Thanks to that good old GOP Administration:

Top officials at the Internal Revenue Service are pushing agents to prematurely close audits of big companies with agreements to have them pay only a fraction of the additional taxes that could be collected, according to dozens of I.R.S. employees who say that the policy is costing the government billions of dollars a year.

“It’s catch and release,” said Douglas R. Johnson, an I.R.S. auditor in Colorado for three decades who said he grew so frustrated at how large corporations were allowed to pay far less than what he thought they owed that he transferred to the agency’s small-business division.

With one exception, other working agents would talk about the issue only on condition they not be identified because they feared being fired. They said a policy intended to avoid delays in auditing corporations was being pushed so rigidly that it prevented them from pursuing numerous examples of questionable corporate tax deductions.

I.R.S. officials said the complaints were misguided. In an interview yesterday, Debbie Nolan, the I.R.S. executive in charge of auditing large and medium-size businesses, denied that audits were being closed over the objections of agents who had evidence that significant additional taxes were owed. Ms. Nolan said she had not heard any such complaints from auditors.

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Pretty cool. It begins:

“Nobody understands quantum mechanics,” lamented Richard Feynman. But Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna aims to prove him wrong. His research group has demonstrated the futuristic phenomena of quantum teleportation and quantum encryption, and these successes have encouraged Zeilinger to search for the essence of quantum mechanics—the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. He believes that he has found it. If he is right, all the mysteries of the quantum world will turn out to be inescapable consequences of a single, simple idea.

Quantum theory describes the world with astonishing precision, whether applied to elementary particles a hundred thousand times smaller than atoms or to currents in superconducting rings a billion times larger. And yet it seems to present a catalogue of intertwined conundrums. The most fundamental is quantisation, the notion that energy, spin and other quantities only come in discrete steps. Another enigma is the probabilistic nature of the quantum world, at odds with the classical world of definite physical properties. Then there is entanglement, the profound connectedness of objects and processes across large distances, and superposition, the astonishing proposition that an electron can be both here and there, a current can flow simultaneously clockwise and anticlockwise, and a cat can be both dead and alive, until you look to see which.

Physicists have anxiously devised one philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics after another. In the Copenhagen interpretation, the outcome of an experiment is only revealed when the quantum system interacts with a macroscopic apparatus in the laboratory, which eliminates all possibilities but one. The many-worlds interpretation insists that all possible outcomes of an experiment actually occur in as many parallel universes, but as we only occupy a single branch of the hydra-headed multiverse, we experience only one outcome. Or, if you prefer, there’s the guiding wave interpretation, which assigns an undetectable “pilot wave” to each particle to steer it along a perfectly determined path. Altogether there are at least eight serious and reputable interpretations of the theory, which implies that no single one is convincing.

Zeilinger thinks that before we can truly understand quantum theory, it must be connected in some way to what we know and feel. The problem, he says, is the lack of a simple underlying principle, an Urprinzip. All the other major theories of physics are based on such principles—pithy, comprehensible maxims that anchor the formulae in the everyday world.

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I finally got around to making the spicy roasted chicken. Extremely easy, and just as good as it sounds. I cooked half a recipe—two half-breasts, bone in, skin on—and ate one for lunch, another for dinner. Whole Foods didn’t have fresh marjoram, so I used fresh tarragon. To go with, I made a kind of ratatouille, with eggplant, tomatoes, yellow squash, onion, bitter melon, garlic, and whole-wheat orzo. Yummy.

It took a long time. Note that the DEA has seized control of permission to grow industrial hemp even though it is not a drug and in fact US companies can buy and import it. The DEA is out of control.

David Monson began pushing the idea of growing industrial hemp in the United States a decade ago. Now his goal may be within reach - but first he needs to be fingerprinted.

Monson plans this week to apply to become the nation’s first licensed industrial hemp farmer. He will have to provide two sets of fingerprints and proof that he’s not a criminal.

The farmer, school superintendent and state legislator would like to start by growing 10 acres of the crop, and he spent part of his weekend staking out the field he wants to use.

“I’m starting to see that we maybe have a chance,” Monson said. “For a while, it was getting really depressing.”

Last month, the state Agriculture Department finished its work on rules farmers may use to grow industrial hemp, a cousin of marijuana that does not have the drug’s hallucinogenic properties. The sturdy, fibrous plant is used to make an assortment of products, ranging from paper, rope and lotions to car panels, carpet backing and animal bedding.

Applicants must provide latitude and longitude coordinates for their proposed hemp fields, furnish fingerprints and pay at least $202 in fees, including $37 to cover the cost of criminal record checks.

Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson said the federal Drug Enforcement Administration still must give its permission before Monson, or anyone else, may grow industrial hemp.

“That is going to be a major hurdle,” Johnson said.

Another impediment is the DEA’s annual registration fee of $2,293, which is nonrefundable even if the agency does not grant permission to grow industrial hemp. Processing the paperwork for Monson’s license should take about a month, Johnson said.

A DEA spokesman has said North Dakota applications to grow industrial hemp will be reviewed, and Johnson said North Dakota’s rules were developed with the agency’s concerns in mind. Law enforcement officials fear industrial hemp can shield illicit marijuana, although hemp supporters say the concern is unfounded.

North Dakota is one of seven states that have authorized industrial hemp farming. The others are Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana and West Virginia, according to Vote Hemp, an industrial hemp advocacy organization based in Bedford, Mass.

California lawmakers approved legislation last year that set out rules for industrial hemp production, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. The law asserted that the federal government lacked authority to regulate industrial hemp as a drug.

In 2005, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, introduced legislation to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana in federal drug laws. It never came to a vote.

Monson farms near Osnabrock, a Cavalier County community in North Dakota’s northeastern corner. He is the assistant Republican majority leader in the North Dakota House and is the school superintendent in Edinburg, which has about 140 students in grades kindergarten through 12.

In 1997, during his second session in the Legislature, Monson successfully pushed a bill to require North Dakota State University to study industrial hemp as an alternative crop for the state’s farmers.

Canada made it legal for farmers to grow the crop in March 1998. Last year, Canadian farmers planted 48,060 acres of hemp, government statistics say. Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the provinces along North Dakota’s northern border, were Canada’s biggest hemp producers.

“I do know that industrial hemp grows really well 20 miles north of me,” Monson said. “I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t be a major crop for me, if this could go through.”

Digital Rights Management is about greatly limiting your rights so business can make more money. Read this. Excerpt:

In a nutshell: DRM’s sole purpose is to maximize revenues by minimizing your rights so that they can sell them back to you.

From AP:

Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, behind bars for bribery, can at least be consoled by the federal pension he’ll continue to collect. Current or future lawmakers convicted of crimes may not be so lucky.

The Senate on Friday voted 87-0 to strip away the pensions of members of Congress convicted of white-collar crimes such as bribery, perjury, and fraud. That could result in benefit losses of more than $100,000 a year.

“With this vote, we are preventing members of Congress who steal or cheat from receiving a lifelong pension that is paid for by the taxpayers,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., sponsor of the measure with Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.

The pension measure was attached to a comprehensive ethics and lobbying bill that the Democratic-controlled Senate, trying to improve the image of Congress after the scandals of last year, took up as its first legislative act of the year.

The Democrats’ return to power in both the House and Senate came after a campaign in which they stressed the “culture of corruption” under GOP rule.

Cunningham, R-Calif., was sentenced to more than eight years in prison last year after pleading guilty to receiving $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. Among the favors he received were a Rolls Royce, Persian rugs, antique furniture, use of a yacht and a lavish graduation party for his daughter.

Also last December, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, resigned after pleading guilty to conspiracy and making false statements in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Kerry’s office said that by law Congress cannot take away pensions retroactively and the so-called “Duke Cunningham Act” won’t affect the benefits of Cunningham or Ney. It would also not touch the military benefits of a veteran such as Cunningham.

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Politicizing prosecutors:

The Bush administration has appointed an extreme political partisan as the new United States attorney for Arkansas. Normally, the Senate would have vetted him, and quite possibly blocked his appointment. But the White House took advantage of a little-noticed provision of the Patriot Act, which allows it to do an end run around the Senate.

It is particularly dangerous to put United States attorneys’ offices in the hands of political operatives because federal prosecutors have extraordinary power to issue subpoenas and bring criminal charges. The Senate should fix the law and investigate whether such offices in Arkansas and elsewhere are being politicized.

H. E. Bud Cummins, the respected United States attorney in Little Rock, recently left office. He has been replaced on an interim basis by J. Timothy Griffin, who has a thin legal record but a résumé that includes working for Karl Rove and heading up opposition research for the Republican National Committee. Senator Mark Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, wanted to raise concerns about Mr. Griffin’s appointment as part of the confirmation process. But he couldn’t because there was no confirmation process.

Mr. Pryor, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, have accused the Bush administration of “pushing out U.S. attorneys from across the country under the cloak of secrecy and then appointing indefinite replacements without Senate confirmation.” The San Diego Union-Tribune has reported that San Diego’s United States attorney was asked to resign, and that even some of her opponents “said the supposed reasons she is being forced out are perplexing.”

There could be unsavory political reasons for putting a party operative in charge of federal criminal investigations in Little Rock, which has been home to two possible presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and former Gov. Mike Huckabee. But it is not necessary to leap to extravagant conclusions. United States attorneys are so powerful that their impartiality must be beyond question. One way to ensure that is to require them to submit to questions from the Senate, and face a confirmation vote.

Senators Feinstein, Leahy and Pryor have a bill to change the method for selecting interim United States attorneys back to what it once was: the federal district court in the jurisdiction would make the appointment. Congress should pass that bill, and take a hard look at how vacancies are being filled. There might not be fire where the senators see smoke. But Congress should not take any chances.

Doesn’t it?

“An Inconvenient Truth,” the Davis Guggenheim documentary on global warming starring Al Gore’s presentation on the subject, provides an accurate, engaging, accessible, thought-provoking and (at times) even humorous introduction to one of the most important scientific issues of our time ( see our review of the movie). In some countries, viewing “An Inconvenient Truth” has actually become a required part of the science curriculum, and with good justification, we think. Given that the DVD is currently selling for $19.99 through Amazon.com, you’d think that the National Science Teachers’ Association ( NSTA) would jump at the chance to quickly get 50,000 free copies quickly into the hands of their members. Yet, when Laurie David, one of the producers of the film, made this offer to NSTA last November, it was summarily turned down on the grounds that the NSTA has a 2001 policy against “product endorsement” (as if Laurie David were trying to shop some new deodorant to high school science teachers). What in the world is going on here?

Before continuing with the history of NSTA’s bizarre decision, let us provide you with the most important information: Up to 50,000 US science teachers can receive a free copy of the DVD by filling out a simple request form here. The deadline for requesting your copy is January 18, so if you want a copy, take a few minutes to put in your request right away.

Laurie David described her correspondence with the NSTA in a Washington Post Op-Ed, where she notes that an email sent to her by NSTA invoked not only the product endorsement issue, but also a fear that distributing the film would place “unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.” David goes on to point out that one of these supporters is in fact ExxonMobil (whose efforts to spread confusion about climate change are described in a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.) Is NSTA for sale? Did concern about losing ExxonMobil funding lead to NSTA’s timidity about accepting the donation of the DVDs?

The NSTA responds to David’s charges here, pointing out among other things that they offered to sell David the NSTA’s commercial mailing list and that the email to her regarding the fundraising issue was unauthorized. We ourselves find the NSTA’s defense unconvincing. While it is impossible for us to know the extent to which ExxonMobil funding has compromised NSTA’s objectivity on global warming, a perusal of the NSTA web site shows that their teacher resources are rather short on support for teaching about the fundamental science of global warming. This contrasts strongly with their in-depth support for the teaching of Evolution. Indeed, the NSTA’s “compromise” of providing a link on their homepage to the independent DVD giveaway strikes us as uncomfortably similar to placing a sticker on a biology textbook disclaiming Evolution as “Theory, not Fact.” Their willingness to link to the giveaway without providing it directly to their members conveys a distinct impression that the film is somehow tainted.

Doing a search on “Global Warming” on the NSTA site turns up only a paltry supply of useful educational material. It is also illuminating to go into their “recommendations” section and type in “global warming.” That will turn up this recommended book by Kenneth Green, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute whose article Clouds of Global-Warming Hysteria in the National Review endorsed Michael Crichton’s view of global warming and called supporters of climate change action “One-worlders and other socialist sorts.” Needless to say, the NSTA recommendations (as of today) did not turn up “An Inconvenient Truth” either in its DVD or book form. Nor did it turn up Revkin’s book directed at juveniles “The North Pole Was Here,” nor any of the other scientifically respectable introductions of which we are aware

Perhaps the NSTA policy has not been compromised by its funding sources, but it will have to work a lot harder to convince us. The best way it could do that would be to bring their support for teaching about global warming up to the same standards as their support for teaching about Evolution.

Meanwhile, there have been scattered reports of outright censorship of “An Inconvenient Truth” in the classroom. In a widely reported case, one Seattle school district has essentially banned the film. We have also heard from a science teacher in a populous East Coast state, who was forbidden from showing the film after some parents complained that in fact the earth was “cooling, not warming.” (We have been asked to keep this teacher’s identity confidential so as to prevent reprisals). Hopefully these are isolated instances. We are eager to hear from our readers, not only on the issue of censorship of the film, but also with regard to their experiences with teaching about human-caused climate change in the K-12 classroom (and the extent to which “An Inconvenient Truth” has proved a useful tool).

Take a look at this one:

I doubt if many of our colleagues in the press have noticed that the Bush administration, with the aid of the last Republican congress, began on January 1 an unprecedented invasion of the privacy of some 43 million older and disabled Americans, beneficiaries of Medicare. That most of the press did not notice is understandable. Most of the press pays little attention to the details of programs such as Medicare or to issues facing older people.

Here’s what I’m talking about: One of the lesser known provisions of the December, 2003, Medicare Modernization Act, which created the Part D drug benefit, called for sharp raises in the monthly Part B premiums for Medicare enrollees who earn more than $80,000 a year (or $160,000 per couple). Never mind that this provision, which took effect this year, was a violation the Medicare’s valued principle of universality, a step backward from the gathering national movement toward universal health care.

But I digress. As a result of this provision, the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration are authorized to inspect the tax returns of millions of Medicare beneficiaries to determine if their “modified adjusted gross income” for 2006 reaches high enough to pay the much higher Part B premium, which covers doctor bills and diagnostic tests. The ordinary premium, which is getting expensive, is $93.50 a month. The fee for more affluent enrollees, depending on their income, ranges from $105.80 to $161.40, and it will run higher in coming years.

The Social Security Administration figures several million Medicare beneficiaries will be hit with higher premiums, including at least two million whose incomes will rise only temporarily when they sell a home, withdraw from an IRA or cash in some savings to repair a house or pay for medical costs not covered by Medicare. The point is, as Social Security says on its Web site, many Americans will be appealing the increase. Thus their 1040s, which until now belonged only to the taxpayers and were not shared by the IRS, will become subject to possible mischief.

Only a few years ago the press was up in arms because the tax returns of many of us on a president’s “enemies list,” were subject to inspection by the executive branch. Now, each tax return of people on Medicare will be open to inspection by the bureaucrats at Medicare.

Interesting study:

While previous studies have shown that anger and hostility, in and of themselves, can increase risk of heart disease in men, little of the research has included women.

Results of a new study, conducted exclusively with female subjects, suggest that anger and hostility alone are not predictive for coronary artery disease in women, but women who outwardly express anger may be at increased risk if they also have any of several other risk factors: age (risk increases as women get older), history of diabetes and history of unhealthy levels of fats (lipids) in the blood.

Cardiologist C. Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., medical director of the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center and medical director of Women’s Health at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said the overt expression of anger toward other persons or objects appears to be the most “toxic” aspect of hostility in women. In fact, the researchers analyzed a variety of measures related to anger, including cynicism, hostile temperament, aggression and suppressed anger. Only expressed anger — described as Anger Out on the rating scale — had predictive value, and only when the age, diabetes or dyslipidemia risk factors also were present.

“Our results appear to differ from the literature on males, particularly young males, in which hostility scores are found to be associated with coronary artery disease. However, the new data, combined with our previous findings, indicate that anger and hostility in women, as in men, do tend to cluster with adverse risk factors,” said Bairey Merz, one of the authors of an article in December, 2006, issue of the Journal of Women’s Health.

The anger and hostility research grew out of the Women’s Ischemia Syndrome Evaluation (WISE) Study, a multi-center, long-term investigation sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Bairey Merz chairs the WISE study and holds the Women’s Guild Chair in Women’s Health at Cedars-Sinai.

WISE was designed to study diagnostic testing and pathophysiology of ischemic heart disease in women and how sex hormones and other gender-specific findings influence the clinical aspects of the disease. From 1996 to 2000, 936 women referred for angiograms because of chest pain and suspected ischemia were enrolled. The hostility study included 636 women with suspected coronary artery disease who were referred for diagnostic coronary angiography.

The research team published an article last year showing that hostility and anger are related to coronary artery disease and are predictive of heart-related “events” in women. This study concluded that the outward expression of anger and hostility is higher in, and may be a risk factor for, women with suspected coronary artery disease, based on results of angiograms. But it also found that anger and hostility are associated with atypical cardiac symptoms in women who do not have angiographic evidence of heart disease. The researchers hypothesize that women who have symptoms but no definitive diagnosis or potential treatment may manifest their frustration in increased aggression and anger.

“By beginning to understand the psychosocial factors that play a role in the development of heart disease in women, we hope to develop more effective diagnostic tools. This study also points out the importance of addressing the concerns of women who must cope with atypical, unexplained symptoms and the psychological effects accompanying them,” said Bairey Merz, who is available to provide additional information about the study.

The study and article were completed by researchers at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Md.; University of Pittsburgh; Cedars-Sinai Medical Center; University of California, Los Angeles; National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health; Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh; Atlanta Cardiovascular Research Institute, Atlanta; and the University of Florida, Gainesville.

Financial support was provided by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, the Gustavus and Louis Pfeiffer Research Foundation of Danville, NJ, The Women’s Guild of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, The Ladies Hospital Aid Society of Western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, and QMED, Inc., Laurence Harbor, NJ.

Citation: Journal of Women’s Health, Published Online Dec. 2006, “Anger, Hostility, and Cardiac Symptoms in Women with Suspected Coronary Artery Disease: The Women’s Ischemia Syndrome Evaluation (WISE) Study”

I blogged earlier about the Wollemi pine (photo at the link), and now one has a home in Wisconsin.

A relic plant that once co-existed with dinosaurs has taken up residence in the University of Wisconsin-Madison botany greenhouses.

Thanks to a worldwide effort to conserve and propagate the Wollemi pine — one of the oldest and rarest tree species on earth — a recently purchased foot-tall Wollemi seedling now has a home at the UW-Madison botany greenhouses at Birge Hall. The relic tree species, dating back 90 million years to the age of the dinosaurs and once known to botanists only through fossils, was discovered in an Australian national park in 1994. A limited number of the plants just became available in the United States through National Geographic. (Photo by: Jeff Miller)

 

Known as the Wollemi pine, the plant was presumed extinct until a “bushwalker” named David Noble discovered it in an Australian national park in 1994. As part of a worldwide effort to conserve and propagate the tree species — one of the oldest and rarest on earth — botany greenhouse director Mo Fayyaz recently purchased a foot-tall Wollemi pine seedling. A limited number of the plants just became available in the United States through National Geographic.

Fayyaz says the ancient conifer will be used to teach students about topics such as plant diversity, evolution and geography. The discovery of this “living fossil” also underscores the importance of conserving the world’s natural areas, he says, which can still hold unexpected treasures.

Before 1994, botanists knew the Wollemi pine only from fossils, the oldest of which date back 90 million years to the age of the dinosaurs. Scientists also believed the tree had gone extinct more than 2 million years ago. Although it has been dubbed a “pine,” the plant’s closest living relatives are not true pines, but other unusual conifers such as the Norfolk Island pine and monkey puzzle tree.

Fewer than 100 mature Wollemi pines currently exist in the wild, all within the same remote and rugged canyon of the Wollemi National Park near Sydney, Australia, from which the tree gets it name. The tallest pines in the park top 100 feet and some are estimated to be more than 1,000 years old.

To aid the plant’s continued survival, Fayyaz and his staff eventually plan to propagate their tree through cuttings. Although Fayyaz expects the pine to grow by one to two feet each year, its cultivation is an experiment. “As far as the growth and development of this plant goes, it’s all new to us,” he says.

The public can view the plant in the UW-Madison botany greenhouses, located in Birge Hall, anytime after Tuesday, Jan. 30. The greenhouses are open from 8 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday-Friday. During the summer months, Fayyaz may also move the Wollemi pine outside to the Botany Garden.

From ScienceDaily, with other lotus-technology articles at the link:

A plastic cup that can be reused without washing it, simply because contamination has no chance to stick to the surface? A self-cleaning surface like that of the leaf of a Lotus plant is ideal for many applications and consumer products. These ideal natural properties can be imitated remarkably well now. Structuring a plastic or other surface is now possible by using an ultra fast femtosecond laser. PhD student Max Groenendijk of the Applied Laser Technology Group of the University of Twente presents remarkable results with this new technique.

The secret of the Lotus leaf can be found in numerous tiny pillars with a wax layer on top. Water drops are lifted by these pillars, get into a spherical shape and can simply not cover the surface. Dirt gets no chance to stick to the surface via water. The spherical drops roll off and take dirt particles with the, Again, nature proves to be a source of inspiration for the laser scientists of the University of Twente: they aimed at creating similar surfaces, but without having to use wax. They succeeded in that using an ultra fast femtosecond laser. The light pulses are so short that they can be seen as light ‘bullets’ with which the surface is bombed.

Max Groenendijk applies the laser in two separate steps. During the first step, the surface gets a fine ripple structure. This is caused by a special self organizing effect that works for almost all kinds of surfaces. Whenever the laser removes some material, a pattern of ripples is formed at the bottom. It is possible to influence this pattern with parameters like speed, intensity and polarization.

The second step is writing a pattern of perpendicular lines. What remains is an array of pillars. These pillars then already have the fine pattern caused by the first step. This double structure replaces the need to have wax on the pillars, and makes the surface highly hydrophobic. Treating surfaces directly would be to expensive, but by using a mold, series can be produced in an economic and easy way.

Silky feeling Even for materials that are quite hydrophobic by themselves, the structure can improve the properties drastically, Groenendijk concludes. Unlike in the unstructured, smooth situation, where droplets can still smear a little, the structured surface gives the spherical drops known from the Lotus plant. The ‘look and feel’ of the material also changes, especially the ‘feel’: a surface that has been treated, feels like silk. This could be an added unique selling point, especially for trendy products.

To mimic the Lotus effect, several alternatives are available as well. It is possible to use a coating to make materials self cleaning, but an unstructured coating will never be as good as the new laser technique. Structured coatings could be an alternative, but applying a coating to a structured surface is another one Groenendijk is currently investigating, together with scientists of the Membrane Technology group. Both groups are part of the Institute for Mechanics, Processes and Control Twente (IMPACT) of the University of Twente: http://www.impact.utwente.nl

Take a look.

Interesting article. I spend around an hour blindfolded each day (I wear my sleep mask during my afternoon nap), but so far haven’t noticed any improvement in hearing. Maybe I should extend the nap to 90 minutes. Megs would like that.

Good list of tips.

From the McClatchy Washington Bureau:

President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration’s statements about Iraq.

President Bush unveiled the new version on Wednesday during his nationally televised speech announcing his new Iraq policy.

“When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation,” he said. “We thought that these elections would bring Iraqis together - and that as we trained Iraqi security forces, we could accomplish our mission with fewer American troops.

“But in 2006, the opposite happened. The violence in Iraq - particularly in Baghdad - overwhelmed the political gains Iraqis had made. Al-Qaida terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq’s election posed for their cause. And they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis.

“They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam - the Golden Mosque of Samarra - in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq’s Shia population to retaliate,” Bush said. “Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.”

That version of events helps to justify Bush’s “new way forward” in Iraq, in which U.S. forces will largely target Sunni insurgents and leave it to Iraq’s U.S.-backed Shiite government to - perhaps - disarm its allies in Shiite militias and death squads.

But the president’s account understates by at least 15 months when Shiite death squads began targeting Sunni politicians and clerics. It also ignores the role that Iranian-backed Shiite groups had in death squad activities prior to the Samarra bombing.

Blaming the start of sectarian violence in Iraq on the Golden Dome bombing risks policy errors because it underestimates the depth of sectarian hatred in Iraq and overlooks the conflict’s root causes. The Bush account also fails to acknowledge that Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite groups stoked the conflict.

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We’ve created a bad Iraq. The Guardian reports:

One morning a few weeks ago I sat in a car talking to Rami, a thick-necked former Republican Guard commando who now procures arms for his fellow Sunni insurgents.

Rami was explaining how the insurgency had changed since the first heady days after the US invasion. “I used to attack the Americans when that was the jihad. Now there is no jihad. Go around and see in Adhamiya [the notorious Sunni insurgent area] - all the commanders are sitting sipping coffee; it’s only the young kids that are fighting now, and they are not fighting Americans any more, they are just killing Shia. There are kids carrying two guns each and they roam the streets looking for their prey. They will kill for anything, for a gun, for a car and all can be dressed up as jihad.”

Rami was no longer involved in fighting, he said, but made a tidy profit selling weapons and ammunition to men in his north Baghdad neighbourhood. Until the last few months, the insurgency got by with weapons and ammunition looted from former Iraqi army depots. But now that Sunnis were besieged in their neighbourhoods and fighting daily clashes with the better-equipped Shia ministry of interior forces, they needed new sources of weapons and money.

He told me that one of his main suppliers had been an interpreter working for the US army in Baghdad. “He had a deal with an American officer. We bought brand new AKs and ammunition from them.” He claimed the American officer, whom he had never met but he believed was a captain serving at Baghdad airport, had even helped to divert a truckload of weapons as soon as it was driven over the border from Jordan.

These days Rami gets most of his supplies from the new American-equipped Iraqi army. “We buy ammunition from officers in charge of warehouses, a small box of AK-47 bullets is $450 (£230). If the guy sells a thousand boxes he can become rich and leave the country.” But as the security situation deteriorates, Rami finds it increasingly difficult to travel across Baghdad. “Now I have to pay a Shia taxi driver to bring the ammo to me. He gets $50 for each shipment.”

The box of 700 bullets that Rami buys for $450 today would have cost between $150 and $175 a year ago. The price of a Kalashnikov has risen from $300 to $400 in the same period. The inflation in arms prices reflects Iraq’s plunge toward civil war but, largely unnoticed by the outside world, the Sunni insurgency has also changed. The conflict into which 20,000 more American troops will be catapulted over the next few weeks is very different to the one their comrades experienced even a year ago.

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It’s becoming increasingly apparent. This story, for example:

Uh-oh. The Interior Department’s internal watchdog says top officials at the agency knew about problems costing taxpayers as much as $10 billion in revenue, but tried to hide the problem from the public, according to Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Tollefson (sub. req).

One official may even have lied to Congress about when she knew things were screwy with her agency’s energy contracts, which have allowed companies like ExxonMobil and Shell to pay billions less than they should have to extract oil and gas from federal lands, CQ reports:

A much-anticipated report to Congress will allege that Interior Department officials covered up a problem with oil and gas leases after it was discovered in 2000, according to congressional aides.The Interior Department inspector general (IG) also has been investigating whether Johnnie Burton, head of the agency that collects royalties, might have been told about the problem earlier than she said in congressional testimony last fall.

Bush doesn’t like to use his veto power—the only Presidential power he seems to avoid. Only one veto, to date. But:

President Bush renewed his veto threat Friday as Democrats pushed legislation that would require the government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare patients.

The House began debating the bill that would require the secretary of Health and Human Services to conduct those negotiations. It’s one of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s six priorities for the new Democratic-controlled House.

Democrats touted the negotiations as a way to save money for seniors and taxpayers. They said that the government would be able to drive down prices by buying in bulk.

“Medicare overpays drug companies in purchasing medicine,” said the bill’s author, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich.

Republicans countered that the drug benefit, which kicked in on Jan. 1, 2006, has cost less than anticipated, and the large majority of seniors and disabled who use the program are satisfied. [Completely irrelevant to the argument: the Dems are saying negotiating, as the VA does, will bring the drug prices down. - LG]

“With all that’s right with the program, it seems unwise and unkind [to the drug companies - LG] to jeopardize its success,” said Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas.

Bush contends that competition is already reducing prices for seniors and creating an environment that encourages the development of new drugs. [So why is he opposed to negotiating? - LG]

“Government interference impedes competition, limits access to lifesaving drugs, reduces convenience for beneficiaries and ultimately increases costs to taxpayers, beneficiaries and all American citizens alike,” the administration said in a written statement Thursday.

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For social communication (e.g., rolling your eyes):

Col. William Prescott is said to have prepared his troops for a charge from the British Army at the Battle of Bunker Hill by telling his men, “Don’t one of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

If the opposing army had not been British men but rather a horde of charging chimpanzees, the American troops would have been summarily overrun. Why? Because neither chimpanzees nor any of the other 220 species of nonhuman primates have whites of the eyes, at least not that can be easily seen. This means that if their eyes are looking in a direction other than the one in which their heads are pointing, we can easily be fooled about what they are looking at.

Why should humans be so different? And yet we are. We can’t fool anyone. The whites of our eyes are several times larger than those of other primates, which makes it much easier to see where the eyes, as opposed to the head, are pointed. Trying to explain this trait leads us into one of the deepest and most controversial topics in the modern study of human evolution: the evolution of cooperation.

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