Later On

QED’s Vetiver shaving soap is VERY vetivery. You’ll notice that it’s not identified on QED’s label: I think this was a one-off batch on special request, but it’s a wonderful soap. It’s not included in his current list of available soaps, but keep an eye out for it—maybe he’ll make another batch. In the meantime, I do like his Special 218 as you know.

I got a fine lather with the TOBS artificial badger brush, and the Edwin Jagger Chatsworth did a fine job. At the beginning of the first pass, I seemed to be getting more resistance from the stubble than I like, so I replaced the old Polsilver blade with a new Swedish Gillette blade, and then all went well. A splash of Royall Vetiver and I’m ready for the day.

Interesting Cool Tool for Pilates.

For one thing, it’s weight loss, not weight gain. And slow brings benefits: the focus is less on losing the weight, more on adopting a new way of eating and a different way of living that incorporates more exercise. In other words, it’s making a real, permanent change, and that takes time and experimentation. For example, over the past 3 months I lost only 5 lbs/month—still, that’s more than 1 lb/week, and in addition I was learning through experimenting with foods and meals, finding combinations that I liked and that still resulted in weight loss.

I spent at least a month convincing myself that if I ate a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack of a piece of fruit, I would lose weight, but if I stopped the snacks, I stopped losing weight. So that’s a whole new thing for me and a permanent addition to my lifestyle: eating a piece of fruit mid-morning, and eating another mid-afternoon. When I go on maintenance, I’ll add a string cheese to the snack.

Also, I had to find the right mix of exercises that I can maintain the rest of my life. I think what I have now—Nordic Track for cardio, Pilates for strength—is about right, and they also become permanent residents in my daily and weekly routine. I’ll have to transition from thrice-weekly Pilates instruction to thrice-weekly Pilates at-home mat exercises, but I can do that. I think I will maintain a weekly instructional session to make sure my form doesn’t suffer.

I seem to have the right meal balance, too:

breakfast: cereal and protein for breakfast (egg and steel-cut oats)

lunch: a large green salad with protein (boiled egg, tuna, chicken, sardines, or shrimp) and carbs (cooked whole-grain wheat or barley in the salad, or 2 Ry-Vita crackers with the salad) and an excellent low-fat dressing.

dinner: meat, veg (usually greens, sometimes green beans), and a carb, typically a cooked whole grain (rice, wheat, spelt, kamut, barley) or quinoa or, especially now, roasted winter squash. Meat is generally chicken or fish, but lately I’ve also been eating beef liver.

So I know what my meals look like—I have a clear template in mind and simply pick things to fill the template. And, given the slow rate at which I’m losing, my meals on maintenance will be pretty much the same: add string cheese to the snacks, and increase the portion size a small amount. But basically I won’t be changing what I eat or how I eat—which is the whole point of the program and why it’s food-based instead of formula-based.

At this point, I feel confident that I can continue to goal and then maintain—because by the time I reach goal, my new habits and lifestyle will be thoroughly ingrained and a part of me: it will be just how I live.

Greenwald points out how the responses to Wikileaks have relied heavily on distortion, propaganda, and outright lies, with examples. Interesting column, which begins:

(1) In The New Republic today, Todd Gitlin writes an entire anti-WikiLeaks column that is based on an absolute factual falsehood.  Anyone listening to most media accounts would believe that WikiLeaks has indiscriminately published all 250,000 of the diplomatic cables it possesses, and Gitlin — in the course of denouncing Julian Assange — bolsters this falsehood:  "Wikileaks’s huge data dump, including the names of agents and recent diplomatic cables, is indiscriminate" and Assange is "fighting for a world of total transparency."

The reality is the exact opposite — literally — of what Gitlin told TNR readers.  WikiLeaks has posted to its website only 960 of the 251,297diplomatic cables it has.  Almost every one of these cables was first published by one of its newspaper partners which are disclosing them (The Guardian, the NYT, El Pais, Le Monde, Der Speigel, etc.).  Moreover, the cables posted by WikiLeaks were not only first published by these newspapers, but contain the redactions applied by those papers to protect innocent people and otherwise minimize harm.  Here is an AP article from yesterday detailing this process:

[T]he group is releasing only a trickle of documents at a time from a trove of a quarter-million, and only after considering advice from five news organizations with which it chose to share all of the material.

"They are releasing the documents we selected," Le Monde’s managing editor, Sylvie Kauffmann, said in an interview at the newspaper’s Paris headquarters. . . .

"The cables we have release correspond to stories released by our main stream media partners and ourselves. They have been redacted by the journalists working on the stories, as these people must know the material well in order to write about it," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in a question-and-answer session on The Guardian’s website Friday.

Just as they did prior to releasing the Afghanistan war documents, WikiLeaks — according to AP — "appealed to the U.S. ambassador in London, asking the U.S. government to confidentially help him determine what needed to be redacted from the cables before they were publicly released."  Although the U.S. — again — refused to give such guidance, WikiLeaks worked closely with these media outlets to ensure that any material which has no valid public interest value and could harm innocent people was withheld.  And Assange’s frequent commitments to engage in "harm minimization" when releasing documents gives the lie to Gitlin’s assertion that he is "fighting for a world of total transparency."

I understand that the media has repeated over and over the false claim that WikiLeaks "dumped" all 250,000 diplomatic cables on the Internet — which is presumably how this falsehood made its way into Gitlin’s brain and then into his column — but that’s no excuse for him and TNR editors failing to undertake the most minimal due diligence (such as, say, checking WikiLeaks’ website) before publishing this claim.  I’ve emailed Gitlin and TNR Editor-in-Chief Franklin Foer early this morning and advised them of the need for a correction, but have heard nothing.  I will post any reply I get.  They’re entitled to condemn WikiLeaks all they want, but not to propagate this factual falsehood.

(2) According to The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter, Matt Lauer — when announcing Assange’s arrest in London this morning — proclaimed:  "The international manhunt for Julian Assange is over" — as though Assange is Osama bin Laden or something.  I don’t know if it’s sheer empty-headedness or excessive servile-to-power syndrome — probably both, as is usually the case — but that claim is both painfully dumb and misleading.  There was no valid arrest warrant in England for Assange until yesterday; he then immediately turned himself into British law enforcement.  There was no "international manhunt."  How long before Matt Lauer and his friends start featuring playing cards with all the WikiLeaks Villains on the them ("and here we have Julian Assange, the Terrorist Mastermind, who is the Ace of Spades!")?  Answer:  as soon as the Government produces them and hands them to the media with instructions to use them.

(3) Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein ran today to The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page to call for the prosecution of Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917.  Legal experts overwhelmingly believe that any such prosecution under that law would be extremely difficult and"extremely dangerous," but that’s of no concern to the Surveillance-State-protecting, Iraq-War-supporting, defense-contractor-plutocrat:  the "liberal" Democratic Senator from California.  To argue this, she invokes the most tired and simple-minded platitude beloved by all those who want to curtail basic press and speech freedoms:  "Just as the First Amendment is not a license to yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, it is also not a license to jeopardize national security."

Every line of pro-prosecution rationale cited by Feinstein applies equally to journalists — including especially the newspapers from around the world which are publishing all of the same diplomatic cables as WikiLeaks is, and which are publishing them before WikiLeaks even does.   How can it possibly be that WikiLeaks should be prosecuted for espionage, but not The New York Times, or The Guardian, or any other newspaper that publishes these cables?

In 2006, Alberto Gonzales threatened to prosecute The New York Times for revealing Bush’s illegal NSA program, and The Weekly Standard ran numerous articles calling for the prosecution of NYT journalists and editors under the Espionage Act for having done so.  Bill Bennett demanded the prosecution of The Washington Post‘s Dana Priest for revealing the CIA black sites.  How can all the Good Democrats who condemned that mentality possibly not condemn Dianne Feinstein and those who think like her?  What’s the difference?

(4) Here is the American justice system under Obama in a nutshell: . . .

Continue reading.

This is very bad, IMO. Once governments gain the right to have citizens killed with no due process, things can go downhill quite rapidly. The Associated Press:

A judge on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit aimed at preventing the United States from targeting anti-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki for death, but questioned whether a president or his aides can order a U.S. citizen assassinated for terrorist activity.

U.S. District Judge John Bates said in an 83-page opinion that he does not have the authority to review the president’s military decisions and al-Awlaki’s father does not have the legal right to sue to stop the United States from killing his son. But Bates also said the "unique and extraordinary case" raised vital considerations of national security and for military and foreign affairs.

Among the questions Bates said the case raises is why courts have authority to approve surveillance of Americans overseas but not their killing. And he questioned whether the president or his advisers can order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without "any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organization."

"The serious issues regarding the merits of the alleged authorization of the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen overseas must await another day or another nonjudicial forum," wrote Bates, an appointee of President George W. Bush and an Army veteran.

Al-Awlaki, believed to be hiding in Yemen, has urged Muslims to kill Americans. He also has been linked to last year’s shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, and the attempted bombing of a U.S.-bound flight last Christmas.

Obama administration officials have confirmed to The Associated Press that al-Awlaki is on a capture or kill list, although the Obama administration declined to confirm or deny that in court proceedings.

The cleric’s father, Nasser al-Awlaki of Yemen, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, argued that international law and the Constitution prevented the administration from unilaterally targeting his son for death unless he presents a specific imminent threat to life or physical safety and there are no other means to stop him. The suit against President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta, also tried to force the government to disclose standards for determining whether U.S. citizens like his son, born in New Mexico in 1971 and raised in the United States, can be targeted for death.

Administration officials argued the court has no legal authority to review the president as he makes military decisions to protect Americans against terrorist attacks. Bates agreed, although somewhat reluctantly.

"To be sure, this court recognizes the somewhat unsettling nature of its conclusion — that there are circumstances in which the executive’s unilateral decision to kill a U.S. citizen overseas is constitutionally committed to the political branches and judicially unreviewable," Bates wrote. "But this case squarely presents such a circumstance."

The Obama administration also said the case should be thrown out because it could disclose state secrets. But Bates agreed with the administration that he didn’t need to consider that argument because the case should be thrown out on other grounds.

Bates also said he must dismiss the case because Anwar al-Awlaki did not bring the suit himself. The judge was not swayed by the father’s argument that the cleric could not sue because it would force him to come out of hiding in risk of his life. Bates said al-Awlaki could peacefully present himself under protection of international law and even suggested in a footnote that the cleric could possibly participate via videoconferencing while still in hiding.

Continue reading.

Here’s an article by Alfred McCoy in Salon describes several different scenarios for a collapse of the American empire by 2025: 15 years from now. Hemingway once wrote a story about a guy who went broke—"at first slowly, and then all at once." That probably describes the fall of the US. The country is clearly overextended in many directions (our military costs are eating us alive—all those foreign bases), but the real problem is that a substantial majority of those now running the country prefer ideology and wishful thinking to actual facts and consensual reality. Thus they are making policy in a fantasy world, and this will not work.

Here’s who McCoy is:

Alfred W. McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, "From the Cold War to the War on Terror." Later this year, "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," a forthcoming book of his, will explore the influence of overseas counterinsurgency operations on the spread of internal security measures here at home.

His article begins:

A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don’t bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines. If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting.

Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.

Future historians are likely to identify the Bush administration’s rash invasion of Iraq in that year as the start of America’s downfall. However, instead of the bloodshed that marked the end of so many past empires, with cities burning and civilians slaughtered, this twenty-first century imperial collapse could come relatively quietly through the invisible tendrils of economic collapse or cyberwarfare.

But have no doubt: when Washington’s global dominion finally ends, there will be painful daily reminders of what such a loss of power means for Americans in every walk of life. As a half-dozen European nations have discovered, imperial decline tends to have a remarkably demoralizing impact on a society, regularly bringing at least a generation of economic privation. As the economy cools, political temperatures rise, often sparking serious domestic unrest.

Available economic, educational, and military data indicate that, when it comes to U.S. global power, negative trends will aggregate rapidly by 2020 and are likely to reach a critical mass no later than 2030. The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, will be tattered and fading by 2025, its eighth decade, and could be history by 2030.

Significantly, in 2008, the U.S. National Intelligence Council admitted for the first time that America’s global power was indeed on a declining trajectory. In one of its periodic futuristic reports, Global Trends 2025, the Council cited "the transfer of global wealth and economic power now under way, roughly from West to East" and "without precedent in modern history," as the primary factor in the decline of the "United States’ relative strength — even in the military realm." Like many in Washington, however, the Council’s analysts anticipated a very long, very soft landing for American global preeminence, and harbored the hope that somehow the U.S. would long "retain unique military capabilities… to project military power globally" for decades to come.

No such luck. Under current projections, the United States will find itself in second place behind China (already the world’s second largest economy) in economic output around 2026, and behind India by 2050. Similarly, Chinese innovation is on a trajectory toward world leadership in applied science and military technology sometime between 2020 and 2030, just as America’s current supply of brilliant scientists and engineers retires, without adequate replacement by an ill-educated younger generation.

By 2020, according to current plans, the Pentagon will throw a military Hail Mary pass for a dying empire. It will launch a lethal triple canopy of advanced aerospace robotics that represents Washington’s last best hope of retaining global power despite its waning economic influence. By that year, however, China’s global network of communications satellites, backed by the world’s most powerful supercomputers, will also be fully operational, providing Beijing with an independent platform for the weaponization of space and a powerful communications system for missile- or cyber-strikes into every quadrant of the globe.

Wrapped in imperial hubris, like Whitehall or Quai d’Orsay before it, the White House still seems to imagine that American decline will be gradual, gentle, and partial. In his State of the Union address last January, President Obama offered the reassurance that "I do not accept second place for the United States of America." A few days later, Vice President Biden ridiculed the very idea that "we are destined to fulfill [historian Paul] Kennedy’s prophecy that we are going to be a great nation that has failed because we lost control of our economy and overextended." Similarly, writing in the November issue of the establishment journal Foreign Affairs, neo-liberal foreign policy guru Joseph Nye waved away talk of China’s economic and military rise, dismissing "misleading metaphors of organic decline" and denying that any deterioration in U.S. global power was underway.

Ordinary Americans, watching their jobs head overseas, have a more realistic view than their cosseted leaders. An opinion poll in August 2010 found that 65 percent of Americans believed the country was now "in a state of decline."  Already, Australia and Turkey, traditional U.S. military allies, are using their American-manufactured weapons for joint air and naval maneuvers with China. Already, America’s closest economic partners are backing away from Washington’s opposition to China’s rigged currency rates. As the president flew back from his Asian tour last month, a gloomy New York Times headline  summed the moment up this way: "Obama’s Economic View Is Rejected on World Stage, China, Britain and Germany Challenge U.S., Trade Talks With Seoul Fail, Too."

Viewed historically, the question is not whether the United States will lose its unchallenged global power, but just how precipitous and wrenching the decline will be. In place of Washington’s wishful thinking, let’s use the National Intelligence Council’s own futuristic methodology to suggest four realistic scenarios for how, whether with a bang or a whimper, U.S. global power could reach its end in the 2020s (along with four accompanying assessments of just where we are today). The future scenarios include: economic decline, oil shock, military misadventure, and World War III. While these are hardly the only possibilities when it comes to American decline or even collapse, they offer a window into an onrushing future.

Economic Decline: Present Situation

Today, three main threats exist to America’s dominant position in the global economy: . . .

Continue reading. This is rather gloomy, but unfortunately that does not make it less likely. Add to everything else the stresses on all countries as global warming accelerates ("slowly at first, and then all at once"), oil becomes less available and more expensive, and food supplies become harder to maintain. I recall reading about a man, interviewed in the ’60s about his experiences in the Great Depression. He commented that he had heard people say that he should have seen it coming—but he did see it coming. There’s was simply nothing he could do. That’s the way I feel about the decline of the US, global warming, and the downfall of humanity.

He points out that the newspapers that print his findings are curiously immune to all the great legal machinery brought to bear on him. From The Australian:

In 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch’s exposé  that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain’s The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister’s office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me…

Continue reading.

I did my Nordic Track this morning (17 minutes, but who’s counting) and then went for the blood draw for my quarterly meeting with my endocrinologist. Though not so dramatic as last time, when I had lost 25 lbs: I’ve lost only 15 since that visit, a measly 5 lbs/month. Still, it’s a loss.

And diabetes is in the news. Take a look at these interactive maps: 2004-2008 inclusive. The South is clearly a hotbed of diabetes—and notice how it spreads up from the south, through the valleys on either side of the Appalachian mountains. The mountainous regions are not in such bad shape: perhaps simply walking up and down hills is enough to keep diabetes at bay.

Some bad news: the little pin-prick tests to check blood glucose levels may not be accurate. Best course is to avoid the disease entirely if you can: keep a proper weight and do daily exercise and eat healthful foods—but not that much.

This morning I did in fact use the Simpson Emperor 3 Super—and a nod to the season in QED’s Frankincense & Myrrh shaving soap. The Emperor worked up a fine lather (though with little fragrance), and the English Gillette Aristocrat #22 with a Swedish Gillette blade gave three very smooth and pleasant passes, with a splash of Klassik at the end.

Read this column, which reveals the strength of authoritarianism in Western nations. The lynch-mob mentality is just under the surface. From the column:

. . . Just look at what the U.S. Government and its friends are willing to do and capable of doing to someone who challenges or defies them — all without any charges being filed or a shred of legal authority.  They’ve blocked access to their assets, tried to remove them from the Internet, bullied most everyone out of doing any business with them, froze the funds marked for Assange’s legal defense at exactly the time that they prepare a strange international arrest warrant to be executed, repeatedly threatened him with murder, had their Australian vassals openly threaten to revoke his passport, and declared them “Terrorists” even though — unlike the authorities who are doing all of these things — neither Assange nor WikiLeaks ever engaged in violence, advocated violence, or caused the slaughter of civilians.

This is all grounded in the toxic mindset expressed yesterday on Meet the Press (without challenge, naturally) by GOP Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said of Assange:  ”I think the man is a high-tech terrorist. He’s done an enormous damage to our country, and I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And if that becomes a problem, we need to change the law.”  As usual, when wielded by American authorities, the term “terrorist” means nothing more than: “those who impede or defy the will of the U.S. Government with any degree of efficacy.”  Anyone who does that is, by definition, a Terrorist.  And note McConnell’s typical, highly representative view that if someone he wants to punish isn’t a criminal under the law, then you just “change the law” to make him one.

But that sort of legal scheming isn’t even necessary.  The U.S. and its “friends” in the Western and business worlds are more than able and happy to severely punish anyone they want without the slightest basis in “law.”  That’s what the lawless, Wild Western World is:  political leaders punishing whomever they want without any limits, certainly without regard to bothersome concepts of “law.”  Anyone who doubts that should just look at what has been done to Wikileaks and Assange over the last week.  In this series of events, there are indeed genuine and pernicious threats to basic freedom and security; they most assuredly aren’t coming from WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.

People often have a hard time believing that the terms “authoritarian” and “tyranny” apply to their own government, but that’s because those who meekly stay in line and remain unthreatening are never targeted by such forces.  The face of authoritarianism and tyranny reveals itself with how it responds to those who meaningfully dissent from and effectively challenge its authority:  do they act within the law or solely through the use of unconstrained force? . . .

Dick Taverne has a very interesting piece in New Scientist on how drug regulation is done: without evidence. He writes:

Asked by Galileo to look through his telescope at the newly discovered four moons of Jupiter, a representative of the pope answered: “I refuse to look at something which my religion tells me cannot exist.” The attitude of most western governments to the harm caused by recreational drugs is not dissimilar.

This attitude is exemplified by the UK government’s response to a recent report by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, led by former government adviser David Nutt. The report is a methodical analysis of the harm caused by different drugs, not only to the user but also to others and society at large (The Lancet, vol 376, p 1558). Its conclusions are broadly similar to those of an earlier study by Nutt (The Lancet, vol 369, p 1047) and of one by drug addiction experts in the Netherlands.

The committee found that crack cocaine and heroin were the most harmful to the individual, but on the overall scale of harm, alcohol easily came top because of the violence, crime, road accidents, police time, job losses and relationship problems associated with its use.

Seen in this light, the UK’s system of classifying harmful drugs has no basis in evidence. Ecstasy and LSD, which are among the least harmful, are classified with the most harmful such as heroin and crack cocaine. Cannabis is classified in the second highest category, listed as seriously harmful, although its effect on individuals and others is relatively mild. Alcohol and tobacco are of course not included at all.

When I challenged the government in the House of Lords to reconsider its present system of classification in the light of the new report and take much stronger action against the abuse of alcohol, I was met by a blank refusal. I was told that there is no consensus about what constitutes evidence, that all classified drugs are extremely harmful to society, that the government must provide a stable and enduring system, and that the current system continues to serve that purpose.

In effect, the government’s message echoed the answer of the pope’s representative: “We refuse to look at the evidence because our policy is fixed and that tells us the evidence cannot be true.”

So we continue to fill our jails – which are already fuller than in any other European Union country – with drug users, even though the link between criminal penalties and drug use is weak. When for a while the penalties for possessing cannabis were downgraded in England, use of cannabis declined. This does not prove that lower penalties caused the decline, but they certainly do not inevitably result in increased use.

Read the rest of this entry »

Red CKO is the name I just made up for a dish that combines red chard, red kale, and red onions:

Cut top and bottom off a red onion, cut it in half vertically, and discard papery outer layers.

Slice each onion half thinly—I use my Swissmar Borner V-Slicer. At the link, note the cut-resistant glove: I never use the V-Slicer without wearing a cut-resistant glove after V-slicing away a chunk of my thumb.

Sauté sliced onion in 2 tsp of olive oil in a large sauté pan for which you have a lid. Continue sautéing until onion is starting to caramelize.

Wash chard and kale in a sink full of cold water, shake dry, and chop. Chop stems into small pieces, but I include them in the dish.

Add chard and kale to onions, stir, and sauté briefly. Then add 3/4 cup chicken stock or water, a glug of good balsamic vinegar, some salt, some pepper and/or homemade pepper sauce, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes.

I find it quite tasty, myself.

Reid Wilson reporting for National Journal:

Members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus may tout their commitment to cutting government spending now, but they used the 111th Congress to request hundreds of earmarks that, taken cumulatively, added more than $1 billion to the federal budget.

According to a Hotline review of records compiled by Citizens Against Government Waste, the 52 members of the caucus, which pledges to cut spending and reduce the size of government, requested a total of 764 earmarks valued at $1,049,783,150 during Fiscal Year 2010, the last year for which records are available.

“It’s disturbing to see the Tea Party Caucus requested that much in earmarks. This is their time to put up or shut up, to be blunt,” said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste. “There’s going to be a huge backlash if they continue to request earmarks.”

In founding the caucus in July, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said she was giving voice to Americans who were sick of government over-spending.

“The American people are speaking out loud and clear. They have had enough of the spending, the bureaucracy, and the government knows best mentality running rampant today throughout the halls of Congress,” Bachmann said in a July 15 statement. The group, she wrote in a letter to House Administration Committee chairman Bob Brady, “will serve as an informal group of Members dedicated to promote Americans’ call for fiscal responsibility, adherence to the Constitution, and limited government.”

Bachmann and 13 of her Tea Party Caucus colleagues did not request any earmarks in the last Fiscal Year, according to CAGW’s annual Congressional Pig Book. But others have requested millions of dollars in special projects…

Continue reading to see the names and how much each requested in earmarks.

Private industry has one goal: to turn a profit. Anything that might interfere is quickly thrown overboard. Via Ed Brayton, this depressing story reported by AP’s Rebecca Boone:

The surveillance video from the overhead cameras shows Hanni Elabed being beaten by a fellow inmate in an Idaho prison, managing to bang on a prison guard station window, pleading for help. Behind the glass, correctional officers look on, but no one intervenes when Elabed is knocked unconscious.

No one steps into the cellblock when the attacker sits down to rest, and no one stops him when he resumes the beating.

Videos of the attack obtained by The Associated Press show officers watching the beating for several minutes. The footage is a key piece of evidence for critics who claim the privately run Idaho Correctional Center uses inmate-on-inmate violence to force prisoners to snitch on their cellmates or risk being moved to extremely violent units.

On Tuesday, hours after the AP published the video, the top federal prosecutor in Idaho told the AP that the FBI has been investigating whether guards violated the civil rights of inmates at the prison, which is run by the Corrections Corporation of America.

The investigation concerns the prison’s rate of violence and covers multiple assaults between inmates, including the attack on Elabed, U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson said.

CCA spokesman Steve Owen said the company is cooperating with federal agents, as it has with other law enforcement overseeing the prisons.

Lawsuits from inmates contend the company denies prisoners medical treatment as a way of covering up the assaults. They have dubbed the Idaho lockup "gladiator school" because it is so violent.

The AP initially sought a copy of the videos from state court, but Idaho 4th District Judge Patrick Owen denied that request. The AP had already obtained a copy and decided to publish the videos after a person familiar with the case verified their authenticity.

The videos show at least three guards watching as Elabed was stomped on a dozen times. At no time during the recorded sequence did anyone try to pull away James Haver, a short, slight man.

About two minutes after Haver stopped the beating of his own accord, the metal cellblock door was unlocked. Haver was handcuffed and Elabed was examined for signs of life. He bled inside his skull and would spend three days in a coma.

CCA, the nation’s largest private prison company, said it was "highly disappointed and deeply concerned" over AP’s decision to release the videos.

"Public release of the video poses an unnecessary security risk to our staff, the inmates entrusted to our care, and ultimately to the public," the prison company said in a statement.

Continue reading. Emphasis added. Note that the company is not at all disturbed by the attack or by the inaction of the guards—only by the matter becoming public. This is typical: corporations fit the psychological profile of a sociopath, whose only concern is his own interests. Nothing else matters.

Because people are being put to death by the state for things they did not do. Example: DNA Test Proves Critical Hair Evidence in a Capital Murder Case Didn’t Match Man Executed. At that link:

The Innocence Project today released DNA test results proving that crucial hair evidence found at the scene of a murder, the only physical evidence linking the accused Claude Jones to the crime, did not belong to Jones. Although he always maintained his innocence, Jones was executed for murdering Allen Hilzendager on December 7, 2000. George Bush, who was awaiting a decision from the Florida Supreme Court on whether the presidential election recount would continue, denied Jones’ request for a 30 day stay of execution to do DNA test on the hair sample. The memo from the General Counsel’s office that recommended against the stay did not tell Bush that Jones was seeking a DNA test of the hair. Evidence that the hair “matched” Jones was critical to the prosecution’s case at trial and proved to be the key factor in a narrow 3-2 decision by the Texas Court of Appeals finding there was sufficient corroboration of the accomplice who testified against Jones to uphold the murder conviction.

“I have no doubt that if President Bush had known about the request to do a DNA test of the hair he would have would have issued a 30-day stay in this case and Jones would not have been executed,” said Barry C. Scheck, Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law.

Scheck noted that Bush had issued a stay for DNA testing just months earlier in another capital case and said at the time, “Any time DNA evidence can be used in its context and can be relevant as to the guilt or innocence of a person on death row, we need to use it.”

“It is unbelievable that the lawyers in the General Counsel’s office failed to inform the governor that Jones was seeking DNA testing on evidence that was so pivotal to the case,” said former Texas Governor and Attorney General Mark White.  “If the state is going to continue to use the death penalty, it must figure out a way to build safeguards in the system so that lapses like this don’t happen again.”

In November 1989, Hilzendager was shot to death while working at a liquor store in San Jacinto County, Texas.  Jones was arrested for the crime with two co-defendants, Timothy Mark Jordan and Kerry Dixon…

Continue reading.

Thanks to Zach for passing along a pointer to this deliciousness. Would be nice with a BLT, I imagine.

Happy birthday, Mr. Brubeck!

This morning I feel particularly good. Maybe the little bit of boost to my iron levels (beef liver, a couple of steaks, and a week of daily iron pills) helped—I see the doctor later this week for the report from my blood workup, so I’ll know.

At any rate, I enjoyed the Nordic Track (and Robinson Crusoe’s effort to sail around his island: Chapter 10) and, as you can tell, my shave, and I’m looking forward to the day and the week, especially Pilates this afternoon.

I expect this week to have my morning weight below 210 lbs/ 95.5 kg. That makes getting below 200 within reach.

Not quite kitten whiskers or raindrops on roses, but here are some of my favorite shaving things. This morning I simply picked out things that appeal to me. You know already how much I like Sweet Gale—I love the unexpected notes for a shaving fragrance: honey, Scotch—and the Lucretia Borgia was my first artificial badger brush. The iKon open-comb head in Greg’s new design is certainly one of my most comfortable razors (maybe the most comfortable), and it fully deserves its gold plate. This morning the Swedish Gillette blade delivered yet another smooth and comfortable shave, and then I splashed on a bit of Pashana aftershave, which I like for the exuberance and flair of its fragrance: not subtle, but supremely enjoyable and rather dashing.

Not shown in the photo is MR GLO, another favorite thing: I wash my beard with Musgo Real Glyce Lime Oil soap before lathering for each and every shave. It’s an essential part of the morning shave.

For those thinking of a holiday gift for a guy who shaves: I think an ideal present would be a tub of Sweet Gale—perhaps with a nice shaving brush, which needn’t be expensive (check out the Omega 643167) if he doesn’t already have a shaving brush. Anyone would, I think, enjoy shaving with a lather whose fragrance is so like a Rusty Nail.

If he doesn’t know how to build lather using a brush, have him check out the “Prep” chapter in Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving.