry guns in its stores. Americans thus can enjoy their rights and wash them down with a Frappuccino. …

 

The Brady Campaign warns businesses that allowing customers to carry guns will scare away other customers. Yet it seems pretty obvious that the businesses themselves - despite all the pressure they face from trial lawyers and bureaucrats to ban guns - are in a much better position to know what their customers want.

 

Hollywood and the liberal media have skewed public perceptions to such a degree that most Americans probably don't realize that not so long ago, people openly carried guns without a second thought all the time. Up until 1969, all but one of the public high schools in New York City had rifle teams. Thousands of students carried their rifles every day on subways, buses and streets on their way to school, when they went to practice in the afternoon and on their way home. The students would store their guns in homerooms in the morning and then pick them up in the afternoon. In more normal times, no one thought it was a big deal.

        

Fowler White Burnett did not want its employees to read this article about a lawsuit filed against the firm and one of its attorneys, Lilly Ann Sanchez, alleging that she was involved in an "inappropriate relationship" with Miami developer Oscar Rivero and that his former in-laws were conned by her and the firm into forking over $1 million for his criminal defense on charges of embezzling public funds. To ensure no one read the article, the firm sent out a company-wide E-mail telling them not to. Seriously. Daily Business Review reports that it was “the second-most-read story” on its Website last month.

        

Like many of us, Los Angeles Times writer Don Reisinger dreads Daylight Daylight Saving Time because it takes him an hour or two to change the time on the “slew” of portable and household gadgets he owns. But that’s not the worst of it:

 

[M]y family knows that I'm the one person in the crew who can walk them through how to change the time on all those products.

 

All day my phone rings with requests from family members asking me why their microwave time isn't changing when they press the "clock" button.

 

It's a nightmare.

 

Luckily for him - and us - he found a Website, Retrevo, that has posted 100,000 manuals for microwaves, VCRs, faxes and other gadgets that will need to be fiddled with on Sunday. “Users need only to download the manuals and flip to the page describing how to change the time, and they're all set.”

 

Given the need to troubleshoot an errant gizmo from time to time, this would be a handy page to bookmark no matter what time of year it is.

        

Symptoms Of Ketoacidosis

- HealthDay News, March 12, 2010

 

        

As You Age, Better Health Means Better Sex

- HealthDay News, March 10, 2010

        

Disbarred Erie lawyer J. Gregory Moore, 62, was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison on two felony counts of mail fraud for stealing $178,500 from clients' estates in his care. The Erie Times-News reports that prosecutors brought charges against Moore after he confessed to the state Disciplinary Board for lawyers that he had “drained nearly everything from the estate of Norma Garrett, who had lived on a poverty-level income but saved thousands.” Moore – who “advertised his law practice as having Christian standards” - also stole money from the estate of another client, Anne Ackroyd. Senior U.S. District Judge Maurice Cohill Jr. also ordered Moore to make restitution. Moore's attorney had asked the judge to sentence his client to probation, but federal prosecutors argued for a sentence of 21 to 27 months behind bars because “he spent the money to live a double life, including using prostitutes,” reports The Associated Press.

        

On his radio program last week FOX News pundit Glenn Beck encouraged his listeners to leave or change their churches if they hear preaching about social or economic justice, saying they were code words for Communism and Nazism:  

 

I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! … If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop.

 

Long ago, The Stiletto became offended by the politicization of sermons and other spiritual teaching and stopped attending church - except for such family functions as baptisms and weddings. Where she prays to G-d, that is her church.

 

As far as The Stiletto is concerned, Beck - a Mormon convert - is behind the curve, given this New York Times interview with Utah State University professor Philip Barlow, an expert in Mormonism: “One way to read the Book of Mormon is that it’s a vast tract on social justice. A lot of Latter-day Saints would think that Beck was asking them to leave their own church.” 

Forget for a moment that the Mormon concept of “social justice” became expansive enough to permit black men to receive the priesthood only 32 years ago, Beck is not exhorting Christians to become nonbelievers or to quit going to church altogether. He's only asking them to find and flock to pastors who leave the politics outside the church door. What's so controversial or outrageous about that?    

  

Editorial Note: Barlow tells The Times that just this year, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, revised the “Handbook of Instructions” to add a fourth mission: Care for the poor. Um, so that means Mormons will share the one year’s food supply (or, barrels of hard red winter wheat for the traditionalists) they are instructed to keep on hand at all times with the rest of us in an emergency?

        

Yet another study "proving" that liberals are smarter (both, the second item on the page) - but this one has a twist: The researcher is a libertarian who "despises" libs. HealthDay News reports:

 

People who consider themselves liberals or atheists tend to have higher IQs than those who are more religious or conservative, a new study suggests. …

 

Young adults who identified themselves as "very liberal" had an average IQ of 106 during adolescence, compared to an average IQ of 95 for those who were "very conservative."

 

Young adults who identified themselves as "not at all religious" had an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identified themselves as "very religious" had an average IQ of 97.

 

Study author Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, explains:

 

Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid. This innate bias toward paranoia served humans well when self-preservation and protection of their families and clans depended on extreme vigilance to all potential dangers." …

 

The purpose of intelligence, on the other hand, is to help humans cope with and solve novel problems. Therefore, more intelligent people are more likely to have religious and political preferences that go against the grain, such as atheism or a rejection of a higher power, and liberalism, which is provisionally defined in the study as caring about people who are unrelated to you.

 

One obvious flaw in Kanazawa’s reasoning is, "Concern for others not related to you could apply to any political outlook, including religious and social conservatives who donate large amounts of money to churches,” counters Ilya Somin, an associate professor of law at George Mason University.

 

A second obvious flaw: Both the “smart” and “dumb” people in this study were one standard of deviation or less apart in intelligence – and all of them were of average intelligence (an IQ of 90 to 110). In other words, there was no significant difference between the two groups.

 

Editorial Note: HealthDay reporter Jennifer Thomas gives this example of a dumb conservative: “a fan of Fox News or an avid churchgoer.” Wonder what her IQ is.

 

Is This One Of Those Jobs That “Americans Won’t Do?”: Part XIV

 

You’ve heard of a flash mob? Here’s the agrarian version: a Crop Mob. The Los Angeles Times reports that a Crop Mob is “a roving band of volunteers dedicated to helping young farmers build sustainable small farms. It's a modern version of a barn-raising, with volunteers brought together by Google and Facebook”:

 

Rob Jones, his boots smeared with mud, was trying to get the attention of a ragged group of young men and women dressed in jeans and work boots. They were toting shovels and rakes as they stomped across a barren field toward a plot of freshly turned earth. …

 

Jones and several other young, back-to-the-land enthusiasts started Crop Mob on a local biofuels farm. Nineteen volunteers showed up for the first mob in October 2008, harvesting 16,000 pounds of sweet potatoes in a few hours.

 

There have been 15 Crop Mobs since, each one bigger than the last as word spreads over the Internet. More than 80 volunteers dug rice paddies, cleared fields and repaired a roof on Oatis' rough little farm on a crisp Sunday last month.

 

Gathering once a month, the mobs have dug, weeded, mulched and cleared land for farmers across two North Carolina counties. Some mobbers are office workers and backyard gardeners. Others are striving young farmers. All are connected by social networking websites anchored, naturally, by the Crop Mob website at www.cropmob.org.

 

Great idea. If this catches on, Crop Mobs can help, say, NY farmers pick apples, CO sheep ranchers  herd and shear sheep (seventh item) and then they will not have to import foreign workers – legally or illegally - for seasonal farm work. Center for Immigration Studies and other groups that oppose illegal immigration should organize their own groups of like-minded Americans to put the lie to the claims of farmers and ranchers that they need to hire illegal workers (and pay them less than minimum wage) in order to survive

        

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: Unemployment insurance - once a temporary safety net to tide laid-off workers over until they found another job - has become a long-term entitlement for Americans facing protracted joblessness, reports The Washington Post:

 

About 11.4 million out-of-work people now collect unemployment compensation, at a cost of $10 billion a month. Half of them have been receiving payments for more than six months, the usual insurance limit. But under multiple extensions enacted by the federal government in response to the downturn, workers can collect the payments for as long as 99 weeks in states with the highest unemployment rates - the longest period since the program's inception. …

 

Although unemployment held steady at 9.7 percent in February, millions of jobs have been lost in the downturn, particularly in the hardest-hit sectors including real estate, construction, manufacturing and financial services. Those jobs are unlikely to return even when the economy recovers, many experts say.

 

But complaints that extending unemployment payments discourages job-seeking have begun to bubble into the political debate. …

 

Although the availability of long-term unemployment benefits "could dampen people's efforts to look for work," the Congressional Budget Office said in a February report, that concern "is less of a factor when employment opportunities are expected to be limited for some time."

 

The report went on to say that people receiving unemployment benefits tend to plow the money right back into the economy, making them "both timely and cost-effective in spurring economic activity and employment."

 

Jeffrey Carlson of Grand Rapids, Mich., a former insurance salesman and father of six, says he is motivated to find work, despite the $1,650 a month he collects in unemployment benefits. That money does not go far given his rent, child support, utilities and credit card bills. Carlson, 44, said he has applied for numerous jobs with no luck and has spent $40,000 in savings. …

 

"I paid into the system for 25 years and now I need it," he said. "People are being put through the emotional heartache and anxiety of not knowing if it's going to keep coming. There are too many people who need it and are depending on it."

 

† He Wants To Live, Dammit!: The Washington Post excerpts an essay by Boris Veysman, assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, in which he recounts how “[t]he best resuscitation of my career turned into my most memorable professional disappointment” when the family of an elderly cancer patient decide on palliative care instead of dialysis to buy time to correct a potassium imbalance that caused the heart attack that precipitated the ER visit:

 

I carefully explain that everything happened fast. We weren't aware of the DNR and the DNI. Now, he's stabilizing. Then I get the story: several failed rounds of chemo; several weeks of weakness, decreased appetite and depression; many days of feeling unwell. I hear that his meds don't include appetite stimulants, antidepressants or narcotics; why not? The family wants me to "make him comfortable." …

 

"I think there's a good chance he is fixable in the short term," I say. "He needs dialysis, but other than that we can address every other comfort issue. I think he can wake up and talk, probably even write or use a computer. I think his depression, weakness, appetite, dehydration and malnourishment can be effectively treated. Whatever his prognosis is from the cancer, I think he can probably get at least a few good weeks, which is done best by a hospice. He might want to do something with that time. To finish up. To say goodbye and good luck. I think it's too early to die. To give him a chance, however, we must go all-out and 'do everything' for the next several days." I pause and add, "You can always change your mind," addressing a family's fear. …

 

I see the burnout in their eyes. Their will to fight quit weeks ago, after this patient's minor symptoms from the chemo and cancer were left unaddressed, leaving the impression that his life wasn't worth living. No amount of hope in my heart can rekindle what has died in theirs.

 

He is taken off the ventilator and placed on the time-honored morphine drip. He expires peacefully several hours later. …

 

It's so easy to let someone die, but it takes effort, determination and stamina to help someone stay and feel alive. Only after you made every effort to let me be happy and human, ask me again if my life is worth living.

 

Veysman wants his own doctor to “give me some comfort meds, then shock me, tube me and line me.” He adds: “My version of DNR is ‘Do Not Resign.’ Don't give up on me if I can still think, communicate, create and enjoy life. … My DNI? It means ‘Do Not Ignore’ early signs of trouble when my failing body and mind need support so I can continue to function in ways that matter.”

 

Editorial Note: The Stiletto’s family has been in this situation, and can attest that it takes almost superhuman effort and self-sacrifice to keep a seriously debilitated family member alive and - more important - to feel loved and valued. Caregiving can either be a burden or a blessing, depending on your point of view. If you believe it’s the former, there is no shortage of healthcare professionals willing to relieve you of the burden – permanently. If you believe it’s the latter, you’re pretty much on your own as far as our healthcare system is concerned. Vaya con dios.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Chicago On The Potomac): Washington Post media analyst-cum-political pundit Howard Kurtz observes that “Not since the Alfred Hitchcock movie "Psycho" has there been such a famous shower scene” and that “this obscure former Democratic congressman has been as slippery as a bar of soap.” In his interview with Glenn Beck (which Kurtz calls “the most bizarre hour of television in a long time”), Eric Massa denied allegations that he groped a male staffer with a defense that could be summed up as “depends what the meaning of the word ‘grope’ is”:

 

Yeah, I did. Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn't breathe and four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday and it was kill the old guy.

 

Up until now, the old salt had copped to salty language but not to copping a feel – but his description of the goings on aboard the U.S.S. New Jersey suggest that when it comes to arguments against repealing the “don’t, ask, don’t tell” policy, that ship has sailed.

 

The Washington Times reports that Glenn Beck asked, "Is there another shoe that's going to drop?" [Click on part 6 of the interview, below]: 

 

Mr. Massa fell back into defensive mode. "People will say anything at this point."

 

Mr. Beck homed in. "Are there Tiger Woods phone calls that are going to happen, or text messages?"

 

In the show's most newsworthy moment, Mr. Massa said frankly of his interactions with staff members: "I'm sure there are text messages because we bantered back and forth all the time."

 

Text messages!

 

Already, at least four shoes have dropped: On Wednesday, Mr. Massa said he was leaving office because of a recurrence of cancer; the next day, he said he was guilty of using "salty language"; by Friday, he acknowledged that the House ethics committee was investigating him on charges of sexual harassment; and on Sunday, he said the Democrats were out to get him. …

 

By the end, Mr. Beck was beyond frustrated.

 

"America, I'm going to shoot straight with you. I think I wasted your time. I think this is the first time that I've wasted an hour of your time, and I apologize for that," he said.

 

He somberly told his viewers that he had failed to answer three questions he had dramatically written on a large blackboard before the session began: "Is there anything new to his charges? Do you believe what he says about corruption in Washington? Does it affect you?"

 

"We learned a lot, I think," Mr. Beck said as he closed his show, "but what we learned, I don't think it affects you at all."

 

For their part, several lawmakers tell The Washington Post that that Senators and Representatives do not accost each other in the shower to lobby for or against legislation. They may talk while working out in the gym, but prefer that “naked partisanship” remain a metaphor.

Editorial Note: Additional clips from the interview (Part 1); (Part 2); (Part 3); (Part 4); (Part 5); (Part 6). Beck grilled him, not as a journalist, but as a cynical, world-weary detective trying to get a suspect to tell a straight story. Beck kept going back over the same ground, asking the same questions in different ways, alternately badgering and commiserating with Massa.   

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?): Because there is no chemistry between him and President Barack Hussein Obama, French president Nicolas Sarkozy has turned from being pro-Bush to being anti-Obama position, according to The Financial Times of London. And now, Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl has learned that Sarkozy isn’t the only world leader who finds Obama insufferable:

 

[T]his president appears, so far, to have no genuine foreign friends. In this he is the opposite of George W. Bush, who was reviled among the foreign masses but who forged close ties with a host of leaders - Aznar of Spain, Uribe of Colombia, Sharon and Olmert of Israel, Koizumi of Japan. …

 

Focused intently on his domestic agenda, the president is said to be reluctant to take time to build relationships with foreign leaders. If something has needed to be done or decided, he has readily picked up the phone. If not, he generally hasn't been available.

 

Obama also hasn't hesitated to publicly express displeasure with U.S. allies. He sparred all last year with Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu; he expressed impatience when Japan's Yukio Hatoyama balked at implementing a military base agreement. He has repeatedly criticized Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai, and he gave up the videoconferences Bush used to have with Iraq's Nouri al-Maliki.

 

Would Sarkozy have fought French public opinion and sent more troops to Afghanistan (he has refused) if he had been cultivated more by Obama? Would Israel's Netanyahu be willing to take more risks in the (moribund) Middle East peace process if he believed he could count on this U.S. president? Would Karzai cooperate more closely with U.S. commanders in the field if Obama had embraced him?

 

The answers seem obvious. In foreign as well as domestic affairs, coolness has its cost.

 

“Cool” is an adjective for “aloof,” “detached,” “standoffish.” In other words, “arrogant.” Obama expected world leaders to prostrate themselves before him, awed by his greatness, enthralled by his Obamaness, eager to do the bidding of The One.

 

Paradoxically, Obama’s high opinion of himself notwithstanding, a survey by liberal think tanks The Democracy Corps and Third Way finds that more than half of Americans think the standing of the U.S. has dropped since Obama took office (51 percent v. 41 percent). The pollsters are agape: "This is surprising, given the global acclaim - and Nobel peace prize - that flowed to the new president after he took office." [Emphasis, The Stiletto.]

 

Yes, but it’s one thing to accept accolades handed to you on a silver platter, it’s another to do the hard – and often thankless work (just ask Bush) – to earn them.

 

Editorial Note: Here at home, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is warning Obama that the House regards his March 18 deadline for a vote on health care reform to be as meaningless as all the others he’s issued, reports CNN blog Political Ticker: “Asked by a reporter about a potential health care vote on the 18th, Hoyer replied, ‘Your premise is incorrect. You mean that date that Mr. Gibbs mentioned. None of us has mentioned the 18th, other than Mr. Gibbs. We are trying to do this as soon as possible. That continues to be our objective.’ ” 

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II): The Boston Globe is ridiculing open-carry laws in an effort to coerce retail establishments to deny their law-abiding customers their Second Amendment rights. Columnist Derrick Jackson suggests that “[i]f Starbucks wants to run Wild West caffeine saloons, the least it can do is provide gunsmoking and nongunsmoking sections.” In its editorial, The Times tried to make caffeine sound like crack or meth when consumed by a gun-carrying American. But The Globe one-ups its sister paper by turning a pleasant coffee shop into a lawless saloon. Hinting at a boycott, Jackson adds: “I do not know about you, but I suddenly became even more a fan of Peet’s than I was before and as far as I am concerned, I can go without Starbucks the rest of my life as long as it plays the cowardly bartender.”

 

Thanks to firearms-phobes like Jackson, the rest of us have no choice but to sit in the “nongunsmoking section,” to use his faulty analogy. Faulty, because even he acknowledges that the MA Department of Public Safety says that someone licensed to carry a firearm in the state can walk around with it as long as (s)he doesn’t use it “in a manner that constitutes a crime.’’ That would include firing the gun at Starbucks just because the barista made his or her grande half-caf extra hot coffee with breve instead of percent. So were Jackson to sit next to a fussy coffee lover who is packing heat, the gun would not be smoking.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, You Are What You (Can’t) Eat): Last month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Panel for Educational Policy has banned student bake sales to raise money for art and music programs, school supplies, team uniforms and such in an effort to fight childhood obesity. The New York Times reports that parents plan a "bake-in" on March 18^th outside City Hall in protest:

 

"We don't really want to be told what to buy, especially when it's junk food from Kellogg's," said Helen Greenberg, whose daughters, Maizy, 12, and Haddy, 8, attend the East Village Community School in Manhattan.

 

Greenberg has been making organic popcorn with organic toppings every Friday to help raise money for the school. The treat is not on the city's new list of approved foods.

 

City officials now allow only prepackaged snacks so they can keep calorie counts below 200 and control the amount of sodium and trans fats kids are consuming.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Putting The “Boo” In Boomer): BrandWeek notes the off-putting oddness of the new AARP ad campaign featuring Baby Boomers talking about “When I grow up” (If you’re over 50, aren’t you already grown-up?). In an interview with BrandWeek, AARP’s EVP and chief brand officer Emilio Pardo explains that the new ads stem from a previous AARP campaign showing children wishing they’d grow up faster so they can do the things that grown-ups do. “Now we flip it and say, ‘They’re not done growing up,’ ”  

 

Yes, they’re not done growing up. They will never grow up, and that’s bad news for "Millennials" (those 29 or younger), argues Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson:

 

An oft-quoted study by Yale University economist Lisa Kahn found that college graduates entering a labor market with high unemployment receive lower pay and that the pay penalty can last two decades. …

 

As baby boomers retire, higher federal spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid may boost Millennials' taxes and squeeze other government programs. It will be harder to start and raise families.

 

Millennials could become the chump generation. They could suffer for their elders' economic sins, particularly the failure to confront the predictable costs of baby boomers' retirement. This poses a question. In 2008, Millennials voted 2 to 1 for Barack Obama; in surveys, they say they're more disposed than older Americans to big and activist government. Their ardor for Obama is already cooling. Will higher taxes dim their enthusiasm for government?

 

In other words, will they grow up? They’ll have to. And fast.

  

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, A Court Of Law, Not Of Justice): The Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice has determined that the PA Judicial Conduct Board never investigated any of four complaints against former Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan, who is facing federal racketeering charges, reports The Legal Intelligencer:

 

In a 12-page response to written questions from [the commission], the JCB's chief counsel, Joseph Massa, wrote that the board did not conduct a preliminary investigation, conduct interviews or review any documents related to the complaints. …

 

[I]n a startling revelation, Massa said that, not only did the board fail to refer a detailed 2006 complaint to the U.S. Attorney's Office, he didn't turn it over to investigators until nearly 18 months later, in April 2008. …

 

The document, though, fails to explain what happened to the 2006 complaint after the decision was made to table the discussion until the October 2007 meeting.

 

"[The 2006 complaint] was never placed on any subsequent agenda for action or for a report from chief counsel," the board's outside counsel said in response to a question about whether Massa reported on the status of the case.

 

Based on the written answers from Massa and the JCB, no action was taken on the complaint after the decision in June 2007 to table it.

 

The 2008 complaints were filed against Conahan in June of that year, Massa said. "The board decided to defer/stay the matters pending the outcome of the federal investigation," he said.

 

Massa also revealed that it was not the policy of the JCB to make board members aware of prior complaints filed against a jurist when discussing new complaints.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on Amos Winter. The doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at MIT who has devised a wheelchair that can restore mobility to disabled people in Third World countries, “where roads are bad, money tight, and the need immense,” reports The Boston Globe:

 

Winter calls his invention the Leveraged Freedom Chair - leveraged because it is powered by hand levers. …

 

The genius of Winter’s wheelchair lies in the design of the long ratchet-like levers that power it. Hold them low, near the axle, and it goes fast. Hold them higher up, and it generates a lot of torque, making it possible to climb slowly but surely over rocks and up hills. In effect, you change gears by changing your body geometry.

 

That helps keep the wheelchair simple and inexpensive, and may make it affordable to some of the 20 million people who need wheelchairs in the developing world.

 

Winter said he hopes to get his lever-powered wheelchair patented and produced in substantial numbers - priced at about $200 each - within two years. He plans to test 30 more in Guatemala this summer, thanks to a $50,000 grant from the Inter-American Development Bank, and then conduct wider tests in India.

 

For Winter, a 30-year-old native of Chesterfield, N.H., wheelchairs are an accidental passion. After earning his master’s in mechanical engineering at MIT in 2005, he was foraging for a summer project that would let him be with his girlfriend in Tanzania. His MIT mentor, professor Amy Smith, suggested that he look into wheelchair needs there. He did, and came back obsessed with finding solutions to meet those needs.

        

The FL Highway Patrol says that Megan Mariah Barnes, 37, crashed her car into the back of a pick-up truck that had slowed to make a turn because she was busy shaving her bikini area while her ex-husband, Charles Judy, was steering from the passenger seat, reports WBBM-TV (Channel 2-Chicago):

Barnes said she was meeting her boyfriend in Key West and wanted to be "ready for the visit," trooper Gary Dunick explained.

Barnes and Judy allegedly drove another half-mile before switching seats. When they were pulled over, Judy claimed to have been driving. The trooper noticed burns on Judy's chest from the passenger-side airbag, which disproved their story.

 

Well, it could've been worse. If she had been touching up her roots, too, she could’ve killed somebody:

In any case, Barnes - who had been sentenced to nine months probation and had her license yanked for five years the day before the accident - was arrested on charges that include reckless driving, driving with a revoked license and driving without insurance. Her ex was not charged.

        

Symptoms That May Indicate A Urinary Tract Infection

- HealthDay News, March 8, 2010

        

Dems' Splintering Threatens Health Bill

- The Washington Times, March 8, 2010

        

Prosecutors accuse Susan Thanh Litwin of embezzling $279,000 from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County (VA) to bankroll a gambling habit and to pay her mortgage and credit card bills. Litwin, 37, who handled federal funds and donations from parents to support student athletics, clubs and other school activities, allegedly began stealing the money in March 2008, reports The Washington Post:

 

Prosecutors said she wrote checks to herself and also deposited funds into school accounts and then withdrew the money. The checks and withdrawals ranged from $2,500 to $35,000, prosecutors said. …

 

Paul Regnier, a spokesman for Fairfax schools, would not comment on the allegations but said the district will reexamine its procedures for overseeing money collected by employees.

        

Former assistant U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy has dubbed them the “al-Qaeda bar” and conservative group Keep America Safe has referred to them as “The al Qaeda Seven” in a video that demanded Attorney General Eric Holder name the white shoe law firm attorneys who represented Gitmo detainees he has hired to work in the Department of Justice:

A Washington Post editorial waves away the Keep America Safe’s insistence that it only wants the transparency that President Barack Hussein Obama promised when he assumed office: “It is an effort to smear the Obama administration and the reputations of Justice Department lawyers who, before joining the administration, acted in the best traditions of this country by volunteering to take on the cases of suspected terrorists.”  

The true motives of Keep America Safe may indeed be murky, as The WaPo suspects, but Americans did get transparency as a result of the firestorm surrounding the ad. The day after it aired, FOX News unearthed the names of the mysterious government attorneys who had once represented or advocated for terror suspects pro bono and got confirmation of their identities from the DOJ.

 

In response to the controversy American Bar Association president Carolyn Lamm released a statement calling the interest in outing the DOJ lawyers – who are being paid by U.S. taxpayers now – a “witch hunt” and said that "Lawyers have an ethical obligation to uphold that principle and provide representation to people who otherwise would stand alone against the power and resources of the government - even to those accused of heinous crimes against this nation in the name of causes that evoke our contempt.” She also cited ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 1.2(b): "A lawyer’s representation of a client does not constitute an endorsement of the client’s political, economic, social or moral views or activities.”

 

This nuance was acknowledged by FOX News, which noted:  

 

The Obama Administration is not the first to hire lawyers who represented or advocated for terror suspects.

 

Pratik Shah, an assistant to the Solicitor General hired by the Bush Administration, was part of the WilmerHale team that put together arguments for the Boumediene v. Bush case.

 

As Politico’s Josh Gerstein reported back in January, Shah’s “transition from advocate for war-on-terror prisoners to a government official trying to prevent such prisoners from getting a hearing in court” has put him in the position of having to convince a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to dismiss habeas corpus petitions from prisoners held at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

 

And a post on The Volokh Conspiracy pointed out that most are former Supreme Court clerks.

 

Citing the very case that Shah won, The WaPo also reminds us [emphasis, The Stiletto]:

 

[N]o less an authority than the Supreme Court ruled that those held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, must be allowed to challenge their detentions in a U.S. court. It is exceedingly difficult to exercise that right meaningfully without the help of a lawyer. It is also worth remembering that the Bush administration wanted to try some Guantanamo detainees in military commissions - a forum in which a defendant is guaranteed legal representation.

 

Nearly three-quarters of the 50 largest law firms in the U.S. have either represented detainees or filed amicus briefs in support of detainees, and as McCarthy argues in the National Review, “[t]he salient issue in the controversy … is this: They were volunteers” [emphasis, The Stiletto]:

The lawyers and their lefty legions expect you to overlook that. … Since they are trained advocates, they figure that if they feign enough indignation over somebody’s “questioning their patriotism,” then Americans will shrink from asking, “How is it patriotic to go out of your way to help America’s enemies in wartime?” …

There is no legal right to counsel in a habeas corpus case. The vast majority of American citizens and aliens who are incarcerated after being found guilty of crimes do not get lawyers to help them challenge the legal proceedings against them or the conditions of their confinement. They must represent themselves. The United States has detained millions of war prisoners in our history, and those prisoners have never been entitled to counsel in order to challenge their detention - indeed, until 2004, they didn’t have a right to challenge their detention, period. And even terrorist detainees who were charged with war crimes in military commissions had no right to representation by private counsel; instead, the rules provided for the assignment of military defense lawyers at the expense of the American taxpayer.

McCarthy puts his finger on the very thing that makes all the harrumphing about upholding the legal profession’s “noble tradition” to represent unpopular causes and unlovable people - despite abhorring the cause and the heinous acts committed by people to further it – set off The Stiletto’s BS meter.   

 

The Gitmo detainees were not without legal representation. Each was assigned a team military defense attorneys (AKA judge advocates or JAGs) who were under the same professional and ethical obligation to aggressively defend their clients' rights as the white shoe lawyers. And, boy, did they – as this June 2006 “Hardball” interview Chris Matthews did with Lt. Commander Charles Swift, the JAG who successfully argued the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case before the Supreme Court vividly demonstrates:

 

MATTHEWS: [W]hat was at stake here in this case decided by the court? 

 

SWIFT: At stake was the rule of law.  The president had staked out a position that was contrary both to international law and to our domestic statutes in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  What the court did was say that even the president has to follow the law.  And that if we're going to try people, we're going to do it under the law, not under an ad hoc system. 

 

MATTHEWS:  Does this mean now that our prisoners at Gitmo are going to have lawyers and rules of evidence that they can use to defend themselves? 

 

SWIFT:  Well, in a manner of speaking, yes, and one would hope so, because what the court was addressing is a trial wherein you could actually be executed.  One would hope in an American system that you have lawyers, that you have rules of evidence. In a trial as politically charged as these, that's what the rules of evidence were developed for.  What it says is that these individuals be able to be present during their trials and confront the evidence against them.  …

 

MATTHEWS:  [D]o you believe that people who fight us as terrorists deserve Geneva Convention treatment?

 

SWIFT:  It's not whether they deserve it or not.  It's how we conduct ourselves.  It has to do where if we say that our opponent can cause us not to follow the rules anymore, then we've lost who we are.  We're the good guys.  We're the guys who follow the rule and the people we fight are the bad guys and we show that every day when we follow the rules, regardless of what they do.  It's what sets us apart.  It's what makes us great and in my mind, it's what makes us undefeatable, ultimately. 

 

If you want more evidence that JAGs were forcefully defending the Gitmo detainees against what they perceived as a legal overreach (at best) or unlawful policies (at worst) by the Bush administration – meaning, attorneys from top-drawer U.S. firms did not have to rush to offer their services to the detainees for free – click here and here. That they did so was not out of professional obligation, but out of political preference.

 

They went because they wanted to go (second item), not because they were needed. And that’s the rub.

 

 

In Memoriam

 

Joanne Malkus Simpson, March 23, 1923 - March 4, 2010

        

† Chicago On The Potomac: Eric Massa (D-NY) has resigned to avoid an ethics investigation – that he insists no one had mentioned to him until he announced his retirement because of a recurrence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. At least, that was his reason for quitting his office last week. Then he started reading articles by The Associated Press and Roll Call about the political calculus of his resignation – he had voted against cap-and-trade, and against the House healthcare “reform” bill – and the proverbial light bulb went off. He says he now believes that the White House and House leadership orchestrated the ethics investigation to force him out of office and lower the bar that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has to clear to pass healthcare legislation. 

 

In a radio interview with WKPQ-FM in Hornell, a city in his western New York district, Massa explained the circumstances surrounding the sexual harassment compaint against him by a male staffer and goes on to say:

 

[W]ith the departure of Congressman Neil Abercrombie, who is running for the governorship of Hawaii, and with the tragic and sad passing of my personal friend, John Murtha, mine is the deciding voe on the healthcare bill. And this adminsistration and this House leadership have said ... quote- unquote ... They will stop at nothing to pass this healthcare bill. And now they've gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots.

 

When I voted against the cap-and-trade bill, the phone rang and it was the chief of staff of the president of the United States, Rahm Emanuel. And he started swearing at me ... and I gave it right back to him.

 

Massa also called Emanuel the “son of the devil's spawn” who “who would sell his mother to get a vote,” and went on to detail Emanuel’s strong-arm tactics:

 

In my first eight weeks [in office] ... I worked out in the Congressional gym and went to the showers ... I am showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me because I wasn't going to vote for the president's budget. You know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man? ... What the heck was he doing in the Congressional gym? He goes there to intimidate members of Congress. ... He's hated me since Day One, and now he wins. He'll get rid of me, and this bill will pass and I don't know what we'll do in this country.

 

A spokesperson for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer denies Massa’s charges that he was targeted because he has voted against the Obama administration’s major domestic policy initiatives. And Politico reports that one of Massa’s aids said he had engaged in inappropriate behavior “for eight months.”

† Homelessness In The Time Of Obama: In a New York Times op-ed, Jeffrey Essmann, who supports his quintessentially NY artsy-fartsy career as a playwright and a performer with “gypsy clerical stuff” like working as a proofreader in the financial district, describes how he “come down in the world” after he lost his day job in October 2008, “about a month after the Lehman Brothers collapse”:

 

I registered with temp agencies, I hit the job Web sites, I got out four or five résumés a day. Nothing happened. So in November I went to Social Services - the first of what turned out to be about 20 visits over the next year. … At the end of the [nine-hour] day, the caseworker told me they couldn’t pay my rent because I still had $600 in the bank. But I got food stamps.

 

I looked for work during the day, slept or didn’t sleep at night. November rent never got paid, and the landlordly grumblings began. …

 

Then I missed December rent as well, and shortly after Christmas the landlord called to say he was “moving to legal.” A few days into the new year, there was a pounding at the door so loud that I thought, Gestapo. It was the city marshal with my eviction notice. I had five business days to report to housing court. The good news was that there was only $3.93 left in the bank; I figured maybe now I could get that emergency loan.

 

But it wasn’t quite that easy. For several weeks, I ping-ponged between housing court and Social Services, courthouse and caseworker. I also tried the Legal Aid Society, the Coalition for the Homeless, the Catholics, the Protestants, the Jews. None of them could help me with my rent, but each organization offered me a letter I could take to court to show that I was trying to pay it, which bought me some time.

 

Then my luck turned: Social Services approved a loan - and I got a job doing P.R. for a German company. It was only part time and would barely pay the rent. I still had court dates, still had a caseworker. But it sounded good in housing court. It sounded good to Social Services when I picked up my loan - though it also meant that they cut off my food stamps.

 

In August, Essmann’s German employer cut him loose because of the recession, and he found out he was not eligible for unemployment insurance because he worked for a foreign company. By October he was “shuttling between friends’ spare rooms.”

 

† Obama – Not McCain - Will Be Bush III: President Barack Hussein Obama, who called Indonesia home for several years during his childhood, is not exactly being welcomed back as a favorite son by citizens of the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. The Jakarta Post reports that “[d]ozens of activists grouped under the Campus Islamic Proselytization Institute Coordinating Board rallied outside the Serang regency legislative council building on Friday to oppose Obama's visit” later this month, because “Obama was no different to his predecessor, George W. Bush, who resorted to war in disputes with other countries.”

 

Protesters threw shoes at a poster of Obama, which was marked with a bulls-eye:

In 2008 when Iraqi “journalist” Muntadar al-Zeidia threw his shoe at President George Bush, the left had a field day creating interactive games (click here for one example) that put players in the, um, shoes of the shoe-thrower. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a similar Obama game.

† Obama Gets A “Makeover”: A year ago, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and other libs saw Obama like this:

Now, the ACLU sees Obama like this, in its full-page ad in the The New York Times:

† Life Imitates “A Law Abiding Citizen”: Less than a week after registered sex offender John Albert Gardner III was charged with the rape and murder of 17-year-old Chelsea King, the skeletal remains of Amber Dubois, who disappeared more than a year ago at the age 14, were found on the Pala Indian Reservation, north of San Diego, reports The Associated Press:  

The search for Amber produced few leads until 17-year-old Chelsea King disappeared Feb. 25, last seen wearing running clothes in a park about 10 miles south of where Amber was last seen walking with a man near school. A body presumed to be Chelsea's was found five days after Chelsea disappeared in a shallow, lakeside grave.

 

Gardner … pleaded not guilty Wednesday to murdering Chelsea and raping or attempting to rape her and attempting to rape another woman in December, a potential death penalty case.

 

Gardner was registered as a sex offender in Escondido, a north San Diego suburb, from January 2008 to January 2010, with some gaps, police say.

He served five years of a six-year prison term for molesting a 13-year-old neighbor in San Diego in 2000; he saw her at a bus stop and lured her to his home to watch movies, authorities said. He completed parole in September 2008.

 

Gardner was charged with two counts of a lewd act on a child and one count of false imprisonment, which could have put him behind bars for 30 years. He pleaded guilty to the charges and under the terms of the plea agreement he was allowed to serve the three sentences concurrently instead of consecutively – a total of 10 years and eight months in prison. As Gardner did not have a significant criminal history, prosecutors rejected the recommendation of Mission Valley psychiatrist Matthew Carroll to sentence him to the full 30 years because he “takes no responsibility whatsoever for his actions” and “would be a continued danger to underage girls in the community.”

 

Then-District Attorney Paul Pfingst told The San Diego Union-Tribune that the plea deal would have been arranged without him by a division chief, and that it went down the way it did because judges are instructed not to throw the book at felons who don’t have prior convictions.

 

But just because a “first time” sex offender doesn’t have a prior conviction doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been committing or trying to commit sex crimes – and he certainly will commit others once he gets out of prison.

 

Meanwhile, CBS News reports that “there are not enough parole officers to monitor the more than 700,000 registered sex offenders in the United States”:

 

At least 100,000 may not even be living where they say they are.

"The sex offender registry provides this false sense of security we are monitoring and doing something with the sex offenders out there," said Robin Sax, a former Los Angeles county prosecutor.   
 

† All The News That’s Fart To Print: AZ “has the largest budget gap in the country when measured as a percentage of its overall budget,” reports The New York Times, and decided to shrink the hole, in part, by shuttering 13 of the state’s 18 highway rest stops – a move that saves $300K a year per facility - much to the displeasure of motorists:

 

“People in this state are mad about this,” said State Representative Daniel Patterson, a Democrat from Tucson who has sponsored a bill that would allow other entities to reopen and maintain the rest stops. “This bill may have the broadest support among members of any bill this year.”

 

Some residents see something sinister in the closings. Betty L. Roberts, who lives in Sun City, west of Phoenix, said the topic was a hot one among her friends.

 

“I honestly think they are setting us up because they want to do a tax increase,” Ms. Roberts said. “I think by shutting down things people want, they will give us one.”

 

Arizona is not alone in singling out toilets. Colorado, Georgia, Vermont and Virginia are among states that have also closed rest stops, though Virginia’s new governor, Robert F. McDonnell, has vowed to reopen 19 stops that closed last year.

 

Well, at least Sheriff Joe Arpaio hasn’t been forced to empty the prisons.

 

† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: Freelance writer John Kenney does a humorous riff on the closing line of a New York Times article about the results of President Barack Hussein Obama’s first routine physical since assuming office (“One oddity of the report: Mr. Obama weighed 179.9 pounds with his shoes and workout attire on, which is not the usual way to measure a patient’s weight.”), envisioning a Republican cabal led by Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell (KY) accusing Obama of trying to obscure his true weight “to add bulk to his delicate frame” and threatening an investigation, even as media outlets reported his “true weight” being 127 lbs (FOX News) or 11 lbs, 3 oz(which Vogue editor Anna Wintour deemed “almost the ideal weight, if he could lose three more pounds.” Unfortunately, the truth is that Obama is viewed as a 98-pound weakling by allies and adversaries alike, so the “unbearable lightness of leading” is not quite as metaphorical as the satire would suggest. 

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II): In an article carrying the hed, “Locked, Loaded, and Ready to Caffeinate” The New York Times is making an issue of open carry laws, trying to drive a wedge between Second Amendment proponents [emphasis throughout, The Stiletto]:

 

[A] grass-roots effort among some gun rights advocates is shifting attention to a different goal: exercising the right to carry unconcealed weapons in the 38 or more states that have so-called open-carry laws allowing guns to be carried in public view with little or no restrictions. The movement is not only raising alarm among gun control proponents but also exposing rifts among gun rights advocates. …

 

“Our point is to do the same thing that concealed carriers do,” said Mike Stollenwerk, a co-founder of OpenCarry.org, which serves as a national forum. “We’re just taking off our jackets.”

 

The goal, at least in part, is to make the case for liberalized concealed weapon laws by demonstrating how uncomfortable many people are with publicly displayed guns. The tactic has startled many business owners like Peet’s Coffee and Tea and California Pizza Kitchen, which forbid guns at their establishments. So far, Starbucks has resisted doing the same.

 

The open-carry movement is a wild card in gun rights advocacy and in some ways is to the N.R.A. and other mainstream gun rights advocacy groups what the Tea Party movement is to the Republican Party. …

 

Some gun rights advocates see risks in the approach. …

 

Robert Weisberg, a gun law expert and a criminal justice professor at Stanford University, described the open-carry activists as “a liability” for the N.R.A., in particular.

 

While the N.R.A. is almost always going to support the increased deregulation of guns, Professor Weisberg said, the organization keeps its distance from open-carry advocacy because it does not want to distract attention from its higher priority of promoting the right to carry concealed weapons.

 

“Add to this that the N.R.A. is a very disciplined, on-message organization,” he said, contrasting the N.R.A.’s approach with the free-wheeling nature of some open-carry advocates.

 

Does anyone at The Times even know what "locked and loaded" means? It pertains to an M-16 rifle, not a handgun in a holster either carried openly (that is, visible outside the clothing) or concealed (under a jacket or in a purse). Just about all states and localities that allow unlicensed gun owners to carry side arms openly also require them to be unloaded. This headline and article is not only offensive to law-abiding citizens who own guns, but once again shows that no one at the Times understands firearms, nor how (or perhaps why) to perform a simple Google search to research how they work.

†Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Garbage In, Garbage Out: Part II): After the local teachers union in RI refused to work a longer school day and tutor struggling students at Central Falls High School without a pay raise, the school district's board of trustees allowed Superintendent Frances Gallo to fire the entire faculty by the end of the year. Under the Obama administration’s $3.5 billion School Improvement Grants targeting high schools with graduation rates below 60 percent, the mass firings are one of the four options permitted to turn failing schools around to qualify for the federal funds. Central Falls High School “has long been one of the worst-performing” in the state, reports The Associated Press, with 52 percent of students graduating within four years and 30 percent dropping out.

 

AP notes that Chicago and Los Angeles have also taken similarly drastic steps in the past with mixed results, because new teachers “still grapple with problems of poverty and discipline.”

 

For her part, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten complains that the Central Falls teachers were “scapegoated,” and the school’s teachers contend that such “wholesale firings unfairly target instructors who work with impoverished children who have been neglected for years.” But President Barack Hussein Obama counters, "If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn't show any sign of improvement, then there's got to be a sense of accountability."

 

Teachers coast to coast – many who complained bitterly about President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” and voted for Obama to leave the previous administration’s standards-based accountability education reform program behind - are up in arms, condemning the firing of 93 of their colleagues an insult (one Houston union official removed the Obama sticker from his truck, and says teachers who worked hard to elect Obama are “having to dig the knife out of our back”), reports The New York Times:

 

[H]undreds of other school districts across the nation could face similarly hard choices in coming weeks, as a $3.5 billion federal school turnaround program kicks into gear.

 

While there is fierce disagreement over whether the firings were good or bad, there is widespread agreement that the decision would have lasting ripples on the nation’s education debate - especially because Mr. Obama seized on the move to show his eagerness to take bold action to improve failing schools filled with poor students.

 

“This is the first example of tough love under the Obama regime, and that’s what makes it significant,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, an educational research and advocacy organization.

 

“I think it’s going to give some cover to other school boards and school superintendents around the country that want to do something similar,” Mr. Petrilli said. “They can say the president of the United States, Barack Obama, someone the teachers voted for, supports us here to take some radical actions to shake up our schools.”

 

As the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers and the Democrats have a symbiotic relationship, the two national teachers’ unions are trying to help Central Falls school administrators and teachers work out their differences.
 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on the healthcare providers at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami and Americans from all walks of life who have raised money to repair and rehabilitate the hands of blind, Julliard-trained violinist Romel Joseph after he was rescued  from the rubble of Haiti’s New Victorian School. The Washington Post reports:

 

Joseph's left hand was broken and his right hand was impaled by nails from a wall that had fallen on him. A second wall had crushed his right leg and pinned his heel. Trapped for 18 hours, he wondered if he would survive - or if he would want to. …

 

Across the United States, friends and strangers have rallied to aid Joseph, 50, who lost his pregnant wife, Myslie, 26, in the rubble. Last month, Andover Chamber Music in Massachusetts held a benefit concert for him. Another concert at San José State University was aimed at helping the New Victorian School's 300 students, who had already gone home before the quake struck. Stevie Wonder gave Joseph a keyboard to aid his recovery. South Miami middle schoolers brought their instruments to Joseph's bedside and played Mozart for him. …

 

While Joseph is grateful for the care he's getting, he also betrays flashes of frustration, fussing at the nurses, turning up his nose at the soup, and pecking at the keys longer than his physical therapist would like.

 

"He doesn't like being a patient," said his doctor, Patrick W. Owens. "He has all these things he really wants to do outside the hospital and sees this as a big setback to his plans."

 

Owens, a hand specialist, didn't know who Joseph was when they met. "His number just came up and I was there," he said. But after learning that he was a violinist, "there was some pressure" to perform a perfect operation "on someone whose hand is their entire being and purpose." …

 

But Joseph isn't sure he'll ever be the same musician. "These guys have no idea what it takes to play the violin," he said. He plays the donated keyboard for exercise and spends five hours a day breathing pure oxygen in a hyperbaric chamber to help his hands mend more quickly.  

        

As Charles Dickens’ Mr. Bumble observed, “the law is an ass.” And sometimes, it’s the judge who interprets the law who’s the bigger ass.

 

Inspired by the SeaWorld killer whale incident, college student Nicholas Brilleaux published a fake news story, “Giraffe Claims Third Victim at Global Wildlife,” on his satirical Website, Hammond Action News. The February 25^th post related how "veteran wildlife guide Dizzy Dimarco" had been tossed into the top of a tree by a “rogue giraffe” and directed readers to watch an upcoming TV special, "When Good Giraffes Go Bad,” on a local TV station.

 

Global Wildlife Center officials didn’t find the spoof amusing. The Folsom, LA, wildlife preserve’s president, Ken Matherne, sent an E-mail to Brilleaux threatening to file criminal charges, FCC charges, fraud charges, an IRS complaint, a governor’s office complaint, and a federal lawsuit against him, reports FPTV (Channel 17-Hammond, LA). Global Wildlife Foundation also hired Metairie lawyer Robert McComiskey to request an injunction against HAN on the grounds that the killer giraffe story is “malicious” and “defamatory.”  

 

As Law.com’s Legal Blog Watch points out:

 

HAN does not pretend to be a real news source. Its posts are blatantly satirical and the site even includes a disclaimer that reads, simply, "The content of Hammond Action News is purely satirical and for entertainment purposes only."

 

Nevertheless, LA District Judge Brenda Bedsole Ricks incredibly signed a temporary restraining order requiring HAN to remove the post and and scheduled a hearing for March 15^th in 21st Judicial District Court in Amite on whether to make the injunction permanent.

 

Ponchatoula attorney Parker Layrisson, who is representing Brilleaux, correctly notes that “[a]rtistic expressions like parody and satire are protected from censorship by the First Amendment.” Let’s hope that when Judge Beth Wolfe will hears the case in a couple of weeks, she either has a better sense of humor than her colleague – or a better understanding of free speech.

        

Help Prevent Indigestion

- HealthDay News, March 4, 2010

        

Partisan Bickering In Washington Is Nothing New

- The Associated Press, March 6, 2010

        

After a four-month investigation three Providence, RI, police officers have been arrested for (allegedly) dealing cocaine. Detective Joseph Colanduono, Patrolman Robert Hamlin and Sergeant Steven Gonsalves have also been suspended without pay, reports The Associated Press:

 

Three other men were arrested, including Hamlin's brother, Albert, who police describe as a major cocaine dealer and the primary target of their investigation. Police say Robert Hamlin, a school resource officer at a Providence high school, helped his brother avoid getting caught by giving names of narcotics detectives and providing descriptions of their police cars, said State Police Capt. David Neill. …

 

Also arrested was Khalid Mason, who in 2007 faced drug dealing charges that were dismissed by a federal judge after a Providence police sergeant testified at a pretrial hearing that he didn't have any notes or reports from his investigation. That case is not connected to the current arrests, police said.

 

Mason supplied drugs to Albert Hamlin, who would purchase one kilogram of cocaine at a time for about $35,000 and break down the drugs into smaller quantities, which he would then sell, police said.

 

Gonsalves, 47, is charged with soliciting another to commit a crime. Robert Hamlin, 33, is charged with conspiracy to possess cocaine, and Colanduono, 44, is charged with conspiracy to deal cocaine and compounding and concealing a felony.

        

† Life Imitates “A Law Abiding Citizen”: The recession and the intractable level of joblessness that resulted has drained state coffers of tax receipts. Instead of cutting bloated state government budgets by making tough choices, as newly-elected governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) is demanding of state legislators and town councils, CA and other states are emptying their prisons, reports The New York Times:

 

In the rush to save money in grim budgetary times, states nationwide have trimmed their prison populations by expanding parole programs and early releases. But the result - more convicted felons on the streets, not behind bars - has unleashed a backlash, and state officials now find themselves trying to maneuver between saving money and maintaining the public’s sense of safety. …

 

“Early releases have been a problem in Los Angeles County since the 1980s, after a federal judge ruled that overcrowded conditions in the nation's largest county jail system amounted to cruel and unusual punishment for inmates,” reports the Los Angeles Times:

 

Freeing some early was meant to be a temporary fix but has continued ever since, ebbing and flowing over the years.

 

The practice increased dramatically earlier this decade, when budget cuts prompted Baca to close jail facilities, allowing some inmates freedom after serving only 10% of their time. A 2006 Times investigation found that nearly 16,000 inmates released early were rearrested for new offenses while they were supposed to be in jail. Sixteen were charged with murder.

 

Over the last few years, sheriff's officials began reopening shuttered jail areas and lengthening the time inmates served.

 

But now, amid the troubled economy and state budget crisis, Baca said the department again needs to make major cuts. …

 

The department is considering $128 million in cuts over the next 16 months from its nearly $1.3-billion general fund budget.

 

Much of the savings - about $58 million - would be achieved through reductions in overtime, and Baca said that will inevitably require shutting some parts of the jails.

 

"You cannot cut dollars from the budget and keep facilities open to the level they were before the cuts," he said. "At some point, the integrity of the system starts to break."

 

“Integrity” is an interesting choice of words when describing a state penal system that opens the jailhouse door after an inmate has served only 10 percent of his or her sentence.

 

† The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II: Aside from being a caffeine addict, The Stiletto has another reason to patronize Starbucks: In those states permitting people to openly carry firearms, the company has a “long-standing policy of complying” in the belief that its baristas “could be harmed if the stores were to ban guns,” reports The Wall Street Journal:

 

Starbucks Corp. and some other chain stores in the U.S. are finding themselves caught in the middle of a firearms debate, as gun-control advocates go up against a burgeoning campaign by gun owners to carry holstered pistols in public places.

 

The "open carry" movement, in which gun owners carry unconcealed handguns as they go about their everyday business, is loosely organized around the country but has been gaining traction in recent months. Gun-control advocates have been pushing to quash the movement, including by petitioning the Starbucks coffee chain to ban guns on its premises.

 

Businesses have the final say on their property. But the ones that don't opt to ban guns - such as Starbucks - have become parade grounds of sorts for open-carry advocates. …

 

In 29 states, it's legal to openly carry a loaded handgun, without any form of government permission. Another 13 allow an unconcealed loaded handgun with a carry permit, according to opencarry.org, which is a loosely organized Web forum for the movement. …

 

Supporters are spreading in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and other areas. Some are making lists of "OC-friendly" locales, and encouraging boycotts of businesses with no-weapons signs. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Home Depot Inc., Best Buy Co. and Barnes & Noble Inc., are designated as "open-carry" friendly in some online forums or say they abide by existing laws. "Our practice is to comply with local and state laws," said Best Buy spokeswoman Sue Busch Nehring.

 

Starbucks takes the view that, "The political, policy and legal debates around these issues belong in the legislatures and courts, not in our stores."

 

† Always Remember And Don’t Ever Forget (second item): It was a particularly bad week to be a Turk. On Wednesday, a panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave short shrift to Harvey Silverglate’s contention that his clients’ First Amendment rights were violated by education officials in MA removing Web sites pushing Turkish propaganda denying the Armenian Genocide from teacher curriculum guide in Griswold v. Driscoll. The next day, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 23 to 22 to send H. Res. 252 affirming that the Armenian Genocide is a historical fact (text) to the full House.

 

Matt Lewis of Politics Daily notes that bipartisanship is “elusive” in Washington, D.C. - except when it comes to the symbolic resolution for the U.S. to recognize the Armenian Genocide (as, BTW, 20 other countries and 43 of our 50 states already have):

 

The resolution's supporters include a diverse and bipartisan group of more than one hundred members, including Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.). …

 

Should the resolution pass the committee, its advocates would then push for an April floor vote, hoping to coincide with the vote with "Armenian Genocide Recognition Day" on April 24. But the resolution also has significant - and bipartisan - opposition. A letter urging congressional colleagues to reject it on the grounds it will complicate sensitive relations with a NATO ally was recently sent to the House Foreign Affairs Committee by Reps. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) and Kay Granger (R-Texas). …

 

Efforts to pass the resolution probably got a boost this past Sunday when CBS' "60 Minutes" aired a segment heavily sympathetic to the Armenian case. The "60 Minutes" segment also included an embarrassing interview with former Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy, who, in references to "death marches," said: "Well, I don't think that it was anything comparable to Auschwitz. This was only deportation. And things happened on the road." …

 

So why should America take a stand? For one thing, many scholars believe the Armenian genocide inspired Adolph Hitler, who noted in 1939 that the world seemed to have forgotten the fate of the Armenians. Silence, in other words, became complicity - and helped set the stage for the Holocaust.

 

President Ronald Reagan sought such moral clarity. Just as he pointedly called the Soviet Union an "evil empire," Reagan did not mince words on this issue. Upon his death, the Armenian National Committee of America noted: "We will remember President Reagan as the last U.S. President to properly commemorate the Armenian genocide."

 

As in 2007 when the “Armenian Genocide Resolution” also cleared the committee, Turkey withdrew its ambassador to the U.S., reports The Associated Press. Given Turkey’s increasing belligerence towards Israel (second item), this time the Jewish state and its friends in the U.S. are refraining from lobbying against passage (last item) of the resolution. Writing on the JTA blog “Capital J,” Ron Kampeas explains:

 

[T]he pro-Israel community is hanging back and telling the lawmakers, "Do what you feel is right. We're not spending political capital on the Turks this season."

 

I honestly did not get the sense that anyone in the pro-Israel lobby is eager for this resolution to pass; just that they did not feel motivated to burn themselves by helping to kill it.

 

Kampeas also notes that in 2007 six of the seven Jews on the committee voted in favor of the resolution (“The single Jew who voted against was Robert Wexler of Florida, who was a friend of the Turkish lobby”) despite “agonizing” over their votes “because of Turkey's good relations (at least then) with Israel.” Three of them - Adam Schiff (D), Howard Berman (D) and the late Tom Lantos (D) represented CA, a state with a large population of Armenian-Americans. But why did the other Jews on the committee vote in favor of the resolution? Because it was the right thing to do:

 

American foreign policy - and this is something we wonks forget - is driven, perhaps to a greater degree than in any other country, by conscience. By moral choice. …

 

Yesterday's vote might not have been in U.S. interests, according to a "realist" foreign policy read. It probably was not in Israel's interests, despite the recent coolness between Israel and Turkey. …

 

American support for Israel has never had a purely "realist," or self-interested, cast - and via Goldblog, Walter Russell Mead at the American Realist makes this case better than I ever could. The support has been, mostly. a moral choice, whatever you make of the morality.

 

And whatever one makes of the wisdom of the vote yesterday - or in 2007 - I remember feeling immensely moved as seven Jewish members voted not in the "realist" interests of the State Department or the Pentagon or of Israel; but in the interests of never again denying that a genocide occurred.

 

† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race: “It sounds like a cheesy Hollywood movie,” reports The Washington Post [contextual video links added by The Stiletto]:

 

White college girls from Arkansas go to a national step dancing competition - a dance form that is a hallmark of black fraternities and sororities - and, gee whiz, win the whole darned thing! Boy, are the black sorority sisters steamed!

 

But wait!

 

In the final reel, five days after the results set off a national ruckus, show organizers say they discovered a "scoring discrepancy." They say the second-place sorority from Indiana University, the pink-and-green Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation's oldest black sorority, is also a winner! Each team gets $100,000 in scholarships!

 

The only problem with this eye-rolling scenario is that … it actually happened. And the Feb. 20 national finals of the Sprite Step Off competition in Atlanta, in which the all-white Zeta Tau Alpha team from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville won what sponsors billed as "the largest Greek stepping competition ever," is scheduled to be broadcast at 3 p.m. Sunday on MTV2. …

 

When the team finished - to wild applause - emcee Ryan Cameron, a local radio personality, rushed onstage: "Whoa! Wow!" Then he playfully admonished the sold-out crowd of 4,600 fans, nearly all of them black, not to be so surprised that the evening's only white contestants were that good.

 

"Close your mouth! Close your mouth!" he said with a laugh. "Stepping is for everybody. If you can step, you can step."

 

But later, when it was announced that the Zetas won, the feel-good vibe evaporated. Large sections of the crowd starting booing. Then Internet and radio-call-in warfare broke out when the videos were posted on YouTube. There were allegations of cultural theft and reverse racism, not to mention race-based taunting and name-calling.

 

† Service With A Snarl: Evergreen Entertainment VP Steven Payne, who famously told a dissatisfied movie patron to "f**k" herself, could learn a thing or two from online shoe retailer Zappos.com. The New York Times reports that Zappos is unveiling a $7 million multiplatform ad campaign that “celebrate[s] its customer service representatives, whom the company refers to as the customer loyalty team”:

 

The intent is to demonstrate to potential customers - and remind current ones - how the employees make it easy to order or return merchandise, either on or by calling a toll-free number. …

 

There will be television commercials, print advertisements and video and display ads on Web sites, along with a presence in social media like Facebook and YouTube and on Zappos.com.

The ads will also appear in an unusual place where Zappos is already advertising: on the bottoms of plastic bins in airport security lines, reflecting the origins of Zappos as a seller of shoes.

 

The campaign is centered on the interaction during phone calls between Zappos employees and customers. The employees are represented by puppetlike characters who are based on and styled after actual Zappos workers.

 

The characters, called Zappets, resemble Muppets who have been to the theater several times to see “Avenue Q.” The idea is to evoke the offbeat company culture for which Zappos has become known. …

 

Some of the commercials use recordings of calls made to Zappos employees, whose voices are heard in the spots. The words “Actual call with Zappos” appear onscreen. The customer service representatives were not aware that the calls were potential fodder for an ad campaign.

 

The calls heard in those commercials were made by actors or Mullen employees posing as customers, asking tough questions or making unusual requests.

 

Editorial Note: Is it The Stiletto's imagination, or have puppets been in the news a lot lately? 

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?): You’d think that President Barack Hussein Obama would have learned not to set deadlines for Congressional action by now, but to quote President Ronald Reagan – a staunch opponent of socialized medicine - “there he goes again.” The New York Times reports:

 

Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told reporters Thursday that the president expected the House to complete its work by March 18, when Mr. Obama is to leave for Australia and Indonesia. But the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and other Congressional leaders outlined steps that would make it difficult to meet that timetable.

 

First, Ms. Pelosi said, Democratic leaders must agree on the substance of a budget reconciliation bill, the likely vehicle to make changes in the health care bill passed by the Senate. At that point, Ms. Pelosi said, House Democratic leaders will consult with their Senate counterparts, and then their own colleagues in the House. She conceded that some Democrats are skittish.

 

“Every vote, every legislative vote is a heavy lift around here,” Ms. Pelosi said.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, “Daddy, What Causes Global Warming?”): Based on private e-mails exchanged by climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences that were obtained by The Washington Times reports that “climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be ‘an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach’ to gut the credibility of skeptics.” In other words, they will continue to operate in the same fashion that gutted their own credibility.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Not Giving Credit Where Credit’s Due): Ahmad Afzali, the imam linked who tipped off would-be NYC subway bomber Najibullah Zazi that he was under federal surveillance, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI when they asked him about his conversations with Zazi, reports The Associated Press:

 

Under the plea deal, Afzali faces up to six months behind bars at sentencing on April 8. It also requires the Afghanistan-born defendant to leave the country within 90 days after completing the sentence or face deportation.

 

After the New York Police Department was alerted to the possible threat, detectives reached out to Afzali to gather information about Zazi and two other men the imam knew from a Queens mosque, Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay. Authorities say the former high school classmates traveled together in 2008 to Pakistan, where Zazi received explosives training.

 

This would be the same Ahmad Afzali who, upon Zazi's arrest, complained bitterly: "Are we going to be treated like this for the rest of our lives? Every Muslim across America is fed up with this kind of mistrust." Every infidel across America (that is to say, Christians and Jews) is tired learning that there are terrorist sympathizers, co-conspirators and wanna-bes like Zazi, his friends and his family (allegedly) trying to kill us right here in the US. FDR would've known what to do with the whole lot of you (second item). Perhaps when the White House is occupied by a president who is deadly serious about protecting the homeland against terrorists within and without, September 11 will not be remembered as the anniversary of the worst terror attack on U.S. soil, but as the anniversary of America and its allies putting down jihadism once and for all.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Red Is The New Blue (Dog): Now that Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) won the people’s seat held by Ted Kennedy for decades, Blue Dog Dems are now being joined by Yellow Dogs in running for the exit. Rep. William Delahunt will not be running for re-election, “ending a nearly 40-year career in elected office and giving Republicans hope of capturing the district, which stretches from Cape Cod to the South Shore,” reports The Boston Globe:

 

The congressman has faced recent questions about the handling of the 1986 Amy Bishop shooting case, which occurred in Braintree when he was Norfolk district attorney. Backed up by his then-top prosecutor, Delahunt has said consistently that his office was not told that Bishop fled with a loaded weapon after killing her brother in what police then called an accident.

 

But the case has absolutely nothing to do with his decision to retire, Delahunt said. Several of his friends and associates confirmed that the lawmaker has been mulling his departure for years, and very seriously considering it for many months.

 

Voters in Delahunt’s 10th District gave Republican Scott Brown his best margins in the state in the Jan. 19 special election to fill Kennedy’s seat, giving the GOP hopes of breaking the Democrats’ lock on the House delegation.

 

The Globe did not mention another controversy in Delahunt’s tenure: During a 2008 hearing on the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques, Delahunt told David Addington, then-chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, that he hoped Al Qaeda was watching C-SPAN so they could see what he looked like (video).

 

Meanwhile, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) resigns from Congress to avoid an ethics investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by a male staffer. Massa, who is battling a recurrence of terminal cancer, did not want to put his family through an ethics investigation, according to press reports. Massa had voted against the House healthcare “reform” bill, and the vacancy lowers the majority House Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs for passage to 216.

 

† Updates To Recent Posts (last item, The Sum For The Parts): U.S. District Judge William Martini in Newark, NJ denied class action status to families seeking damages from funeral homes in three states for a years-long conspiracy to harvest and sell tissues and parts from the bodies of their loved ones' for transplants, reports New Jersey Law Journal:

 

[T]he proliferation of factual differences in the cases make a class action unworkable.

 

And there are too many potential conflicts between the interests of the 13 named plaintiffs and unnamed potential class members numbering in the hundreds, Martini ruled in Kennedy-McInnis v. Biomedical Tissue Services Ltd.

 

The plaintiffs' lawyers greeted the decision with a shrug. Van White, a Rochester, N.Y., solo who filed the putative class action in 2006, says Martini telegraphed his inclination to deny the request months ago.

 

White says the decision actually clears the way for the main effort: individual suits against individual funeral homes by family members. …

 

Seven funeral directors or employees have been found guilty in the scandal, which came to light in 2006.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, What It’s Like To Live In The Bronx): Maybe those Manhattan coyotes should be afraid of the Bronx chickens. The New York Post reports that a fox in a British henhouse met a grisly end when the resident rooster and his three hens together kicked a table over on its head to knock it out and then pecked it to death. Clearly, chickens are not dumb clucks.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (ninth item, Revenge Of The Nerds): Former mayor of Racine, WI, Gary Becker (D) was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of child enticement and attempted sexual assault of a child arising from an Internet sex sting, reports The Associated Press:

 

Judge Stephen Simanek said he was prepared to sentence Becker to probation but was alarmed to discover Becker purchased girls' underwear two weeks ago.

 

With this denouement of a sordid small-town sex scandal, AP retains its unbroken streak of never mentioning Becker’s political affiliation when writing about the progress of his case through the criminal justice system.

        

The New York Post calls a staged Diamond District jewel heist “a real fugazi” [explanatory link added by The Stiletto]:

 

Atul Shah, 48, and Mahaveer Kankariya, 43, owners of Dialite Imports on West 46th Street, were more than a million dollars in debt and concocted the elaborate hoax to collect on a massive insurance policy with Lloyd's of London, authorities said. …

 

The robbery mimicked the opening scene of the 2000 Guy Ritchie film "Snatch," in which Benicio Del Toro and a gang of diamond thieves pose as Hasids.

 

In the real-life version, when the jewelry-store owners reported the bogus Dec. 31, 2008, heist, they claimed that two men - sporting black coats, hats and beards - pulled guns after being buzzed into the store and appeared to make off with a startling haul of precious stones from the safe.

 

The "Hasids" - who had actually been hired by the store owners - were caught on building surveillance entering in their costumes, then spray-painting the camera lenses to make them useless.

 

Surveillance cameras inside the store, however, showed the owners clearing all the bling out of the safe two hours before the alleged robbery. The owners thought they had disabled those cameras.

 

Both men were arrested on charges of grand larceny, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.

        

NYers are used to helicopters racing across the sky to cover a breaking news event or hovering overhead to update the status of a major traffic snarl – and even to film aerial cut away shots for TV shows and movies that are supposed to be taking place in NYC but are really being filmed in Toronto. And city officials are used to getting complaints from NYers about the noise.

 

Both sides will be happy with Eurocopter’s new noise-reducing Blue Edge rotor blade, which brings down the noise level of the spinning blades to 3 or 4 decibels, reports Wired magazine' “Autopia” blog:

 

[T]he company also introduced something called Blue Pulse technology. Also designed to reduce helicopter noise, the Blue Pulse system uses three flap modules in the trailing edge of each rotor blade. Piezoelectric motors move actuate the flaps 15 to 40 times per second in reduce the “slap noise” often heard when a helicopter is descending.

 

Both of these technologies are able to reduce noise by minimizing the blade-vortex interaction of the main rotor on a helicopter. Blade-vortex interaction is the source of the pulsating sound most of us are familiar with when helicopters fly overhead. The noise is created when a rotor blade hits the wake vortex left behind from the blade in front of it. …

 

The company says the goal is to create more environmentally friendly helicopters from both a noise and emissions standpoint.

 

This cockpit recording of Eurocopter’s EC155 with and without the Blue Edge rotor shows the drastic difference in noise-level:

 

        

If You Have Nasal Congestion

-HealthDay News, March 3, 2010

        

Gun Rights Case Likely To Be Landmark Supreme Court Ruling

- Los Angeles Times, February 28, 2010

        

The Washington Times has published the third in a series of its ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) investigations into government workers spending their working hours goofing off and/or looking at porn – first at the National Science Foundation, then at the Securities and Exchange Commission and now at the Department of Veterans Affairs special-events office:

 

The officials include a director who took taxpayer-funded trips to Las Vegas and San Diego that included a sailing trip and a golf outing, records show.

 

The same official - Diane Hartmann, director of national programs and special events - also authorized herself to receive hundreds of hours of leave to which she wasn't entitled, according to a new report by the VA Office of Inspector General.

 

Another employee, whose name and job title VA officials so far have withheld, was caught with thousands of pornographic images on his work computer. …

 

A spokeswoman for the VA declined to comment on specific individuals named in the report, but said officials were weighing disciplinary action. 

        

† Puppet Cleavage Smutty: Colorado Springs Prude: Miss Piggy will be taking a page from Lady Gaga’s playbook - not to mention items from her closet (well, except for pants) – in a new Muppet movie in the works, "The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made," being scripted by "How I Met Your Mother" actor Jason Segel, according to the Los Angeles Times blog "Ministry of Gossip":

 

"Miss Piggy ends up becoming like a Lady Gaga-esque character living in Europe," the source said. "Kermit ends up being destitute and the main characters find him living in squalor."

 

The script is said to involve an evil oil baron bent on destroying the Muppets' historic theater. All the classics, including Gonzo, Beaker and Swedish Chef, will rally to save the space with their version of a star-studded telethon.

 

Perhaps with Lady Gaga's persona serving as inspiration, the taste police won't mind a little puppet cleavage in the future?

 

Colorado Springs, brace yourselves. You may see Miss Piggy’s puppet hams, gams and cleavage in the new Muppet flick. You can’t say you haven’t been warned.

 

† Can The Nutrition Police Lay Off Coffee, Already?: Studies presented at the American Heart Association’s annual conferences on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention and Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism suggest that drinking coffee will not harm – and may even be beneficial to – heart patients, reports HealthDay News:

 

For example, coffee drinkers appear to have a lower risk of hospitalization for abnormal heart rhythms. And there's no indication that having a few cups every day increases the risk of atherosclerosis, the thickening of blood vessel walls that can lead to heart attacks and other problems. What's more, something in coffee other than caffeine might be responsible for a reduced risk of diabetes for women who regularly imbibe java. …

 

One report did find a potential link between coffee drinking and high blood pressure, but the effect was described as "modest." And, like the other studies, it came hedged with the caveat that the finding wasn't based on a controlled trial - the gold standard for assessing risk and benefit - but from observational studies, which don't exclude all possible factors.

 

† All The News That’s Fart To Print: Here we are about to commemorate 40 years since the first Earth Day, and The Washington Post notes a crappy environmental irony:

 

The United States has reduced the manmade pollutants that left its waterways dead, discolored and occasionally flammable.

 

But now, it has managed to smother the same waters with the most natural stuff in the world.

 

Animal manure, a byproduct as old as agriculture, has become an unlikely modern pollution problem, scientists and environmentalists say. The country simply has more dung than it can handle: Crowded together at a new breed of megafarms, livestock produce three times as much waste as people, more than can be recycled as fertilizer for nearby fields.

 

That excess manure gives off air pollutants, and it is the country's fastest-growing large source of methane, a greenhouse gas.

 

And it washes down with the rain, helping to cause the 230 oxygen-deprived "dead zones" that have proliferated along the U.S. coast. In the Chesapeake Bay, about one-fourth of the pollution that leads to dead zones can be traced to the back ends of cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys.

 

Despite its impact, manure has not been as strictly regulated as more familiar pollution problems, like human sewage, acid rain or industrial waste. The Obama administration has made moves to change that but already has found itself facing off with farm interests, entangled in the contentious politics of poop. …

 

Around the country, agricultural interests have fought back against moves like these, saying that new rules on manure could mean crushing new costs for farmers.

 

Once again proving that private enterprise and the profit motive can solve problems when Big Government and regulation fail, Perdue has built a $13 million plant in DE that dries and heat-sterilizes poultry manure and compresses it into pellets of organic fertilizer that is sold to golf courses and  homeowners. Calling it a “sort of a reverse chicken,” Perdue spokesman Luis Luna tells the WaPo that “In a chicken, the food goes in and the poop goes out. Here, the poop comes in and the plant food goes out.”

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, “Daddy, What Causes Global Warming?”): The New York Times reports that after months of taking “a vicious beating in the media and on the Internet, accused of hiding data, covering up errors and suppressing alternate views” climate scientists “now realize they are facing a crisis of public confidence and have to fight back”:

 

Tentatively and grudgingly, they are beginning to engage their critics, admit mistakes, open up their data and reshape the way they conduct their work. …

 

A number of institutions are beginning efforts to improve the quality of their science and to make their work more transparent. The official British climate agency is undertaking a complete review of its temperature data and will make its records and analysis fully public for the first time, allowing outside scrutiny of methods and conclusions. The United Nations panel on climate change will accept external oversight of its research practices, also for the first time.

 

Two universities are investigating the work of top climate scientists to determine whether they have violated academic standards and undermined faith in science. The National Academy of Sciences is preparing to publish a nontechnical paper outlining what is known - and not known - about changes to the global climate. And a vigorous debate is under way among climate scientists on how to make their work more transparent and regain public confidence. …

 

The battle is asymmetric, in the sense that scientists feel compelled to support their findings with careful observation and replicable analysis, while their critics are free to make sweeping statements condemning their work as fraudulent.

 

Um, if the process by which climate scientists created global warming models had been transparent and the data on which they are based had been shared for analysis and replication, there would be no need for the investigations and oversight that the “Climategate” revelations have compelled.

 

On Monday Professor Phil Jones, the former head of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, told a special committee of Parliament that it was not “standard practice” to release data and computer models so other scientists could check and challenge research. That being the case, climatology stands apart from every other branch of science. Climate research is also unique in that man-made global warming was considered “settled science” without methods and findings being replicated – in particular, by those who had originally set out to discredit and disprove them.   

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, Madoff’s Victims: Gullible Or Greedy?): Federal Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland dealt a blow to hundreds of Bernie Madoff’s victims, who insisted that court-appointed trustee Irving Picard calculate their losses using the amount shown on the last account statement received from the Ponzi schemer before his arrest. Lifland ruled that the statements “were bogus and reflected Madoff’s fantasy world of trading activity, replete with fraud and devoid of any connection to market prices, volumes or other realities,” and agreed with Picard that investors’ losses amount to “the difference between the cash they invested in their Madoff accounts and the cash they withdrew in the years before the scheme unraveled,” reports The New York Times:

 

Under this “cash in, cash out” approach, investors who have already withdrawn all of their original capital are not entitled to further compensation from the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, an industry-financed organization that oversees brokerage industry bankruptcies and provides limited protection and compensation for customers of failed firms. …

 

But investors who did not retrieve all - or, in many cases, any - of their initial investment with Mr. Madoff have argued that they should have first claim on whatever assets Mr. Picard collects - since it was their money that Mr. Madoff used to cover the withdrawals and fictional profits collected by those who object to Mr. Picard’s approach. …

 

The ruling was immediately denounced by Helen Davis Chaitman, a lawyer for several hundred Madoff victims and a victim herself, who said the decision was “letting Wall Street off the hook at the expense of Main Street investors and taxpayers.”

 

If the decision stands, “no American who invests in the stock market with the hope of retiring on his savings has any protection against a dishonest broker,” Ms. Chaitman said in a statement released by a coalition of Madoff victims. …

 

As her comments suggest, the decision seems certain to be appealed.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws): Three years and $1 billion later, our southwestern border is as wide open to “terrorists, violent drug smugglers and a flood of illegal immigrants,” reports The Washington Times, because repeated Government Accountability Office reports to Congress and Homeland Security since 2007 that the “virtual fence” being built by Boeing “needed better oversight and accountability, and that it lacked realistic measures of cost, timing and benefits”:

 

Early on, GAO found that Boeing had failed to show how the $1.1 billion high-tech system would meet the objectives of the Secure Border Initiative (SBI), a comprehensive, multiyear, $4 billion Homeland Security proposal to secure the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, and urged revisions to the company's lucrative contract.

 

Despite such warnings, based on GAO's detailed evaluations of the root causes of major problems, the goals of the high-tech project, dubbed "SBInet," were not realized and deadlines were pushed back. In September, GAO reported to Congress that the virtual fence scheduled for completion in 2009 will not be ready until at least 2016 - if it goes forward at all. …

 

The GAO has asked repeatedly how much more the government is willing to spend on a failed initiative.

 

"There's a trillion-dollar budget deficit and you're looking for programs that don't work?" said Richard M. Stana, GAO's director of homeland security issues. "This one hasn't proven yet that it's workable." …

 

William K. Moore, a former political consultant and now a lobbyist whose clients include the Texas Border Coalition, a group of local officials and community leaders who represent more than 6 million people who live along the Mexican border, described the project as a "political strategy" by the Bush administration to shore up immigration reform.

 

"The department either pursued it for a political purpose that had nothing to with homeland security, or pursued it without any strategy whatsoever," Mr. Moore said.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, How ACORN Got Buried By “Squirrelly Right-Wingers”): After a four-month investigation of ACORN triggered by undercover videos made by conservative citizen journalists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes announced that having reviewed unedited footage, he found no criminality on the part of three ACORN employees. A law enforcement source tells the  New York Daily News that the unedited tape did not show clear-cut evidence that the ACORN workers were advising a prostitute how to hide the source of her income when applying for loans and grants through the group.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, What It’s Like To Live In The Bronx): Those feral chickens roaming The Bronx may be able to find a new home and a new purpose to their indolent lives – but they will have to cross the pond. The environmentally-conscious town council of Mouscron, Belgium, will give each family two chickens. The idea is, people will feed the chickens food scraps that would normally be thrown in the trash, and the chickens will give them eggs to eat. The only catch, reports BBC News: Recipients of the chickens must agree not to eat or give them away for two years.

 

Meanwhile, the cougars roaming Manhattan have been joined by coyotes. Not illegal alien smugglers - this isn’t Phoenix - Canis latrans. Good thing the Bronx chickens are separated from the Manhattan coyotes by the Harlem river. Or should that be the other way around?

 

† Updates To Previous Posts  (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on college students nationwide who plan to spend their spring break in Haiti – even though they are being discouraged from lending a hand because conditions remain dangerous, reports USA Today:

 

David Adewumi's plans for spring break don't look like those of most other college juniors. He won't be heading to a resort town for a week of beaches and bars, or home for a week of naps and TV-watching.

 

Instead, he and 10 other students from Pennsylvania State University will fly south to Haiti, on an earthquake relief trip. They expect to spend a week helping with minor medical care, food distribution and shelter building. "We know we're a tiny Band-Aid on a huge wound," he said. "But we're still doing what we can to help." …

 

Adewumi, a Spanish major who a few years ago spent six months on a mission to the Dominican Republic, said his group is going to Haiti because they are needed there. "We didn't invite ourselves to come. An organization on the ground decided they needed a certain number of nonskilled laborers. If they didn't want us, we wouldn't be there." The trip is being coordinated by Adventures in Missions, a Christian group. …

 

Major secular groups like Habitat for Humanity and Partners in Health aren't taking unskilled volunteers, but some religious groups and institutions are sponsoring trips. …

 

For those who want to help but don't have skills that make them desirable volunteers this spring, the obvious means of contribution is financial. Brooks, of CIDI, is urging volunteers to help from afar, whether by raising funds, counseling Haitians in the United States or providing legal aid.

 

After the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that Haitian nationals would be eligible to apply for temporary protected status, the University of Miami School of Law's Health and Elder Law Clinic quickly developed a system largely staffed by students to help refugees with the paperwork.

        

Zachary Leone, 19, was arrested on two counts of unlawful manufacture of a destructive device, two counts of disorderly conduct and unlawful sale/use of fireworks for (allegedly) packing a homemade bomb into a tree in his backyard and setting it off. Neighbors who heard "two very loud kabooms" called 9-1-1, and when Polk County (OR) Sheriff's Office deputies found more explosives and what looked like another bomb inside Leone’s home they called in Salem Police bomb squad, reports The Associated Press. Leone had told neighbors he wanted to take a tree down.