Later On

Potentially some very good (thought after-the-fact) news.

Abrahm Lustgarten at ProPublica:

Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering whether to bar BP from receiving government contracts, a move that would ultimately cost the company billions in revenue and could end its drilling in federally controlled oil fields.

Over the past 10 years, BP has paid tens of millions of dollars in fines and been implicated in four separate instances of criminal misconduct that could have prompted this far more serious action. Until now, the company’s executives and their lawyers have fended off such a penalty by promising that BP would change its ways.

That strategy may no longer work.

Days ago, in an unannounced move, the EPA suspended negotiations with the petroleum giant over whether it would be barred from federal contracts because of the environmental crimes it committed before the spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Officials said they are putting the talks on hold until they learn more about the British company’s responsibility for the plume of oil that is spreading across the Gulf.

The EPA said in a statement that, according to its regulations, it can consider banning BP from future contracts after weighing "the frequency and pattern of the incidents, corporate attitude both before and after the incidents, changes in policies, procedures, and practices."

Several former senior EPA debarment attorneys and people close to the BP investigation told ProPublica that means the agency will re-evaluate BP and examine whether the latest incident in the Gulf is evidence of an institutional problem inside BP, a precursor to the action called debarment.

Federal law allows agencies to suspend or bar from government contracts companies that engage in fraudulent, reckless or criminal conduct. The sanctions can be applied to a single facility or an entire corporation. Government agencies have the power to forbid a company to collect any benefit from the federal government in the forms of contracts, land leases, drilling rights, or loans.

The most serious, sweeping kind of suspension is called "discretionary debarment" and it is applied to an entire company. If this were imposed on BP, it would cancel not only the company’s contracts to sell fuel to the military but prohibit BP from leasing or renewing drilling leases on federal land. In the worst cast, it could also lead to the cancellation of BP’s existing federal leases, worth billions of dollars.

Present and former officials said the crucial question in deciding whether to impose such a sanction is …

Continue reading.

Brett Dykes at Yahoo News:

According to two surviving crew members of the Deepwater Horizon, oil workers from the rig were held in seclusion on the open water for up to two days after the April 20 explosion, while attorneys attempted to convince them to sign legal documents stating that they were unharmed by the incident. The men claim that they were forbidden from having any contact with concerned loved ones during that time, and were told they would not be able to go home until they signed the documents they were presented with.

Stephen Davis, a seven-year veteran of drilling-rig work from San Antonio, told The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg today that he was held on a boat for 36 to 40 hours after diving into the Gulf from the burning rig and swimming to safety. Once on a crew boat, Davis said, he and the others were denied access to satellite phones or radio to get in touch with their families, many of whom were frantic to find out whether or not they were OK.

Davis’ attorney told Goldenberg that while on the boat, his client and the others were told to sign the statements presented to them by attorneys for Transocean — the firm that owned the Deepwater Horizon— or they wouldn’t be allowed to go home. After being awake for 50 harrowing hours, Davis caved and signed the papers. He said most of the others did as well.

Davis’ story seems to be backed up by a similar account given to NPR by another Deepwater Horizon crewmember earlier in the month. Christopher Choy, a roustabout on the rig, said that the lawyers gathered the survivors in the galley of a boat and said, "’You need to sign these. Nobody’s getting off here until we get one from everybody.’ … At the bottom, it said something about, like, you know, this can be used as evidence in court and all that. I told them, ‘I’m not signing it.’ "

Choy said that once he was finally allowed to get off the boat, he was shuttled to a hotel, where he met up with his wife. At the hotel, representatives from Transocean confronted him again and badgered him to sign the statement. Exhausted, traumatized and desperate to go home, Choy said that he finally relented and signed.

Choy’s lawyer, Steve Gordon, is incensed over what transpired in the hours after the explosion. He, along with other attorneys for Deepwater Horizon workers, is trying to get the documents voided by the courts.

"It’s absurd. It’s unacceptable, and it’s irresponsible," Gordon told NPR.

Seems clear that the documents were signed under duress. They should indeed be invalidated. Moreover, the company should suffer a serious penalty for this behavior.

Interesting:

The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society

by Frans de Waal

A review by Joan Silk

The thesis of Frans de Waal’s new book, The Age of Empathy, is that empathy comes "naturally" to humans, by which he means that it is a biologically grounded capacity that all people share. According to de Waal, empathy has deep evolutionary roots, having originated before the order Primates came into existence. The antiquity of empathy firmly fixes its place in human nature, he believes, making it a robust trait that develops in all societies. De Waal makes an impassioned and eloquent case that understanding the role of empathy in nature can help us build a kinder and more compassionate society. His message will have considerable resonance for many readers.

De Waal has long been a critic of the notion that evolution drives us (and our primate relatives) to express the darker sides of our natures. He has been impatient with colleagues who are fixated on the struggle for existence and give short shrift to the need for cooperation and accommodation among interdependent animals that live in groups. Thus, while many primatologists have focused on evolutionary pressures that generate high levels of competition and conflicts within a group, de Waal has emphasized the importance of the mechanisms that primates use to defuse tension, resolve conflicts and repair the damage caused by them.

De Waal’s argument in this book hinges on his claim that empathy is an ancient trait. Emphasizing the continuity in empathic concern across species, he speculates that empathy may be as old as maternal care itself. His reasoning is partly based on the selective advantages that he thinks empathy would have provided for mothers. Females who were sensitive to, and able to anticipate, the needs of their developing offspring would have been more successful mothers than those who were less responsive, he argues. But even if that’s the case, it does not necessarily mean that mammals actually evolved the capacity for empathy. After all, it might also have been useful for mammalian males to have the capacity to lactate, because in some circumstances males who could provide nourishment for their young might have had greater reproductive success than those who lacked this capacity. Nevertheless, except under rare specific conditions, mammalian males do not lactate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Interesting report by Deborah Franklin on NPR:

The link between heart disease or diabetes and a diet rich in red meat has always been a little fuzzy. Some studies show a strong connection; others not so much.

Now Harvard researchers think they may have turned up a reason for the discrepancy: Most studies don’t distinguish between processed meat and fresh.

When nutrition epidemiologist Renata Micha and her colleagues pooled and analyzed the data from 20 previous studies in a new way, they spotted the trend. Healthy people who tended to eat a lot of preserved meats like bacon, sausage, hot dogs, and cold cuts were much more likely than those who rarely touch the stuff to go on to develop heart disease or Type 2 diabetes.

The more they ate, the higher the risk. Eating unprocessed red meat with the same amount of fat — steaks, hamburgers, lamb chops, and the like — showed no such effect, Micha says. The results appear in the May 17 issue of the journal Circulation.

She sees her meta-analysis as more of a starting place than a conclusion; it’s another hint that there’s more to determining a food’s potential harm to the heart than just measuring its fat and cholesterol content. But she can’t tell from her work whether the problem is the oodles of extra salt in processed meat, the nitrates and other preservatives, the way it’s cooked, or some other factor entirely.

Michael Thun, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society, says that at this point Micha’s finding is interesting, but shouldn’t yet be the basis for any shift in dietary guidelines.

"We’ve been telling people for years to limit their consumption of all red meat, including processed meat and that still holds," Thun says. There’s plenty of solid evidence, he points out, that a diet heavy in any kind of red meat —fresh as well as processed — raises the risk of colon cancer, and maybe other cancers, too.

I find it easy to give up sausage and hot dogs, but bacon will be a bit of a struggle.

Barbara Hagerty for NPR:

Last November, a 27-year-old woman was admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. She was 11 weeks pregnant with her fifth child, and she was gravely ill. According to a hospital document, she had “right heart failure,” and her doctors told her that if she continued with the pregnancy, her risk of mortality was “close to 100 percent.”

The patient, who was too ill to be moved to the operating room much less another hospital, agreed to an abortion. But there was a complication: She was at a Catholic hospital.

“They were in quite a dilemma,” says Lisa Sowle Cahill, who teaches Catholic theology at Boston College. “There was no good way out of it. The official church position would mandate that the correct solution would be to let both the mother and the child die. I think in the practical situation that would be a very hard choice to make.”

But the hospital felt it could proceed because of an exception — called Directive 47 in the U.S. Catholic Church’s ethical guidelines for health care providers — that allows, in some circumstance, procedures that could kill the fetus to save the mother. Sister Margaret McBride, who was an administrator at the hospital as well as its liaison to the diocese, gave her approval.

Read the rest of this entry »

Taken a few minutes ago. Is she sticking out her tongue?

I used the 48-blade Jaccard on the steak, and quite thoroughly: completely covered the steak with the Jaccard crossways, then again with the Jaccard lengthwise, then diagonally, then wherever I thought it might need extra. Then I turned it over and did the other side the same way.

Salted and peppered it, and on the grill over direct hardwood coals: 4 minutes per side.

Result: Terrific. It was quite tender, but still chewy, in a pleasant way. Not mushy at all. Extremely juicy. Great flavor.

Of course, using the Jaccard makes the steak particularly susceptible to marinades, and I suddenly recalled a bourbon-marinated steak I once had somewhere in Kentucky. So to Google and “bourbon marinade steak.”

I picked this one because all the others were variants of Shari’s chicken marinade, which I already know. I’ll make it tomorrow morning and let the steak marinate a day.

UPDATE: The Wife amplified the slight misgivings I had about the marinade above, so I decided to wing it with this:

1/4 c. bourbon
2 Tbsp maple syrup
2 Tbsp sesame oil/olive oil (undecided—maybe even pecan oil)
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
dash Tabasco

Let’s see how that works.

UPDATE 2: Turns out I’m out of pecan oil, and in reading about it online, several noted that commercial pecan oils remove all the tiny pecan fragments to try to give it more shelf life—and that makes the oil tasteless. (And it still goes rancid quickly.) I’m going to use walnut oil.

I went with only 1 Tbsp of the balsamic vinegar because I didn’t want too much of that taste. I could add 1 Tbsp of red-wine vinegar as well—to put more acid in the marinade for tenderizing—but since the meat is pretty tender already, probably not.

UPDATE 3: Next time: I’ll put a handful of pecans in the mortar (or food processor) and reduce them to paste, adding olive oil to make a thick (and, I presume, very pecan-tasting) slurry, which I’ll then use in this marinade.

UPDATE 4: The marinade is definitely worth doing again. Extremely tasty, and the steak worked out great, though my cheap grill doesn’t cook well in windy conditions. Still, a hearty success.

TimF at Balloon Juice:

Julius Caesar did not break ancient Rome’s taboo against marching troops into the city of Rome. Lucius Cornelius Sulla did that in 82 B.C., thirty years earlier. Sulla even set what you might call a good example: he restored the Republic’s traditional balance of powers and then, setting himself apart from self-appointed dictators then and now, he retired.

Similarly, the first Weimar leader who more or less ignored his Republic’s balance of powers was Friedrich Ebert. Ebert, the first President of Weimar after WWI, felt that nobody could rebuild German society with the existing burden of checks and balances. Maybe he was right! Historians disagree. Regardless, by Hitler’s time a leader had plenty of precedent to declare an emergency and use the Constitution as a dinner napkin.

We shouldn’t punish the Addington regime because they acted like assholes or because they made America look bad. We should punish them, and we must punish them, because we cannot afford not to.

Britain gets it.

A judge will investigate claims that British intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of terror suspects, William Hague, the foreign secretary, said tonight. The move was welcomed by civil liberties campaigners and may put pressure on the Labour leadership candidate and former foreign secretary David Miliband, who was accused by Hague, while in opposition, of having something to hide. Miliband has repeatedly rejected the accusation and broadly indicated that he or his officials may have been misled by foreign intelligence agencies about the degree of British complicity…

Hague will come under pressure to ensure the inquiry is public and comprehensive. He first called last year for an independent judicial inquiry into claims that British officials had colluded in the torture of Binyam Mohamed, the former Guantánamo detainee and a UK resident. Mohamed claimed that he was tortured by US forces in Pakistan and Morocco, and that MI5 fed the CIA questions that were used by US forces.

Isn’t it odd to see Labour utterly fail to rise to the challenge of Bush-era abuses and have the Tories stand up instead. By US wingnut standards I guess that makes the mainstream British right a bunch of terrorist-loving communazis.

For lack of a better word, news from our side of the pond sucks ass.

[L]ast April, John Bates, the Bush-43-appointed, right-wing judge overseeing the case, rejected the Bush/Obama position and held that Boumediene applies to detainees picked up outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram. I reviewed that ruling here, in which Judge Bates explained that the Bagram detainees are “virtually identical to the detainees in Boumediene,” and that the Constitutional issue was exactly the same: namely, “the concern that the President could move detainees physically beyond the reach of the Constitution and detain them indefinitely.”

But the Obama administration was undeterred by this loss. They quickly appealed Judge Bates’ ruling. As the NYT put it about that appeal: “The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight.” Today, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals adopted the Bush/Obama position, holding that even detainees abducted outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram have no right to contest the legitimacy of their detention in a U.S. federal court, because Boumediene does not apply to prisons located within war zones (such as Afghanistan).

Maybe the British could indict ours as well.

It’s not free, but a business would probably find the trivial cost well worth paying. Take a look.

George W. Bush asked for the report, and a good thing, too. Unfortunately, the report was finally released after Obama took office, so the Right went crazy, as they are wont to do, and the report was withdrawn. Benen:

It’s genuinely tragic that the concerns raised by the Department of Homeland Security last year, about potentially violent anti-government extremists, look increasingly prescient.

An antigovernment Ohio man who had had several run-ins with the police around the country was identified Friday as one of two people suspected of gunning down two officers during a traffic stop in Arkansas.

The Arkansas State Police on Friday identified the pair — killed Thursday during an exchange of gunfire with the police — as Jerry R. Kane Jr., 45, of Forest, Ohio, and his son Joseph T. Kane, believed to be 16.

About 90 minutes before the shootout with the police, Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, and Officer Bill Evans, 38, were killed with AK-47 assault rifles after stopping a minivan on Interstate 40 in West Memphis, Ark., the authorities said.

Jerry Kane is obviously an anti-government extremist who, just last week, was shown in a YouTube video saying, "You have to kill them all. So what we’re after here is not fighting, it’s conquering. I don’t want to have to kill anybody, but if they keep messing with me, that’s what it’s going to have to come out. That’s what it’s going to come down to, is I’m going to have to kill. And if I have to kill one, then I’m not going to be able to stop, I just know it."

Examples of these politically-motivated attacks from extremists seem to be increasingly common. Just this year, John Patrick Bedell opened fire at the Pentagon; Joe Stack flew an airplane into a building; and the Hutaree Militia terrorist plot was uncovered. Last year, James von Brunn opened fire at the Holocaust memorial museum; Richard Poplawski gunned down three police officers in Pittsburgh, in part because he feared the non-existent "Obama gun ban"; and Dr. George Tiller was assassinated. In 2008, Jim David Adkisson opened fire in a Unitarian church in Tennessee, in part because of his "hatred of the liberal movement."

Obviously, deranged madmen are responsible for their own violent actions. It’s not unreasonable, though, to wish that some of the leading far-right voices would lower the rhetorical temperature a bit, helping to cool the tempers of those who might be inclined to hurt others.

Via Boing Boing, Davinder Kumar in the Guardian:

Barefooted, some even stark naked, the kids follow her as if she were the Pied Piper of Hamelin. As boisterous cheers announce her arrival the women abandon their chores and elders jostle for attention. The men are on their best behaviour, teeming with a welter of anxious faces.

In the impoverished hinterlands of Gaibandha district in northern Bangladesh, a frail young woman on her bike is having a dramatic effect. And Luich Akhter seems to perpetuate her spell with perfection. In the sweltering post-monsoon heat that transforms the flooded nation into an open-air sauna, the 24-year-old looks immaculate as she negotiates her way through paddy fields, cows and mosquito-breeding ponds on a weekly visit into Panchpeer village.

In a place where women dutifully give birth in dingy huts, the men know of little outside their fields, and the world revolves around the local mosque; the sight of a "modern" woman visitor astride her bike is a spectacle. The more so as Akhter zaps around with gadgets like a netbook, GSM mobile, blood pressure monitor and pregnancy kit, all deftly packed in her shoulder bag. "It was a scandal when I started my rounds two years ago with just a mobile phone", says Akhter. Now it is more of a phenomenon. She is treated like a champion by people whose lives she’s shaping with once "scary machines".

Akhter belongs to a motley band of "InfoLadies," who are piloting a revolutionary idea – giving millions of Bangladeshis, trapped in a cycle of poverty and natural disaster, access to information on their doorstep to improve their chances in life.

"Ask me about the pest that’s infecting your crop, common skin diseases, how to seek help if your husband beats you or even how to stop having children, and I may have a solution," says a confident Akhter.

"An InfoLady’s netbook is loaded with content especially compiled and translated in local Bangla language," says Mohammed Forhad Uddin of D.Net, a not-for-profit research organisation that is pioneering access to livelihood information. "It provides answers and solutions to some of the most common problems faced by people in villages." In Bangladesh this means nearly three-quarters of the nearly 160 million that live in rural areas. From agriculture to health, sanitation and disaster management, the content follows simple text, pictures and engaging multimedia animations to include all users, many of whom are illiterate. "I love the cartoon that tells about brushing teeth and hygiene," says 10-year-old Shamshul.

It took a just a brief meeting with an InfoLady for 60-year-old Nahar Hossain to finally identify …

Continue reading.

UPDATE: Read the news story here.

Steve Benen:

After a contentious debate and international scrutiny, right-wing activists in control of Texas’ State Board of Education did exactly what they set out to do: they approved a new social studies curriculum that ignores reality, and reflects history the way they wish it happened.

The State Board of Education Board, ending nearly two years of politically divisive deliberations, approved new social studies curriculum standards for the state’s 4.7 million students despite vigorous objections from the board’s five minority members.

The revisions have drawn national attention amid complaints that conservative Republicans on the board are attempting to alter history and trying to inject their political beliefs into the curriculum. [...]

The curriculum, which will be used in classrooms beginning with the 2011-12 school year, will also serve as a template for new textbooks. They will remain in effect for more than a decade…. With one member absent, the board voted 9-5 to accept the new curriculum for kindergarten, elementary school and high school.

As we’ve been reporting for months, the board’s version of history is a fairly ridiculous one, which will now be imposed on public school students.

The new standards say that the McCarthyism of the 1950s was later vindicated — something most historians deny — draw an equivalency between Jefferson Davis’s and Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural addresses, say that international institutions such as the United Nations imperil American sovereignty, and include a long list of Confederate officials about whom students must learn.

Of particular interest, the new standards dictate that students must “describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.”

A majority of the state board took an especially hostile view of the separation of church and state — which, of course, has been removed from the curriculum — and board member Cynthia Dunbar (R) spoke for her cohorts when she insisted the nation’s origins were “a Christian land governed by Christian principles,” all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

At its core, this is not just a travesty for academic integrity and students in Texas, but it’s also a reminder of what’s gone horribly wrong with the twisted right-wing worldview. These state officials have decided they simply don’t care for reality, so they’ve replaced it with a version of events that makes them feel better. The result is an American history in which every era has been distorted to satisfy the far-right ego.

Of course, the concern outside of Texas has been that the state-mandated ignorance might spread — Texas is the nation’s second-largest customer for textbooks, and “publishers craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers.” This week, however, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told CNN that he does not believe there will be a “ripple effect” that undermines education elsewhere.

Texas school kids, however, will be punished by the right-wing agenda, and there’s not much anyone can do about it.

Paul Krugman in his blog:

In the various responses to my posts on libertarianism, here and here, some commenters have made a point that sounds reasonable, but actually isn’t. I pointed out that the libertarian alternative to regulation — just use tort law to make people pay for the damage they cause — doesn’t work in practice, because when push comes to shove politicians will shield the rich and powerful from paying the real cost. Commenters say, but isn’t that an equally strong reason to believe that regulation won’t work either?

Well, here’s the thing: regulation demonstrably does work where tort law doesn’t. Consider the environmental issue: in reality, the perpetrators of oil spills never pay most of the cost; but in reality, environmental regulation has led to much cleaner air and water. (Look up the history of Los Angeles smog or the fate of Lake Erie if you don’t believe me.)

So why does regulation work? If polluters can buy off the system ex post, after a disaster, why don’t they manage to totally corrupt regulation ex ante? There’s a lot to say about that, and I’m sure there’s a literature I haven’t read. But one thing we tend to forget in this age of Reagan is the importance and virtues of a dedicated bureaucracy: when you have professional government agencies with a job to do, and treat them with respect, that job often gets done.

On the other hand, if you degrade and devalue that bureaucracy, it will do a heckuva job. But that’s not the way it has to be.

Very interesting article by Sara Robinson:

Sedition: Crime of creating a revolt, disturbance, or violence against lawful civil authority with the intent to cause its overthrow or destruction
– Britannica Concise Dictionary

Well, finally. It’s high time somebody had the guts to say the S-word — sedition — right out loud.

When the indictments against the Hutaree were unsealed last week, the S-word was right there, front and center, in Count One. The Justice Department accused them of "seditious conspiracy," charging that the defendants "did knowingly conspire, confederate, and agree with each other and other persons known and unknown…to levy war against the United States, and to prevent, hinder, and delay by force the execution of any United States law."

This is very serious stuff. But the Hutaree are getting nailed for sedition only because they crossed the line with inches to spare. They’re by no means the only ones. Advocating, encouraging, and sanctioning sedition is the new norm on the conservative side.

We saw it again last Thursday, when the Guardians of the Free Republics — a Sovereign Citizen group that believes that the oath of office taken by state governors is invalid under their twisted Bizarroland interpretation of the Constitution — sent letters to most or all sitting state governors telling them to either a) take what they consider to be a legitimate oath of office; b) stand down; or c) or be removed "non-violently" within three days. The FBI, rightly, regards this as a potentially seditious threat against the governors.

These two events are a wake-up call for progressives. They’re telling us that it’s time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of constitutional democracy in America. When they’re in power, they mismanage it and defund it. When they’re out of power, they refuse to participate in running the country at all — indeed, they throw all their energy into thwarting the democratic process any way they can. When they need to win an election, they use violent, polarizing, eliminationist language against their opponents to motivate their base. This is sedition in slow motion, a gradual corrosive undermining of the government’s authority and capacity to run the country. And it’s been at the core of their politics going all the way back to Goldwater.

This long assault has gone into overdrive since Obama’s inauguration, as the rhetoric has ratcheted up from overheated to perfervid. We’ve reached the point where you can’t go a week without hearing some prominent right wing leader calling for outright sedition — an immediate and defiant populist uprising against some legitimate form of government authority.

Moderates and liberals are responding to this rising threat with feckless calls for "a return to civility," as if all that’s needed to put things right again is a stern talking-to from Miss Manners. Though that couldn’t hurt, the sad fact is that we’re well past the point where it’s just a matter of conservatives behaving like tantrum-throwing spoiled brats (which they are). When a mob is surrounding your house with torches and telling you they intend to burn it down, "civility" really isn’t the issue any more.

At that point — and we’re there — criminal intent and action become the real issues. Progressives need to realize that the right began defiantly dancing back and forth over the legal line, daring us to do something about it, quite some time ago. And it’s high time we called it out — and, where appropriate, start prosecuting it — for exactly what it is.

What is Sedition?
Before we start throwing around inflammatory terms like "sedition," it’s essential that we understand the strict definition of the word — and use it carefully and precisely, lest it lose all meaning…

Continue reading.

Interesting: BP believes that it can simply ignore government directives. I guess we’ll soon see whether this Administration has any teeth at all. Scarecrow at Firedoglake:

We’re about to find out how this "BP is responsible for the spill and cleanup, but we’re responsible for oversight" concept works, because BP is apparently defying the Environmental Protection Agency’s order to find and use a different, less toxic and more effective dispersant.

From the continued excellent coverage by the Times Picayune:

BP has told the Environmental Protection Agency that it cannot find a safe, effective and available dispersant to use instead of Corexit, and will continue to use that chemical application to help break up the growing spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP was responding to an EPA directive Thursday that gave BP 24 hours to identify a less toxic alternative to Corexit — and 72 hours to start using it — or provide the Coast Guard and EPA with a "detailed description of the alternative dispersants investigated, and the reason they believe those products did not meet the required standards."

BP spokesman Scott Dean said Friday that BP had replied with a letter "that outlines our findings that none of the alternative products on the EPA’s National Contingency Plan Product Schedule list meets all three criteria specified in yesterday’s directive for availability, toxicity and effectiveness."

Dean noted that "Corexit is an EPA pre-approved, effective, low-toxicity dispersant that is readily available, and we continue to use it."

He did not directly address widely broadcast news reports that more than 100,000 gallons of an alternative dispersant chemical call Sea-Brat 4 was stockpiled near Houston and available for application.

As the article notes, there are reportedly quantities of alternative dispersants available in the region.

BP’s Dean statement suggests an attitude of open defiance. They’ve been ordered to stop using a dispersant and replace it, or explain why, but "we continue to use it." So who’s in charge here?

Either EPA needs to say, …

Continue reading.

Joe Conason at Salon:

To understand Rand Paul‘s agonized contortions over America’s civil rights consensus, let’s review the tainted pedigree of the movement that reared him. Specifically, both the Kentucky Republican Senate nominee and his father, Ron Paul, have been closely associated over the past two decades with a faction that described itself as "paleolibertarian," led by former Ron Paul aide Lew Rockwell and the late writer Murray Rothbard. They eagerly forged an alliance with the "paleoconservatives" behind Patrick Buchanan, the columnist and former presidential candidate whose trademarks are nativism, racism and anti-Semitism.

Repeatedly during Ron Paul’s political career, his associates used the same kinds of inflammatory rhetoric used by Buchanan in order to attract support and raise money, all while Paul himself pretended not to know what they were doing and saying in his name. Paul could always cover himself by saying, just as Rand Paul says now, that his opposition to civil rights statutes is purely constitutional and has nothing to do with bigotry.

The last time that anyone examined the details of the Paul family’s gamy history was back in 2008, when the New Republic dug up copies of newsletters sent out under Ron’s name to raise money, and found that they were replete with ugly references to blacks, Martin Luther King, homosexuals and other targets of the racist far right. At the time, Reason magazine, a libertarian magazine that opposed the "paleo" deviation, gave the most revealing account of its movement’s degenerate element in a long article by Julian Sanchez and David Weigel.

Following Ron Paul’s dismal performance in the 1988 presidential campaign as the Libertarian Party candidate, Rockwell and Rothbard "championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist ‘paleoconservatives,’ producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters" uncovered by the New Republic. Rothbard died in 1995, but in 2008 Rockwell was still at Paul’s side as a top advisor, "accompanying him to major media appearances; promoting his candidacy on the LewRockwell.com blog; publishing his books; and peddling an array of the avuncular Texas congressman’s recent writings and audio recordings."

According to Sanchez and Weigel, the tone of Paul’s newsletters shifted to reflect his political circumstances. Between his first presidential campaign and his return to Congress in 1996 as a Republican, they were filled with slurs against blacks generally and Martin Luther King Jr. in particular, including the accusation that the civil rights leader "seduced underage girls and boys." Rothbard hated King deeply, describing him in November 1994 as "a socialist, egalitarian, coercive integrationist, and vicious opponent of private-property rights … who was long under close Communist Party control," and concluding that "there is one excellent litmus test which can set up a clear dividing line between genuine conservatives and neoconservatives, and between paleolibertarians and what we can now call ‘left-libertarians.’ And that test is where one stands on ‘Doctor’ King." (Then again, he hated Lincoln too, whom he disparaged in the same essay as "one of the major despots of American history.")

Read the rest of this entry »

Laura Bassett reporting at Huffington Post:

Democratic strategist James Carville and MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews, two reliable supporters of President Barack Obama, have issued withering critiques of the administration’s handling of the Gulf oil spill.

Carville, the famously outspoken Louisianan who was a chief political aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday that the administration’s response to the spill has been "lackadaisical" and that Obama was "naive" to trust BP to manage the massive clean-up effort.

"I think they actually believe that BP has some kind of a good motivation here," he said. "They’re naive! BP is trying to save money, save everything they can… They won’t tell us anything, and oddly enough, the government seems to be going along with it! Somebody has got to, like shake them and say, ‘These people don’t wish you well! They’re going to take you down!’"

Carville also accused the White House of going along with what he called the "let BP handle it" strategy.

"I’m as good a Democrat as most people, and I think this administration has done some good things. They are risking everything by this ‘go along with BP’ strategy they have that seems like, lackadaisical on this, and Doug is right, they seem like they’re inconvenienced by this, this is some giant thing getting in their way and somehow or another, if you let BP handle it, it’ll all go away. It’s not going away. It’s growing out there. It is a disaster of the first magnitude, and they’ve got to go to Plan B." …

Continue reading. There’s a video at the link.

Excellent thought by Kerri Conan on MarkBittman.com:

I am not the sort of gal known for her delicate touch. But each spring, when the first garden salads of the season appear on our table, I muster a smidgeon of restraint.

This year our Kansas greens are waterlogged with two weeks of near-solid rain, so they’re extra fragile, tender, and mild. Add whatever microgreens I’m thinning from the plot—this week it was beet and dill sprouts—and suddenly dressing becomes an issue. Even the velocity of a thin stream of oil pouring from a bottle or spoon seems harsh. The answer: Mix the dressing in your hands, then use the same tools to toss it.I first heard of this technique from my old friend, food writer, farmer (and current Kentuckian) Susie Quick. Over the years I’ve adapted it to accommodate any and all ingredients. And the concept is both elegant and foolproof, since unless your hands are the size of canoe oars, it’s impossible to overdress the salad. (Tong tip to husband Sean for demonstrating here, lest someone think those were my hands!)

After the greens are rinsed and dried—ideally in a spinner for fluffiness—put them in a bowl big enough for elbow room, sprinkle lightly with salt, and give a cursory toss. I don’t always use pepper on the earliest leaves, since the sharpness and grit can be too abrasive.

Next rub about a tablespoon of oil between the palms of your hands and gently paw through the greens, lifting and folding them a couple times as if you were turning brioche dough. Rarely do you need more than a tablespoon, but maybe for a large bowlful, so repeat the process until the greens start to stick to your hands a bit.

You can stop there, or add a few drops of lemon juice, again lightly passing through the salad with your hands. Try this method with any combination of oils, citrus, or vinegars—mindful of the proportions; a few drops of something strong, like sherry or balsamic are plenty to balance the oil without causing one leaf to droop. And with that payoff, even I don’t miss the pool of dressing at the bottom of the bowl.

Interesting article by Katrina Woznicki at WebMD. Here’s just one of the myths:

Myth: I’m allergic to foods that don’t agree with me.

Not necessarily.  A food allergy is a very specific  immune system response involving either the immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibody or T-cells. Both are immune system cells that react to a particular food protein, such as milk protein.

An IgE reaction occurs within minutes  to an hour or so of either smelling, touching, or ingesting a particular food.  The presence of the food triggers the immune system to over-react and interpret the food as harmful. Histamine is released, causing symptoms that range from mild to severe, including hives, itching, trouble breathing, wheezing, and anaphylaxis.

About 30,000 Americans per year go to the emergency room due to severe allergic reactions to food, and as many as 200 die every year from food allergies, according to the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network.

A non-IgE immune system reaction can occur within three to four hours of ingestion and can often be mistaken for food insensitivity or food poisoning, explains Wesley Burks, MD, division chief of pediatric allergy and immunology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

“The biggest misunderstanding is that there are different types of food allergies, they’re reproducible, the reactions are the same,” Burks says. “You’re can’t eat cheese, feel sick, and claim a food allergy, but then turn around and enjoy ice cream and feel OK. With a true food allergy, the trigger does not change and the trigger will always set off the same immune system response.”

Read the whole thing.

Elizabeth Lopatto in Bloomberg Businessweek:

Whipworms are two-inch-long parasites that sicken pigs by burrowing into their guts. Scientists, however, are beginning to appreciate them for their curative power in humans. Large-scale trials underway in Europe are testing whipworm eggs as a treatment for autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s, a digestive ailment, and multiple sclerosis. About 23.5 million Americans have some type of autoimmune disorder. "This is probably the biggest market in the entire history of medicine," says Detlev Goj, founder of Ovamed, a German biotech. He believes whipworm eggs may prove effective against as many as 60 diseases.

Goj, who in 2002 got European regulators to approve the use of maggots to clean wounds, became interested in whipworms after coming across a 2005 study in which 21 out of 29 patients with Crohn’s disease went into complete remission after being dosed with the parasite’s eggs. The data seemed to support the "hygiene hypothesis," which holds that people have become too clean for their own good. The thinking is that parasites may act on the immune system by boosting the T-cells that help identify and kill infectious agents. When those cells don’t work properly, substances and tissues normally present in the body can be mistakenly targeted, causing a range of disorders. "Now that we’ve eliminated parasites in many Western countries," says Goj, "the immune system doesn’t get the required challenge anymore."

Ovamed has supplied sterilized batches of whipworm eggs for human trials for Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, peanut allergies, and for symptoms of autism. One of Goj’s partners is Asphelia Pharmaceuticals. That San Diego (Calif.)-based company is projecting peak annual sales of about $2 billion in North America for its treatment for Crohn’s.

But what about the yuck factor? Will people willingly infect themselves with worms under doctor’s orders? Goj, whose company is conducting phase two trials in Crohn’s disease at 40 medical centers in Europe, does not anticipate any resistance. "The eggs of the whipworm are so small they’re hard to find on a microscope," he says. "All you see is a small cup of water." And since the worms don’t reproduce in humans, the parasites are gone in about two weeks.

Whipworms aren’t the only invertebrates commanding attention. A 2007 study in Argentina found that MS patients who were infected with Schistosoma mansoni, a parasite found in water supplies in poor countries, suffered fewer relapses than those who were not. An immunologist at the University of Nottingham has been looking into whether pin-sized hookworms may protect against asthma, Crohn’s, and MS.

The bottom line: Parasites are being used to treat autoimmune diseases. Some researchers believe people can be too clean for their own good.