For those interested in public health, it’s been an exciting news week. A few of the highlights:

At the Global Level:
UNAIDS prepares to mark World AIDS Day tomorrow. In his message for the occasion, Kofi Annan notes that AIDS has become the leading cause of death among both women and men aged 15 to 59, but that over the past decade “the world has started to take the fight against AIDS as seriously as it deserves.”

The parties to the Basel Convention meet in Nairobi, and e-waste is on their agenda. The new public health blog The Pump Handle explains why this is so important.

The secret November 8 memo by National Security advisor Stephen Hadley, just published by the NY Times, tries to identify a plan under which the Bush administration can work with Nouri al-Maliki to establish some kind of order in Iraq. Hadley identifies three basic problems from which all the others arise: (a) We can't fully trust Maliki's intentions; (b) Maliki favors Shia power and is distrusted by Sunnis; (c) Maliki's own base of political support is so small that he is a hostage to Sadr's coalition of Shia radicals.

Dating from the day after the election, the memo reveals a welcome new seriousness of purpose and relative candor about the scope of the problems we face in Iraq. But it begs some obvious questions:

Why weren't these problems addressed long ago? And who's to blame that such an inappropriate candidate became Prime Minister in the first place?

The answer to both questions, of course, is George Bush.

C'mon, friends! Sharpen that pitchfork! Fire up that torch! We're gonna have a political hoedown!

The Democrats sweep of Congress could be attributed to any number of reasons. From White House lie fatigue, voters simply looking for a new direction, to microtargeting of potential voters to just plain ol' good political timing.

My theory is that many of the races were won by the emergence of neo-populism — a marriage of convenience between old-school economic justice and a "throw the bums out" corruption backlash coupled with small "l" libertarianism that promotes individual rights and personal privacy. Think of it as the defiant "Don't Tread On Me" movement characterized by the badass rattlesnake on American Revolution-era flags.

Consistently some of the best reporting from Iraq has been done by Patrick Cockburn for the Independent. Tomorrow he has a stunner. As always, Cockburn sheds light on the true situation through details you won't find in most journalism (apart from the blogs that still occasionally post in Iraq).

Iraq may be getting close to what Americans call "the Saigon moment", the time when it becomes evident to all that the government is expiring.

Something essential is wrong about the way we discuss the detainees in George Bush's secret network of prisons abroad. It's troubled me for a long time. Published descriptions of this program, no matter how critical, have always seemed just a bit hollow. But why, what is missing?

This week the answer to that puzzle became blindingly clear. Murat Kurnaz, a German resident who endured years of captivity at Guantanamo, testified to the European Parliament about his experiences:

"They [the Pakistani police] caught me and sold me to the Americans for 3000 or 5000 dollars."

The obvious fact, little remarked, is that he and many other victims of Bush's gulags were sold into slavery to the U.S. government.

The trailer for Happy Feet would make you think that this is just a fluffy cute animated picture about a cute misfit.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The 17th century philosopher / scientist Rene Descartes took the position that there was an impenetrable wall between humans and all other animals. Descartes contended that only humans were capable of thought. In contrast, animals only gave simple responses, and these were simple and mechanical. link. Scientists in Descartes' time felt no compunctions about nailing a live dog's paws down so they could perform vivisection. link.

We have come a long way from Rene Descartes' view that animals are just fleshy machines, completely different from humans, and it looks as if science is on the verge of erasing any clear boundary.

Who is more likely to get scholarship aid from this country's 50 flagship universities? If you said the very well off, go to the top of the class! If you are poor, what possessed you to think you deserved to be educated?

At the same time the top 50 public universities increased grant aid to the lowest income students by 29% they increased grant aid to their wealthiest students by 186%.

A few weeks ago, the N.Y. Times Sunday Magazine published a story of deep human cruelty and misalignment with our environment - Charles Siebert, An Elephant Crackup? (Oct. 8, 2006) Coming as it did in the month before the election, it was easily overlooked, but I want to redirect attention to that story, because I think it has a message we need to pay attention to as we move into a period where liberal voices have an opportunity to be heard.

Because everything I write has a substantial proportion of error, I give thanks today for forgiving readers. Call them what you will—inaccuracies, implausibilities, glaring omissions of fact, flights of fancy, fabrications—the sheer number of times I've supplied misleading information during the last year might have turned off a less tolerant bunch than you. And yet apart from a few stern letters sent in by obvious soreheads, you've been quite incredibly forgiving of the falsehoods I've disseminated.

For instance just last week I wrote that the North Carolina Baptist Convention had taken a firm stand against usury ("The only sin that has its own advocacy group"). I may have been a little precipitous in posting that story, though. Baptist ministers responded by insisting, in multiple emails, that they'd done no such thing—yet. They were concentrating for the moment on expelling gays rather than usurers, they explained.

I think we'll just have to see whether my report on the Baptists turns out to have been premature, then.

It is so hard to be sad, lonely, alone, in pain on a festive, family holiday. And it is hard when holidays are tinged with memories of sadness connected with the date. Today as many of us join family and friends, there are people in hospitals, hospices, homes, battlefields sick and dying and sitting with the sick and dying. The memory of this sad time will become a part of the package of emotions connected with the holiday.

The employer association, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, has filed suit claiming that the San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance's pay-or-play provision for worker health coverage, violates the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) by imposing conditions on the provision of employment welfare plans.

In its press release, the GGRA says . . .

There has been a MAJOR environmental victory in northern New Mexico.

The Valle Vidal has been permanently protected by an act of Congress.

Due up on the web soon will be an International Labor Organisation decision dated Nov. 15 on a complaint filed by the American Federation of Government Employees against Transportation Security Administration for violating the union organizing and collective bargaining rights of 56,000 airport screeners. The case name and number is Complaint against the Gov't of the United States presented by the American Fed'n of Gov't Employees, ILO, Case No. 2292, report adopted Nov. 15, 2006).

The ILO committee on Freedom of Association concluded that the TSA improperly denied the employees collective bargaining rights on national security grounds. Link here to site where decision will appear.

Things were going well enough for Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack during a rather ho-hum speech on energy policy in Boulder, CO on Thursday evening until the end of the Q&A session.

After fielding an angry outburst by an audience member who supports nuclear energy, Vilsack went on the defensive when questioned how the recently announced Democratic presidential candidate squares his responsibilities as chair of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), an unapologetic free trade group, with his earlier remarks about reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

"Hey folks, that's a trick question!" Vilsack exclaimed.

At the New Yorker Seymour Hersh has a new article on what the administration is up to regarding Iran. This April, he described a significant level of fear in Washington, particularly among the military, that Bush Co. might attack Iran over its nuclear program. Based upon that and parallel warnings from senior defense and foreign policy figures, many commentators in blogtopia concluded that an attack was indeed imminent attack.

During the past year, Pennsylvania legislators responded to ultra-conservative claims by holding months of hearings to ascertain the degree to which students were subjected to liberal indoctrination. The result was that "political bias is rare at Pennsylvania's public colleges and universities, a bipartisan legislative panel has found."

So what does a conservative, Republican-dominated state legislature do when confronted with evidence that there is no problem of liberal bias and indoctrination?

You are going to think that I am re-running a post for the last few weeks. This post reports on a new report on IRS reorganization run amok with losses to the public . . . not to mention the employees involved.

I thought Milo had wandered from smintheus' posts into my posts, this time in search of a two-tone blue on blue 1956 Studebaker President when I stumbled across this news story: WTO Announces Formalized Slavery Model for Africa.

So, come here often? Um, what's your sign - positive or negative? Er, I meant your sine. What a square! Are your rational? Sorry to go off on a tangent. My angle? Obtuse, of course. Hey, hey, hey! Look at that prime number over there!

Or so the pick up lines might go at the Mathematician's Bar.

Boffo: David Laufman's nomination to be the Pentagon Inspector General is looking pretty desiccated.

Buffo: Laufman is campaigning to revive it via the media.

Bozo: Laufman's getting an assist from the AP's spectacular hack, John Solomon.

Since June I've been saying, to nobody in particular, that Laufman's nomination needs to be stopped because he's an unqualified, untrustworthy partisan and a Bush family "cleaner". Fortunately, Sen. Carl Levin also distrusts Laufman and put a hold on his nomination this summer. The latest summary is here.

I thought we might have to fight to block the nomination during the lame duck session, but on Monday Levin declared that he's still opposed. Laufman rushed forth and fought back, as one must in DC, by means of the whinging, self-pitying interview.

Just the other day the White House Domestic Propaganda Bureau (more of that later) insisted vehemently that there's no difference between the views of Tony Blair and George Bush on Iraq. They might want to rethink that.

Yesterday on al-Jazeera TV, Blair agreed with interviewer David Frost that the invasion of Iraq had "so far been pretty much of a disaster". A somewhat tactless admission, given all the lies he's told to Parliament, the public--to pretty much everybody who would listen. Yet this statement has a verisimilitude that will be hard to dismiss, like Cheney's evil chortling that "dunking" prisoners is a "no-brainer".

And just for added fun, Blair's cabinet minister for Trade and Industry gave a private speech in which she slammed him for his dishonesty and "moral imperialism" in Iraq, which she called a "big mistake". She added, "I hope this isn't being reported."

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) has a problem with the Military Commissions Act of 2006.  Most likely, you feel the same way that he does.  Tell me whether or not you agree.

"I take a backseat to no one when it comes to protecting this country from terrorists," Sen. Dodd said. "But there is a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this. It's clear the people who perpetrated these horrendous crimes against our country and our people have no moral compass and deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But in taking away their legal rights, the rights first codified in our country's Constitution, we're taking away our own moral compass, as well."

Is there a better way than the MCA?  Damn skippy.  We lost rule of law and the Magna Carta so The Decider could continue to get his torture fetish on.  Bad, bad business.

Researchers have gotten one step closer to proving that money is, in fact, the root of all evil. In a study published in this week’s issue of Science, psychologists found that just thinking about money made subjects less helpful.

Colorado has outsourced the processing of child support payments to a private company called Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) of Dallas, Texas.

Recently, one of ACS's computers was stolen. The computer had the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other information on 1.5 million child support recipients, payers, and others. This is not the first time ACS has lost other peoples' data in Colorado. It also seems that ACS bonds are in default, and that ACS has been backdating stock options for its executives.

In spite of this, an Indiana agency wants to hire ACS to run their food stamp eligibility program. Why? Is it because the agency's head used to be a VP at ACS? Or because of ACS' $12,500 contribution to Indiana's Governor? Or is it because ACS is just so darned good at what they do?

The Sierra Club and the FEC have reached a settlement over a voter guide the group distributed in Florida for the 2004 election. Sierra Club is only paying a $28,000 fine, but the implications are huge for nonprofits.

I'm pretty tired of the media's endless speculation about what the Iraq Study Group will recommend. Pundits don't know; heck, the panel itself (comprising not a single Middle East expert, it's worth stressing) still doesn't know what it will propose. Anyhow, ISG won't discover new solutions that everybody else overlooked. There are no good solutions to the debacle, only (a) terrible options and (b) even worse ones.

Anyhow no matter what ISG proposes, or Democrats suggest, Bush will do whatever he wants in the end--unless Congress dares to force his hand. If Bush does choose to do anything new in Iraq (a big 'if'), it will not be the best option available. Bush always wrecks everything he touches. It will be the option that offers the best chance of masking his failures.

Therefore I welcome actual news about what His Petulance has in store for us. The Guardian, at least, seems to be talking to some credible sources regarding this topic.

Although far less well known than the US News & World Report ranking of colleges, the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)'s measurements provide far more information about what makes a college a good educational experience. Rather than being about rankings, the NSSE is designed to help colleges improve education. In addition, it is intended to help students and parents learn what college is a good fit.

The 2006 NSSE has just been released.

Here is a round up of recent studies and reports related to work.

Long-time readers may remember that Milo has been searching for months for a cheap, dependable used 'pre-owned' Pierce Arrow. After the election, somebody gave him a lead on one in North Carolina so he headed down there. Anyway, Milo was on hand for an interesting Baptist synod, and he sent me this news report thinking that all y'all might want to hear about it.

I have to say, this is fascinating stuff. Is it possible that the voters' rejection of the culture of arrogance and extremism last Tuesday finally got the attention of these Baptist leaders? This kind of back-to-basics reform usually doesn't spring up out of the blue, but coming unexpectedly as it does (after Baptists denied for years that such a problem needs addressing), it might just grow into a national reform movement.

So I for one welcome their interest in turning back the epidemic of greed and corruption that has swept the nation. It's a pleasure to see religious leaders turning their hands to good works. You'll want to read the whole article, but below the jump you find an extended selection.

Longtime unbossed readers know that the Bush Administration has made privatizing IRS debt collection a key goal. You will also know that there have been serious problems with prior privatization of IRS debt collection. If you are not a long time reader or don't recall this information, last week, I posted some stories with links that will fill you in.

Now for the latest installment of the saga, we return to privatization now in progress but with poor oversight and measurements in place to figure out whether it is cost-effective compared with just hiring a few more IRS employees and giving them the support to do their jobs.

Brief summary of the few known facts about Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, then some info pending verification.

• Army Reservist Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, age 42, was abducted on October 23 when he left the Green Zone.
• Al-Taayie was born in Iraq, but moved to the US as a teenager.  His MOS is translator.
• Altaie was at "a relative's home when three cars pulled up to the residence," U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said last week. "The hostage-takers handcuffed him and forced him into one of their vehicles."

What committees will be investigating the run-up to the Iraq war; the misuse of intelligence; the collusion between the US and UK governments? What will their goals be? What writ will they have from the new leadership? The Democrats are slowly figuring this out.

So too, perhaps, is the House of Commons in Britain.

The hagiographies of Donald Rumsfeld are already being written.

If you read Ben Stein's NY Times column "Everybody's Business" you will know that he is a big fan of markets, except, it appears when markets bite him in the seat.

Women have not exactly been over-represented in science. So we periodically trot out Madame Curie and Barbara McClintock (Barbara who you ask?) and that's about it, right?

A couple weeks ago unbossed reported on improprieties related to private companies that provide student loans. And serious failures to provide oversight that resulted in improperly paying more than $278 million. Was it just another example of bad math or something more?

The Kiwis and Aussies also observe a holiday rooted in World War I, but on April 25, not November 11. And ANZAC Day is different not only in terms of the date but in terms of the bitter anger associated with the Brits who sent the soldiers from Down Under into battle at Gallipoli to be mowed down as they landed either in the wrong place or the right place but with inaccurate maps. Just dumb colonists, no more than cannon fodder. Casualties ran about 52% on the Brit side and higher for the Turks, roughly 500,000 killed in that futile and useless campaign. And for what?

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,

I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,

And speed glum heroes up the line to death.

You'd see me with my puffy, petulant face,

Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,

Reading the Roll of Honour. 'Poor young chap,

'I'd say --- 'I used to know his father well;

Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap.'

And when the war is done and youth stone dead,

I'd toddle safely home and die --- in bed.

-Seigfreid Sassoon, WWI vet

Armistice Day, Veterans Day, Remembrance Day. Name changes can't efface memory; November 11 marks the armistice in World War One. Both my grandfathers served in the war, and I pay tribute to them. Yet I'm sure they were painfully aware that many of their fellows did not return from it, and those men will have no descendents to pay tribute to them, ever.

I want to do right by them by telling the truth about the past. It's the very least we can do.

It’s delightful to contemplate the changes that we’ll be seeing in the Capitol after this Democratic victory. I wonder, though, whether we’ll be seeing changes in Washington, DC. Even though pundits refer disparagingly to Washington, DC, as though it were nothing more than an elitist lawmakers’ clubhouse, it’s actually a city where 570,000 people live. And unlike our counterparts within the 50 states, District of Columbia residents have no voting representation in Congress.

Maybe the reason we end up with privatization - and privatization gone very bad - is that the Bush Administration has not learned to appreciate the all important role that a the zero plays at the right hand side of a number. How else to explain claims that privatizating a service would save $18 million - that's $18,000,000 - but it saved only $914,000. That's 1/20 the claimed savings.

This is the mathematical equivalent of the Rumsfeldian running of the Iraq War. Is it possible to make such a bad mistake by accident? Of course not, as you will see when you read on. And here too there would have been casualties. Hundreds of workers stood to lose their jobs based on this very bad math.

Apparently the Bush Administration is smarting over criticisms of the way it has mis, er, managed its privatization projects. OMB now has a webpage that is trying to set the record straight. You almost have to feel sorry for them except for the fact that they have been incredibly successful at destroying good public jobs. Don't believe me? Check out their more recent scorecard on which they rate federal agencies by how well they perform - part of the rating being for privatizing. It is also includes success in "faith based initiatives." Link to latest scorecard can be reached via a link here.

If you think this is Mickey Mouse stuff and what federal agency could be motivated by getting the equivalent of a sticker, well, think again. When the DOL scored all green (based on mightily privatizing) it trumpeted the news to the world. Apologies to Mickey Mouse.

True or false? For the answer click on the link after each question.

The Bush Administration is pusing to privatize a government agency after a trial project resulted in violations of citizens' private information, theft of $1 billion, destruction of property - leading to some criminal convictions . . . and it is 10 times more effective to have the work done by public employees. True or False?

On Wednesday the former First Secretary of the British delegation to the U.N., Carne Ross, made to a Committee of Parliament some pretty stiff allegations against Tony Blair and George Bush regarding their plans to drag the U.K. and U.S. to war in Iraq. Ross resigned his position in protest over the Iraq war nearly two years ago.

Though he has made certain charges in the past about the rush to war, and Blair's eager embrace of Bush's war mongering, until now Ross has cooperated with the British government in keeping the documentary evidence from the public. He's had to, since he could be charged under the Official Secrets Act if he reveals it.

But now Ross says he's decided the public has to see the evidence. It is evidence, he implies, that the Butler Inquiry ignored when it reported that the Blair government did not manipulate the pre-war intelligence on WMD.

In the second installment of this series, I described why the Senate Armed Services Committee ought to be very concerned about the nomination of a new Inspector General of the Defense Department—entirely apart from the worrying facts about David Laufman's career and qualifications. Both of the IGs elevated thus far by George Bush have established a record of obstructing investigations into criminal activity by government officials. In addition, an extremely sensitive investigation of the administration's manipulation of pre-war intelligence ("Phase Two"), pushed strongly by Sen. Carl Levin, has been in the hands of the Office of the IG. Republican operatives have been trying for years to strangle this investigation, and David Laufman appears to be the very man to do the deed.

Fortunately, Sen. Levin was well positioned as the Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to scrutinize closely David Laufman's nomination at the July 18 hearing. To judge by Laufman's answers to the Committee's advance questions (PDF), it's possible to surmise that this hearing did not go smoothly.

It may be, then, that Laufman's nomination really can be derailed permanently.

The Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report has a good summary of "Results of Races in Which Women's Health Issues Played a Role." In addition to reporting that South Dakotans struck down and abortion ban and that parental-notification initiatives in Oregon and California appear to have failed, the report highlights candidates' contrasting stance on health issues related to abortion and stem cell research. A few highlights:

"The facts are and I have said this publicly for a long time--the oil prices have been moving steadily up for the last two years, and I think I have been very clear in saying that I do not think that the fundamentals of supply/demand, at least as we have traditionally looked at it, have supported the price structure that is there" - Lee Raymond, the Chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil, March, 2006

If you remember, WAAAAAY back on November 9, 2005 (I know this is ancient history, but bear with me.  I got a point to make and I'm going to fess up to you all that....well...I may have been wrong!!!!!!), the Senate Commerce and Energy Committee looked into the causes behind the high price of oil.  The hearing was announced well in advance.  Oddly enough, just under two month before the hearing began, the price of oil began to drop.  From near $70 a barrel around the middle of September the price fell to about $56 at the time of the hearing.  Result?  The Senate took no action.

What else can we do to start to clean up the mess and relight the flame that would make this country a shining city on the hill?

Yesterday I proposed going after the swiftboat strategy that snatched victory from Harold Ford. But there's more.

This story is not about today's story, but a small reminder of why this election matters so desperately to so many Americans.

In recent weeks, Henry Porter has published two excellent commentaries at the Observer. He is seeking to refocus attention on the British government documents from 2002 that show that Tony Blair was conspiring with George Bush to gin up a war in Iraq. Porter makes a number of interesting observations, the most important of which is this: British intelligence was asked to re-open the search for links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in February 2002.

In other words, the Blair government was looking to "fix the facts around the policy" of attacking Iraq half a year before the Head of MI6 famously declared that the Bush administration was doing so. The Bush/Blair conspiracy to gin up that war gets more tangled the more we learn about it.

Folks, it is time, past time, to put a stop to the Swiftboating of Democrats. In recent weeks they have spread lies about a host of Democratic Party candidates, most notoriously Harold Ford. You can see an analysis of these campaign ads via a Slate article and run in a window at this link.

But is it enough just to reveal the pack of lies?

Another election, and once again Republicans are trying their darndest to suppress the vote of Democrats and Independents. This Congress has virtually nothing to its credit that it could run upon, many House Republicans are staring into the abyss of unemployment, and accordingly the voter-suppression tactics have an unprecedented fierceness.

Rebarbative voter-ID laws; intimidating letters and calls that threaten registered voters with prosecution if they show up at the polls; secretive purges of voters in heavily Democratic districts; flyers that spread false information about the election and voters' rights. All of that is quite apart from the blasted Diebold machines that malfunction when a voter punches the button for a non-Republican.

But the nastiest stunt this time around from Dick Nixon's Party-of-Dirty-Tricks are the phone calls. These may back-fire in New Hampshire, but much of the rest of the country remains ignorant of what is transpiring in dozens of closely contested Congressional districts. Isn't that always the way with these dirty-tricks campaigns?

A band of young people chanting "1-2-3-4. We don't want your bloody war. 5-6-7-8. Stop the violence, stop the hate" stood in stark contrast with the quiet resolve of West Point Graduates Against the War at a protest to greet President Bush who was stumping in northern Colorado for Rep. Marilyn Musgrave.

Retired Army Capt. Joe Sharrock a 1997 West Point graduate who did a tour in Iraq said "This war is illegitimate. It's not going well and we've got to change the course." Sharrock, who was not politically involved prior to the war, said "I want people to know we're not all flower children. My conscience brought me here."

Sharrock's wife, Shannon, a retired Air Force captain and West Point graduate, agreed. "We have a duty to speak out. The biggest reason we're here today as veterans is that we have a message that can't be ignored. A member of Military Families Speak Out, Shannon said "Our friends are over there. Nothing has changed. The soldiers are more than just faces to us. We've served with them."

The dozen protestors interviewed for this story among the 200 strong on the street expressed complete support for the troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan though they were universally opposed to the war itself.

That sentiment was lost on Dale Parrish of rural LaSalle and a lonely group of nine war supporters -- none with personal military experience -- who had stationed themselves a block north of the action.

In the first installment, I explained several reasons to be suspicious of the President's nomination of David H. Laufman to be the next Inspector General of the Defense Department. There are gaping holes in his qualifications to run such an office. Furthermore, Laufman looks to be a Bush family loyalist and Republican partisan. He has participated in two high profile investigations of Bush pere, which turned into whitewashes.

Besides all that, Congress has plenty of reason to be concerned about the nominee, or any nominee, to the post of IG of the Defense Department. It is a huge and hugely complicated job, with vast implications for national defense as well as for the federal budget.

In any case, Bush's two earlier appointments to this post have behaved in a manipulative and deceptive manner (to say the least). That's where I'll begin this installment.

Big things are in the air, a political revolution. I could just smell it this morning, midst the pungent oak leaves in the driveway. My friend Milo stopped by while I was watching Meet the Press, on his way out to canvass for the Democratic candidate, Charles Dertinger. Milo wanted to get his talking points down pat, and he seemed to think that me and Mrs. Smintheus were the people to try them out on.

I want to raise one other issue about the Democrats, because it’s on the minds of some voters, and that is what they’ll do if they win. Until May, John Conyers, who would become chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had this on his Web site. He said, “Stand with Congressman Conyers. Demand an investigation of administrative abuses of power and make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.” Is that what it’s going to be, the Democrats, get together, investigate...

"In the first 100 hours, we're going to toughen inspections of imported spinach," Milo said.

I got shivers down my back at the end of Al Gore's talk that eventually turned into the movie. He ended by showing a photo of earth from outer space, while saying that this is our only home. And for all its woes, just look around and up and down.

Friends, is this - our home - not a beautiful and diverse planet?

Rep. Duncan Hunter slipped into the recent military spending bill a provision to eliminate the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The deed had to be done with stealth, because both Democrats and Republicans oppose this loss of oversight in Iraq. Several members of Congress say they plan to reverse the provision, which Hunter tried to portray as a "return to a non-wartime footing in which inspectors general in the State Department, the Pentagon and elsewhere would investigate American programs overseas."

But in Congress, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle, there have long been accusations that agencies controlled by the Bush administration are not inclined to unearth their own shortcomings in the first place.

The stunt pulled by Hunter shows why we need to ensure in particular that the next Inspector General of the Department of Defense is competent, independent, and non-partisan. Bush's current nominee for that post, David H. Laufman, is none of those things. As I wrote in June, Laufman is a partisan hack who has no background that would really qualify him for such a critical post. Now more than ever, his nomination needs to be derailed.

Just as voters in California, Oregon, and South Dakota are preparing to weigh in on ballot measures regarding abortion, an article in the The Lancet shows just how important access to safe abortion is for women’s health.

I happen to think that all women should have complete control over their reproductive lives. I know that a lot of people don’t agree with me on that point, though, so I offer this argument: If you care about saving lives, you should oppose any step that limits women’s access to safe abortion.

Yesterday I included findings from the first of two recent Kaiser Permanente studies on health benefits. Today I report on the second.

The other day, after waiting as late as possible, I mailed in my Pennsylvania absentee ballot. With regret, I cast no vote in the Senate race. It was never a question of voting for the obnoxious twit, Senator Santorum. Instead, I've been searching for any sort of evidence that the Democrat, Bob Casey, has taken a stance on the important constitutional issues of the day. This, I thought, would permit me to cast a vote for him despite his mediocrity in so many respects.

I never did find any such evidence, despite hours of poking around the internet's cobwebs, so its absence was glaring. The Casey campaign ignored repeated queries; it was as if my concerns did not even register with his staff—though I advised them that if they continued not to respond, I would take them to task about it on line. In the end, I decided it wasn't enough that Casey is not a Republican. I'm looking for scruples, and all he's offering is piffle.

Kaiser Permanente has two new studies out on health benefits and the uninsured.

A new report on minority presence in institutions of higher education is out from the American Council on Education (ACE). It has positive news but cautions that we still have an unequal system in terms of the partcipation of minorities in colleges and universities.

A common complaint is that the NLRB complaint and trial procedures are slow. They often suggest that it is the NLRB that actively creates slowdowns. Of course, that's not the case.