† Romney: The Sequel: Just as his December 2007 "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" speech about his Mormonism failed to allay people's concerns about the more exotic tenets of his belief system, former Gov. former Gov. Mitt Romney's (R-MA) "Non, je ne regrette rien" speech at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center in Ann Arbor, MI, about his foundering universal healthcare coverage plan in MA won't do much to allay the fears of independents and conservatives that the speech is nothing more than a political pivot.

 

The Wall Street Journal called the speech a "daredevil act" in which he tries to jump over “unbridgeable policy and philosophical differences … like Evel Knievel heading for the Snake River Canyon”:

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." If we may judge by his health-care speech at the University of Michigan yesterday, Mitt Romney is a very smart man. …

 

[I]f Massachusetts is the triumph that Mr. Romney claimed yesterday, well, what's the problem with Washington exporting the same successful model? If an individual mandate to purchase health insurance was indispensable in the Bay State, as Mr. Romney argued, why isn't it necessary in every other state too? …

 

[H]e might have rebutted the President from experience and evidence. Instead, he has lashed himself to the contradiction of attacking Mr. Obama's plan while claiming his own is different.

 

Many people have tried to talk Mr. Romney down from this daredevil campaign act, but Mr. Romney privately says he doesn't want to reinforce the rap he had in 2008 that he had reinvented himself too often. As a political matter, however, we think it's better to change positions than to try to defend the intellectually indefensible.

 

Yes, but not for Romney, whose political career is littered with a long line of cynical, opportunistic flip-flops. Doug Gross, who chaired Romney’s 2008 campaign in IA, explains Romney’s dilemma to The Boston Globe:

 

He has two issues - he’s got [health care] and he’s got the issue about whether or not people think he’s genuine. So if he tries to run away from health care, it will make his other problem, the genuineness problem, even worse. So he’s got to own it. And then deal with it.

 

Dem strategist Mo Elleithee is less charitable in his assessment of the pickle Romney’s in, telling The Washington Times:

 

His biggest problem is that he either has no idea of who he is politically or he doesn't like who he is and keeps trying to change it.

 

Mr. Elleithee said that Mr. Romney ran as a progressive in his failed 1994 U.S. Senate bid in Massachusetts, as a conservative in his failed 2008 presidential race, and now is running away from his marquee legislative achievement in his second bid for the White House.

 

Or, as The Washington Post puts it: “His greatest achievement is also his biggest liability. It is the kind of paradox that would test the most agile of politicians, of whom Mitt Romney is not one.”

 

Romney’s speech in a nutshell: A contradiction wrapped in a dilemma inside a paradox.  

 

The relevant sound bites (and the accompanying PowerPoint presentation; The WaPo reports that, “the Democratic National Committee mockingly sent reporters a set of what it said were ‘missing slides,’ comparing Romney’s past statements on the issue with his current ones.”):

 

‡ Our plan was a state solution to a state problem and his was a power grab by the federal government to put in place a one-size-fits-all plan across the nation. … a government takeover of health care.

 

‡ My Massachusetts health-care plan was considered, at least by me, to be an asset in my campaign - I hear some laughter in the room. That’s not the case now.

 

‡ A lot of pundits around the nation are saying that I should just stand up and say this whole thing was a mistake, that it was a boneheaded idea and I should just admit it. But there’s only one problem with that: It wouldn’t be honest. I, in fact, did what I believed was right for the people of my state.’

 

‡ There’s a recognition in this country that we are a grand and generous people. The idea that we would ever say to people, ‘Tough luck, you’re poor, you’re not going to have health care,’ that’s just not American. We’re going to care for one another. Overall am I proud of the fact that we did our best for our people and got people insured? Absolutely.

 

Hence, The Wall Street Journal suggesting that Romney try to knock Joe Biden off the Dem ticket in this scathing editorial:

 

Like Mr. Obama's reform, RomneyCare was predicated on the illusion that insurance would be less expensive if everyone were covered. Even if this theory were plausible, it is not true in Massachusetts today. So as costs continue to climb, Mr. Romney's Democratic successor now wants to create a central board of political appointees to decide how much doctors and hospitals should be paid for thousands of services. The Romney camp blames all this on a failure of execution, not of design. But by this cause-and-effect standard, Mr. Romney could push someone out of an airplane and blame the ground for killing him. Once government takes on the direct or implicit liability of paying for health care for everyone, the only way to afford it is through raw political control of all medical decisions.

 

Mr. Romney's refusal to appreciate this, then and now, reveals a troubling failure of political understanding and principle. The raucous national debate over health care isn't about this or that technocratic detail, but about basic differences over the role of government. In the current debate over Medicare, Paul Ryan wants to reduce costs by encouraging private competition while Mr. Obama wants the cost-cutting done by a body of unelected experts like the one emerging in Massachusetts. …

 

For a potential President whose core argument is that he knows how to revive free market economic growth, this amounts to a fatal flaw. Presidents lead by offering a vision for the country rooted in certain principles, not by promising a technocracy that runs on "data." Mr. Romney's highest principle seems to be faith in his own expertise.

 

And that’s precisely what irks Erick Erickson of RedStateNews:

 

[I]n his Power Point presentation on slide 7, Mitt Romney defends the individual mandate as okay at the state level, but not at the federal level. That nuance may be constitutionally sound, but it sounds very much like Romney defending European socialized medicine at the state level. …

 

It is reassuring to see a candidate proud of his record - but being proud of destroying the Massachusetts healthcare system is nothing to be proud of. Thanks to Romneycare, the Massachusetts government is imposing price controls on hospitals, doctors, and other health care providers. They are doing everything conservatives have feared would happen under Obamacare.

 

For his part, Grover Norquist, president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, says that he was left wondering "Why would you be against a mandate nationally, but for it in Massachusetts?"

 

Even as he defended RomneyCare, Romney proposed a new national healthcare plan that is “radically different from his plan for Massachusetts,” The Boston Globe reports:

 

It includes no mandate for individual coverage, and changes tax laws to encourage people to buy their own portable insurance rather than relying on their employer’s coverage. …

 

His new, five-point proposal has an overarching goal of giving states more power in the health coverage arena. He would give states block grants for Medicaid, for example, and allow them to craft their own coverage plans.

 

He also talked of a new market-based system in which insurers would compete for customers across state lines and Consumer Reports would rank the best plans.

 

His plan gives people incentives to purchase their own insurance and have more financial stake in their health care decisions. To do so, he proposes a system that would allow people to take the money that their employer puts toward their health care and use it themselves.

 

He also wants the federal government to give people a tax deduction if they buy their own insurance, just as those who buy it through their employers can now have their health costs taken out before taxes. …

 

Romney’s plan also includes a change in the system of dealing with malpractice, capping damages in lawsuits and giving grants to states to come up with alternate ways to resolve legal disputes.

 

His plan would still ensure that some people with preexisting conditions aren’t refused access to coverage, one of the most popular aspects of the Obama plan. But Romney said that that requirement would apply only to those who have already had insurance for an undefined amount of time - which could still allow insurers to deny coverage.

 

Before the speech, The Washington Post's Greg Sargent "cut through the B.S.":

 

If Romney … won’t fully repudiate the individual mandate at its core - then it won’t matter what he proposes.

 

And that’s where things still stand.

 

† Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much Foreign Policy: Columnist George Will schools President Barack Hussein Obama in U.S. history:

 

Responding to Ryan’s budget proposal, Obama said it “would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known certainly in my lifetime. In fact, I think it would be fundamentally different than what we’ve known throughout our history.”

 

Well. It is unclear what “fundamentally” means to Obama, but consider some possible metrics of what is, and is not, different than what we have known “throughout our history.” Ryan’s plan would reduce federal spending as a percentage of GDP from the 2009-11 average of 24.4 to 19.9 in 10 years. It was not until the nation was 158 years old - in the Depression year of 1934, with the New Deal erupting - that peacetime federal spending topped 10 percent of GDP, and it did not reach 12 percent until the war preparations of 1941.

 

Ryan’s plan would alter Medicare. But Medicare has existed in its current configuration for only 46 of the nation’s 235 years. …

 

The lesson of all this is that one’s sense of possibilities - and proprieties - is shaped by what we know, and often do not know, about history. The regnant ideology within the Obama administration and among congressional Democrats is reactionary liberalism, the conviction that whatever government programs exist should forever exist because they always have existed. That is, as baby boomers, in their narcissism - or perhaps solipsism; or both - understand “always.”

 

† Global Warming Is In The Eye Of The Beholder: When Secretary of State of Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to Nuuk, Greenland – an “icebound island straddling the Arctic Circle” – to attend a meeting of the eight-nation Arctic Council, she found that “[r]ather than questioning global warming, many of this island’s 60,000 inhabitants seem to be racing to cash in,” The Washington Post reports:

 

The tiny capital of Nuuk is bracing for record numbers of visitors this year; the retreating sea ice means a longer tourist season and more cruise ships from the United States. Hunters are boasting of more and bigger caribou, and the annual cod migration is starting earlier and lasting longer.

 

In the far south, farmers are trying their hand at an exotic form of agriculture: growing vegetables.

 

“Before, the growing season was too short for vegetables,” said Noah Melgaard, a local journalist. “Now it is getting longer each year.” …

 

Other than a single placard that condemned “U.S. killing of Muslims,” the Greenlanders appeared welcoming and polite, if perhaps anxious to learn how industrial nations intended to address the climate shift that is bringing new economic opportunity to the island.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (penultimate item, Never Again Or Forgive And Forget?): Retired U.S. autoworker John Demjanjuk was convicted in a German court of 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder, one for each person who died during his tenure as a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, The Associated Press reports:

 

Presiding Judge Ralph Alt said the 91-year-old was a piece of the Nazis' "machinery of destruction."

 

"The court is convinced that the defendant ... served as a guard at Sobibor from 27 March 1943 to mid-September 1943," Alt said, closing a trial that lasted nearly 18 months.

 

Demjanjuk sat in a wheelchair in front of the judges as they announced their verdict, but showed no reaction. He has denied the charges, but declined the opportunity to make a final statement to the court. …

 

Alt later ordered that Demjanjuk be freed during his appeal - a process that is likely to take six months or more - though it wasn't clear when exactly he would leave the prison.

 

Such a release is not unusual in Germany, and Alt said Demjanjuk did not pose a flight risk because of his advanced age, poor health and the fact that the defendant, deported from the U.S. two years ago, is stateless. The costs of Demjanjuk's two lawyers are being shouldered by German authorities, who routinely pay the legal costs of low-income defendants. …

 

Demjanjuk is not allowed to leave Germany. Alt said that the issue of whether or not Demjanjuk died in a German jail had "nothing to do" with the decision. …

 

There was no evidence that Demjanjuk committed a specific crime. The prosecution was based on the theory that if Demjanjuk was at the camp, he was a participant in the killing - the first time such a legal argument has been made in German courts.

 

Simon Wiesenthal Center Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff says the verdict "sends a very powerful message that, even many years after the crimes of the Holocaust the perpetrators can be brought to justice." These sentiments are echoed by Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress: “There must never be impunity or closure for those who were involved in mass murder and genocide, irrespective of their age,” added

 

In a commentary, John Hayward of Human Events writes:

 

The case of John Demjanjuk has been long, and filled with unexpected twists.  Timeless evil demands relentless justice.  It would be good to say the Nazi hunters are prosecuting the last aging perpetrators of the final genocide, but that wouldn’t be true.  There have been others.  May their victims have equally tireless champions, and may those champions speed the day when there are no more mass murders to prosecute.

 

The Stiletto has no quarrel with this, except to note that the timeless evil of the Armenian Genocide – which was the original genocide and provided Hitler with a blueprint – also demands relentless justice. Yes, there have been other genocides since Hitler’s, because each genocidal maniac expects to get away with it, like the Ottoman Turks did. 
 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws): President Barack Hussein Obama’s flippant remarks about immigration and border control, has syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer sputtering that “[t]he El Paso speech is notable not for breaking any new ground on immigration but for perfectly illustrating Obama’s political style: the professorial, almost therapeutic, invitation to civil discourse, wrapped around the basest of rhetorical devices - charges of malice compounded with accusations of bad faith.” He adds:

 

This impugning of motives is an Obama constant. “They” play politics with deficit reduction, with government shutdowns, with health care. And now immigration. It is ironic that such a charge should be made in a speech that is nothing but politics. There is zero chance of any immigration legislation passing Congress in the next two years. El Paso was simply an attempt to gin up the Hispanic vote as part of an openly political two-city, three-event campaign swing in preparation for 2012.

 

Accordingly, the El Paso speech featured two other staples: the breathtaking invention and the statistical sleight of hand.

 

“The [border] fence is now basically complete,” asserted the president. Complete? There are now 350 miles of pedestrian fencing along the Mexican border. The border is 1,954 miles long. That’s 18 percent. And only one-tenth of that 18 percent is the double and triple fencing that has proved so remarkably effective in, for example, the Yuma sector. Another 299 miles — 15 percent — are vehicle barriers that pedestrians can walk right through.

 

Obama then boasted that on his watch 31 percent more drugs have been seized, 64 percent more weapons - proof of how he has secured the border. And for more proof: Apprehension of illegal immigrants is down 40 percent. Down? Indeed, says Obama, this means that fewer people are trying to cross the border.

 

Interesting logic. Seizures of drugs and guns go up - proof of effective border control. Seizures of people go down - yet more proof of effective border control. Up or down, it matters not. Whatever the numbers, Obama vindicates himself.

 

Rep. Lamar Smith, (R-TX), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has a thing or two of his own to say about Obama’s damned lying statistics in this Washington Times op-ed – because the administration also claims that deportations are up:

 

As the adage goes, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." But according to the Obama administration, if at first you don't succeed, manipulate the results. This especially applies to its border security plan. …

 

The Obama administration used questionable methods to achieve the record deportation numbers.

 

In fact, DHS' Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) included more than 19,000 immigrants who had exited the previous fiscal year. ICE also continued operation of a Mexican repatriation program five weeks longer than it had done previously, allowing the agency to count at least 6,500 exits that otherwise would not have been included. ICE also used "voluntary return" to bolster deportation numbers, but this is not removal because it does not subject an illegal immigrant to penalties for returning to the United States. …

 

Each year, millions of illegal immigrants try to enter the United States. During fiscal 2010, nearly half a million people were apprehended trying to enter the country illegally - and those are just the ones we caught. Border Patrol agents on the ground estimate there are three successful illegal entries for every one illegal immigrant who is apprehended. That means more than 1 million illegal immigrants cross into the U.S. each year.

 

No matter what kind of index the administration manufactures, it cannot change the facts. The truth is that there are massive holes in security along the southern border and the Obama administration has ignored this growing problem for the past two years.

Larry A. Dever, the sheriff of Cochise County, AZ – whose department patrols 83.5 miles of border between the U.S. and Mexico plus an area of his state that’s more than four times the size of Long Island - notes in this New York Times op-ed, that in his speech Obama “said little about the lawsuits by his administration and the American Civil Liberties Union against Arizona’s immigration law, passed just over a year ago but still unenforced, thanks to a federal injunction.” Here are more facts the administration can’t change:

 

There is no river between Arizona and Mexico to create a natural obstacle to illegal immigration, drug trafficking and human smuggling, and our county is a major corridor for all these. At best, illegal aliens and smugglers trespass, damage ranchers’ land, steal water and food and start fires. At worst, people who have come here hoping for freedom and opportunity are raped or abandoned by smugglers and left to die in the desert.

 

Nor are the migrants the only victims. Just over a year ago, while officials at the Department of Homeland Security were declaring they had secured “operational control” of most of the southern Arizona border, my friend Robert N. Krentz Jr., a local rancher, was murdered, most likely by drug smugglers.

 

The people of Cochise County support the state’s immigration law because we want this violence to end. Understandably, we get frustrated and disheartened when the White House, which has failed to secure the border for generations, sues us for trying to fill the legal vacuum.  …

 

Whether illegal aliens committed a crime to enter this country, or a civil offense to remain unlawfully, they are still breaking the law, and S.B. 1070 is Arizona’s solution to help the federal government hold them accountable without becoming embroiled in confusion that enables individuals to fall through the cracks. At the same time, it assures the standards of probable cause and reasonable suspicion are applied throughout the process. …

 

Neither my fellow sheriffs nor I believe the law is a silver bullet, but we do believe it is an important tool. It’s up to the Supreme Court to decide whether we can use it.

 

For his part, in an open letter to Obama, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) takes the president to task for his unseriousness about a very serious issue [Hat Tip: RedStateNews]:

 

When you consult with Latino Hollywood celebrities such as Eva Longoria and Rosario Dawson wanting their take on, you aren’t serious. When you sit down with the SEIU and other union leaders to get their take on immigration reform, you aren’t serious. When you threaten to sue border states that are only doing what the federal government won’t do, you aren’t being serious. And, finally, when you bring up ‘immigration reform’ for political reasons - to fire up the folks on the left as the election season nears - you aren’t serious.

 

When it comes to securing our borders, enforcing our immigration laws and holding businesses accountable to hiring illegal immigrants, Mr. President, I, like many of my Republican colleagues, am serious. And if it would take introducing legislation to build a moat with alligators in order to secure our borders to get you to be serious on the topic - I’m game.”

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Waterboarding Works): Failed Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who again and again reminds The Stiletto why she should have just stayed home on Election Day in 2008, asserts that waterboarding ("an exquisite form of torture") calls former attorney general Michael Mukasey a liar for his assertion that  “the intelligence that led to bin Laden . . . began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding" in this Washington Post op-ed:

 

Osama bin Laden’s welcome death has ignited debate over whether the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners were instrumental in locating bin Laden, and whether they are a justifiable means for gathering intelligence. …

 

But this must be an informed debate. Former attorney general Michael Mukasey recently claimed that That is false.

 

I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti - the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden - as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.

 

In fact, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced false and misleading information. He specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an al-Qaeda facilitator - none of which was true. According to the staff of the Senate intelligence committee, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee - information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in al-Qaeda and his true relationship to bin Laden - was obtained through standard, noncoercive means. …

 

Ultimately, this is more than a utilitarian debate. This is a moral debate. It is about who we are.

 

Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 and from 2001 to 2006 rebuts McCain in this WaPo op-ed published the very next day – using WikiLeaks to substantiate his argument: 

 

As a result of the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation program and the intelligence gained from detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a major fraction of al-Qaeda’s senior leadership has been captured or killed since 2001.

 

This conclusion was inadvertently reinforced recently by WikiLeaks’ illegal disclosure of more than 700 classified Defense Department files on Guantanamo Bay detainees. …

 

They document the deadly techniques and intentions of hundreds of Guantanamo detainees who still desire to return to the fight, and the labors of analysts and interrogators who enabled us to stop additional attacks. …

 

The classified files from Guantanamo Bay, particularly those on senior operative Abu Faraj al-Libi, contain clues about al-Qaeda’s courier network and even mention Abbottabad. Had bin Laden closely followed WikiLeaks’ release of these documents April 25, it is unlikely he would have been there when U.S. Navy SEALs descended into his compound days later. …

 

The documents should also disprove some myths that have dogged Guantanamo and the reputations of those who honorably serve there. The classified record, for example, confirms that three detainees who died in 2006 were suicides - not, as some have irresponsibly alleged, victims of brutal interrogations. …

 

The release of this classified information has compromised intelligence sources and methods, risking lives. The documents indicate, for example, that some al-Qaeda members turned and revealed large quantities of information about their colleagues. …

 

[T]he WikiLeaks documents, coupled with what we know about how bin Laden’s hiding place was discovered, may be among the clearest vindications yet of the Bush administration’s policies in the struggle to protect America and the free world from more terrorist attacks. They may prove the strongest arguments for keeping open the invaluable asset that is Guantanamo Bay.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, The TSA Emperor Wears No Clothes: Part II): Someone who favors Apple for his tech gear should consider the Fourth Amendment implications should customs agents at the airport decide to confiscate his iPhone and/or computer, as well as the identity theft and personal safety implications should a TSA agent decide to steal and sell a laptop synced with an iPhone. 

 

Law Technology News recently explained the Fourth Amendment issues that cellphone tracking data raises:

 

As cell phones contain greater amounts of personal information, it seems that the Fourth Amendment would require police to obtain a warrant prior to searching through the contents. However, a number of courts, relying on Supreme Court cases decided before cell phones existed, have permitted these searches without warrants when a person is arrested.

 

In allowing searches of cell phones after an arrest, courts have relied on an exception to the Fourth Amendment created by the Supreme Court known as "the search incident to arrest doctrine." See, Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752 (1969). Under this rule, after an arrest, the police are permitted to search an arrestee's person, clothing, and area of immediate control. …

 

As the courts struggle with this issue, anyone carrying a smartphone faces the risk that a minor traffic stop could permit the police to search through his or her entire e-mail. This risk includes not only the disclosure of incriminating evidence, but also the disclosure of embarrassing personal details or confidential business information. Ultimately the courts will have to decide whether to continue to rely upon decisions made before the invention of cell phones in deciding how much privacy people have in the data contained on smartphones.

 

The Guardian of London explained the personal safety implications maintaining a continuous log of everywhere you go – and then copying the file onto your computer when the two devices are syncronized:

 

The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner's movements using a simple program. …

 

If someone were to steal an iPhone and "jailbreak" it, giving them direct access to the files it contains, they could extract the location database directly. Alternatively, anyone with direct access to a user's computer could run the application and see a visualisation of their movements. Encrypting data on the computer is one way to protect against it, though that still leaves the file on the phone.

 

These concerns notwithstanding, in a Washington Times op-ed Rob Rachwald, director of security strategy at Imperva, and Robert Bird, professor of law and business at the University of Connecticut, argue that data security, not privacy, should be our paramount concern:

 

Giving data to a large company and having it stolen are two different things.

 

Hackers are a lot less trustworthy and a bit more cavalier with data than Steve Jobs. … Data insecurity will do much more harm to individuals, businesses and our government. …

 

Consider all the personal information stored by entities from retailers to the Internal Revenue Service. While it is important to know what information they have and how they use it, imagine the impact if any of that information were stolen. Large private firms such as Sony, Heartland Payment Systems, Epsilon, RSA and Google all have experienced significant breaches at the hands of private and government-sponsored hackers. Nations continue to reel from Pvt. Bradley Manning's purported file disclosures to WikiLeaks.

 

Data security is a critical issue - one likely to continue to dominate news stories as cybercriminals continue to have their way. If Congress wants to avoid being left behind, it must focus on the critical issue of hackers and insiders and on what already is working to mitigate that threat. The Data Security Standard is an established system that works well - one that several industries and states already have embraced and that would give a quick and effective data security framework. Congress should acknowledge the precedent and results already in place and ensure that citizen data is secure immediately by applying the DSS model to all federal agencies and also to legislation.

 

Rachwald and Bird may have a legitimate point, but strengthening data security does nothing to protect citizens against warrantless searches – about which New York Times tech guru David Pogue seems oddly unconcerned (“I have nothing to hide. Who cares if anyone knows where I’ve been? You’re welcome to that information; in fact, the map shown here is my actual map. Clearly, I spend a lot of time on the East Coast (because I live here). Oooooh!!”). He may feel differently the next time he’s pulled over for a traffic infraction.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (penultimate item, Rearranging The Deck Chairs): Yet another drug recall from Johnson & Johnson, which brags about its commitment to "sustainability" but apparently has QC procedures that are nothing to brag about. The Wall Street Journal reports:

 

Johnson & Johnson's manufacturing-quality lapses continued, with the company's recall of at least 11,700 bottles of HIV/AIDS drug Prezista in several countries, after discovering trace amounts of a chemical emitting offensive odors.

 

J&J said Wednesday it had received four consumer reports of musty or moldy odors, and it found the chemical in five batches of products sold in the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Austria and Canada.

 

The chemical is 2,4,6 tribromoanisole, also known as TBA, which is a byproduct of a chemical preservative sometimes applied to wood used for pallets to transport and store products. …

 

J&J, of New Brunswick, N.J., has been grappling with a series of product recalls that span its diversified businesses, from over-the-counter medicines to hip-replacement parts to surgical sutures. The actions have hurt sales and tarnished J&J's once-sterling reputation for quality. In response, the company has shuffled management, shuttered a plant outside Philadelphia and taken other steps to try to recover from the quality lapses.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times): Citing a poll by consulting firm Twentysomething Inc., Time magazine reports that “some 85% of graduates will soon remember what Mom's cooking tastes like”:

Reports have placed the unemployment rate for the under-25 group as high as 54%. Many of these unemployed graduates are choosing to go into higher education in an attempt to wait out the job market, while others are going anywhere - and doing anything - for work. Meanwhile, moving back home helps with expenses and paying off student loans.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (penultimate item, Sleepgroping): Apparently without considering the negative effect on the marriage prospects of Gavriel Bidany’s children, Magistrate Judge Ramon Reyes sentenced the Israeli rabbi to 60 days in prison for groping a sleeping female passenger a March 27 Delta Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to New York City, The Smoking Gun reports:

 

The victim is an Israeli Army officer who was traveling to New York on a fundraising trip sponsored by Israel Bonds.

 

In a victim’s impact statement read by prosecutor David Sarratt, the woman remarked that she “lost my innocence” due to the fondling. She added that, “A burn leaves a scar which cannot be removed.”

 

If Bidany’s two sons and daughter cannot find suitable matches, instead of blaming Reyes they should direct their ire at their father for molesting a woman half his age and leaving a stain on his family’s honor that cannot be removed with his reprehensible conduct.