Later On

You are legitimately suspicious of organizations that knowingly distort quotations from opponents: it’s a very deliberate form of lying, and those who practice are worth dismissing out of hand. PZ Myers gives an example from the Discovery Institute—no great surprise: the organization is a collection of anti-evolution crackpots. Myers:

There’s nothing I detest more than intellectual dishonesty, and the Discovery Institute is a world leader in that. They have a ghastly little article up on their website, "Is origin of life in hot water?", which cites a recent paper in PNAS to argue that life couldn’t have evolved without the enzymes that catalyze chemical reactions. Here’s what they say about it:

So it seems according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors address the conundrum of origin of life chemists between the rate of (un-catalyzed) organic reactions and the lack of time available for these reactions to occur. From the article (note: an enzyme is a biological catalyst):

Whereas enzyme reactions ordinarily occur in a matter of milliseconds, the same reactions proceed with half-lives of hundreds, thousands, or millions of years in the absence of a catalyst. Yet life is believed to have taken hold within the first 25% of Earth’s history. How could cellular chemistry and the enzymes that make life possible, have arisen so quickly?" [Internal citations omitted]

Indeed this is one of the problems with origin of life scenarios, particularly those scenarios that presume a metabolism-first world (as opposed to an RNA-first world). The half-life of certain reactions without a catalyst can be millions of years, but studies show that the emergence of early bacteria could be dated as far back as 3.5 billion years (see ENV post on a cold origin of life and Schopf, J. William, "The First Billion Years: When Did Life Emerge?" Elements vol 2:229 (2006) for more on this). This means there was a limited amount of time for fundamental biological reactions to occur. Reaction kinetics can be prohibitive. However, the authors of this paper have a theory to solve the reaction kinetics problem.

No, the authors provide data to support a dramatic (and unsurprising) effect of temperature on the rate of chemical reactions, and the Discovery Institute uses a paper demonstrating the feasibility of life’s early chemistry to argue the exact opposite.

It’s stunningly arrogant — I guess they’re used to their readers simply accepting whatever they say. They quote the first three sentences of the paper, and leave off the rest of the paragraph. Would you like to know what it says?

Do you think the DI might have accurately represented the sense of the paper?

Place your bets now. Here’s the remainder of the paragraph: . . .

Continue reading.

Basic reason: They’re crazy. PZ Myers notes:

I used to always give my spare change to the Salvation Army at this time of year — there they were, ringing their bell outside the grocery store, so sure, I’d give a little. That changed when I learned about their anti-gay policies, though…and now there’s another reason to spurn the Salvation Army.

The Salvation Army says it refuses to distribute Harry Potter and Twilight toys collected for needy children because they’re incompatible with the charity’s Christian beliefs.

The policy has alarmed a Calgarian who volunteered to sift through a southeast warehouse full of unused, donated items and was alarmed when he was told by Salvation Army officials that the two kinds of toys are "disposed of" and not given to other charities.

"I asked if these toys went to another charitable organizations but was told no, that by passing these toys on to another agency for distribution would be supporting these toys," said the man, who wouldn’t give his name due to his occupation.

So donors may have handed over popular toys for distribution, not knowing that the destination was going to be the landfill. And it’s not because the Salvation Army is concerned about the quality or educational value of the toys…

"I was told to withhold a six-inch Harry Potter figure, but when I picked up a plastic M-16, I was told, ‘That’s for the 10-year-olds,’" he said.

I feel so dumb for having ever given that organization anything. I should have been clued in by the frickin’ name that it was run by a gang of puffed-up sanctimonious looneys.

The comments to his post are worth reading. One commenter notes that, of $2 billion collected for charity, the Salvation Army burned up 80% in their operating costs (i.e., using the contributions to pay salaries within the SA, their rent, etc.).

Thanks to TYD for passing along a pointed to this remarkable article about replicating the Antikythera mechanism (see my earlier blog post). From the article:

Republicans will always choose ideology over facts—at least that’s what I’ve observed. Thus Republicans in general avoid (a) taking science classes (too many facts contrary to their ideology), and (b) thus avoid careers in science.

This column, in which I believe the humor is unintentional, is by Daniel Sarewitz, a geologist who seems to have gone into policy activity—he’s currently based in DC, though his appointment is from Arizona State University. Although he was work was in geology (PhD, Cornell, 1986), most of his publications seem to be in sociology and policy. Very strange.

At any rate, the column’s a hoot. It begins:

It is no secret that the ranks of scientists and engineers in the United States include dismal numbers of Hispanics and African-Americans, but few have remarked about another significantly underrepresented group: Republicans.

No, this is not the punch line of a joke. A Pew Research Center Poll from July 2009 showed that only around 6 percent of U.S. scientists are Republicans; 55 percent are Democrats, 32 percent are independent, and the rest “don’t know” their affiliation.

This immense imbalance has political consequences. When President Obama appears Wednesday on Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters (9 p.m. ET), he will be there not just to encourage youngsters to do their science homework but also to reinforce the idea that Democrats are the party of science and rationality. And why not? Most scientists are already on his side. Imagine if George W. Bush had tried such a stunt—every major newspaper in the country would have run an op-ed piece by some Nobel Prize winner asking how the guy who prohibited stem-cell research and denied climate change could have the gall to appear on a program that extols the power of scientific thinking.

Yet, partisan politics aside, why should it matter that there are so few Republican scientists? After all, it’s the scientific facts that matter, and facts aren’t blue or red.

Well, that’s not quite right. Consider the case of climate change, of which beliefs are astonishingly polarized according to party affiliation and ideology. A March 2010 Gallup poll showed that 66 percent of Democrats (and 74 percent of liberals) say the effects of global warming are already occurring, as opposed to 31 percent of Republicans. Does that mean that Democrats are more than twice as likely to accept and understand the scientific truth of the matter? And that Republicans are dominated by scientifically illiterate yahoos and corporate shills willing to sacrifice the planet for short-term economic and political gain?

Or could it be that disagreements over climate change are essentially political—and that science is just carried along for the ride? For 20 years, evidence about global warming has been directly and explicitly linked to a set of policy responses demanding international governance regimes, large-scale social engineering, and the redistribution of wealth. These are the sort of things that most Democrats welcome, and most Republicans hate. No wonder the Republicans are suspicious of the science.

Think about it: The results of climate science, delivered by scientists who are overwhelmingly Democratic, are used over a period of decades to advance a political agenda that happens to align precisely with the ideological preferences of Democrats. Coincidence—or causation? Now this would be a good case for Mythbusters.

Continue reading. It goes on like that. He omits the inconvenient fact that climate change (whose effects are quite obvious all around the world) is supported by more than 99% of climatologists—the very people who spend their lives and careers studying the climate. He apparently believes that they base their conclusions on their politics, not their observations.

It’s pretty clear why Dr. Sarewitz abandoned science: he apparently lacks the capacity to understand it. He can’t even follow the scientific arguments if he thinks that the evidence for climate change is simply political. (Geology, it may be of interest to know, is at the very bottom of the scientific totem pole. Geologists get as much respect from their scientific peers as, say, dermatologists get from their medical peers.)

Thanks to Alex Pareene for pointing out the column, and I think you might find his rebuttal worth reading. At the end, Pareene notes:

Oh man, here’s Sarewitz writing more great stuff about science and politics last March: “Contrary to all our modern instincts, then, political progress on climate change requires not more scientific input into politics, but less.” This guy!

Governments in general lie to the people they govern. In authoritarian and totalitarian countries, they lie with impunity and everyone knows that they’re lying. But in a democracy, in which the government theoretically represents the will of the people ("government of the people, by the people, and for the people"), lying is highly inappropriate: the government is supposed to be doing what the public wants and what will benefit the public, so any lie is likely to involve actions that are NOT what the public wants and do NOT benefit the public.

And that’s why the US government is so very, very angry at Assange: the US government has been lying to the public, and it is angry that the lies are exposed.

Here’s one, for example, from Obama’s State Department: the US supported attacks in Yemen with matériel shipped to Saudi Arabia,

a revelation that is directly at odds with a public statement at the time by the top State Department spokesman, who flatly insisted that the U.S. had no military role in the conflict.

The American people, who pony up the money to run the government, in general (I think) do not want the government lying to them. So the government, rather than being angry at the liars in its midst, is angry at the person who exposed the lies: familiar if depressing psychology.

But perhaps this is the government that the American people now deserve.

Read Justin Elliott’s full article from which that quote is taken. It begins:

The Obama administration supplied emergency arms shipments to Saudi Arabia to aid the Saudis’ attacks on a Northern Yemeni rebel group late last year, according to a cable released by WikiLeaks — a revelation that is directly at odds with a public statement at the time by the top State Department spokesman, who flatly insisted that the U.S. had no military role in the conflict.

The December 2009 cable, released this week and flagged by Spencer Ackerman, describes fighting between the governments of Yemen and Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebel group in northern Yemen, along the Saudi border. The Houthis are a Shia group who have been fighting with the central Yemeni government for years, with devastating effects for the civilian population. Beginning in October 2009, Saudi Arabia became engaged in several months’ fighting against the Houthis on both sides of the border.

The Dec. 30 State Department cable from Riyadh described the Saudi assault as the use of "massively disproportionate force in [the Saudis'] effort to repel and clear the lightly armed Houthi guerillas from the border area." The cable then describes the secret American role in the conflict over the previous two months (emphasis ours):

During the campaign, the Saudi military turned to the U.S. for emergency provision of munitions, imagery and intelligence to assist them to operate with greater precision. The U.S. military responded with alacrity to the extent possible, primarily by flying in stocks of ammunition for small weapons and artillery.However, the great majority of Saudi requests remain bogged down in the FMS contacting process or in interagency reviews.

Now, what was the State Department saying publicly at the time about the Houthi conflict? Here is a Dec. 15 exchange on the topic between a reporter and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip J. Crowley:

QUESTION: On the conflict in Yemen, Houthis say that U.S. warplanes have launched airstrikes in northern Yemen. Is the U.S. involved in any military operations in Yemen?

MR. CROWLEY: No.

QUESTION: No?

MR. CROWLEY: But we – those kinds of reports keep cropping up.We do not have a military role in this conflict.

Most reasonable people would take emergency shipments of arms from the United States to the Saudis specifically for use in this conflict as constituting "a military role." We’ve asked Crowley for comment and we will update this post if we hear back. (We took issue with the same statement yesterday because the U.S. launched cruise missile strikes at suspected terrorists in southern Yemen a couple days after Crowley’s blanket denial of any military operations in the country.)

Here’s what Crowley said a few days later, on Dec. 22, 2009: . . .

Continue reading.

This morning I was 210 lbs (95.5 kg)—well, 210.1, but tomorrow should see me actually below 210. So that’s 40 lbs lost, 35 to go.

Mr. Pilates was born 127 years ago today, and I’m very glad that he was. The Pilates training is, I think, having a definite effect, though as I told The Wife, it will be interesting to see where our skills and stance are next December.

It does make a lot of difference having close instruction from a trained professional. I took a few Pilates classes, but, really: one total beginner doing mat exercises with 30 other people with one instructor (who’s also doing the exercises)? It doesn’t work. Pilates exercises totally require that you do them correctly for the benefit, and “incorrect” can result from tiny displacements. My instructor has me do the exercises while she watches, adjusts, comments and keeps me on track. Plus, of course, when I show a weakness, she then focuses on that, using a variety of exercises to tackle that weakness from various angles.

In a word: if you want Pilates, find a good instructor and sign up for small classes—either yourself alone or yourself with two or three others. And if you do sessions with others, I still would recommend an individual session once a week to focus on your own particular needs.

This is all beginner advice, of course. I imagine that once you know what you’re doing, you can make your own informed decisions. But at the beginning, one needs a lot of close monitoring.

I don’t recall where I got the razor above (a Gillette), but the writing on the package and on the enclosed blade is in Thai, as you see, so I think this came as a freebie with an order from iKon.

The razor is, I think, made from nylon: the hinge and clip make me suspect that. The blade loaded easily, but I believe that this is one razor where the usual rule of “just let the weight of the razor do the cutting”: the razor (with blade included) tips the scale at 0.2 oz—that is, 1/5 oz. I let the weight of the razor do the work, and the razor just hung there from my stubble.

Still, with actual pushing the razor and blade about, I got a good shave. I don’t know that I would enjoy using this razor on a regular basis, but in an emergency or as part of one’s camping supplies, it would answer nicely. For camping and hiking, the extreme lightness is obviously a plus.

The lather was the usual delight. I am definitely going to notate Sweet Gale as a favorite shaving soap—perhaps my most favorite.

A splash of Pashana, and I’m ready to go.

I’m startled by the exaggerated response this relatively mild set of revelations has engendered. It’s as if the drive behind the emotions and fears were larger, more general, than just Wikileaks alone—Wikileaks triggered the realization of those fears. I’m thinking here of the fears that governments, bureaucracies, and large organizations are feeling as they realize how vulnerable their internal records now are—en masse, not individually, due to information technology—to disgruntled employees, and how very many disgruntled employees they know they have (and they are in the process of making employees—i.e., workers—even more disgruntled as we slide down the economic death-spiral created by deregulation and supported by economic ignoramuses).

Lee Fang at ThinkProgress:

To many Americans, Washington is fundamentally broken. While corporations enjoy record profits and executives reward themselves with million-dollar bonuses, lobbyists have gamed the system so corporate behemoths like ExxonMobil and GE pay zero corporate income taxes. During the economic crisis, with high unemployment and stagnant wages, middle class Americans seem to be bearing the sacrifices. Riding a wave of this popular discontent, Republicans won a historical congressional election this year by channeling anger against “Beltway insiders” and Washington corruption.

Perhaps to the surprise of many Tea Party populists who helped elect them, the Washington Post reports, “Many incoming GOP lawmakers have hired registered lobbyists as senior aides. Several of the candidates won with strong support from the anti-establishment tea party movement.” These lobbyists are not public servants. They are experts at carving out special deals and tax giveaways to powerful corporations:

– Rep.-elect Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) selected lobbyist Tim Harris as his chief of staff. Harris works as lobbyist for a trade association representing the shareholders of energy companies like American Electric Power, Duke Energy, NiSource, Vectren.

– Rep.-elect Mike Pompeo (R-KS) selected Mark Chenowerth as his chief of staff. Chenowerth previously worked as a lawyer on the lobbying team for Koch Industries, the conglomerate owned by Charles and David Koch. As ThinkProgress reported early this year, Pompeo was groomed for office by Koch Industries-run front groups, and has served as an executive for Koch Industries oil company subsidiaries.

– Rep.-elect Robert Dold (R-IL) selected corporate lobbyist Eric Burgeson as his chief of staff. Burgeson works for the lobbying firm BGR Holdings serving business clients in China, the coal industry, and a nuclear company.

– Rep.-elect Chip Cravaack (R-MN) selected corporate lobbyist Rod Grams as his chief of staff. Grams works for a lobbying firm called Hecht, Spencer, and Associates where he represents 3M, Norfolk Southern and the Financial Services Roundtable, the trade association for the country’s largest banks.

– Rep.-elect Krisi Noem (R-SD) selected Jordon Stoick as her chief of staff. Stoick is a vice president at the lobbying firm Direct Impact. Direct Impact also specializes in building public support for corporate causes, boasting on its website that it once generated hundreds of letters to the FCC on behalf of the telecom industry.

– Rep.-elect Jeff Denham (R-CA) selected corporate lobbyist Jason Larrabee as his chief of staff. Larrabee is the founder of his own lobbying firm.

– Sen.-elect Pat Toomey (R-PA) selected former corporate lobbyist Chris Gahan as his chief of staff. Gahan previously worked at the lobbying firm Latham and Watkins.

– Rep.-elect Steve Pearce (R-AZ) selected Todd Willens as his chief of staff. Willens is a lobbyist at Vitello Consulting, a firm that represents a number of interests, including a casino.

– Sen.-elect Charlie Bass (R-NH) selected lobbyist John Billings as his chief of staff. Billings is a lobbyist for a food marketing and whole sale trade association.

– Rep.-elect Chris Gibson (R-NY) selected Steve Stallmer as his chief of staff. Stallmer is a lobbyist for the Associated General Contractors of New York State.

– Sen.-elect Ron Johnson (R-WI) selected Don Kent as his chief of staff. Kent is a lobbyist for the firm Navigators Global. Navigators Global represents AT&T, CitiGroup, and other major corporations.

– Sen.-elect Mike Lee (R-UT) selected lobbyist Spencer Strokes as his chief of staff. Lee is one of the most prominent corporate lobbyists in Utah, representing clients from the private prison industry to the nuclear industry.

– Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-KY) selected anti-union lobbyist Douglas Stafford for his chief of staff. Stafford is the vice president of the National Right to Work Committee.

These Republican lawmakers, many of whom cast themselves as insurgents, are linking their professional decisions into the corporate establishment of influence peddling. Congressional chiefs of staff are often in charge of helping members make pivotal decisions, like which positions to take on public debates, how to vote on pieces of legislation, and of course, how to use your votes to raise money for your re-election.

As the Washington Post reported last weekend, freshmen “Tea Party” Republicans have already ingratiated themselves into the cocktail culture of K Street. Dozens of freshmen Republicans have crowded into near-daily fundraisers, parties, and high-priced dinners hosted by corporate lobbyists. Already undercutting a promise to wean themselves off earmark giveaways to corporate interests, the new Republican Chairman of the Appropriations Committee is leaning towards hiring a defense industry lobbyist as the committee chief of staff.

Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving currently recommends the Merkur Hefty Classic (aka “HD”) as the razor for a beginner. This recommendation was based on polls of experienced wet-shavers. The HD is readily available, is not adjustable (a plus for beginners, who don’t need to be worrying about and tinkering with the adjustment), and is relatively inexpensive, currently running around $42. But this morning I was thinking again about my own experiences with the razors I have, and I am going to change that recommendation.

UPDATE: The iKon open-comb’s price went up to above $150, and the availability is uncertain. So, although it’s a great razor—and a bargain at $75—those days are over and I thus do not recommend it for a beginner.

My recommendation for the best beginner razor is one of the Edwin Jagger DE8x series. This has a head that is from a recent design (a couple of years ago) by Neal Jagger and the Müller brothers of Mühle-Pinsel. It’s a terrific head, and the more I use that razor the more I realize what a great job they did. Best of all, it’s not expensive at all: around $35, less than the Merkur HD (and, in my opinion, better). Moreover, it’s a razor you can continue to enjoy using your entire life.

It’s a 3-piece razor, the most robust and sturdy razor design. TTO razors, though cool, have moving parts—always a potential problem—and the hinges are of indifferent security quite often: a tumble into the sink and your razor may drop a door. Three-piece razors, like three-piece suits, are a traditional favorite, and there’s a reason why so many guys have liked them so much. (They also pack nicely flat when taken apart.)

The HD is still a good budget choice, but in my opinion (and experience) the best razor for a beginner is the iKon open-comb with either the bulldog handle or the long slender handle. This will cost $75 or $80, depending on the handle, but the iKon is a remarkably comfortable and forgiving razor. I now think this is the best beginner razor, and the next edition of the book will reflect the new recommendation.

Thought you might want to know if you’re shopping for a traditional wetshaving kit for the beginner.

Eric Holder not only has little interest in enforcing the law (cf. his total restriction of investigations into possible war crimes, despite the clear requirement of the law to do such investigations), he also lies, not a good thing in an Attorney General. Example: He assured the US that the DOJ and the DEA would respect state laws regarding medical marijuana. Then he lets the DEA operate with impunity against the state laws regarding medical marijuana. That seems to me to be the mark of a bad person. What do you think?

Here’s the report by Philip Smith:

Once again, this time last week in Michigan, the federal DEA has teamed up with recalcitrant state and local law enforcement in a bid to negate the will of the public and the law of the land. Heavily-armed state and federal lawmen raided a pair of medical marijuana gardens in the town of Okemos, outside Lansing, breaking windows, throwing smoke grenades, and seizing thousands of dollars worth of equipment and medical marijuana plants — all in a raid of a facility that is undeniably within the confines of Michigan’s medical marijuana law.

The gardens subleased to two individual caregivers by Capital City Care Givers in nearby Lansing contained a total of 40 marijuana plants. Under the Michigan law, caregivers can grow up to 12 plants each for up to five patients, as well as growing 12 plants for themselves if they are patients. That means the two caregivers should have been legally protected in growing up to 72 plants each, or 144 in total.

The apparent hole in the law that the DEA and the state police could be seeking to exploit is that the law does not directly address the issue of conjoined grows. It says only that caregivers can grow up to 12 plants for up to five patients and does not address more than one caregiver growing under the same roof. On the other hand, the law does not forbid such activities.

"This was an operation of the state police and the DEA," said Detroit medical marijuana activist Tim Beck. "The state police couldn’t even get a warrant from a local judge, so the DEA had to get one from a federal judge in Grand Rapids. The state police claim that they are captives of the local prosecutor, but in this case, the local prosecutor didn’t cooperate with them, so they went around him to the feds."

"We were completely in compliance with the law," said Ryan Basore, proprietor of Capitol City Care Givers, whose grow was hit. "We had contacted the local, county, and state police, and they all gave the go ahead and said we were doing it legally. We had two different attorneys write up the leases and go through plant counts and make sure everything was correctly separated. Every caregiver was well under the limit."

That didn’t stop the DEA, the state police, and the Tri-county Metro Narcotics Squad from behaving as if they were busting an Al Qaeda cell. Raiding agents threw smoke bombs in the building, paraded around with AK-47s, and stole the marijuana being grown by legally compliant caregivers. When asked about the Holder memo, the agents acted as if they were above the law. "Obama is not our president," Basore reported the agents saying."The people wanted change," Basore overheard another agent say as they effectively laughed in the face of their own superiors.

"All I can tell you is that this is an ongoing investigation in which we procured the search warrant," said Detroit DEA spokesman Special Agent Rich Isaacson. "Just because someone makes a claim that it is medical marijuana doesn’t make it so."

When asked about the October 2009 Justice Department memo urging the DEA to quit going after medical marijuana patients and providers in states where it is legal, Isaacson appeared to agree with the memo, but then suggested Capital Caregivers was somehow outside the state law. "If it’s unambiguous that they’re following state law, there would be better ways for the department to spend its resources," he said.

"Our mission is to target large scale drug trafficking groups," Isaacson said, but clammed up when confronted with the fact that the raids had seized only 40 plants. "That number may or may not be accurate," was all he would say.

Basore has been a prominent figure in the state’s medical marijuana movement. He is a member of various cannabis patient groups and the Michigan Association of Compassionate Care Centers. He’s been available to local and state media, and as a result, he has a very high profile. That could have been why he was targeted, his supporters suggested.

"This raid came about because Ryan Basore was in the media for the past few weeks talking about his desire to have regulated dispensaries," said Detroit attorney Matthew Abel. "He is a very successful businessman in this industry, and I think they just decided to take him down. They do that to anyone who goes public, and that’s highly retaliatory against our First Amendment rights. He was talking to the press, so they took him out. That’s pretty nasty."

"Ryan is high-profile, he’s politically active and on TV all the time, but he’s also scrupulously honest," said Beck. "That operation was absolutely straight up," he said.

"We’re very troubled by the continuing raids involving the DEA that are occurring around the country, and we’ve been saying this for a long time," said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for the medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access. "It is not the purview of the federal government to enforce state or local laws. If the feds believe state or local law may have been violated, they should leave those cases to the state to prosecute. Only then we will find out if there were in fact violations of state or local law, because if those cases go to federal court, prosecutors will not risk opening the door to a medical marijuana defense," he said.

"The DEA conducts these raids and provides very little evidence of state law violations," said Hermes. "They rarely, if ever, produce any actual physical evidence of state law violations."

It’s not just Michigan where the DEA is acting out, said Hermes. "We’ve seen well over 20 DEA raids since Justice issued its memo, and while that is for sure a less aggressive posture than the Bush administration, any raids are unacceptable if they are going to undermine the implementation of a state’s medical marijuana law," he said. "That has been the effect in California and Colorado, where the DEA attempts to undermine the state medical marijuana law," Hermes argued.

"US attorneys have received notice that there was a change in policy, and that has filtered down to DEA agents across the country in medical marijuana states," Hermes continued. "Eric Holder and the Obama administration have given pretty broad latitude to use discretion in enforcing federal marijuana laws in medical marijuana states, and it’s mostly US attorneys and DEA field agents who consider their targets to be violating state or local law. The shadow of the Justice Department memo is coloring enforcement actions, and hopefully we’ll see fewer raids in the future, but it’s that discretion that has resulted in the continuing raids."

"The DEA has been all over Michigan trying to subvert this law, running around recommending that municipalities pass laws saying that any activity which is contrary to state local or federal law is also illegal," Beck noted.  "That is being challenged in court by the ACLU."

For Basore, it’s not just about picking up the pieces and starting over. "I’m thinking about suing the state of Michigan, said Basore. "I think I have an entrapment case. I would never have broken the law unless I was told it was okay to do, and some of those who told me it was okay were in on the raids."

Continue reading.  It just gets worse and worse.

The Obama Administration continues to disappoint. And lie.

17 nonstop minutes on the Nordic Track this morning. No speed record: slow and steady wins the race, as Grandmother Ham used to tell me. I noticed this morning that I didn’t much feel in the mood (it’s a dark and rainy day), but the book drew me on—Crusoe has just spotted the footprint—and once begun it was pretty easy to keep going. This morning I noticed how warm my shoulders became as they warmed up and got into it: the Nordic Track seems to throw a fair amount of exercise onto the arms and shoulders as well as the legs.

And later this morning I’ll be doing my Pilates session, so today is a good workout day. And a good thing: weight this morning (211.3 lbs; 96 kg) is identical to yesterday’s weight. So I didn’t gain, but I’m eating carefully again today, so tomorrow should have a nice surprise.

Last night I took out the last piece of veal liver from the fridge: it looked like a good dinner size, but when I weighed it, it was 7.9 oz. So, really, it’s two (4-oz) dinners. I immediately cut it in half, and do you know the 4-oz piece I ate was fully satisfying and I did not in fact feel hungry after dinner? To me, this is a loaves-and-fishes type of miracle: that I can feel full and satisfied with a 4-oz meat serving. A good thing to keep in mind.

BruceOnShaving has an interesting post today: a beginner’s guide to traditional shaving kit. In the course of the post, he mentions Geo. F. Trumper Violet as his favorite shaving soap, so I thought I’d break out my tub today—using a very traditional brush to book: the Rooney Style 2 Finest.

An excellent lather once more, and then three smooth passes with the iKon open-comb bulldog holding a Swedish Gillette blade. I do like iKon razors, can you tell?

A splash of New York aftershave, and I’m ready for a Pilates workout.

I’m now watching Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Very enjoyable, and I’m not saying that just because at one point they featured this blog.

My iron levels are perfectly okay, so there go the iron pills. Still, an occasional serving of liver and onions is always a good idea. (I slice the onion quite thinly on the Swissmar Borner V-Slicer, sauté over medium-low heat in 2 tsp of olive oil, stirring and occasionally turning it, until it is a fine golden color and caramelized somewhat. Then a few drops of balsamic vinegar: divine!)

Thyroid is good, prostate is fine (PSA reading), vitamin D levels perfect (I take 2000 IU daily in the winter). My fasting blood glucose level was 102, much better than the 115-120 I was having and getting closer to a normal reading of around 95. HbA1C was 5.5%, quite normal.

He wants now to start cutting out meds. His first target is Zetia, and since I see my endocrinologist next week, I’ll go for that. Zetia is a good one to drop because it’s expensive: not on our health insurance formulary.

Bradford Plumer writes in The New Republic:

Here’s a quick sketch of how environmental policy will get made for the next two years. Congress won’t pass any new laws. The EPA will try to use the authority it already has to mop up pollution from coal plants, factories, and vehicles (and the agency has a fair bit of existing authority to do so). Industry groups, Republicans, and more than a few Democrats will moan about the costs. And the Obama administration will then have to decide just how much confrontation it can really stomach. Any bets on how this will all play out?

Today brings a sneak preview: The EPA just announced that it is asking for a year-long delay in crafting new rules that would lower toxic pollution from industrial boilers and solid-waste incinerators. The D.C. District Court had given the EPA until January 16, 2011, to set new standards that would reduce mercury and soot pollution from sources like oil refineries and paper mills. This isn’t just some abstract tree-hugging measure; it would arguably do more for public health than any section of Obamacare: EPA  experts found that cutting toxic pollution could prevent 5,000 deaths and 36,000 asthma attacks each year. (All told, the rule would have cost an estimated $6.4 billion each year while delivering between $138 billion and $334 billion in annual health benefits—not a bad deal.) But the affected industries all griped that the costs were way too burdensome and buried the EPA in angry comments.

Now, EPA officials say they’re seeking a delay because all those comments made them realize that the air-toxics rule could be structured more carefully. That’s plausible. But it’s also true that the agency has been under excruciating political pressure of late. Nearly 100 lawmakers have complained about the boiler rules. The likely new head of the House energy committee, Fred Upton, has bashed the standards and is promising to drag EPA head Lisa Jackson in for enhanced interrogation. (Upton’s concern? The Council of Industrial Boiler Owners thinks the costs will be far greater than EPA is projecting. It’s worth noting that, historically, pollution rules tend to be cheaper than even the EPA expects.) And House Republicans will have a say in the agency’s budget going forward, so Jackson can’t just ignore them.

But this goes beyond one little pollution rule. Right now, the EPA is preparing a whole host of new regulations under the Clean Air Act. There’s a national air quality standard for ozone pollution in the works. There’s a looming decision about whether to regulate coal ash as a hazardous waste. There are new smog rules that would limit sulfur-dioxide and nitrogen-oxide emissions from coal power plants. And, of course, the EPA is still trying to formulate rules to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions. That last one is pretty much the country’s only shot at tackling global warming, now that Congress has no interest in passing climate legislation.

Taken together, these new regulations could have an enormous effect on America’s energy mix—up to 20 percent of the country’s coal plants could get retired in the coming decade, potentially replaced with cleaner natural gas or even renewable power. It’s hard to overstate what a massive shift that would entail. But, for that to happen, the EPA would actually have to slog ahead in the face of vicious opposition from Congress and industry groups. And it’s unclear just how hard the agency is willing to battle. True, Barack Obama has said he’d veto any bill that crippled the EPA’s greenhouse-gas authority, and Lisa Jackson is fond of dismissing apocalyptic cries by industry lobbyists. But today’s announcement suggests that even Jackson doesn’t want to get too heavy-handed.

Incidentally, this is why American Electric Power v. Connecticut is a Supreme Court case worth following closely. At stake is . . .

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BruceOnShaving has a fascinating post—with lots of photos—on the restoration of two antique shaving brushes. Take a look.

Some have accused the FBI of actually instigating attacks—and certainly in Portland the FBI was very much on the scene, even supplying the explosive device. Here’s a story in the Washington Post by Jerry Markon that goes into some detail on an FBI operation that failed:

Before the sun rose, the informant donned a white Islamic robe. A tiny camera was sewn into a button, and a microphone was buried in a device attached to his keys.

“This is Farouk al-Aziz, code name Oracle,” he said into the keys as he sat in his parked car in this quiet community south of Los Angeles. “It’s November 13th, 4:30 a.m. And we’re hot.”

The undercover FBI informant – a convicted forger named Craig Monteilh – then drove off for 5 a.m. prayers at the Islamic Center of Irvine, where he says he spied on dozens of worshipers in a quest for potential terrorists.

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the FBI has used informants successfully as one of many tactics to prevent another strike in the United States. Agency officials say they are careful not to violate civil liberties and do not target Muslims.

But the FBI’s approach has come under fire from some Muslims, criticism that surfaced again late last month after agents arrested an Oregon man they said tried to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. FBI technicians had supplied the device.

In the Irvine case, Monteilh’s mission as an informant backfired. Muslims were so alarmed by his talk of violent jihad that they obtained a restraining order against him.

He had helped build a terrorism-related case against a mosque member, but that also collapsed. The Justice Department recently took the extraordinary step of dropping charges against the worshiper, who Monteilh had caught on tape agreeing to blow up buildings, law enforcement officials said. Prosecutors had portrayed the man as a dire threat.

Compounding the damage, Monteilh has gone public, revealing secret FBI methods and charging that his “handlers” trained him to entrap Muslims as he infiltrated their mosques, homes and businesses. He is now suing the FBI.

Officials declined to comment on specific details of Monteilh’s tale but confirm that he was a paid FBI informant. Court records and interviews corroborate not only that Monteilh worked for the FBI – he says he made $177,000, tax-free, in 15 months – but that he provided vital information on a number of cases.

Some Muslims in Southern California and nationally say the cascading revelations have seriously damaged their relationship with the FBI, a partnership that both sides agree is critical to preventing attacks and homegrown terrorism.

Citing Monteilh’s actions and what they call a pattern of FBI surveillance, many leading national Muslim organizations have virtually suspended contact with the bureau.

“The community feels betrayed,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques.

“They got a guy, a bona fide criminal, and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques,” Syed said. “And when things went sour, they ditched him and he got mad. It’s like a soap opera, for God’s sake.” . . .

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