Later On

And in large part, I think, it’s because that Congress has refused to fund them adequately: short-staffed and under-funded, the FDA is incapable of doing the job we want. Lyndsey Layton has a front-page story on the problem in the Washington Post, but of course Congress is now out of town on their Spring recess. Still, I’m hoping that we could forego and fighter plane or two and greatly increase the FDA budget. Layton:

The expensive "sheep’s milk" cheese in a Manhattan market was really made from cow’s milk. And a jar of "Sturgeon caviar" was, in fact, Mississippi paddlefish.

Some honey makers dilute their honey with sugar beets or corn syrup, their competitors say, but still market it as 100 percent pure at a premium price.

And last year, a Fairfax man was convicted of selling 10 million pounds of cheap, frozen catfish fillets from Vietnam as much more expensive grouper, red snapper and flounder. The fish was bought by national chain retailers, wholesalers and food service companies, and ended up on dinner plates across the country.

"Food fraud" has been documented in fruit juice, olive oil, spices, vinegar, wine, spirits and maple syrup, and appears to pose a significant problem in the seafood industry. Victims range from the shopper at the local supermarket to multimillion companies, including E&J Gallo and Heinz USA.

Such deception has been happening since Roman times, but it is getting new attention as more products are imported and a tight economy heightens competition. And the U.S. food industry says federal regulators are not doing enough to combat it.

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As this article in the NY Times points out, meteorologists in general are both ignorant and doubtful of climate change science. (Doubting the conclusions of climate scientists usually requires ignorance of the science.) The NY Times itself harbors much ignorance about the topic, as the story shows.

Here’s a detailed refutation—too bad the Times couldn’t do better research.

Interesting book review by Catherine Tumber in The Wilson Quarterly:

Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability

by David Owen

A review by Catherine Tumber

From the moment Henry David Thoreau drove a post into the shores of Walden Pond, the American environmental movement declared its hostility toward cities — those sooted handmaidens of industrial despoliation into which, by 1920, half the American population was smooshed. The argument against urban congestion was moral, aesthetic, and increasingly grounded in science. Yet in spite of the hygienic improvements of Progressive-era municipal reforms, the birth of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, and the more recent recognition that auto-dependent suburban sprawl poses grave environmental hazards, cities remain the bane of environmentalists. Today’s movement to "green" cities with more open parkland, urban agriculture, and ecologically minded building design belongs to a long tradition.

Contrary to environmentalism’s anti-urban bias, David Owen argues, New York City — the ur-metropolis itself — is among the greenest human settlements on the planet, measured in terms of its carbon footprint. "The average New Yorker," he points out, "annually generates 7.1 tons of greenhouse gases, a lower rate than that of any other American city, and less than 30 percent of the national average." And the beauty of it is that New Yorkers don’t even have to try — or to care. Simply by not driving, and by living on top of one another in small apartments stacked in tall buildings, the denizens of Gotham do more for the environment than the most strenuously eco-friendly composter can imagine.

For those unfamiliar with the environmental argument for urban density, Green Metropolis (which developed from a 2004 article Owen wrote for The New Yorker) is a fair place to start. Owen devotes a good part of his book to showing that high-tech green fixes — developing an electric-car industry, constructing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified buildings, and going off the grid with residential solar panels and other technologies — offer false comfort, as long as they perpetuate our dependence on automobile transportation. Such measures do little more than flatter the vanity of architects, engineers, and high-end, conspicuously green consumers, while providing a convenient marketing edge for a host of new products and real estate ventures. Michael Pollan-inspired locavores also come in for a drubbing. In reducing their "food miles," Owen argues, they ignore agricultural efficiencies of scale while turning over precious urban real estate to plants rather than people.

The other prong of Owen’s argument is that …

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Rachel Ehrenberg in Science News:

Don’t judge a wine by its cover. In a survey of the chemistry and flavor of pinot noir and chardonnay, consumers couldn’t discern wines capped with natural corks from screw caps, scientists reported March 25 at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society. The results suggest that the way its bottle is stopped has little if any effect on a wine’s flavor.

“Wine quality should really be judged by the wine, not the cork,” said Michael Qian of Oregon State University in Corvallis, who led the research. “The right kind of screw cap is just as good as a cork, or even better, because it is more consistent.”

The permeability of a wine’s cork determines the amount of oxygen that enters the wine, and this acts on other compounds that affect flavor. Some traditionalists assert that real corks are the only way to get just the right amount of healthy gas exchange needed for a flavorful wine, while screw caps are suffocating. But Qian’s survey found that wine was just as appealing to taste testers whether it was aged in bottles topped with screw caps or traditional corks. And instead of stifling the wine, one kind of screw cap and the synthetic cork actually did the opposite, allowing the wine to breathe too much.

Working with Qian and colleagues, graduate student Juan He investigated 2006 vintage pinot noir and chardonnay from the Argyle Winery in Oregon. The winery closed 150 bottles each with natural cork, synthetic cork and three screw caps, each with a different lining. Every six months for two years the team uncorked bottles from each of the five groups to test the chemical profile and dissolved oxygen content of the wine under each type of seal. The researchers also had volunteers rate the flavor and aroma of wine from the different kinds of capped and corked bottles.

The chemical analysis revealed that of the five types of seal, the synthetic cork and the cap lined with low-density polyethylene actually let in too much oxygen, running the risk that too many flavorful compounds such as thiols and esters may be oxidized. While consumers weren’t able to detect these differences, if a larger proportion of compounds interacts with oxygen, chemical reactions could kill desirable flavors such as the passion fruit character of some sauvignon blancs, noted Qian.

Screw caps made from a polyvinylidene chloride–tin foil combination (Saran-tin) let in the least oxygen. But the amount of oxygen wasn’t low enough to leave the wine heavy with unreacted sulfur compounds, which can give an “off” quality that is often attributed to too much unreacted methanethiol and was thought to be the bane of screw cap wines. The screw cap lined with polyvinylidene chloride–polyethylene mix (Saranex) had chemical and taste profiles similar to the natural cork, said Qian.

The lack of excessive unreacted sulfur in the screw-capped bottles is “kind of surprising,” said He. “We think the wine itself is more important than the screw cap.” 

Their study suggests that screw caps themselves aren’t all the same; some allow just the right amount of breathability, one parameter of many in getting flavor to bloom.

Sai Prakash Chaturvedula, a chemist with the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, says the results are …

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One thing I still dislike about Google Chrome is that I don’t have the little tools that would embed videos. This video is so impressive that I urge you to click the link. John Cook at Skeptical Science:

Past studies have found most of Greenland’s ice mass loss had occurred in the south. However, new research has been published (Khan 2010) examining the pattern of mass loss over the entire Greenland ice sheet (H/T to Riccardo). Satellite gravity data and Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements both find that mass loss has been spreading up along the northwest coast of Greenland, starting in late 2005. This increase in mass loss is shown most dramatically in this animation created by co-author John Wahr:

Continue reading to watch video—it’s staggering.

Jill Richardson from PRWatch.org:

When First Lady Michelle Obama decided to plant a vegetable garden at the White House, she faced a problem that many new homeowners in America run into. Previous residents of her house had applied sewage sludge to her lawn, but left no warnings to alert the her about the potential toxicity of her soil as a result of the sludge application. When the Obamas tested the soil in preparation for planting their garden, they found some lead in the soil. At 93 parts per million (ppm), the lead showed that the soil was probably contaminated by something, even though at 93 ppm the lead itself was not necessarily a danger. Still, the Obamas took precautions to further lower the lead level to 14ppm, and make the lead unavailable to plants by adding soil amendments that diluted the lead and increased the acidity of the soil.

Sludge Politicized

Unfortunately for the Obamas, and for the entire nation, once the story hit the news, it became politicized. While the issue was initially raised as a comment on the safety of using sewage sludge as fertilizer – an issue that has no political party – the right soon grabbed a hold of the story as a way to make fun of the Obamas. Some on the left fiercely defended the Obamas in return. But the Obamas are not the villains in this story; they are the victims. They are among many other Americans whose yards and gardens are contaminated with sewage sludge without their knowledge and who, as a result, are exposed to toxic contaminants in the soil. And lead is just a fraction of the overall problem.

When it was conceived, the White House garden was intended as a symbol of support for home gardening and fresh, organic food. In fact, famed chef and visionary Alice Waters lobbied for the White House garden for more than a decade. When it finally became a reality last year, she said, “Fresh, wholesome food is the right of every American. This garden symbolizes the Obamas’ commitment to that belief.” But in planting her garden, Michelle Obama not only set the example she intended for home gardening, she also illustrated why using sewage sludge as fertilizer is so harmful.

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Steve Benen at Political Animal:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, once a European darling to American conservatives, has been keeping an eye on the U.S. debate over health care. Speaking at Columbia University yesterday, the French leader expressed some astonishment at what he saw. (via Kevin Drum)

"Welcome to the club of states who don’t turn their back on the sick and the poor," Sarkozy said, referring to the U.S. health care overhaul signed by President Barack Obama last week.

From the European perspective, he said, "when we look at the American debate on reforming health care, it’s difficult to believe."

"The very fact that there should have been such a violent debate simply on the fact that the poorest of Americans should not be left out in the streets without a cent to look after them … is something astonishing to us."

I imagine it’s all the more astonishing when we have unemployed cancer patients expressing their opposition to improvements in the health care system because they fear government programs and benefits.

European astonishment is understandable. I’ve followed the debate as closely as just about anyone, and I’ve found it hard to believe, too.

I imagine the Right will start clamoring that the latest batch of terrorists be waterboarded and shipped off to Guantánamo, since the US cannot withstand trying terrorists in criminal court or having terrorists in domestic jails. </snark> Sorry.

But I’ve yet to see any stories calling these guys terrorists, though their plans and threats seem far more advanced than the "terrorists" who planned to cut  down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch, or those in Florida who depended heavily on the FBI for encouragement and planning.

Juan Cole in Salon:

FBI raids on the Hutaree Christian militia have brought to light this formerly little-known group based in Adrian, Michigan.

Unlike the generally secular white supremacist organizations, Hutaree are explicitly Christians. Many seem to be millenarians, expecting the end of time to come soon. Like the so-called Patriot Movement, they are gun nuts. They are said to be organized to kill the Antichrist, and some reports say that they planned violence against American Muslims.

Polling shows that about 1/4 of members of the Republican Party believe that President Obama is the Antichrist, and one fears that Hutaree may agree.

Irregular Times has a good overview of their beliefs, which include secession from the US and return to colonial times, perhaps in preparation for another revolution. (Will they have to register in South Carolina?)  Some are antinomians, rejecting U.S. laws. They fear a liberal ‘new world order.’

Fox News and Rupert Murdoch bear some responsibility for such groups. When Glenn Beck tosses around a charge like ‘anti-Christ’ at a prominent liberal, he knows that term is an incitement for militant Christians. And the years of rabid Fox promotion of hatred of US Muslims is bound to get someone among them killed– and is therefore murder by television.

I am struck that Hutaree has a great deal in common with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq. The Hutaree militia seems to recruit from the poor or lower middle class. Michigan’s real unemployment rate is said to be 17%, and for many Michigan workers there have been years of hopelessness and joblessness, inducing despair and anger. The Mahdi Army likewise drew on Iraqi unemployed and angry youth. Many Sadrists believe that the Mahdi or Muslim messiah will soon come, perhaps accompanied by the return of Christ. The Mahdi Army has sometimes targeted Christian video or liquor shops, as a symbol of the oppressive other (yes, that is unfair to Iraqi Christians but they had the misfortune to be W.’s co-religionists.).

The Hutaree, a mirror image, target Muslims. The Mahdi Army considered Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the Dajjal or anti-Christ. Both have an unhealthy interest in firearms for political intimidation of others. The Hutaree fear the United Nations, as the Mahdi Army fears the US occupation. (Muslim radical groups often also hate the UN.)

Both groups are victims of a neoliberal world order that uses and discards working people, while protecting and cushioning the super-wealthy. Instead of a rational analysis of exploitation, however, they are responding with emotion and symbol, projecting their economic and political alienation on other religious or ethnic groups (the Mahdi Army ethnically cleansed tens of thousands of Sunni Muslims from Baghdad in the name of anti-imperialism. They resort to irrational conspiracy theories, to religion and guns. Admittedly, the Mahdi Army is somewhat more rational, since they really do face foreign occupation, though their targeting of Sunnis instead of forming a nationalist front was highly dysfunctional.

The U.S. press is saying the Hutaree people are a Christian "militia" but is avoiding calling them ‘alleged Christian terrorists." Apparently only organized Muslim radicals can now be called terrorists.

Andrew Sullivan:

Commonweal’s Paul Moses counters Weigel:

To say that sexual abuse in other churches or other sectors of society does not get the same media attention misses the point. The issue isn’t that Catholic priests are allegedly prone to commit sexual abuse, but that a small percentage of them were freed to do so, again and again, due to gross mismanagement, secrecy and lack of accountability on the part of church authorities. However dated most of the sexual abuse cases are, this story still calls out to be covered because some of those who failed to stop repeat abusers remain in positions of authority.

It’s not just the crime – about the most horrific there is and treated as the most despicable by most prison inmates – it’s the cover-up! And the fact that the men who concocted the cover-up were never held truly accountable, never prosecuted, and, in one case, elevated to the papacy!

This is why the developments of the last two weeks have been so earth-shattering. Because they reveal that one of the countless bishops and archbishops who treated child-rape as a possible embarrassment for the church and a problem for the priest – rather than as a horrifying betrayal, crime and danger to children and families – now runs the whole show. So not only is he part of the problem, his refusal to concede that he was part of the problem compounds the problem.

This is about trust and minimal moral accountability. Minimal. What responsibility does the Pope have for the subsequent child rapes committed by the priest he reassigned? How many violated children does he have on his conscience? And how can responsibility for and complicity in those crimes – those indelible wounds in the souls of children – be dismissed, however many years later, as "petty gossip"?

Catholics are being asked move on from the fact that the Pope himself personally let a child-molester go on to rape other children. Personally, I can no more move on from that fact without some accountability than I can from the fact that the president of the United States authorized the brutal torture of human beings.

From Marian Wang at ProPublica:

The New York Times business section had a piece over the weekend about a bank regulator called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. It points out that while the Federal Reserve has shouldered most of the criticism directed toward bank regulators, because of its relative obscurity, the OCC has escaped much of the scrutiny.

The Times piece focuses mostly on John C. Dugan, the former bank lobbyist who heads the agency. It highlights criticism that Dugan is too pro-bank, and goes back and forth between criticism and Dugan’s response:

Mr. Dugan bristles at the notion that he is too easy on banks and says his agency’s record on consumer protection has been “vigorous and sustained.” He says it is a “cheap shot” to suggest that his lobbying years color his viewpoint and that it demeans his employees and his years of public service.

In point-counterpoint situations, what’s often helpful is hard data. The Times brings it into the story later on, with statistics on the OCC’s formal enforcement orders against banks. Check out the graphic:

The OCC has both formal and informal enforcement orders against banks. The Times’ chart shows that the agency rarely takes formal enforcement action against banks, and even more rarely doles out actual penalties to the banks in the form of fines, restitutions or refunds to consumers. The agency defended its small number of enforcement actions, saying it works closely with banks to fix problems while they’re small, so as not to require stronger measures.

My Rooney Style 3 Size 1 Super Silvertip, as promised—a very good brush, similar to the Rooney 2. It worked up an excellent lather from the Geo. F. Trumper Rose shaving soap, and the Apollo Mikron with a still-sharp Swedish Gillette blade did a fine job. A splash of Blenheim Bouquet, and I’m ready for my pot of Jasmine Silver Needle tea.

Steve Benen at Political Animal:

Now I remember why I stopped reading Robert Samuelson’s columns.

In his latest piece, the conservative columnist argues that the money the Obama administration and congressional Democrats intend to use to pay for health care should actually be used to reduce the deficits left by Bush/Cheney, rather than extending health care coverage to 32 million Americans. As Samuelson sees it, President Obama prioritizing the needs of those 32 million people is "self- centered" and his policy initiative "self-indulgent."

Got that? If the president thinks of the needs of those who are struggling, he’s necessarily thinking of himself. This is how Robert Samuelson perceives recent events.

Jon Chait is unimpressed with the argument.

"Self-indulgent" — what an interesting phrase. Let’s consider both words, starting with the end. It contains the assumption that some basic health insurance is an "indulgence," rather than a necessity. I defy anybody to make a careful study of the actual conditions of people who lack health insurance — such as can be found in Jonathan Cohn’s book "Sick" — and come to this conclusion.

Next, there’s the word "self." Self-indulgent is when you spend money to indulge yourself. The Bush tax cuts, which massively enriched George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, could be described as self-indulgent. Samuelson supported those, incidentally. President Obama and the Democrats who enacted health care reform all have insurance. Even if you consider providing basic medical care to people who lack it an "indulgence," they are not indulging themselves. They are "indulging" others.

Ezra added, "And before you think this is all about Samuelson, consider that Charles Krauthammer calls coverage ‘candy.’ There’s an absence of empathy here that borders on a clinical disorder."

So far as I can tell, most conservatives are completely devoid of compassion.

ThinkProgress:

Since passage of the Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies have begun laying the groundwork to blame Democrats for the increased health care costs that they plan to impose on consumers. Last Tuesday, CIGNA CEO David Cordani told Neil Cavuto that health care premiums will continue to increase despite the new health care law. And in an interview with Charlie Rose, Aetna CEO Ron Williams said that his company also plans to jack up rates:

ROSE: Will insurance premiums go up?

WILLIAMS: The answer is yes, and some of the things that will drive those premiums are significant additional taxes the industry will ultimately have to pay in the first year.

Williams is lying. In fact, the health care law does not tax insurance issuers until 2014. Moreover, as Igor Volsky writes, insurers are disingenuously trying to point the fingers at hospitals and doctors to avoid a conversation about their own failed efforts to control costs while raking in profits.

Who ordered that? Julissa Treviño in the Washington Independent:

James M. Chaparro, director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations, apparently implemented his own plan to increase the number of deportations of undocumented immigrants, The Washington Post reported Saturday. This announcement was made in a Feb. 22 memo to field directors around the country after he explained the number of deportations this year will be about 20 percent behind last year’s numbers, “well under the Agency’s goal of 400,000 [deportations].”

From the Post:

Beyond stating ICE enforcement goals in unusually explicit terms, Chaparro laid out how the agency would pump up the numbers: by increasing detention space to hold more illegal immigrants while they await deportation proceedings; by sweeping prisons and jails to find more candidates for deportation and offering early release to those willing to go quickly; and, most controversially, with a “surge” in efforts to catch illegal immigrants whose only violation was lying on immigration or visa applications or reentering the United States after being deported.

That same day the Post revealed the memo, ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton released a statement saying that portions of Chaparro’s message did not reflect ICE’s policies and had been sent out without authorization. “We are strongly committed to carrying out our priorities to remove serious criminal offenders first,” Morton concluded, “and we definitively do not set quotas.”

Still, the memo hasn’t been overlooked as an isolated, individual action.

Democracy Now! today reported that the memo sets a quota for non-criminal deportations, even though the administration promised to focus on cases that actually pose threats: …

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John Sifton in Slate:

On Sunday, Adam Goldman of the Associated Press broke new details about a 2002 torture-homicide of an Afghan CIA detainee at the infamous "Salt Pit" near Kabul, one of several that occurred in CIA custody from 2002 to 2004. The new report raises questions about the investigation of the death and about accountability generally for past CIA abuses.

The Washington Post first reported on the homicide in2005, but until now it was only known that the man killed was an Afghan and that he had possibly died of exposure to cold. AP now reveals his name—Gul Rahman—and that he had been through several weeks of interrogation when, shackled and half-naked, he died of hypothermia early in the morning of Nov. 20, 2002. We also learn that Rahman was not a member of al-Qaida, but rather an Afghan insurgent in Hizb-i-Islami, a mujahedeen group headed by the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. (Ironic twist: Hekmatyar’s group received hundreds of millions of dollars in CIA assistance in the 1980s; it was one of the CIA’s most favored mujahedeen groups. It’s also in the news now for offering Karzai a peace plan.)

The facts of Rahman’s death suggest at least a negligent homicide, but as AP reports, it appears no one was ever punished for Rahman’s death. Why not? The answer may lie with an obscure word in a little-noticed footnote in a recently declassified memo sent to a Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility. Page 29, Footnote 28 of the memo, submitted in 2009 by lawyers for former administration lawyer Jay Bybee, refers to a "declination memorandum prepared by the CIA’s Counterterrorism Section regarding the death of Gul Rahman."

The word pops up in other sections of the OPR report and other declassified documents, also in the context of interrogations. On Page 38 of the OPR report, one can read about the CIA in early 2002 asking for an "advance declination" from the criminal division of the Justice Department, for proposed interrogation techniques for Abu Zubaydah, the CIA’s first detainee, including mock burial, binding in painful positions, deprivation of sleep for multiple days, being thrown into walls, and water-boarding. Marcy Wheeler lists on Emptywheel other documents in which lawyers discuss "declination letters," "pre-activity declination memos," and "declination decisions" in the context of proposed interrogations of other so-called high-value detainees (see one example here).

What’s a declination? The answer—in the context of the CIA, torture, and homicides—is troubling. The word declination in law is similar to the word indulgence in Catholicism; it’s about avoiding eternal damnation by obtaining forgiveness for your sins.

Declinations are typically used in garden-variety criminal cases when potential defendants who have survived investigation wish to confirm that they won’t be indicted. An attorney for a business client might seek a declination from DoJ in the context of a tax case. With, say, a client under investigation for using a dodgy tax shelter, a lawyer might say: "Hey, let’s ask the prosecutors about you, if they’re formally declining to prosecute, we’ll get something in writing"—a declination letter—and you can sleep at night." (Declinations to prosecute can also be part of plea agreements.) The business is somewhat shady: The very fact a client needs a declination letter can suggest legal shenanigans occurred. Prosecutors can still choose to indict later if new facts emerge, but the declination itself, once given, serves as exculpatory in the hands of a good defense attorney.

In the context of interrogation, torture, and homicide, the word becomes even more sinister. The declination memo "regarding Gul Rahman’s death" was essentially an after-the-fact blessing for Rahman’s killer, in the form of a memo stating that DoJ would not prosecute the officers responsible…

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Christopher Hitchens at Slate:

One by one, as I predicted, the pathetic excuses of Joseph Ratzinger’s apologists evaporate before our eyes. It was said until recently that when the Rev. Peter Hullermann was found to be a vicious pederast in 1980, the man who is now pope had no personal involvement in his subsequent transfer to his own diocese or in his later unimpeded career as a rapist and a molester. But now we find that the psychiatrist to whom the church turned for “therapy” was adamant that Hullermann never be allowed to go near children ever again. We also find that Ratzinger was one of those to whom the memo about Hullermann’s transfer was actually addressed. All attempts to place the blame on a loyal subordinate, Ratzinger’s vicar general, the Rev. Gerhard Gruber, have predictably failed. According to a recent report, “the transfer of Father Hullermann from Essen would not have been a routine matter, experts said.” Either that—damning enough in itself—or it perhaps would have been a routine matter, which is even worse. Certainly the pattern—of finding another parish with fresh children for the priest to assault—is the one that has become horribly “routine” ever since and became standard practice when Ratzinger became a cardinal and was placed in charge of the church’s global response to clerical pederasty.

So now a new defense has had to be hastily improvised. It is argued that, during his time as archbishop of Munich and Freising, Germany, Ratzinger was more preoccupied with doctrinal questions than with mere disciplinary ones. Of course, of course: The future pope had his eyes fixed on ethereal and divine matters and could not be expected to concern himself with parish-level atrocities. This cobbled-up apologia actually repays a little bit of study. What exactly were these doctrinal issues? Well, apart from punishing a priest who celebrated a Mass at an anti-war demonstration—which incidentally does seems to argue for a “hands-on” approach to individual clergymen—Ratzinger’s chief concern appears to have been that of first communion and first confession. Over the previous decade, it had become customary in Bavaria to subject small children to their first communion at a tender age but to wait a year until they made their first confession. It was a matter of whether they were old enough to understand. Enough of this liberalism, said Ratzinger, the first confession should come in the same year as the first communion. One priest, the Rev. Wilfried Sussbauer, reports that he wrote to Ratzinger expressing misgivings about this and received “an extremely biting letter” in response.

So it seems that 1) Ratzinger was quite ready to take on individual priests who gave him any trouble, and 2) he was very firm on one crucial point of doctrine: Get them young. Tell them in their infancy that it is they who are the sinners. Instill in them the necessary sense of guilt. This is not at all without relevance to the disgusting scandal into which he has now irretrievably plunged the church he leads. Almost every episode in this horror show has involved small children being seduced and molested in the confessional itself. To take the most heart-rending cases to have emerged recently, namely the torment of deaf children in the church-run schools in Wisconsin and Verona, Italy, it is impossible to miss the calculated manner in which the predators used the authority of the confessional in order to get their way. And again the identical pattern repeats itself: Compassion is to be shown only to the criminals. Ratzinger’s own fellow clergy in Wisconsin wrote to him urgently—by this time he was a cardinal in Rome, supervising the global Catholic cover-up of rape and torture—beseeching him to remove the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who had comprehensively wrecked the lives of as many as 200 children who could not communicate their misery except in sign language. And no response was forthcoming until Father Murphy himself appealed to Ratzinger for mercy—and was granted it.

For Ratzinger, the sole test of a good priest is this: …

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Tom Ricks at The Best Defense:

This is a great way to slap around military spouses: Start up a program to help them with college tuition, and then shut it down a few months later when it proves unexpectedly popular.

Not only are they rejecting new applicants, they left existing participants in the lurch on future payments. The Military Spouse Career Advancement Accounts program recently has been re-started but still isn’t accepting new applicants. Secretary Gates said the project could cost as much as $2 billion — that is almost as much as one submarine or B-2 bomber. Which do you think helps national security more — getting one more platform, or making tens of thousands of military spouses happier with their lot?

It is almost like, hey, your husband is deployed to Afghanistan? You’re losing sleep over IED fears? We’ll distract you by giving you something else to worry about!

The logic of this is amazing: It turned out there was a huge demand for this, so we had to stop doing it. That’s like taking a car off the market because so many people wanted to buy it. Time for a senior official to step up and make this right, first with a public apology. Congrats to McClatchy Newspaper for breaking this story. Les Blumenthal’s article is chockablock with great quotes. Here is one, from Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.): "How they have handled this is infuriating. This is crazy."

This is just another reason why military spouses are so sick of lip service that praises their sacrifice, but fails to follow through by making their problems a top priority. Are you listening, Mrs. Obama?

John Amato of Crooks & Liars has a good report, along with a couple of videos. Take a look.

Amanda Terkel at ThinkProgress:

The Obama administration and many congressional Democrats are pushing to create a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) that will be able to “effectively enforce rules designed to protect consumers of mortgages, credit cards and other financial products.” Such legislation has already passed the House. However, now, Senate Republicans and their allies in the financial industry are trying to block these efforts by weakening the legislation in every way they can. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has even urged bankers to stand up for themselves against “little punk staffers” on Capitol Hill and lobby against financial reform.

Advocates for reform now have a powerful ally on their side: the Pentagon. On Feb. 26, Undersecretary of Defense Clifford Stanley wrote to the Treasury Department and advocated a strong CFPA, noting that military families are often the targets of unscrupulous financial practices:

The Department of Defense would welcome and encourage CFPA protections provided to Service members and their families with regard to unscrupulous automobile sales and financing practices, provided such protections would not limit access to legitimate products. While each Military Service includes car buying and financial classes as part of its normal financial educational curriculum, there are still documented cases of Service members falling victim to predatory practices and prohibitively expensive products. [...]

We recognize Service members and their families are under increasing stress. When we have asked in surveys about the causes, Service members responded that finances were second only behind work and career concerns and ahead of deployments, health, life events, family relationships, and war/hostilities.

Last week, Pentagon officials also met with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner about the CFPA. “DOD firmly believes that the financial readiness of their troops and families equates to mission readiness and anything that we can do to help our families be financially ready, we will support the family and the mission,” said avid Julian, the director of the Defense Department’s Office of Personal Finance.

Predatory lenders have long targeted military families. In 2006, the AP found that thousands of U.S. servicemembers were “being barred from overseas duty because they are so deep in debt that they are considered security risks.” Military officials blamed the problem, in part, on “high interest rates at payday lending businesses, many of which are clustered outside bases around the country.” That same year, President Bush signed legislation limiting the interest rate on payday loans for military families.

An area of particular concern now is shady automobile lending. In a survey of 659 military financial managers, counselors legal assistance officers, 72 percent of them said that they “had counseled Service members in the past six months” about tactics such as “bait and switch” financing, falsification of loan applications or documents, and other abusive practices in auto financing. Currently, however, auto dealers don’t have to follow the same rules as community banks and credit unions.

Unfortunately, in October, the House Financial Services Committee approved an amendment that would “exempt auto financing from independent dealers” from CFPA oversight. (Democratic Chairman Barney Frank opposed the measure.) If Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) gets his way, payday lenders will also be exempt.