Later On

Marian Wang in ProPublica:

In One Gulf County, Officials Take Home Government Salaries, Plus Pay from BP

Gulf County, Fla. — population 15,000 — has been clear of BP’s oil so far, but it has tried to get ready. The small coastal county, according to one county commissioner, has spent hundreds of thousands to protect itself, aware that the crude hitting its neighboring counties could creep closer.

But these days, when the Gulf County Board of Commissioners votes on anything BP-related, only two members of the five-person board can participate. The other three must abstain. Two of them, on top of their duties to the county, also work for BP contractors. One has a son who is helping in the cleanup.

I chanced upon this nugget of news last week when I reported about the challenges posed by the BP reimbursement process for some local governments along the Gulf Coast. When I called the board chairman, Carmen McLemore, to ask about his county’s experience with the reimbursement process, he refused to answer.

“I’m actually working with BP and they won’t allow me to talk to reporters,” he told me.

“BP told you you can’t talk to reporters?” I asked.

“No news media. Bye!” And McLemore hung up.

When I called up his fellow commissioner Billy Traylor, who also works for a BP contractor, Traylor didn’t have the same problems talking to me. So I asked whether he feels he has a conflict of interest, given that he’s getting paid both by the county and, ultimately, by BP.

“There’s been several issues come up about BP—BP this and BP that,” Traylor said, regarding some of the county commissioners’ votes. “I’ve had to abstain from some of those issues because as a subcontractor, I cannot vote."

Some people might see it as a conflict, but he doesn’t see one. “As a matter of fact,” he told me, “it is a blessing that I’m working out here. I actually know what’s going on. If I had been a commissioner sitting on the outside—and I mean no disrespect to my fellow commissioners—I would not have a clue as to what was happening as far as beach operations, as far as what’s happening on site with local hiring." …

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Joanna Grossman at FindLaw:

Earlier this month, a federal district court judge in Massachusetts issued two opinions, in which for different, but related reasons he invalidated a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 ("DOMA") as applied to the plaintiffs before the court.

Section 3 of DOMA provides that marriage is defined as the union between a man and a woman for all federal-law purposes — of which there are 1,138. By defining marriage at all, rather than deferring to each state’s definition of marriage, Congress certainly departed from its past tradition. But was the departure constitutionally invalid? That is the question that has been explored (and answered "Yes") in both Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Commonwealth v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In Part One of this two-part series, I will describe DOMA and explain the reasoning that led Judge Joseph L. Tauro, in Gill , to invalidate section 3 as applied to the plaintiffs in that case.

In Part Two — appearing on FindLaw tomorrow, Tuesday, July 20 — I will discuss the ruling in Commonwealth and consider the marriage-regulation history that is so central to the court’s reasoning in both cases.

Where the Story Begins: The Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 (DOMA)

In a way, the story here begins fourteen years ago. In 1996, it seemed very likely that Hawaii was about to become the first state in the union to legalize same-sex marriage. In fact, Massachusetts took those honors in 2004, followed several years later by four additional states and the District of Columbia. But, for a time, all eyes were on Hawaii because its highest court had ruled, in Baehr v. Lewin, that a ban on same-sex marriage was a form of sex discrimination that warranted the highest form of judicial scrutiny (and, presumably, would be invalidated once that scrutiny was applied).

Out of fear of the effects Hawaii’s anticipated ruling might have on other states and on the federal government, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 (DOMA) in haste, just a few weeks before the 1996 presidential election. DOMA was pushed through quickly in anticipation of Hawaii’s legalization of same-sex marriage, and the legislative history of DOMA reveals an intense focus on confining such marriages to the state of Hawaii alone.

DOMA’s scheme for confining same-sex marriage to Hawaii (or to any other state that might eventually legalize it) was twofold. Section Two of DOMA purports to give states the right to refuse recognition to same-sex marriages that have been celebrated in other states — while, at the same time, leaving open the possibility that each state might permit same-sex marriages within its own borders. Second, and more pertinent here, Section Three of DOMA provides that, for any federal-law purpose, "the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife."

The Claim in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management : The Intent of the DOMA Drafters

The plaintiffs in Gill — one of the Massachusetts federal district court cases before Judge Tauro — are same-sex couples who legally married in Massachusetts, and yet were each denied some marriage-based entitlement by the federal government. Among the entitlements denied were spousal health benefits for federal employees, retirement and survivor benefits under the Social Security system, and joint filing status with the IRS. In each instance, the married couple presented satisfactory proof of marriage to the federal agency in question — and in each instance, they were told, nevertheless, that Section Three of DOMA prevents the federal government from giving effect to the marriage.

The various agencies were no doubt applying Section Three of DOMA exactly as Congress wrote and intended it. Under DOMA, these same-sex marriages were to be ignored under federal law, even though …

Continue reading.

Via Steve Benen:

That seems to be the rate (as of today) that I’m losing weight. 15.25 lbs lost to date, over 6 weeks.

It’s certainly true that I’m losing weight be eating less, but it’s also true that I have a team helping me.

It occurs to me that the US prizes individualism to the extent that, for some tasks, one is considered to have failed if one cannot do it alone. My previous weight-loss attempts fall into the category of failure. But when I decided to hire a team to assist me, I’m having success. YMMV, of course, but coaches, trainers, counselors, and the like have had a long and honorable role as helpers who enable one to do more than one could do by himself.

UPDATE: As I continued to mull this over, it struck me that many middle-class Americans do have a regular team of experts to assist them in various ways: doing it all by yourself is to some extent an anomaly. It’s not beyond reason for a family to have a gardener, a house cleaner, a lawyer, an accountant, a dentist, a doctor, and the like. Adding a trainer and a diet counselor to the list just augments the team.

And, in terms of doing it on one’s own, I went out and hired the trainer and the diet counselor on my own, so I am owning the problem and owning my solution (which involves the team). Just as a person might say of their home, “I built this,” meaning that an architect was hired and a general contractor, with the owner doing none of the actual work but still feeling responsibility for the result.

The Washington Post has a lengthy report on the secret parts of the US government. Worth reviewing.

And Andrew Sullivan has a post quoting various reactions to the piece. Worth reading.

Take a look.

On closer inspection, the dial seems to show both Celsius (outer ring of numerals) and Fahrenheit (inner ring). That’s a very nice gesture, given that the US is the only country that uses Fahrenheit. (There are a couple of others, but as markets they are minimal.)

Read this post by John Cole. The payoff is in an email he received. From the post:

I still have no clue why I should be concerned about seepage. Fortunately, someone emailed me in response to a tweet I made asking what the hell is meant by a seep:

…it means that the entire oil reserve’s casing might be collapsing. To give you a visual metaphor: they are currently trying to fix the plumbing in the bathroom, maybe stop the shower from leaking. What might be happening now amounts to the huge water main under the house breaking and causing the entire house to sink, bathroom and all.

The problem is that the well is deep underground and under high pressure, so once it springs a leak it just worms its way to the surface through a thousand crevices and makes them bigger and bigger over time. You can’t “plug” them because… well, to use another metaphor, imagine you have a garden hose that’s blocked by a pillow. Once the water works its way through the pillow and soaks through, you have water leaking from every fiber of the thing, and putting a little rubber patch on any given part of the pillow is really just pointless. This is why the government was worried about capping the well: it amounted to blocking the only escape route for the pressure, thereby forcing out of other little holes in the compromised reservoir, which as I said become bigger and bigger with time.

If the reservoir casing is compromised, we’re fucked, end of story.

Now granted, CNN, the NY Times, and the WaPo can’t drop f-bombs, but which of those actually informed you why the seep was a concern? Why doesn’t every MSM story about the “seepage” include a simple description like that to inform people? Instead, we are told what the government and BP are “doing,” but no one understands what they are doing or why.

It seems to be well underway. I was reading about the fight between Steve Jobs and AT&T—AT&T has not invested in keeping their network upgraded, and now the iPhone 4 has features that AT&T cannot support (though iPhone 4 uses in Europe, Japan, Korea, and other countries can readily use the features). AT&T, in the mindset typical of American corporations, attempted to get Jobs to remove the features from the iPhone and not talk about them, but Jobs rightly refused to cripple the customer experience simply so AT&T’s neglect of its networks would not be evident.

Of course US “broadband” speeds in general are a joke when compared to those of advanced nations. Our healthcare system is struggling to improve, but we still spend much more per capita than other nations for worse outcomes. And, of course, the plan has no public option.

Our politicians (who work at jobs that do not require heavy lifting or outdoor work in inclement weather or empathy or compassion or intelligence or knowledge—well, these last are desirable, but most politicians seem to lack them) are working hard to ensure that the Social Security system is dismantled to the extent possible, including requiring people to work until their 70′s to qualify (and good luck to the 65-year-olds who will be looking for work).

Steve Benen posts on how states are reverting from paved roads to gravel roads because people no longer want to pay taxes (though they do want the paved roads, perhaps thinking that the paved-road fairy will build them overnight if you leave out a saucer of milk). [UPDATE: The WSJ on the unpaving of roads. - LG]

The jobs situation is likely to remain bad for another decade or so because the GOP (and Blue-Dog Democrats like Ben Nelson) will block any additional stimulus. That means millions out of work, a depressed economy, and more falling behind, even as the country’s wealth goes to buy billions upon billions of dollars of military equipment that the Pentagon does not want and that Robert Gates has asked be eliminated. Better, Congress thinks, to piss the money away on military equipment than make the country better.

We get more and more bogged down in foreign wars and pay handsomely to maintain military bases all over the world—indeed, the US spends as much on its military as all others countries combined spend on theirs. That’s tax money unavailable to help the people of this country.

As Steven Benen notes:

The chart [click to enlarge – LG] was put together by the Brookings Institute, and highlights how long it will take our economy to return to the unemployment levels that existed before the Great Recession began. If the economy added an average of 208,000 jobs per month — a rate we’re still not close to reaching — it would take 136 months to get back to where we were. That translates to more than 11 years.

That’s not a typo. Moderate monthly job growth would get us back to a pre-recession job market in 2021.That’s how deep a hole we fell into. Obviously, more robust economic growth would get us back to pre-recession levels much faster, but by any scenario, we’re still years away.

From where I sit, it looks like decline, without even factoring in the damage that climate change will do. You think people are unhappy now because there are not enough jobs? Wait until you see what they’re like when there’s not enough food.

The Coates Lime is an excellent shaving cream, with the lime fragrance quite muted (which is fine with me). I got a great lather with the Edwin Jagger synthetic-bristle brush, and the iKon with its Swedish Gillette blade (previously used) once again provided a totally comfortable shave. This razor (along with the Apollo Mikron, the Pils, the Fat Boy, the Feather stainless, the slant bar, the English Gillette open comb #22, and others) is now a favorite. Very smooth shave, and then a splash of Geo. F. Trumper West Indian Extract of Limes—not a muted fragrance—to finish.

Once an agency is so immersed in making things good for businesses, it starts to lose touch with the real world and dwells instead among fantasies. Marion Nestle at Food Politics:

I’m just getting around to reading an optimistic report from USDA about how much more energy we are getting from converting corn to ethanol.

The report surveyed corn growers for the year 2005 and ethanol plants in 2008 and happily reports that energy yields are improving. 

Never mind that the mere thought of using food resources to feed cars rather than farm animals or people makes no sense from the standpoint of sustainability.   Early estimates of energy efficiency made it clear that it took almost as much—or, in fact, as much—energy to convert corn to ethanol as cold be obtained from the ethanol, and that the size of the energy yield depended on who was doing the estimating.  

This latest report says that “the net energy balance of corn ethanol has increased from 1.76 BTUs to 2.3 BTUs of required energy” since 2004.  If true,

Ethanol has made the transition from an energy sink, to a moderate net energy gain in the 1990s, to a substantial net energy gain in the present. And there are still prospects for improvement. Ethanol yields have increased by about 10 percent in the last 20 years, so proportionately less corn is required. In addition to refinements in ethanol technology, corn yields have increased by 39 percent over the last 20 years, requiring less land to produce ethanol.

I still think this is not a good idea.  A rational energy policy must develop sustainable sources, and corn is not one of them.

Steve Rollins writes in the British Medical Journal:

Consensus is growing within the drugs field and beyond that the prohibition on production, supply, and use of certain drugs has not only failed to deliver its intended goals but has been counterproductive. Evidence is mounting that this policy has not only exacerbated many public health problems, such as adulterated drugs¹ and the spread of HIV and hepatitis B and C infection among injecting drug users, but has created a much larger set of secondary harms associated with the criminal market. These now include vast networks of organised crime, endemic violence related to the drug market,² corruption of law enforcement and governments, militarised crop eradication programmes (environmental damage, food insecurity, and human displacement), and funding for terrorism and insurgency.^{3 4}

These conclusions have been reached by a succession of committees and reports including, in the United Kingdom alone, the Police Foundation,⁵ the Home Affairs Select Committee,⁶ The prime minister’s Strategy Unit,⁷ the Royal Society of Arts,⁸ and the UK Drug Policy Consortium.⁹ The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime has also acknowledged the many "unintended negative consequences" of drug enforcement,¹⁰ increasingly shifting its public rhetoric away from its former aspirational goals of a "drug free world," towards "containment" of the problem at current levels.

Problems of prohibition

Despite this emerging consensus on the nature of the problem, the debate about how policy can evolve to respond to it remains driven more by populist politics and tabloid headlines than by rational analysis or public health principles.

The criminalisation of drugs has, historically, been presented as an emergency response to an imminent threat rather than an evidence based health or social policy intervention.¹¹ Prohibitionist rhetoric frames drugs as menacing not just to health but also to our children, national security, and the moral fabric of society itself. The prohibition model is positioned as a response to such threats,^{12 13} and is often misappropriated into populist political narratives such as "crackdowns" on crime, immigration, and, more recently, the war on terror.

This conceptualisation has resulted in the punitive enforcement of drug policy becoming largely immune from meaningful scrutiny.¹⁴ A curiously self justifying logic now prevails in which the harms of prohibition—such as drug related organised crime and deaths from contaminated heroin—are conflated with the harms of drug use. These policy related harms then bolster the apparent menace of drugs and justify the continuation, or intensification, of prohibition. This has helped create a high level policy environment that routinely ignores or actively suppresses critical scientific engagement and is uniquely divorced from most public health and social policy norms, such as evaluation of interventions using established indicators of health and wellbeing.

Emerging change

Despite this hostile ideological environment, two distinct policy trends have emerged in recent decades: harm reduction¹⁵ and decriminalisation of personal possession and use. Although both are nominally permitted within existing international legal frameworks, they pose serious practical and intellectual challenges to the overarching status quo. Both have been driven by pragmatic necessity: harm reduction emerging in the mid-1980s in response to the epidemic of HIV among injecting drug users, and decriminalisation in response to resource pressures on overburdened criminal justice systems (and, to a lesser extent, concerns over the rights of users). Both policies have proved their effectiveness. Harm reduction is now used in policy or practice in 93 countries,¹⁶ and several countries in mainland Europe,^{17 18} and central and Latin America have decriminalised all drugs, with others, including states in Australia and the United States, decriminalising cannabis.¹⁹

Decriminalisation has shown that less punitive approaches do not necessarily lead to increased use. In Portugal, for example, use among school-age young people has fallen since all drugs were decriminalised in 2001.²⁰ More broadly, an extensive World Health Organization study concluded: "Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones."²¹

Similarly US states that have decriminalised cannabis do not have higher levels of use than those without. More importantly, the Netherlands, where cannabis is available from licensed premises, does not have significantly different levels of use from its prohibitionist neighbours.¹⁹

New approach

Although these emerging policy trends are important, they can be seen primarily as symptomatic responses to mitigate the harms created by the prohibitionist policy environment. Neither directly tackles the public health or wider social harms created or exacerbated by the illegal production and supply of drugs.

The logic of both, however, ultimately leads us to . . .

Continue reading.

This soup intrigues me:

Moroccan Tomato Soup

This appeared in an article by Barbara Kafka in The Times.

5 medium cloves garlic, smashed, peeled and minced
2 1/2 teaspoons sweet paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
Large pinch of cayenne pepper
4 teaspoons olive oil
2 1/4 pounds tomatoes, cored and cut into 1-inch pieces
1/4 cup packed chopped cilantro leaves plus additional for garnish
1 tablespoon white-wine vinegar
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
Kosher salt
4 stalks celery, diced.

1. In a small saucepan, stir together the garlic, paprika, cumin, cayenne and olive oil. Place over medium-low heat and cook, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.

2. Pass the tomatoes through a food mill fitted with a large disk. Stir in the cooked spice mixture, the cilantro, vinegar, lemon juice, 2 teaspoons salt, celery and 2 tablespoons water. Add more salt as desired. Refrigerate until cold. Serve garnished with cilantro leaves.

Serves 4.

Sounds tasty for a hot day. This post by The Wednesday Chef gives another version of the recipe, different and scaled down to one serving (though I note that both the one-serving version and the four-serving version use the same amount of olive oil ). The olive oil levels in this recipe is perfectly acceptable on the diet. In fact, this who recipe would simply could as “vegetable” plus 1 “oil” (assuming I ate one serving).

UPDATE: I made it, using an immersion blender, and it was delicious. The cumin speaks firmly but does not shout, the celery adds nice crunch, and the paprika adds both flavor and color. Great served very chilled, or perhaps that was just my soup because I have a free hand with the cayenne. One addition for next time (and for the rest of this soup): chopped sweet (Walla Walla) onion.

UPDATE 2: I’m making it again. Improvements:

1. I bought heritage tomatoes

2. I sliced the tomatoes thinly and then used scissors to cut up the top and bottom (so no big piece of tomato skin). The immersion blender then worked much better.

UPDATE 3: Things to try:

a. Use diced yellow bell pepper instead of celery.

b. Add chunks of ripe avocado.

c. Try some pitted ripe olives.

Melody Dye reports in the Scientific American:

Subject 046M, for male, was seated nervously across from me at the table, his hands clasped tightly together in his lap. He appeared to have caught an incurable case of the squirms. I resisted the urge to laugh, and leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially. “Today, we’re going to play a game with Mr. Moo” —I produced an inviting plush cow from behind my back. “Can you say hi to Mr. Moo?”

In the Stanford lab I work in with Professor Michael Ramscar, we study how children go about what is arguably the most vital project in their career as aspiring adults—learning language. Over the last several years, we’ve been particularly taken with the question of how kids learn a small, but telling piece of that vast complex: color words. We want to know how much they know, when they know it, and whether we can help them get there faster.

046M was off to a good start. I arranged three different color swatches in front of him. “Can you show me the red one?” He paused slightly, then pointed to the middle rectangle: red. “Very good!” I said, beaming. “Now, what about the one that’s blue?”

The test was not designed to trip kids up. Far from it—we only tested basic color words, and we never made kids pick between confusable shades, like red and pink. To an adult, the test would be laughably easy. Yet, after several months of testing two-year olds, I could count my high scorers on one hand. Most would fail the test outright. 046M, despite his promising start, proved no exception.

Before the test would begin, the child’s parents were told that today we would be testing color words. Responses were typically enthusiastic. “Oh, that’s great! Margie’s got her colors down pat.” At which point, we leveled with them: if they wanted to sit through the study, they would have to be blindfolded. Such measures may seem extreme—but then again, so were the reactions we got from parents during the pilot study, as they watched their little ones fail to pick out the right color, over and over again. The reactions ran the short line from shocked to terrified, and back again. Some parents were so dismayed they started impatiently correcting their children mid-test. One mother, in particular, couldn’t seem to stop herself, and took to nervously grabbing her little boy’s hand whenever it veered away from the correct choice. 

Then, inevitably, would come the post-test breakdown: “Is my child colorblind?”

Divorced from context, most two and three-year olds might as well be colorblind; certainly they look that way when asked to correctly identify colors in a line-up, or accurately use color words in novel contexts. What’s more, psychologists have found that even after hours and hours of repeated training on color words, children’s performance typically fails to noticeably improve, and children as old as six continue to make major color naming errors. This is seriously bizarre when you consider all the other things that children at that age can do: ride a bike, tie their shoes, read the comics, and – mistake a blue cupcake for a pink one? Really? Does that actually happen? …

Continue reading.

Technology can do some amazing things. Take a look at this.

You can save a substantial amount of money by buying through Amazon.

From the Huffington Post:

A newly released video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could add some additional strain to the sometimes tense relationship between him and President Obama.

In the video, which is from 2001, Netanyahu — who reportedly did not know his speech was being recorded — speaks frankly in Hebrew about relations with the Clinton White House and the peace process.

As noted in Haaretz, Netanyahu seems to boast of his knowledge of the US by saying, "I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in their way."

He also boasts of manipulating the U.S. in the ongoing peace process, as the Washington Post points out:

"They asked me before the election if I’d honor [the Oslo accords]," he said. "I said I would, but … I’m going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the ’67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I’m concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue."

The video was broadcast on a TV program called "This Week With Miki Rosenthal" titled "The Real (And Deceitful) Face of Benjamin Netanyahu." In Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, columnist Gideon Levy said of the video:

These remarks are profoundly depressing. They bear out all of our fears and suspicions: that the government of Israel is led by a man who doesn’t believe the Palestinians and doesn’t believe in the chance of an agreement with them, who thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes. There’s no point in talking about Netanyahu’s impossible rightist coalition as an obstacle to progress. From now on, just say that Netanyahu doesn’t want it.

Steve Benen:

Several months ago, as the Senate was getting ready to bring a health care reform bill to the floor, Republicans had vowed to filibuster the motion to proceed. In other words, every member of the Senate GOP caucus was not only prepared to block a vote on the legislation, they also wanted to block a vote on having a debate about the legislation.

At the time, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) was far from sure about the bill, but balked at the Republican tack. The conservative Democrat said the motion was merely “to start debate on a bill and to try to improve it.” He added, “If you don’t like the bill, then why would you block your own opportunity to amend it? Why would you stop senators from doing the job they’re elected to do — debate, consider amendments, and take action on an issue affecting every American?”

I don’t know, Ben, why would a member stop senators from doing the job they’re elected to do?

Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska said Thursday he would not support a procedural vote later this month to begin debate on a climate bill that includes a cap on electric utility emissions, a declaration that underscores the tough climb that Majority Leader Harry Reid will have in trying to cobble together a 60-vote supermajority on the controversial issue.

“A carbon tax or trade piece would significantly increase the utility rates in Nebraska for businesses, agriculture and individuals,” the Nebraska Democrat told POLITICO. “I don’t think that’s an appropriate way to go. And while I’d usually vote for a motion to proceed, this is so extraordinary, that I just can’t bring myself to do that.”

Keep in mind, Nelson hasn’t even seen the bill. But if the legislation tries to limit carbon emissions at all, he’ll side with Republicans and try to prevent the Senate from even talking about the energy/climate bill.

It’s too soon to say how big a problem the vote on the motion to proceed might be. In 2008, a bipartisan climate bill was brought to the floor with overwhelming support, with Republicans approving the motion to proceed on the bill they opposed because they were anxious to attack it. That may yet happen again.

But in the meantime, I’d love to hear Ben Nelson answer his own questions: “If you don’t like the bill, then why would you block your own opportunity to amend it? Why would you stop senators from doing the job they’re elected to do — debate, consider amendments, and take action on an issue affecting every American?”

Steve Benen:

Thank goodness Arizona is once again taking due process and privacy rights seriously.

At the first tick of the clock Friday, an array of automated cameras on Arizona freeways aimed at catching speeders were to stop clicking.

There is no glitch. The state, the first to adopt such cameras on its highways in October 2008, has become the first to pull the plug, bowing to the wishes of a vocal band of conservative activists who complained that photo enforcement intruded on privacy and was mainly designed to raise money.

Arizona has been using 76 cameras, which in turned improved public safety, produced a significant drop in fatal collisions, and brought $78 million into the paltry state coffers.

But according to her spokesperson, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) was, among other things, "uncomfortable with the intrusive nature of the system." It’s a sentiment that widely endorsed by conservatives in the state legislature.

Of course, if there’s one thing conservative Arizonans know all about, it’s intrusive state laws.

I’m reminded of this recent exchange between state Rep. Carl Seel (R), a leading critic of the remote speed cameras and a co-sponsor of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, and The Daily Show‘s Olivia Munn:

MUNN: So, is it a conflicting message to support immigration law 1070 and also be against the camera system?

SEEL: No, the photo radar [is] unconstitutional, definitely an invasion of privacy. As to 1070, the enforcement law, the police officers must have probable cause.

MUNN: Such as.

SEEL: If a vehicle is going down the road at an excessive rate of speed, that’s probable cause.

MUNN: What the [bleep]? So, speeding is probable cause to check immigration status, but speeding is not probable cause to give you a ticket for speeding.

Two more pounds lost this morning, but my weight loss goes in fits and starts. I may gain the two pounds back tomorrow, and then lose them again. That’s been the pattern.

However, I continue to tweak the diet. I have been making a big salad: protein (fish or chicken breast), starch (cooked whole-grain rye or wheat, or cooked quinoa), cooked veg (typically broccoli and kale/collards, sometimes green beans instead of broccoli), and a lot of salad greens. I toss this with some excellent miso dressing, and that’s a meal.

I’ve cut it back. Protein and starch are the same, but then I use either salad vegetables or cooked veggies, but not both. The caloric impact is not large, but apparently I’m living right on the boundary of “enough food”, and I want to move into the “not quite enough food” territory. Where I am now, it doesn’t take much to push it that way.

I of course already threw overboard the evening snack (fruit with perhaps a piece of string cheese), and the morning snack is rare now. My starch servings went from 4 a day to 3 a day (and also from 1/2 cup to 1/3 cup). Those changes placed me on the boundary referred to above. Now I want to move the meals only a little bit.

It’s hard to beat J.M. Fraser, a shaving cream for everyman. The Omega boar bristle brush did a fine job—this brush is getting broken in—and I got the usual wonderful J.M. Fraser lather. Three passes with the Gillette Executive holding a previously used Gillette 7 O’Clock SharpEdge blade, and my visage is once again smooth—and, thanks to Booster Aquarius, fragrant as well.