Later On

More and more evidence accumulates as deniers work harder and harder to deny it. Here’s a story in the Scientific American:

The majestic old-growth forests of western North America, greening patches of the landscape from Arizona to British Columbia, may be far more vulnerable to subtle climate change than scientists previously believed. A study published today in the journal Science reveals that these western forests are dying at faster rates as regional average temperatures climb more rapidly than the global average.
"Tree death rates have more than doubled," says study co-author Phillip van Mantgem, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

He and his team analyzed data (collected from 1955 to 2007) on about 58,000 trees, including firs, pines, hemlocks and others, in 76 old-growth forest plots covering six western states and a Canadian province: Arizona, Colorado, California, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. Their findings: …

Continue reading. The core problem: trees can’t afford lobbyists.

A very nice profile of Robert Burns—read it, and then memorize a bit of Burns’s poetry-—”To a Mouse,” for example.

As a blogging tool, Live Writer is really excellent, albeit with an occasional bug or unpolished infelicity. As an example of the latter, when your cursor clicks on a category name, the name is highlighted, but no check appears in the check box (as it does when using the WordPress internal editor). I imagine that in time things like this will be corrected through routine polishing. I’m a little worried that the Microsoft layoffs might have impacted the Live Writer group, but time will tell. In the meantime, give it a go. You may have to uncheck “Edit using template” under “View,” depending on the WordPress template you’re using. But I’m liking the program a lot.

Incompetence in the Bush Administration ran deep. The Washington Post reports:

President Obama’s plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials — barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees — discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.

Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is "scattered throughout the executive branch," a senior administration official said. The executive order Obama signed Thursday orders the prison closed within one year, and a Cabinet-level panel named to review each case separately will have to spend its initial weeks and perhaps months scouring the corners of the federal government in search of relevant material.

Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner. They said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were reluctant to share information, and that the Bush administration’s focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority…

Continue reading. It’s an amazing story. Keystone Cops doesn’t touch it.

Mark Kleiman looks over the published Obama Administration stance on crime and drug abuse and finds it a little light, though (as he says) this new Administration has yet to really tackle these issues. His post is well worth reading.

Very interesting article in the New Yorker by Atul Gawande. It begins:

In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty. The Canadians had stories like the 1946 Toronto Globe and Mail report of a woman in labor who was refused help by three successive physicians, apparently because of her inability to pay. In Australia, a 1954 letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald sought help for a young woman who had lung disease. She couldn’t afford to refill her oxygen tank, and had been forced to ration her intake “to a point where she is on the borderline of death.” In Britain, George Bernard Shaw was at a London hospital visiting an eminent physician when an assistant came in to report that a sick man had arrived requesting treatment. “Is he worth it?” the physician asked. It was the normality of the question that shocked Shaw and prompted his scathing and influential 1906 play, “The Doctor’s Dilemma.” The British health system, he charged, was “a conspiracy to exploit popular credulity and human suffering.”

In the United States, our stories are like the one that appeared in the Times before Christmas. Starla Darling, pregnant and due for delivery, had just taken maternity leave from her factory job at Archway & Mother’s Cookie Company, in Ashland, Ohio, when she received a letter informing her that the company was going out of business. In three days, the letter said, she and almost three hundred co-workers would be laid off, and would lose their health-insurance coverage. The company was self-insured, so the employees didn’t have the option of paying for the insurance themselves—their insurance plan was being terminated.

Read the rest of this entry »

The tip on Bok Choy came via The Sister from the Web site (and newsletter mailer) World’s Healthiest Foods. Take a look, and note their useful tips on cooking Bok Choy (the recipe has a link on the home page right now):

Healthy Sautéed Bok Choy

Healthy Sauté will concentrate both the flavor and nutrition of your bok choy.

Prep and Cook Time: 4 minutes

• 1 medium bunch bok choy
• 3 TBS low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth
• 2-3 TBS extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 medium clove garlic
• sea salt and pepper to taste
• Optional: chicken and shiitake mushrooms

1. Cut the leafy portion into 1/4-inch slices to ensure they cook al denté. Cut stems into 3/4-inch slices because if they are cut too thin, they will become watery. Let stems and leaves sit for at least 5 minutes to enhance their health-promoting benefits.
2. Chop or press garlic and let sit for at least 5 minutes.
3. Heat 3 TBS broth over medium heat in a stainless steel skillet.
4. When broth begins to steam, add stems and cook uncovered for 1 minute. Add leaves, cover and continue cooking for 3 more minutes.
5. Toss with lemon juice, olive oil and garlic. Salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 2

Healthy Cooking Tips:

Stems will become creamy, and the leaves will develop a robust flavor. The outside will be tender while the inside will be crisp.

If stems become translucent or watery, you know you have overcooked them. For more enjoyment, you may want to add more olive oil.

For best flavor, dress bok choy while it is still hot.

William Blackstone famously observed in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760′s, that it’s “better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” The Bush Administration took a different tack: better that ten innocent persons be imprisoned and tortured than one guilty escape. And Texas, famous home of the Bush Administration, perhaps shows whence that sentiment comes. BlueTexan has this post on Firedoglake:

Forensic pathologists say the science points to yes.

Four forensic pathologists agree that Larry Swearingen, set to be executed Tuesday, could not have committed the 1998 murder that sent him to death row.

The four include the medical examiner whose testimony helped secure Swearingen’s guilty verdict. That medical examiner now says college student Melissa Trotter’s curiously preserved body could not have lain in the East Texas woods for more than 14 days — and probably was there for a much shorter time.

The results mean Swearingen was in jail when the 19-year-old’s body was left behind, the pathologists say.

The Houston Chronicle calls for a stay and points to other exculpatory evidence.And Texas Monthly‘s excellent piece on the case, concludes:

The bottom line: Someone killed Melissa Trotter and dumped her body in the Sam Houston National Forest. But that someone was not Larry Swearingen.

Tell Governor Rick “Culture of Life” Perry stay the execution. Amnesty International has a petition.

Find out more here.

Booman Tribune has an excellent post. It begins:

Hendrik Hertzberg has a piece in the latest New Yorker that discusses the concept of ‘Smart Power’. It’s easiest to define Smart Power by referring to Hillary Clinton’s recent confirmation testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

We must use what has been called smart power, the full range of tools at our disposal—diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural—picking the right tool, or combination of tools, for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of our foreign policy. This is not a radical idea. The ancient Roman poet Terence declared that “in every endeavor, the seemly course for wise men is to try persuasion first.” The same truth binds wise women as well.

The term ‘Smart Power’ comes from a 2004 article by Suzanne Nossel that appeared in Foreign Affairs. At its most basic, Nossel’s argument is in favor of a new form (that isn’t really all that new) of liberal internationalism.

When the United States, the only industrialized power left intact by the war, faced challenges ranging from containing Soviet ambitions to rebuilding war-ravaged Europe, it did not try to shoulder the burden alone. Instead, it crafted an interdependent network of allies and institutions that included the UN and NATO. The United States stood at the center of this order, but it shared the task of maintaining it. The sources of U.S. strength — economic, political, and moral — thus reinforced one another. International institutions helped spread American values, which in turn fueled an appetite for American products. Trade enhanced political influence, and political influence helped further extend American values.

Nevermind the whitewash-y feel of Nossel’s history, when American foreign policy worked well and was on firm moral ground, it was working within the constructs that Nossel describes. If the United States is committed to maintaining its dominant international role, then this is certainly the right and humane way to go about it. Smart Power puts diplomacy first and relies on cultural and economic ties as much or more than military ties to maintain American influence and good relations in the world. That’s all good.

I was watching Minority Leader Mitch McConnell answer questions from the audience yesterday during his appearance at the National Press Club…

Continue reading. The point made about the GOP view is quite cogent and revealing.

You’d think that everyone would be happy that the US will no longer torture prisoners—a step in the right direction. Oddly enough, many people seemed displeased. One assumes, of course, that they don’t want to be tortured themselves, nor (probably) do they want to torture. They just want to be reassured that the US will continue to torture the occasional prisoner.

The torture fans, it should be noted, have had no experience in interrogation and really don’t seem to understand the goal: to get reliable information and induce a cooperative attitude. Those with actual interrogation expertise don’t believe that torture works nearly so well as other (and legal) methods. I refer you, for example, to How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq, by Matthew Alexander and John Bruning.

Still, the media is doing what it seems to love to do: running excited stories to stir people up (and increase ratings). Media Matters has two good takedowns of the latest media scare: CNN, AP falsely claim that Pentagon says 61 Guantánamo detainees have returned to terrorism (43 may have returned to fight—but no real evidence). Media Matters has another smackdown here.

Also, watch this brief Rachel Maddow interview:

I’m watching Brick Lane and so far enjoying it.

I learned about Rail Riders at Cool Tools and ordered a pair of their Backcountry Khaki pants. They’re quite geeky, but The Wife observed that with the increase in popularity of Geek Chic, the designs have gotten better (to expand the market, I assume). And they are extremely comfortable and tough. I live a casual life these days, and these pants will work well. I had been buying Dockers, but the last two pair I bought were shoddily made and started coming apart in just a few weeks. These will endure.

Last night I made a Chinese Chicken Coleslaw, using the Swissmar Borner V-Slicer a lot: purple cabbage, carrot, purple onion, celery, pumpkin seed, cilantro, and a chicken breast, dressed with sesame oil, soy sauce, and rice vinegar. Very tasty and having a good veg:meat ratio (about 8:1, I’d say).

The Sister reminded me that Bok Choy is in season, a green I’ve not had lately. I’ll shop for that next time. I still have a bunch of Lacinato Kale to eat.

It must be Tom Franks day—and I am not familiar with this guy, but so far I like what he says. [UPDATE: I discovered that sitting beside my chair is a book (from the library) by Tom Franks: The Wrecking Crew. Duh. He's the guy who wrote What's the Matter With Kansas?]  Here’s his post at Political Animal, referencing an article I’m definitely going to read:

My piece on the Employee Free Choice Act for the latest issue of the Washington Monthly, which Steve commented about here, has generated some thoughtful responses in the blogosphere. I can’t get to all of the issues raised, but there are a couple of points I did want to reemphasize or clarify.

I think Ezra Klein is wise to lament that the debate over EFCA concerns a “future legislative regime rather than the ongoing abuses of corporations under the current law.” As Ezra states, the problem is that employers are breaking the law to prevent unionization–period. That’s what we’re trying to remedy. That’s where the debate should be. It’s up to us to try to take it there.

But when Ezra objects that “unions and the corporate community are unlikely to both be wrong on the import of card check,” I’d just like to challenge that assertion a bit. Card check as a provision in EFCA is definitely a help to unions, no doubt about it, but I submit that one reason it’s been emphasized so heavily in the current debate is that unions have allowed Republicans and the corporate community to set the terms of the conversation. Republicans like to talk about the card check provision because it’s easy to paint as something bad and anti-democratic–and this provides a cover for opposing the entire piece of legislation. Supporters of EFCA get suckered into this debate because they know card check is a justifiable and misunderstood provision–so they can’t resist defending it. And that’s the trouble: it’s just impossible to explain in less than 400 words.

This brings me Jane Hamsher’s criticisms over at Firedoglake, where I’m glad to have achieved the level of “well-intentioned but ultimately flawed.” (“Flawed” is the norm for me–but “well-intentioned” is a promotion.) Hamsher seems to think I accept the GOP’s objections to card check at face value. I don’t, and I think I make that clear in my article. In fact, in her 437-word explanation of what card check is and isn’t, Hamsher makes one of my points for me: that there’s no succinct Democratic counter to the easy GOP talking point about eliminating the “secret ballot” and threatening workers’ freedoms. That might be frustrating and unfair, but that’s the reality of it.

Hamsher and I agree that other provisions in EFCA–such as arbiter-imposed contracts–probably scare corporations much more than card check. But Hamsher gets my argument wrong when she summarizes it as follows: “Just give up ‘card check’ in order to appease the bill’s opponents, and everything will be hunky dory.” Please. The point isn’t to “appease” the bill’s opponents; the point is to remove the only rhetorical fig leaf they have when opposing EFCA.

Look, I don’t presume to know the intricacies of Senate horse trading, so I’m not trying to advise Senate Democrats on their EFCA strategy. And I’m a journalist, not a movement operative, so I’m not going to insist on some absolutist version of EFCA in order to set up parameters for the Democrats’ opening negotiating position. I’m simply trying to clarify the issue as I see it. And in my eyes, certain provisions in EFCA matter a lot more than card check. If card check passes intact, great. But, given that card check probably requires many times more political capital to wedge into the bill than anything else in EFCA, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it abandoned in the final version. And I won’t be joining liberals and progressives in raising cries of betrayal or spinelessness should Democrats wind up settling for only 80 percent. The long game is what matters here.

And again I recommend that you read his book Which Side Are You On?. Here’s a column by Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal praising Geoghegan for all the right reasons. You can donate to his campaign here. From Frank’s column:

… Mr. Geoghegan is something of an oddity in Chicago. He is a respected lawyer, but he has spent his career in the unlucrative fields of labor law and advocacy for the poor. His connections are probably better with the Jesuits than with City Hall.

He is also a writer, and a brilliant one at that, possessed of an elegant, conversational prose style and an eye for the haunting detail. I should also mention that he is a good friend of mine, and that he has contributed to and worked on a magazine I edit.

I first encountered Mr. Geoghegan in the early 1990s, when he was a frequent guest on a Chicago TV show. And I still remember how shocking it was to hear someone defend organized labor in those days when everyone else was coming to accept the post-industrial order.

The basic point that he would make was that the decline of unions wasn’t a reflection of consumer choice, in the way that hot movies and popular toys are said to be. Labor unions were hemorrhaging members because the game was rigged against them; because it was nearly impossible for workers to organize when the penalties incurred by management for firing pro-union employees were so slight.

Maybe that’s just what you’re supposed to hear when you turn on the TV in a place like Chicago. To me, though, it was new and astonishing, a sort of revelation. Mr. Geoghegan’s 1991 book, "Which Side Are You On?" — the best book on labor to appear in the past 50 years — continued my education about the blue-collar world. An "anti-world," Mr. Geoghegan called it, a "secret world." And so it was: the silent, suffering antithesis to the great choir then starting its hymn to omniscient markets and the ever-ascending Dow.

Now that conservative orthodoxy has collapsed in a heap of complex derivatives, I can’t help but think what a refreshing dose of plain-spoken Midwestern reality Mr. Geoghegan could bring to the nation as a whole.

To begin with, Mr. Geoghegan thinks big while Democrats in Washington tend to think small, …

Continue reading.

An amazing piece to read in the Wall Street Journal. By Thomas Frank, here’s a snippet:

Mr. Friedman described a visit to India by a team from Moody’s Investor Service, a company that carried the awesome task of determining "who is pursuing sound economics and who is not." This was shortly after India had tested its nuclear weapons, and the idea was that such a traditional bid for power counted for little in this globalized age; what mattered was making political choices of which the market approved, with organizations like Moody’s sifting out the hearts of nations before its judgment seat. In the end, Moody’s "downgraded India’s economy," according to Mr. Friedman, because it disapproved of India’s politics.

And who makes sure that Moody’s and its competitors downgrade what deserves to be downgraded? In 1999 the obvious answer would have been: the market, with its fantastic self-regulating powers.

But something went wrong on the road to privatopia. If everything is for sale, why shouldn’t the guardians put themselves on the block as well? Now we find that the profit motive, unleashed to work its magic within the credit-rating agencies, apparently exposed them to pressure from debt issuers and led them to give high ratings to the mortgage-backed securities that eventually blew the economy to pieces.

And so it has gone with many other shibboleths of the free-market consensus in this tragic year.

For example, it was only a short while ago that simply everyone knew deregulation to be the path to prosperity as well as the distilled essence of human freedom. Today, though, it seems this folly permitted a 100-year flood of fraud. Consider the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), the subject of a withering examination in the Washington Post last month. As part of what the Post called the "aggressively deregulatory stance" the OTS adopted toward the savings and loan industry in the years of George W. Bush, it slashed staff, rolled back enforcement, and came to regard the industry it was supposed to oversee as its "customers." Maybe it’s only a coincidence that some of the biggest banks — Washington Mutual and IndyMac — ever to fail were regulated by that agency, but I doubt it.

Or consider the theory, once possible to proffer with a straight face, …

Continue reading.

Hilzoy has a terrific post that begins:

Publius has already written about Sen. Cornyn’s decision to delay Eric Holder’s confirmation as Attorney General for a week. I just wanted to add a couple of points. Here’s what Cornyn said about his reasons for the delay:

“Other GOP members of the committee, said Cornyn, are also concerned about the potential for prosecutions. The intent of the Military Commissions Act, he argued, was to provide immunity from prosecution if agents believed they were acting lawfully.

“Part of my concern, frankly, relates to some of his statements at the hearing in regard to torture and what his intentions are with regard to intelligence personnel who were operating in good faith based upon their understanding of what the law was,” said Cornyn.

“There were provisions providing immunity to intelligence officials based up on good faith and what they understood the law to be,” said Cornyn. “I want to know if he’s going to enforce congressional intent not to second guess those things in a way that could jeopardize those officials but also could cause our intelligence officials to be risk averse — the very kind of risk aversion…that the 9/11 commission talked about when they talked about what set us up for 9/11.”"

First, the Military Commissions Act does not immunize intelligence agents from prosecution for anything. In Sec. 6, it provides a list of things that can be prosecuted as war crimes. One of them is torture. Another is ‘cruel or inhuman treatment’. Insofar as we can infer congressional intent from this statute, we have ought to conclude that Congress intended that people who torture someone can be prosecuted: after all, Congress passed a law that expressly provides for their prosecution.

If John Cornyn and his colleagues meant to immunize intelligence officials for whatever they did, they should have passed a law saying so. If they wanted to immunize intelligence officials for doing anything that the Bush administration said was OK, however implausible the administration’s claims might be, they should have passed a law saying that. And if they wanted to add a codicil saying: “For the purposes of this statute, the practice known as ‘waterboarding’ is not a form of torture”, they should have done that.

But they didn’t do any of these things. They passed a law saying that people who engage in torture can be prosecuted for war crimes. Eric Holder, like many people, and like our government before George W. Bush got hold of it, believes that waterboarding is torture. Nothing in the Military Commissions Act says otherwise.

Second, because Eric Holder is not yet Attorney General, he has not yet had a chance to see what, exactly, people did to detainees over the last seven years. That being the case, it would be completely irresponsible for him to say whether he will or won’t prosecute them…

Continue reading.

I wander here and there about To-Do lists. I had a pretty good one in my Palm, but that app (and PDA) is now gone from this household. Right now I’m using Action Outline, which I like. (You can get a free version, limited to 7 entries at any level. That’s enough to try it out.)

MakeUseOf has a list of some on-line To-Do options.

Via David Kurtz at TalkingPointsMemo, relaying an email for a DoE employee:

I work at the Department of Education headquarters in DC. Today completed our 2-day introduction to Arne Duncan. Yesterday he had lunch in our cafeteria (Edibles, ha ha), with his wife and children. His wife wore jeans and a sweater and Arne looked like an average joe in khaki dress pants, white shirt and tie. They stood in all of the lines and talked to anyone who approached them. They probably stayed 90 minutes. It was definitely the highest cafeteria attendance ever.

Yesterday afternoon he visited every floor of our building and introduced himself to everyone. We all came out into the hall and he shook everyone’s hand with a “Hi, I’m Arne.”

By the end of the day yesterday, everyone was aglow, since this was already more attention than we’d received from Spellings or Paige. Today, however, was the all-staff meeting, and I can say that the morale in the building increased ten-fold by the end of it.

Our auditorium was beyond packed, with people standing in the aisles. I myself snagged a seat on the floor next to the stage kindergarten-style. Arne stood in front of a blue screen that read “Call me Arne!” in bright yellow letters. He insisted that we call him Arne, rather than Mr. Secretary or anything like that, saying his name was Arne before he got this job and it would be 8 years from now.

… I know this isn’t anything earthshattering, but the change in the atmosphere at the Department over the last week has been really astounding. In the past, we all knew that the Secretary had an agenda that she was going to follow, and that we were only there to affirm that her way was best. We really feel that Arne wants to know the truth, whether it fits with his agenda or not.

I am all excited to get the new Rhodia mouse/notepad, so The Wife and I are going to Carmel to pick up a couple. We’ll then have lunch in our favorite Carmel restaurant, the Tutto Mondo Trattoria.

UPDATE: The store that was to have the Rhodia mouse/notepad did not in fact have any. They will call when they get some. And Tutto Mondo Trattoria is no more—in that location is now a Thai place. We tried another Italian place: pricey, and not so good as TMT. :sigh: So it goes.

I watched Modern Warriors: The Martial Way last night, and I thought it was excellent. I see how that the director has received at least one Academy Award nomination.

The movie ponders the state of martial arts today, in the modern world: age-appropriate martial arts, in a way, meaning the age in which we live.

What happened was that the various schools of martial arts came to the US, where they practiced side by side. As a result, students could learn different styles easily, and the result was a new blend of techniques. Then the question naturally arises, what happens if we let martial artists really go at it and practice their art full-contact.

The movie has interviews with many masters and grandmasters and fighting champions, and I found it fascinating. One point made in the movie that I’ve read previously in other contexts: modern-day boxing (with padded gloves) is more dangerous and threatening to long-term health than bare-knuckle boxing of the old era. In the bare-knuckle days, fighters didn’t want to break their hands on the opponent’s (hard) skull, so the fight went for body blows. With padded gloves, fighters work on the head a lot more, going for a knock-out, with resulting brain injuries for the brain being slammed around inside the skull.

One fighter also has good practical advice to avoid joint problems—these are very practical guys. And I saw some styles of fighting with which I was unfamiliar and which looked quite interesting: wing chun, for one. You can see some demos of it on YouTube, but the explanations in the movie were better.

If you do watch the movie, which I recommend for those interested in the martial arts, be sure to also watch the “extra footage,” which shows longer clips of the interviews.