I’ve just published the second edition of the Guide. Quite a bit new. You can look at the table of contents in the “preview” function at the book’s page on Lulu. It will take a while for the new book to trickle down to Amazon, so for now if you want the new edition, order it from Lulu.

At least toward foreign visitors. Look at this story by Nina Berstein in the NY Times:

He was a carefree Italian with a recent law degree from a Roman university. She was “a totally Virginia girl,” as she puts it, raised across the road from George Washington’s home. Their romance, sparked by a 2006 meeting in a supermarket in Rome, soon brought the Italian, Domenico Salerno, on frequent visits to Alexandria, Va., where he was welcomed like a favorite son by the parents and neighbors of his girlfriend, Caitlin Cooper.

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.

Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse [the new America, under Bush; lucky he wasn't tortured as well. - LG] while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

Mr. Salerno’s case may be extreme, but it underscores the real but little-known dangers that many travelers from Europe and other first-world nations face when they arrive in the United States — problems that can startle Americans as much as their foreign visitors.

“We have a lot of government people here and lobbyists and lawyers and very educated, very savvy Washingtonians,” said Jim Cooper, Ms. Cooper’s father, a businessman, describing the reaction in his neighborhood, the Wessynton subdivision of Alexandria. “They were pretty shocked that the government could do this sort of thing, because it doesn’t happen that often, except to people you never hear about, like Haitians and Guatemalans.”

Each year, thousands of would-be visitors from 27 so-called visa waiver countries are turned away when they present their passports, said Angelica De Cima, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, who said she could not discuss any individual case. In the last seven months, 3,300 people have been rejected and more than 8 million admitted, she said.

Though citizens of those nations do not need visas to enter the United States for as long as 90 days, their admission is up to the discretion of border agents. There are more than 60 grounds for finding someone inadmissible, including a hunch [ah, yes---"hunches". They don't work so well in court, though, so that's why the detainees are kept from any legal process. - LG] that the person plans to work or immigrate, or evidence of an overstay, however brief, on an earlier visit.

While those turned away are generally sent home on the next flight, “there are occasional circumstances which require further detention to review their cases,” Ms. De Cima said. And because such “arriving aliens” are not considered to be in the United States at all, even if they are in custody, they have none of the legal rights that even illegal immigrants can claim.

Government officials have acknowledged that intensified security since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has sometimes led to the heavy-handed treatment of foreigners caught in a bureaucratic tangle or paperwork errors. But despite encouraging officers to resolve such cases quickly, excesses continue to come to light.

One recent case involved an Icelandic woman who was refused entry at Kennedy Airport because, a dozen years earlier, she had overstayed her visa by three weeks. The woman, Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl, was deported Dec. 10 after what she described as 24 hours of interrogation and humiliating treatment — locked in a cell and barred from making phone calls. The Department of Homeland Security later issued a letter of regret [almost certainly a standard form letter, don't you think? Since this sort of thing happens often. - LG].

In questioning Mr. Salerno, customs agents seemed to suspect that he intended to work here. Ms. Cooper, a copy editor for an educational publication, said she was in the airport lobby when an agent called to ask about Mr. Salerno’s income and why he visited so often.

The youngest son of a prosperous contractor in Calabria, Mr. Salerno helps out in his brother’s law firm in Rome and is able to visit the United States several times a year. Neighbors said he joined volunteers in refurbishing the Wessynton recreation center in 2006, then became one of its summer attractions, kicking a soccer ball with the kids and playing tennis with the adults.

“He just is a very open, fun and helpful guy,” said Christopher M. Porter, a resident of Wessynton.

Ms. Cooper said that at the airport, when she begged to know what was happening to Mr. Salerno, an agent told her, “You know, he should try spending a little more time in his own country.”

Another agent eventually told her to go home because Mr. Salerno was being detained as an asylum-seeker.

“The border patrol officer said to my face that Domenico said he would be killed if he went back to Italy,” she recalled, voicing incredulity that, in his halting English, he could express such a thought. “Also, who on earth would ever seek asylum from Italy?”

Twelve hours later, when Mr. Salerno was granted a five-minute phone call, he called Ms. Cooper and denied saying anything of the kind. Instead, he said, the asylum story seemed to be retaliation for his insisting on speaking to his embassy.

After being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was taken to the Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover, Va., where he ended up in a barracks with 75 other men, including asylum-seekers who told him they had been waiting a year.

Ten days after he landed in Washington, Mr. Salerno was still incarcerated, despite efforts by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and two former immigration prosecutors hired by the Coopers.

“He’s just really scared,” Ms. Cooper said in an interview last Thursday. “He asked me if Virginia has the death penalty.”

Luis Paoli, a lawyer hired by the Coopers, said there was no limit on detention while waiting for an asylum interview. But even after officials agreed the asylum issue had been a mistake, Mr. Salerno was not released.

“Now an innocent European, who has never broken any laws, committed any crimes, or overstayed his visa, is being held in a county jail,” Ms. Cooper wrote in an e-mail message to The New York Times last Wednesday, prompting a reporter’s inquiries.

Less than 24 hours later, immigration officials intervened and arranged to deliver Mr. Salerno to Dulles, where last Friday he flew to Rome. Ms. Cooper, who said she was now considering moving to Italy, was by his side.

Mr. Salerno was still shaken. “In America,” he said, “there are so many good people and beautiful people that don’t deserve to be showing these terrible things to the world.” [But he'll probably get one of those letters of apology, so everything's fine. - LG]

You really can’t get good sleep if you have obstructive sleep apnea, but if you  don’t, here are some tips from Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project blog, though the tips appear on Huffington Post:

We quickly adjust to being sleep-deprived, and don’t notice that we aren’t functioning at a normal level, but lack of sleep really affects us. If you’re feeling blue or listless, try going to sleep thirty minutes earlier for a week. It can really help.

Here are tips that have helped me get good sleep:

Good habits for good sleep:

1. Exercise most days, even if it’s just to take a walk.

2. No caffeine after 7:00 p.m.

3. An hour before bedtime, avoid doing any kind of work that takes alert thinking. Addressing envelopes–okay. Analyzing an article–nope.

4. Adjust your bedroom temperature to be slightly chilly.

5. Keep your bedroom dark. Studies show that even the tiny light from a digital alarm clock can disrupt a sleep cycle. We have about six devices in our room that glow bright green; it’s like sleeping in a mad scientist’s lab. The Big Man has a new pet, a Roomba (yes, he loves his robot vacuum) that gives out so much light that I have to cover it with a pillow before bed.

6. Keep the bedroom as tidy as possible. It’s not restful to fight through chaos into bed.

If sleep won’t come:

7. Breathe deeply and slowly until you can’t stand it anymore.

8. If your mind is racing (you’re planning a trip, a move; you’re worried about a medical diagnosis), write down what’s on your mind. This technique really works for me.

9. Slather yourself with body lotion. This feels good and also, if you’re having trouble sleeping because you’re hot, it cools you down.

10. If your feet are cold, put on socks.

11. Stretch your whole body.

12. Have a warm drink. Supposedly warm milk contains melatonin and trytophan and so helps induce sleep, but in fact, a glass of milk doesn’t contain enough to have any effect. But it’s still a soothing drink. My nighttime favorite: 1/3 mug of milk, add boiling water, one packet of Equal, and a dash of vanilla. A real nursery treat.

13. Yawn.

14. Stretch your toes up and down several times.

15. Tell yourself, “I have to get up now.” Imagine that you just hit the snooze alarm and in a minute, you’re going to be marching through the morning routine. Often this is an exhausting enough prospect to make me fall asleep.

16. If you still can’t sleep, re-frame: re-frame your sleeplessness as a welcome opportunity to snatch some extra time out of your day. I get up and tackle mundane chores, like paying bills, organizing books, or tidying up. Then I start the day with a wonderful feeling of having accomplished something even before 6:45 am.

This report is surprising. I would assume that white tea would do an even better job. Remember, BTW, that a squeeze of lemon makes green or white tea more effective by preserving the good stuff as the tea is digested.

A cup of green tea may be just what the doctor ordered if you have learning and memory problems related to obstructive sleep apnea, the most common type of sleep-related breathing disorder.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) starves the body of oxygen during sleep. Persons with the condition experience pauses in breathing while sleeping. This condition can cause a drop in oxygen levels, which can affect organs of the body. OSA increases your risk for high blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes, and affects cognitive function such as learning and memory.

The powerful antioxidants found in green tea may help thwart such cognitive problems, according to a study published in this month’s second issue of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Green tea contains compounds called polyphenols, which animal studies suggest can protect against neurodegenerative changes related to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. Green tea polyphenols (GTP) work by counteracting oxidative stress in the brain. Oxidative stress is cell damage brought on by harmful molecules called free radicals. Antioxidants protect against this damage. Oxidative stress is believed to play a role in many diseases.

Signs of oxidative stress and changes in the brain have been documented among some patients with OSA, the study cites.

“OSA has been increasingly recognized as a serious and frequent health condition,” study author David Gozal, MD, professor and director of Kosair Children’s Hospital Research Institute at the University of Louisville, says in a news release. “A growing body of evidence suggests that the adverse neurobehavioral consequences imposed by [intermittent hypoxia] stem, at least in part, from oxidative stress.”

The current study involved male rats that were intermittently deprived of oxygen during a 12-hour “night” cycle for two weeks. The intermittent oxygen deprivation was similar to that experienced by adults with OSA. The researchers gave half the rats water containing GTP and the other half plain water, and then tested the rats for markers of inflammation and oxidative stress.

After receiving the GTP cocktail or plain water drink, the rats entered a maze designed to test their spatial learning and memory abilities. In this case, the rats had to remember the location of a hidden platform.

The experiments showed that the rats treated with GTP made their way through the maze better than the other rats. The researchers say their findings suggest that the chemicals in green tea can calm learning problems related to OSA-induced hypoxia. They also found that there was chemical evidence of less oxidative stress in the rats given GTP.

GTPs “may represent a potential interventional strategy for patients” with sleep-disordered breathing,” Gozal says.

Polyphenols are found in many foods and beverages, including tea, wine, and certain fruits and vegetables.

You just can’t trust them. Article by Arlene Weintraub in Business Week:

A group of researchers at Duke University scoured 746 studies on heart stents published in medical journals over the course of a year and were shocked to discover two huge omissions. First, 83% of the papers failed to disclose whether any of the authors were paid consultants for companies, even though many journals formally require that information. And of those articles specifically describing clinical trials, 72% didn’t say who funded the research. When it comes to policing their disclosure rules, says lead author Kevin Weinfurt of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, “these journals should be doing better.”

Virtually every medical organization urges physicians to be up front about their financial ties to industry. It’s especially a concern when doctors who publish studies about drugs and medical devices receive funding from the companies that make those products. Over the past few years, a spate of safety warnings and product recalls has left journal editors fearful that company-paid researchers might be filtering their results to highlight the positive. So the publications have toughened up their disclosure policies, hoping that transparency by itself would neutralize conflicts of interest.

The Duke study shows that even when authors do divulge their connections, some statements are less than forthright. In all, 168 authors out of 2,985 made disclosures in the journal articles, which were published in 2006. Through simple Internet searches, the Duke team discovered that some physicians who said they had no conflicts of interest in fact served on advisory boards of companies that make stents. One person co-founded a stent company. (The Duke paper doesn’t name doctors.)

The report reveals just how deeply corporate interests have infiltrated medical research. The top funding sources named in disclosure statements were stentmakers Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific, and Medtronic, as well as drugmakers Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis . The last two co-market the blood thinner Plavix, which is widely prescribed to stent patients.

Contacted by BusinessWeek, spokespeople for Bristol-Myers Squibb, Boston Scientific, and Sanofi said in e-mails that they require authors to disclose all financial support from their companies. (J&J and Medtronic did not respond by publication time.)

Some journal editors gripe that there’s only so much they can do. Once they issue disclosure rules, they have no choice but to trust authors to follow them. “I’m not a cop. I’m not the FBI,” says Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Assn. With several thousand authors contributing every year to her publication, DeAngelis says, she can’t expect her editors to research every disclosure to determine whether it’s accurate. And she’s frustrated so many authors are resisting the call to disclose. “It should be a no-brainer,” DeAngelis says. “It doesn’t mean the worthiness of the paper is marred. But if they’re not disclosing because they think it’s marred, then maybe it is.”

Transparency has some built-in limitations. If all authors consistently disclosed every possible conflict of interest, the world would be awash in information that’s hard to interpret. After all, most disclosure statements don’t say how much money the authors receive, whether they’re paid in cash and/or stock, or what services they provide in return. “The whole system is pretty slipshod,” says Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer, former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and author of On the Take: How Medicine’s Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health. “When you know an author has a conflict of interest, you’re still in the dark.”

Take a look.

And I’m simply delighted to read that charring the peppers over a gas flame is NOT the way to go. Read this tutorial.

Thanks to Jack, this nice list to guide your CD acquisition.

While finishing “Bird-Watcher,” a Profile of the jazz broadcaster and expert Phil Schaap, I thought it might be useful to compile a list of a hundred essential jazz albums, more as a guide for the uninitiated than as a source of quarrelling for the collector. First, I asked Schaap to assemble the list, but, after a couple of false starts, he balked. Such attempts, he said, have been going on for a long time, but “who remembers the lists and do they really succeed in driving people to the source?” Add to that, he said, “the dilemma of the current situation,” in which music is often bought and downloaded from dubious sources. Schaap bemoaned the loss of authoritative discographies and the “troubles” of the digital age, particularly the loss of informative aids like liner notes and booklets. In the end, he provided a few basic titles from Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Miles Davis, and other classics and admitted to a “pyrrhic victory.”

What follows is a list compiled with the help of my New Yorker colleague Richard Brody. These hundred titles are meant to provide a broad sampling of jazz classics and wonders across the music’s century-long history. Early New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop, cool jazz, modal jazz, hard bop, free jazz, third stream, and fusion are all represented, though not equally. We have tried not to overdo it with expensive boxed sets and obscure imports; sometimes it couldn’t be helped. We have also tried to strike a balance between healthy samplings of the innovative giants (Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Davis, Coltrane, etc.) and the greater range of talents and performances.

Since the nineteen-seventies, jazz has been branching out in so many directions that you would need to list at least another hundred recordings, by the likes of Steve Coleman, Stanley Jordan, Joe Lovano, Jacky Terrasson, John Zorn, David Murray, Avishai Cohen, Béla Fleck, Eliane Elias, Roy Hargrove, Dave Douglas, Matthew Shipp, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Fat Kid Wednesdays, and many, many others. There is a suggestion below of the dazzling scope of contemporary jazz, but the focus is on the classic jazz that is Schaap’s specialty.

This reminds me of an earlier effort, the three-part series “Jazz Masterpieces” by Terry Teachout, published in Commentary magazine in November and December 1999 and January 2000. The focus of that list was specific tracks, rather than albums, but I did indeed buy all the CDs, ripped them, and assembled the tracks into an album of my own. Those three articles are worth reading, but access is to subscribers or by purchase.

I really like the Lord Platinum blade—I loaded a new one in the ivory Chatsworth and after applying the wonderful Gold Dachs Rivivage lather, worked up with the Simpsons Emperor 3 Super, I got a wonderful shave from it. The oil pass was Gessato, and the aftershave was the menthol Floïd. Very nice shave for a warm morning.

Enjoy.

Make and mod your own at BugLabs.net. Their products:

BUG is a collection of easy-to-use electronic modules that snap together to build any gadget you can imagine. Each BUGmodule represents a specific gadget function (ex: a camera, a keyboard, a video output, etc.). You decide which functions to include and BUG takes care of the rest, letting you try out different combinations quickly and easily. With BUG and the integrated programming environment/online community (BUGnet), anyone can build, program and share innovative devices and applications. We don’t define the final products - you do.

An interesting article by Rebecca Armstrong in the Independent:

As she makes her way through the hospital wards, Billie-Jean keeps up an impressive pace. She has to if she is going to see all the patients who are waiting for her. Wearing her official uniform, she looks neat and trim, and despite how busy she is, she always has time to stop if someone wants to say hello or slip her a Bonio. You see, Billie-Jean isn’t a ward sister doing the rounds or a doctor bringing vital medicine, she’s an Irish terrier. But despite the fact she’s a canine, not human, carer, her medical value is second-to-none because she is a Pets As Therapy dog.

Pets As Therapy is a charity that takes pet dogs and cats to hospitals, hospices, residential care homes, day centres and special-needs schools. It was formed in 1983, explains chief executive Maureen Hennis, by a group of pet owners who were convinced that their animals could help other people. “At that time, people were moving into residential accommodation and nursing homes, and they had to give up their own pets,” she says. “This wasn’t only making them sad and depressed, sometimes it was actually making them ill.”

The importance of regular contact with domestic animals has been highlighted by recent research conducted by the University of Minnesota. According to the study, having a cat around the house can cut the risk of having a heart attack or a stroke by almost half. After studying nearly 4,500 adults aged between 30 and 75 for 10 years, it was found that cat owners had a 40 per cent lower risk of suffering a fatal heart attack.

“For years we have known that psychological stress and anxiety are related to cardiovascular events, particularly heart attacks,” says Dr Adnan Qureshi, executive director of the Minnesota Stroke Institute at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. According to Qureshi, the research shows that “essentially there is a benefit in relieving those inciting factors from pets”. And in a study published last year, Dr Deborah Wells of Queen’s University Belfast found that dog owners tend to suffer less from ill health, have lower cholesterol, and lower blood pressure. “It is possible that dogs can directly promote our well-being by buffering us from stress,” says Dr Wells.

Today, Billie-Jean, along with her owner, Emma Charlton, is on her weekly visit to the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in Putney, south London. The hospital is just one of the thousands of places that PAT animals visit every year. “When we first started, we used to have to look around for establishments for registered PAT dogs to visit. Now we have more than 900 establishments waiting for PAT dogs to visit in,” says Hennis. “Currently, we have 3,600 dogs and 92 cats working in the community and they are benefiting more than 100,000 patients every single week in the UK.” As Billie-Jean makes her way through the hospital, clad in a bright PAT vest and fresh from the grooming parlour, it’s clear that she is a real favourite with the patients.

When Billie-Jean bumps into Scott Robertson in one of the hospital’s corridors, his face is wreathed in smiles at the sight of her. Charlton slips him a dog biscuit, which he hands to Billie-Jean as she enthusiastically licks his hands.

Not all of the patients here can articulate their likes and dislikes as clearly, so Charlton always checks with the ward staff who will welcome some time with Billie-Jean. Tina Loughney, Charlton tells me, loves to see her. Loughney usually communicates through facial movements and her expressive hands but today she has a surprise for everyone. Loughney has dogs at home and Emma asks how they are. “All right,” she says. Charlton is gobsmacked – and thrilled. “That’s the first time I’ve heard Tina speak.” The staff agree. “It’s moments like this that make it worthwhile,” says Charlton, who has been visiting the hospital with Billie-Jean for the past two years.

For over an hour, Billie-Jean pads through the hospital, shaking paws with and licking anyone who says hello. She is wonderfully behaved – she seems to know instinctively when to be gentle and when she can be a little more boisterous. This is no accident – every PAT animal is assessed to ensure that only the best-behaved pets come into contact with patients. Billie-Jean and her ilk are a hard-working part of the healthcare system. “PAT animals are being used for desensitisation in phobia patients, as part of stroke rehabilitation, helping to get people to use their limbs again and to talk,” says Hennis. “Very often people go into a world of their own and they stop communicating with anyone. But if you go in with a dog, it’s amazing how a dog can get through barriers that humans can’t.”

When speaking to a doctor friend about PAT, he waxes lyrical about his experiences of the animals and tells me about a patient on a stroke ward who had not spoken since she arrived in hospital. During an encounter with one of the charity’s volunteer canines, she stroked the dog and uttered her first word – “soft”.

Hennis, herself a regular visitor to a number of establishments, tells me about how she realised the importance of what the charity was doing. “There was a lady that I visited who used to sit by the door every Saturday morning, and when she saw my dog she always used to say, ‘Here’s my ray of sunshine, she’s my reason for staying alive’.” One thing’s for sure – it’s hard to imagine the average GP getting such a warm welcome.

www.petsastherapy.org.uk or call 01844 345 445

And, at the same link as the article above:

Animal magic: how pets prevent illness

Dog owners tend to have lower cholesterol and lower blood pressure, as dogs can reduce the risk of spikes in blood pressure due to stress or tension.

In some cases, the emotional support offered by an animal is greater than that offered by a human. For older people in particular, an animal can fulfil “the need to be needed”.

Owning a pet can improve a person’s chances of survival after a life-threatening illness, by helping to lower blood pressure. Pets can also help speed up rehabilitation following a stroke.

Children with pets have higher levels of self-esteem and function better emotionally than those without, studies have shown. Some teachers have introduced pets into the classroom and children with learning disabilities and behavioural disorders such as autism, for example, show immediate benefits from animal-assisted therapy.

Children who live with a cat or dog in their first years have a lower incidence of hay fever and asthma and are less likely to develop animal-related allergies, or to suffer a bout of gastroenteritis.

By George Bull

Take a look at the list.

Take a look, and scroll down.

If you want someone to follow your advice, charge them for it. And to be sure, charge them a lot. Mind Hacks explains:

Hot on the heels of a study that found that simply describing a wine as more expensive made it taste better comes the discovery that the same advice is more likely to be followed if it costs more.

The study was led by organisational psychologist Francesca Gino and is covered by the BPS Research Digest:

Dozens of students were asked questions about American history and received small cash prizes for correct answers. The students were either given the option of receiving advice on the correct answers, or advice was imposed on them. Sometimes this advice was free; other times it was paid for out of the students’ winnings.

Crucially, the advice always came from the same source - in the form of the answer that a student from a pilot session had given to the same question - so the quality of advice was held constant regardless of whether it was free or paid for.

Throughout the study, the participants took more account of advice they had paid for than advice they were given free, even though it was made clear to them that the advice was of the same quality. A final study showed the students took even more account of advice if it was made more expensive.

The full text of the study is freely available online as a pdf, although if you’re not convinced of the findings I’m sure Dr Gino would be happy to supply an additional copy for a small fee.

Via Kevin Drum, this excellent article in Slate by Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick:

Legal commentators have argued for years about whether there might ever be legitimate trials for the so-called “enemy combatants” we’re holding at Guantanamo Bay. Some say no. Others, like our friend Ben Wittes, argue that the evidence is inconclusive. They want to see what the Guantanamo military commissions produce before pronouncing them a failure.

We may never get there. Key actors are declining to play their part in a piece of theater designed to produce all convictions all the time. These refusals, affecting two trials this week, suggest that the whole apparatus—seven years and counting in the making—cannot ever be fixed. The trials are doomed, and they are doomed from the inside out.

Today we learned that the Pentagon has dropped charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani—the alleged 20^th hijacker (or maybe the 21^st or 22^nd, since that title has gone to others before him). Along with five other “high value” detainees, al-Qahtani was facing capital charges at Guantanamo. The decision not to try him comes from the convening authority for the commissions, Susan Crawford. She didn’t give an explanation for halting the prosecution, but, then, we don’t really need one. As Phillip Carter notes elsewhere in Slate, it’s been clear for a while that the evidence against al-Qahtani was torture (or near-torture) tainted, and prosecutors at Guantanamo had announced long ago that “what had been done to him would prevent him from ever being put on trial.” In light of all that, you might wonder why he was one of the six trotted out for the big show trials in the first place.

Something in the unsavory history of al-Qahtani’s interrogation (featuring sexual humiliation, attack dogs, stress positions, and sleep deprivation) must have proved too much for Crawford, which may reveal that Crawford has some filament of legal integrity or simply that she knows when to cut her losses. Either way, it’s important that for every course correction at Gitmo from the Supreme Court, there have been many more from within the Pentagon. If the same people who joined the military in the hopes of fighting terrorism have had enough of the government’s jury-rigged apparatus of Guantanamo justice, it’s probably time to stick a fork in the whole thing.

Since the inception of the commissions, the brakes have almost always been applied when some member of the military has balked, even when going along would have been the far easier course. These refusals—some silent, some very public—have combined to stall the tribunals. The clearest sign that the military system is working is that the military itself has refused to let it go forward.

Start with Charles Swift, the defense lawyer from the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps who was appointed in 2002 to represent Salim Hamdan, Osama Bin Laden’s driver and—thanks to Swift’s willingness to buck the system—the big winner of the Supreme Court decision that sent the military commissions back to the drawing board in 2006. According to Jonathan Mahler’s new book about Hamdan’s case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Swift doubted early on that it would be possible to present a zealous defense on Hamdan’s behalf, and with fellow Navy JAG Philip Sundel, he lobbied his superiors to call the commissions “what they thought they were—kangaroo courts.” When Swift couldn’t work the changes he wanted internally, he teamed up with Georgetown law school’s Neal Katyal to sue the Defense Department. Swift became an outspoken critic of the tribunals, including here in Slate.

Next up, …

Continue reading.

ThinkProgress:

Responding to the California Supreme Court’s decision yesterday overturning the state’s ban on gay marriage, congressional conservatives attacked the decision by calling it the result of “unelected judges” turning over the will of the people.

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), the House Minority Whip, charged in a statement that “unelected judges” are trying to “substitute their own worldview for the wisdom of the American people”:

Today, the decision of unelected judges to overturn the will of the people of California on the question of same-sex marriage demonstrates the lengths that unelected judges will go to substitute their own worldview for the wisdom of the American people.

Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), piled on, saying that “unelected judges” had “irresponsibly decided to legislate from the bench.”

But, in making their rush to judgment about the CA decision, both Blunt and Feeney have the basic facts wrong about how California’s judicial system works. SmartVoter.org, a resource of the League of Women’s Voters, makes clear that California’s Supreme Court justices are “confirmed by the public at the next general election” after being appointed and “justices also come before voters at the end of their 12-year terms.”

In fact, each of the seven justices involved in yesterday’s decision were approved by California voters by overwhelming margins:

- Justice Joyce L. Kennard confirmed in 2006 with 74.5% of the vote.
- Justice Carol A. Corrigan confirmed in 2006 with 74.4% of the vote.
- Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar confirmed in 2002 with 74.1% of the vote.
- Justice Carlos R. Moreno confirmed in 2002 with 72.6% of the vote.
- Justice Marvin R. Baxter confirmed in 2002 with 71.5% of the vote.
- Justice Ronald M. George confirmed in 1998 with 75.5% of the vote.
- Justice Ming William Chin confirmed in 1998 with 69.3% of the vote.

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder notes that Feeney’s statement on the decision also engages in “coded gay baiting” when he informs “Florida’s hardworking families” that he “will continue to fight to prevent San Francisco taxes and values from infiltrating our community.”

Via Boing Boing, a list of 7 insane conspiracies. The list begins:

#7. The Business PlotThe Plan: In 1933, group of wealthy businessmen that allegedly included the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush tried to recruit Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against President FDR and install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. And yes, we’re talking about the same Prescott Bush who fathered one US President and grandfathered another one.

How did that work out?: A good rule of thumb: never trust a man named Smedley to run your hostile military coup for you. Besides being no fan of fascism, Smedley Butler was both a patriot and a vocal FDR supporter. Apparently none of these criminal masterminds noticed that their prospective point man had actively stumped for FDR in 1932.

Smedley spilled the beans to a congressional committee in 1934. Everyone he accused of being a conspirator vehemently denied it, and none of them were brought up on criminal charges. Still, the House McCormack-Dickstein Committee did at least acknowledge the existence of the conspiracy, which ended up never getting past the initial planning stages.

Though many of the people who had allegedly backed the Business Plot also maintained financial ties with Nazi Germany up through America’s entry into World War II.

I didn’t know this:

The shingles vaccine Zostavax is now on the CDC’s official list of recommended vaccines for people aged 60 and older.

Shingles (herpes zoster) is a skin rash, typically with blisters, that can cause severe chronic pain. It’s caused by the chickenpox (varicella zoster) virus, which can lie dormant within the nerves and reactivate as shingles.

The risk of contracting shingles increases with age, starting around age 50, and the risk of complications from shingles rises after age 60, notes the CDC.

The FDA approved Zostavax, the first shingles vaccine, in May 2006. In October 2006, the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel voted to make shingles vaccination routine for everyone aged 60 and older.

In October 2007, the CDC printed the advisory panel’s recommendations for adult vaccines, including the shingles vaccine. Now, the CDC has finalized its shingles vaccination recommendation for everyone aged 60 and older by printing it in an early online edition of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The CDC recommends a single dose of Zostavax for adults aged 60 and older, even if they’ve already had shingles.

According to the CDC, research has shown that the vaccine reduced the occurrence of shingles in people aged 60 and older by about 50% and by 64% in people in their 60s.

The most common side effects linked to Zostavax are redness, pain, tenderness, itching, and swelling at the injection site, as well headache, states the CDC.

Mark Bittman offers a recipe for fast and simple pot-stickers:

Fast Pot-Stickers

Yield 4 main-course or 8 appetizer servings
Time 1 hour or less

Round wrappers are somewhat easier to handle than squares, though both work. As for filling, you can use any you like. For a vegetarian pot-sticker, cabbage can dominate, complemented by chopped shiitakes, minced tofu, minced celery and carrots, chives or a combination. Shrimp dumplings are also quite fabulous.

• 3/4 pound ground pork or other meat
• 1 cup minced cabbage
• 2 tablespoons minced ginger
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 6 scallions, the white and green parts separated, both minced
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons good soy sauce
• 48 dumpling wrappers
• 1 egg, lightly beaten in a bowl
• 4 tablespoons peanut oil or vegetable oil, more or less
• 1/4 cup rice vinegar or white vinegar

1. Combine meat, cabbage, ginger, garlic, scallion whites and 2 tablespoons soy sauce in a bowl with 1/4 cup water. Lay a wrapper on a clean, dry surface, and using your finger or a brush, spread a bit of egg along half of its circumference. Place a rounded teaspoon of filling in center, fold over and seal by pinching edges together. (Do not overfill.) Place dumplings on a plate; if you want to wait a few hours before cooking, cover plate with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Or freeze, for up to two weeks.

2. To cook, put about 2 tablespoons oil in a large nonstick skillet and turn heat to medium-high. A minute later, add dumplings, one at a time; they can touch one another, but should still sit flat in one layer. Cook about 2 minutes, or until bottoms are lightly browned. Add 1/4 cup water per dozen dumplings to pan, and cover. Lower heat to medium, and let simmer about 3 minutes.

3. To make the dipping sauce, combine remaining soy sauce, green parts of scallions and vinegar.

4. Uncover dumplings, return heat to medium-high and cook another minute or two, until bottoms are dark brown and crisp and water evaporates. (Use more oil if necessary.) Serve hot, with sauce.

Vegetarian Pot-Stickers: Make a filling of 2 cups minced cabbage, 1 cup minced shiitake caps, 1/2 cup minced scallions or chives, and ginger, garlic and soy as above (omit water).

Shrimp Pot-Stickers: Make a filling of 2 cups peeled and minced shrimp (about 1 pound unpeeled), 1/2 cup minced snow peas, 1/2 cup minced shallots, and ginger, garlic and soy as above. Add 1 tablespoon sesame oil (or 1 tablespoon minced bacon).