† Is This Any Way To Run A Transition?: President Barack Hussein Obama announced seven U.S. Attorney nominations this week, but is lagging in filling the 93 U.S. Attorney posts, reports The Legal Intelligencer:

According to Main Justice, a Web site that covers the Justice Department, the Obama administration has so far secured confirmation for 36 [posts], and … an additional 30 nominees are now awaiting confirmation.

But 16 months into Obama's term, the site shows that 28 districts are still somewhere in the beginning stages of the process, often with recommendations from senators already made to the White House but not yet acted on.

"This is really getting to be a squandered opportunity," one lawyer said. "I mean, this is one-third of the way through Obama's term. You need to get these offices up and running."

† Homelessness In The Time Of Obama: A Camden County official who wanted to shut down a campground tent settlement near downtown Camden told the homeless residents that they could stay in their self-governing community until adequate housing could be found, reports WPSG-TV (Channel 3-Philadelphia):

Gino Lewis, the official who wanted to close the enclave, arrived there Thursday morning to tell community founder Lorenzo "Jamaica" Banks that Tent City would not be closed yet …

Banks, a Vietnam War veteran who says it's been 37 years and 11 months since he had a home, said he found the woods a few blocks from downtown Camden about four years ago.

He and some other homeless people cleaned it up, wrote rules and invited others to live there.

Residents of the encampment consider Banks the mayor of "Tent City." Some hold positions there that include cook, security director, spokesmen and even community outreach coordinator. …

During summer months, the population can grow as high as 100.

The push to close the camp began after Banks went to officials last year seeking help for his constituents. A task force was formed. The county pledged to use some of its roughly $1 million in federal economic stimulus money for homeless aid to get the tent dwellers into homes [emphasis, The Stiletto].

Banks is hoping that he and his neighbors will be properly housed by July 1^st, but the county has not yet committed to a date certain.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: Homeowners facing foreclosure are suing appraisers for inflating the estimates of the value of the homes they purchased, reports The Recorder:

Borrower lawsuits account for about 75 percent of the uptick in lawsuits against appraisers, said Peter Christensen, general counsel for Santa Barbara, Calif.-based LIA Administrators and Insurance Services, an insurance administrator specializing in coverage for real estate appraisers.

Still, overall the amount of litigation against appraisers is relatively small potatoes, Christensen added - annually about 1,200 lawsuits for professional liability before the mortgage crisis, and now around 2,000, representing about $100 million a year in damages nationwide. "It's a very small world," said Christensen, who is also the author of a blog about legal defense of real estate appraisers.

Julia Wei, a real estate lawyer in Palo Alto, Calif., is already seeing more lawsuits by lenders in the "surge" she's seen in appraiser cases in the last two years. "I would say that it went from a lot of work defending [all real estate] professionals to pretty much exclusively defending appraisers," she said. "It was that dramatic of a shift in a focus."

† The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II: Human Events blog Guns & Patriots tells the tale of New Orleans barkeep JoAnn Guidos, who has spent nearly two years trying to get back the guns that the federal government unlawfully confiscated from her and other residents during and immediately after Hurricane Katrina:

“I didn’t want to evacuate because I didn’t want people to break in and destroy this place. And that’s what happened. They were breaking into houses and then, setting them on fire.” …

On September 8, 2008, Guidos and friends decided to leave New Orleans. Things had quieted down with the arrival of federal troops, but heat and humidity stayed high. … While loading the van in front of the bar, she carried her Browning 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun and wore a .38 in her belt. Five U.S. Marshals … got out of their vehicle and came running toward Guidos and crew with M-16s, yelling “Put the guns down!” … They never showed any ID, and they never gave her a receipt. …

“My weapons were taken by the U.S. Marshals, and supposedly they were in federal custody and I was verbally told that the Feds transferred the weapons to New Orleans, but I cannot find out who transferred them and who received them. …

Guidos concluded, “I’m looking at it like it’s a lost case. Even if I did get an attorney to find out if they have the weapons and if they were transferred, then what? How long will it take and at what expense to me for $3,000 worth of weapons?

Guidos vows: “I’ll be damned if anyone is going to take my guns from me again. I’m not going to let it happen again.”

† NYC Councilman To Introduce Horseless Carriages Bill (last item): The NYC Council passed regulations giving Central Park’s carriage horses more vacation time than all but the most senior employees at most large corporations. The Associated Press reports:

[The bill requires] carriage horses to have larger stalls, five weeks off per year and blankets in cold and wet weather. …

Carriages must have emergency brakes and reflective material. They also must be equipped with manure-catching devices. …

Mayor Michael Bloomberg supports the bill and is expected to sign it.

Being a bazillionaire, it doesn’t trouble Bloomberg that the cost to take a romantic carriage ride is going up for the first time in 20 years, from $1.13 per minute (or $34 for the first half-hour) to $2.50 per minute (or $50 for the first 20 minutes) - which is more than double the old rate. Someone’s got to pay for a horse to be horsing around for five weeks while being fed, watered and groomed, and that someone is - surprise! - the consumer.

† What It’s Like To Live In The Bronx: Alewife herring were reintroduced to the Bronx River in 2006 and for the second year in a row the fish returned from the ocean to spawn in their outer borough birthplace, reports the New York Daily News:

Linda Cox of the Bronx River Alliance and the city Parks Department called the second annual catch on Sunday a "testament" to restoration efforts along the long-polluted channel. …

Alewives once packed local rivers that empty into Long Island Sound. But mill dams constructed as early as the 1600s kept the fish away. So did gunky Bronx River water, polluted by sewage and clogged with rusty cars. No longer.

Although the alewife has been overfished and named a "species of concern," Sunday's snare demonstrates there's hope for the herring - and Bronx birdwatchers. Herons favor alewives, as do Long Island Sound seals.

Cox was so excited that she mixed her piscatorial metaphors: "It confirms that we have a new species on the Bronx River. Last year was no fluke."

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, “Daddy, What Causes Global Warming?”): A second investigation into the “Climategate" E-mails finds that scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit did not engage in deliberate malpractice, however that “ice hockey stick” graph that global warming proponents have been beating the rest of us over the head with is “exaggerated,” reports The Financial Times of London:

Professor David Hand, president of the Royal Statistical Society, said that a graph shaped like an ice hockey stick that has been used to represent the recent rise in global temperatures had been compiled using “inappropriate” methods.

“It used a particular statistical technique that exaggerated the effect [of recent warming],” he said. …

Although Wednesday’s report - commissioned by UEA with advice from the Royal Society, the UK’s prestigious national science academy - exonerated the unit’s scientists, it criticised climate experts for failures in handling statistics.

“It is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians,” the report concluded. …

The report into the science produced by UEA, which came from a panel chaired by Lord Oxburgh, a scientist and former Shell chairman, was the second investigation into Climategate in the UK. The first, by a committee of MPs, also found the scientists innocent of manipulating data, though it said they may have breached Freedom of Information legislation.

An investigation into the scientists’ handling of FOI requests is still under way.

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, NJ Taxpayers Must Choose Between Dollars And Dolphins): There are no sacred cows as NJ Gov. Chris Christie (R) whacks away at the $10 billion deficit in the $29.3 billion 2010-11 state budget. He’s cut the entire $65 million allocation to the for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and wants to reduce the state’s level of local school aid by $820 million. NJ voters – amongst the highest taxed in the country – are getting into the spirit, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey: 

‡ 65% of New Jersey voters favor a one-year pay freeze on the salaries of administrators, teachers and school workers. ...

‡ 66% say the union is more interested in protecting its members’ jobs than in the quality of education.

‡ 52% think public employee unions like the New Jersey Education Association put a significant strain on the state’s budget.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, That ‘70s Show): Eric Collins pleaded guilty to acting with criminal negligence and will be sentenced to 143 days of community service and three years' probation for shooting a 30-inch carbon aluminum arrow through a fence, striking Denise Delgado-Brown in the stomach as she escorted church parishioners to a Bronx nursing home next door.

† Updates To Previous Posts (ninth item, Multiculturalism Vs. Animal Rights): For years, West African immigrants who are hankering for bushmeat - cured or smoked meat from bats, monkeys, cane rats and other animals that they chowed down on in their homelands – found ways of smuggled the contraband into the U.S. Authorities have tried to crack down on smuggling the meat of endangered species with little success, but they have a compelling new reason to redouble their efforts, reports The Wall Street Journal:

Researchers testing bushmeat smuggled into the U.S. have found strains of a virus in the same family as HIV …

A fraction of the bushmeat coming into the New York City area is seized at the border by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and hundreds of samples from at least 14 species have been sent to be studied. ,,,

The danger to Americans lies in the possibility of a disease entering through smuggled animals and meat such as a monkey pox outbreak in 2003 that the Center for Disease Control traced to African rodents.

Scientists from the CDC said there are many cases of diseases transmitted through handling meat. Cooking meat kills many food borne pathogens such as salmonella, though some diseases carried by animals are not killed in the cooking process.