The New, Handy-Dandy, All-Purpose

Kangaroo repellent. Australian researchers have discovered a new, effective substance to keep voracious kangaroos from destroying new vegetation. Well, strictly speaking, it's really not new, it's been manufactured for many years.

Dingo urine.

Researchers at Curtin University have been startled by the effectiveness of urine from Australia's wild dogs in scaring off kangaroos which chew through areas of new-growth vegetation.

The university's Michael Parsons said the discovery could have important applications in helping to re-establish plant life on old mine sites by repelling kangaroos, unique Australian marsupials which number in the tens of millions.

Researchers looked at the effectiveness of chemicals found in the urine of dingoes and non-native predators like coyotes.

"When we presented tame kangaroos with coyote urine, they became interested in the new smell, but when presented with the dingo urine they were startled and fled," Parsons said.

He told Reuters on Tuesday that the effect of urine on wild kangaroos was even more dramatic.

Parsons's team is looking at ways of delivering the repellent effectively at mine sites and how much would be needed, as well as whether it could be used to reduce the number of collisions between kangaroos and vehicles on outback roads.

He said the university was also trying to isolate and synthesise the active chemicals in dingo urine so that it could be made in quantities large enough to be commercially viable.

Researchers refuse to explain just how they gather the urine. Which is just as well, I'm personally already repelled enough.

Recycling Stories In Hopes Of Gaining Traction

If you don't get traction with it the first time, rewrite it a bit and roll it out again. This appears to be the new media model for trying to damage the White House. Today, the AP rolls out the issue of presidential signing statements. Again. I can't even remember what round this is, it's been recycled so often.

WASHINGTON - A bill becomes the rule of the land when Congress passes it and the president signs it into law, right?

Not necessarily, according to the White House. A law is not binding when a president issues a separate statement saying he reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard it on national security and constitutional grounds.

That's the argument a Bush administration official is expected to make Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who has demanded a hearing on a practice he considers an example of the administration's abuse of power.

"It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution," Specter said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm interested to hear from the administration just what research they've done to lead them to the conclusion that they can cherry-pick."

Apparently, enough to challenge many more statutes passed by Congress than any other president, Specter's committee says. The White House does not dispute that, but notes that Bush is hardly the first chief executive to issue them.

"Signing statements have long been issued by presidents, dating back to Andrew Jackson all the way through President Clinton," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Monday.

And regardless of all the huffing and puffing, this has been done for a long time. Despite what Congress would have you believe, the final call is made by the courts, regardless of what Congressional intent or signing statements there may be on a given law.

The Biggest Controversy Of The Day!

Will author J. K. Rowling whack Harry Potter in the final book in the series?

"I wrote the final chapter in something like 1990, so I've known exactly how the series is going to end," she told a chat show on Channel 4 television.

"The final chapter is hidden away although it's now changed very slightly. One character got a reprieve. But I have to say two die that I didn't intend to die," Rowling said.

"A price has to be paid, we are dealing with pure evil here. They don't target extras, do they? They go for the main characters — well, I do."

Asked whether one of the casualties would be Potter himself, Rowling said she had never been tempted to kill off the magician before the finale.

At the same time, she added: "I can completely understand, however, the mentality of an author who thinks, 'Well I'm gonna kill them off because that means there can be no non-author written sequels. So it will end with me and after I'm dead and gone they won't be able to bring back the character'."

The author said she did not want to commit herself either way on Potter's fate, telling interviewers Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan: "I don't want the hate mail, apart from anything else."

One has to wonder which group would send the most hate mail? Those that want Potter to live or those who wish he was dead already!

UPDATE: Exclusive to Blue Crab Boulevard! Our operative from the Magic 8-Ball Photography and Driveway Sealing, Inc. managed to get a day pass from the ward and secured this un-retouched photograph of author J. K. Rowling. I think we can all see where this is leading, can't we?

Why Does This Happen?

The Washington Post is reporting a story that ticks me off. It seems some African American leaders have raised the issue of where some campaign donations to Michael Steele are coming from. A recent fundraiser for the candidate for the Senate in Maryland was hosted by Floyd Brown's Citizens United Political Victory Fund. Ok, if you're all done with saying, "Who?" now, apparently this man had a role in producing the "Willie Horton" campaign ad that conventional wisdom credits with defeating Michael Dukakis.

The fundraiser thrown for Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele on Thursday night, while ordinary in most ways, struck some African American leaders as notable because of the host.

Unlike the dozens of high-dollar events across the country in his U.S. Senate bid, this event was thrown by the producer of the famous "Willie Horton" ad, the 1988 commercial that came to symbolize the cynical use of skin color as a political wedge.

It seemed a most unusual choice for Steele, the first African American elected to statewide office in Maryland and a Republican whose strategy for winning a Senate seat in a state dominated by Democrats has involved the aggressive courtship of black voters.

"Why would he go for money to those who have done us harm?" asked Elbridge James, a former leader of the NAACP's Montgomery County branch.

Steele said he sees nothing unusual about getting help from Floyd Brown's Citizens United Political Victory Fund. Brown produced the Willie Horton ad, which helped torpedo Michael Dukakis's presidential campaign by drawing attention to a weekend furlough program that released a black convicted murderer serving a life sentence.

Nor, Steele said, was there anything incongruous about donations he took from others who have offended black audiences in the past, including Republican Sens. Trent Lott (Miss.) and Conrad Burns (Mont.) as well as Alex Castellanos, the man behind the racially charged "White Hands" ad that then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) used to attack his black challenger.

It featured a close-up shot of a pair of white hands crumpling a letter as the narrator says, "You needed that job . . . but they had to give it to a minority."

I happen to remember the Willy Horton ad. I did not even recall Willy Horton was black until I read this story. Because the man's skin color was not what struck me about the ad. Releasing a convicted murderer on a weekend furlough so he could rob and rape was what angered me at the time. (Here's the Wikipedia entry on the whole issue).

As Steele points out later in the article, black Democrats have no problem accepting donations from Robert Byrd, the former klansman. Why is there a double standard? More importantly, why is this even an issue worth reporting?

LA Times Bob And Weave

Hugh Hewitt spoke with Doyle McManus from the LA Times Washington bureau about the lengths the government went to to try to convince newspapers not to publish the money-tracking program. Although McManus comes off as less self-serving than Bill Keller from the NY Times, he still does an awful lot of bobbing and weaving.

HH: In those meetings that you held, Doyle McManus, did the officials, including Mr. Levey, argue that publishing this information would help terrorists?

DM: They did, although it may be worth noting that by the time we were having our principal meeting with Mr. Levey and his aides, which was a meeting that lasted about 90 minutes, at which we asked them to give us the fullest and best case for not printing the story, they had already concluded that the New York Times was going ahead. And the tenor of the meeting was one in which they took as the context, that the New York Times was going to publish the story. And as a matter of fact, in the middle of the meeting we were having, one of the lawyers looked at his blackberry, and kind of rolled his eyes, and got a message to Mr. Levey, and it turned out the New York Times had posted the story at that point. So at that point, the discussion shifted from their making a case against publishing the story to their making a case…their assumption that at this point, everybody was going to publish a story, and they in fact were quite helpful in filling in some of the details of the program, to make sure we had an accurate story, as you saw later in the news conference that Mr. Levey and Secretary Snow had on Friday, I think.

HH: Now Mr. McManus, when they argued to you that publishing the story would help terrorists, did you not believe them?

DM: I did…I neither believed it nor disbelieved it. I would believe I took that seriously. It's impossible for me to evaluate independently to what degree…whether the potential assistance to terrorists…I think they actually didn't argue that it would help terrorists. They argued that it would disadvantage, or make more difficult, counter-terrorist programs. But that's probably a distinction without a difference. What…would that be momentous? Would it be marginal? I don't know.

So without knowing how much damage the revelation would do, they went ahead anyway. After all, there are Pulitzers to be won here! It's really quite revealing of the media mindset later in the interview.

HH: Talking now with Doyle McManus off-air. We'll replay this during the program. Mr. McManus, earlier today, Stuart Levey said to me that, "the effectiveness of this program has been damaged." Do you believe him?

DM: I don't know. I would…look, reporters like to check things out. Reporters take assertions by government officials seriously, but then they go check them out in practice.

HH: He also said it will, "make it difficult to do counter-terrorism." Do you believe that?

DM: Again, I'd have to check it out. The Treasury Department said it was monitoring financial transactions. This is…these stories filled in some detail, some important details, about how they're doing that. I'm not sure how the Treasury Department can, in effect, have it both says, say that, proclaim that they were doing this, but say that this level of detail, which is not, in fact, great, in some senses, damages those efforts, but I'm not dismissing the question, either. I think that there's a whole lot of further serious study.

HH: Given that you're okay with the possibility that this might have helped the terrorists, and might have hurt our counter-terrorism, and damaged the program, are you losing any sleep over the possibility, Doyle McManus, that some terrorists will get away and kill as a result of these stories?

DM: I'm not okay with the possibility, Mr. Hewitt. I think that possibility has to be measured against the possibility that the federal government has expanded its intrusive powers of surveillance and investigation without sufficient oversight and safeguards. If we want to ignore the balancing question here, well, then, we could grant the federal government license in the war against terrorists to do anything at all. I know you're not suggesting that. No one serious has suggested that. But I think it's also unfair to suggest that those of us involved in these stories decided that we were simply okay with letting the terrorists know any secrets it wants.

HH: I didn't mean to say…I meant to say given that you will accept that it may have caused that. That's what I mean, okay with the premise.

DM: Okay.

He really does not care about the damage as much as he believes his role is one of oversight of the elected officials. Now, thinking back on my last trip to the polls, I can't recall voting for the New York or Los Angeles Times to office. Can you?