Driving Short

I cannot remember now where I picked up this term. It may have been in a long-forgotten driver safety film that you were required to watch before getting a license. You know, the "Mechanized Death" or some such film. (If you're younger maybe you never saw any of those "classics".) It may have been later at a driver's safety class (good for reducing one's liability insurance, my company at the time offered those.) But the term stuck with me: "Driving Short". As I remember it, it was a description for a driver focusing their eyes too closely in front of the car. This tended to make the ride very jerky and risked one missing something farther ahead in time to avoid it. We were encouraged to "drive long" or focus farther out in front of the car, to have better control and a better chance of seeing something in time to avoid a problem.

Nancy Pelosi has, yet again, indulged in a classic case of "driving short". Not content with attempting to micromanage the war, she has now engineered citations for "Contempt of Congress" on Executive Branch employees. Ed Morrisey nails why this is a stunningly stupid move on her part:

Tony Snow rather forcefully responded to this development, calling it a singular event in American history, where the legislative branch will direct the executive branch — in the form of the federal prosecutor — to file contempt charges against itself. The Department of Justice reminded Congress that administrations of both parties have long held that Congress has no power to issue contempt citations for claims of executive privilege. Obviously, the current leadership in Congress doesn't care.

It portends a showdown in the Supreme Court over the nature of executive privilege, and Sensenbrenner is correct. Absent any evidence of criminal conduct, the Supreme Court is highly unlikely to grant the legislative branch free rein to pursue contempt charges or to undo executive privilege. Nancy Pelosi will in all likelihood force a ruling that will firmly establish executive privilege and leave Congress with less power than it has had, after having finally called its own bluff.

It's unfortunate that the Democrats chose to pursue this course. Even though I believe that Alberto Gonzales should resign for incompetence, no one has established any criminal conduct at the DoJ, nor are they likely to do so by calling Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten for testimony. It's a fishing expedition in both chambers of Congress.

But Pelosi and company will likely have just gutted themselves in the long run. Just as the short-sighted strategy of trying to dictate the conduct of the war will absolutely come back around to haunt a Democrat in the oval office, so too will this theatrical effort backfire. If, as is almost certain, the Supremes destroy the threat of "Contempt of Congress" on the Executive branch, this will come back to bite the Dems. That great, big wheel turns and things come back around.

Driving short is not a good idea for running a country, any more than it is for driving a car.

It Isn’t Easter, So It Must Be Erie

A literal plague of little white bunnies is invading a grocery store in Erie, Pennsylvania. Workers there have no idea where the pasty pests are coming from, but they have found them everywhere.

ERIE, Pa. - A grocery was hopping Tuesday. Bombarded by an invasion of little white bunny rabbits, workers at the Tops Friendly Market were using everything available — hands, boxes and bags — to capture the furry creatures that seemed to be popping up all over the place.

"We never saw them before Monday," Jason Phillips, a store worker, said. "Now they're everywhere."

The workers believe someone may have dumped the rabbits — 16 so far — in the woods behind the store.

What concerns us is the last sentence in the report. Some of the employees have been taking the captured bunnies home. One employee is quoted as saying:

"These are better than gerbils."

The mind boggles.

Tour De Farce

Amid almost non-stop doping scandals, the Tour de France bicycle race is continuing along its merry way. But they are seriously losing any semblance of dignity and are now facing what may be a fatal blow: the media is losing interest in the race. The scandals, one upon another, have taken a huge bite out of the credibility of the race and the business - it is not a "sport" - of bicycle racing.

GENEVA (AP) — One of Switzerland's biggest newspaper stopped writing about the Tour de France because of the recent doping scandals surrounding Tour riders.

The daily Tages Anzeiger said on its Web site Wednesday it will no longer report on the Tour stages and will limit its coverage to results and doping stories.

The move comes a day after Kazakh rider Alexandre Vinokourov and his Astana team were disqualified because he tested positive for a banned blood transfusion.

The newspaper has a circulation of about 231,000, reaching an estimated 550,000 readers.

And the beat goes on. The Dutch Rabobank team has just fired the tour's leader, Michael Rasmussen for lying about his training. Rasmussen will not start the next stage.

GOURETTE, France - One of it's biggest stars is already gone, and now so is the leader of the Tour de France. Michael Rasmussen was removed from the race by his Rabobank team after winning Wednesday's stage, a day after Alexandre Vinokourov and his team withdrew when the star cyclist tested positive for a banned blood transfusion.

"Michael Rasmussen has been sent home for violating (the team's) internal rules," Rabobank spokesman Jacob Bergsma told The Associated Press by phone.

The expulsion, which Bergsma said was ordered by the Dutch team's sponsor, was linked to "incorrect" information that Rasmussen gave to the team's sports director over his whereabouts last month. Rasmussen missed random drug tests May 8 and June 28, saying he was in Mexico. But a former rider, Davide Cassani, told Denmark's Danmarks Radio on Wednesday that he had seen Rasmussen in Italy in mid-June.

Only once before in the history of the 104-year-old Tour has the race leader been expelled. In 1978, Belgian rider Michel Pollentier, trying to evade doping controls after winning a stage at the Alpe d'Huez in the Alps, was caught with an intricate tube-and-container system that contained urine that was not his, said Tour historian Jean-Paul Brouchon.

Rasmussen, who has led since July 15 and looked set to win the race which ends on Sunday in Paris, could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.

But just hours before he was kicked out of the Tour, the 33-year-old told the AP he was being victimized.

Actually, its the fans who are the victims, I suspect. This year is a mess, isn't it?

Life Line

Robert A. Heinlein's first published science fiction story was named Life Line. In it, Dr. Hugo Pinero invented a machine he called a "chronovitameter". The device could tell an individual the exact hour of his or her death. Dr. Pinero ended up knowing the exact hour that thugs from an insurance company would kill him of course.

A nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island has a cat that can, eerily, predict with dreadful accuracy when a patient is about to die. Oscar the cat is so accurate that staff now call family members to come to the facility when the cat curls up beside a patient.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.

"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and other illnesses.

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.

Dosa said Oscar seems to take his work seriously and is generally aloof. "This is not a cat that's friendly to people," he said.

Oscar is better at predicting death than the people who work there, said Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who treats patients at the nursing home and is an expert on care for the terminally ill.

The doctor was convinced a patient was about to die, but the cat would not stay in the room. The doctor left, convinced that the cat had no predictive powers. Hours later, the cat returned to curl up next to the patient, who then died.

There is no word on whether insurance companies are sending anyone to visit Oscar. But, please, keep that cat away from me. On general principle.

Just Say Naaaaaa To Nerve Gas

American scientists, with funding from the US Department of Defense, have found a new way to produce an anti-toxin for nerve agents. Initial testing of the new drug shows that it would be more effective than the current drugs that soldiers carry for emergency use. Oh, and it comes from goat milk.

The drug, called recombinant butyrylcholinesterase, could be used as a protective drug or to treat people after exposure.

Dr Solomon Langermann, of PharmAthene, and a co-author on the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, said: “It is a very difficult molecule to produce.

“There is a long history of people trying to produce this in everything from insects to yeast to bacteria and mammalian cells.

“None of them has been able to produce anything beyond milligram amounts. In the goat, we can make two or three grams per litre.”

Butyrylcholinesterase is an enzyme produced in the human body that can be purified from blood in small quantities. Researchers inserted the human version of the gene involved into female goat embryos.

The resulting female animals, all healthy, produced large quantities of the protective chemical in their milk.

Once the enzyme was purified from milk, it was injected into guinea pigs.

The researchers found it remained active in the blood.

Dr Langermann said Protexia, the drug’s commercial name, was more effective than the combined drugs atropine and 2-PAM carried by soldiers for protection against nerve agents.

The drug produced by the genetically modified goats still needs thorough testing and FDA approval. We simply cannot wait to see what side effects this stuff has.

Fluffy Is On The Loose!

Fluffy is on the loose in Memphis. Dana Shields, Fluffy's owner, lost track of her pet a few weeks ago and is running ads in local papers trying to locate him. She's very concerned that someone might try to hurt Fluffy if they happen to find him.

Some people don't care for 5 foot long boa constrictors.

The brown and tan-spotted 5-foot boa constrictor was in the backyard at his home on Walnut Grove across from Galloway Golf Course on July 8, a lazy Sunday. His owner, Dana Shields, 39, was sunning in a lounge chair reading magazines while Fluffy inched around the grass.

Shields got up to water some plants and got distracted. After about 15 minutes, she remembered her snake. She ran to the backyard. No Fluffy.

Shields looked in all the nooks and crannies. She looked in pots, under bushes. She got scratches all over her body searching through the woods behind her house.

Her neighbors took it well.

She ran a lost pet ad amid the missing cats and dogs.

Reward. $300, 5-foot boa constrictor "Fluffy." Very tame.

Shields has cried for weeks. She's afraid that someone will kill her snake out of fear.

"He's not a threat," Shields said. "He can't eat anything larger than a rat. I just don't want someone to hurt him."

She named him Fluffy because he's the opposite. She hoped the name would put people at ease.

She needs to find him before the weather turns cold, said veterinarian Dr. David Hannon, founder of Exotic Animal Rescue League. Boas are a tropical species. He won't survive the winter.

Hannon thinks the snake is still close to home. Snakes aren't wanderers. They tend to stay put in dark places.

Shields' home is right across from the local golf course. Longtime readers know that snakes have an affinity for golf shoes, so we'd advise golfers to check carefully before changing shoes.

(Oddly enough, "Fluffy" is the nickname the kids and I call my longsword, which has a python skin grip on it. Fluffy was even funnier than "Monty".)

Exhibitionist Hedgehogs Perform Porn

And if you think we're making this up, you don't really know us very well at all. German police were called to investigate a disturbance in a garden in Bremen recently. The homeowner heard a bunch of loud noises out there in the dark. When police rigged spotlights to see what was going on, they got a surprise. Hedgehog porn.

Police called to investigate a disturbing noise in the garden of a house in Bremen, in northern Germany, were surprised to find it coming from two hedgehogs mating vigorously by a pond.

"The hedgehogs were loud and uninhibited in their actions last night. Neither the owners of the house nor the police officers called to the scene were able to put a stop to their passionate fornication," Bremen police said in a statement.

The spiky little mammals are usually shy but wouldn't stop mating even when they were caught in the glare of a police floodlight. In fact, the attention seemed to make them more amorous.

Neighbours started crowding around the garden fence to watch. "The many observers didn't deter the two hedgehogs in the slightest, in fact they intensified their activities," police said.

Hedgehogs: the exhibitionists of the Animal Uprising™. Now, we have no doubt whatsoever that there is probably someone surfing the web looking for hedgehog porn. There are even stranger things than that on the interwebby tubes.

Giant Squid Eat Calfornia Swimmers!

That looks like the type of headline you'd see in the National Inquirer, doesn't it? We'd like to point out that it is absolutely true. Huge squid are rampaging around in the waters off the California coast, dining on swimmers. Oh, the swimmers are fish - for now. But it's only a matter of time.

MONTEREY, Calif. - Jumbo squid that can grow up to 7 feet long and weigh more than 110 pounds are invading central California waters and preying on local anchovy, hake and other commercial fish populations, according to a study published Tuesday.

An aggressive predator, the Humboldt squid — or Dosidicus gigas — can change its eating habits to consume the food supply favored by tuna and sharks, its closest competitors, according to an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

"Having a new, voracious predator set up shop here in California may be yet another thing for fishermen to compete with," said the study's co-author, Stanford University researcher Louis Zeidberg. "That said, if a squid saw a human they would jet the other way."

The jumbo squid used to be found only in the Pacific Ocean's warmest stretches near the equator. In the last 16 years, it has expanded its territory throughout California waters, and squid have even been found in the icy waters off Alaska, Zeidberg said.

Zeidberg's co-author, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute senior scientist Bruce Robison, first spotted the jumbo squid here in 1997, when one swam past the lens of a camera mounted on a submersible thousands of feet below the ocean's surface.

More were observed through 1999, but the squid weren't seen again locally until the fall of 2002. Since their return, scientists have noted a corresponding drop in the population of Pacific hake, a whitefish the squid feeds on that is often used in fish sticks, Zeidberg said.

Oh sure, the squid would jet the other way if it saw a human. But only to get a few buddies to come help with the bigger catch. How do we know that squids will eat humans? Easy, we have proof:

The Animal Uprising™ awaits offshore in California.

The Occult Hand

Kathleen Parker takes a look at the "Scott Thomas" controversy. The New Republic is on the hot seat right now for the lurid stories that the anonymous diarist has been sending to that magazine. Many people have called TNR's article outright falsehoods. Others are pointing to a "Walter Mitty" type: he takes a grain of truth and builds a 20 story building out of it. Parker just points out what she believes may be at work.

But are they honest? Or has The New Republic (TNR) been ''glassed'' again? In the 1990s, TNR Associate Editor Stephen Glass was fired for fabricating stories.

The conservative Weekly Standard began questioning the reports last week. Bloggers have joined in challenging the anecdotes, as have military personnel who have served in Iraq and, in some cases, have eaten in the same chow hall mentioned.

Thomas' version of events in Iraq is looking less and less credible and smacks of the "occult hand."

The occult hand was an inside joke several years ago among a group of journalists who conspired to see how often they could slip the phrase — "It was as if an occult hand had …" — into their copy. This went on for years to the great merriment of a few in the know.

Looking back, it's hard to imagine how a phrase as purple as "an occult hand" could have enjoyed such long play within the tribe of professional skeptics known as journalists. Similarly, one wonders how Thomas' reports have appeared in the magazine without his editors saying, "Hey, wait just a minute."

When it comes to the playbook of anti-military cliches, Thomas seems guilty of plagiarism. What could be more cliche, after all, than American soldiers ridiculing a defaced woman, running over dogs or desecrating babies' remains?

Yup, we got women, dogs and dead babies. My guess is that if there is another column in TNR, this one will have a lurid description of the desecration of apple pie - while listening to country music. Parker attributes it to TNR wanting to believe because the stories reinforced TNR's internal beliefs. That's a pretty common thing, but it can be exceedingly dangerous for a magazine like TNR which already is on shaky ground with past issues of false reporting.

Thug Tactics

Gee, for all the screeching coming from the left about the supposed thug tactics of the right, why is it that the real thug tactics on the left are routinely ignored? Hmmmm? Projection, maybe? Michael Goodwin, writing in the New York Daily News, absolutely rips into New York Governor Elliot Spitzer for the brute force thuggery that was just revealed. Spitzer swears it was his staff that falsified information in an attempt to smear New York State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

The dirty tricks scheme run out of Spitzer's office is unprecedented in modern New York. For the governor's inner circle to order the state police to gather information on a political rival and leak the information to a handmaiden newspaper is the kind of cheap plot that gets you kicked out of Hollywood. That this outrageous abuse of power really happened in Albany ought to produce a grand jury, one where the governor and his staff are forced to testify under oath.

Let me be blunt: I believe Eliot Spitzer not only knew about the scheme, I believe he approved it and maybe even ordered it. His denials Monday that he knew nothing ring as hollow as his earlier claim that "we have never asked the state police to do anything that wasn't standard operating procedure, nor would we." Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's report, despite its important findings, falls short. Spitzer's office says the governor was never questioned about the sordid plot against Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. And two of the four known participants in the plot refused to answer questions by the attorney general. They submitted only brief sworn statements that Cuomo said he disregarded. Given those lapses, the hasty conclusion that no laws were broken is troubling.

Two patterns suggest Spitzer was directly involved. First, volcanic anger at targets, followed by leaks to the media, both of which happened here, was standard operating procedure for Spitzer as attorney general. Virtually every Wall Street case he brought was first previewed in newspapers, often with evidence such as key e-mails released by anonymous sources. Notwithstanding that the evidence was often damning, the tactics were more thuggish than professional.

The second argument for Spitzer's involvement is that he is a micromanager. The notion that his A team - his chief of staff, his communications director, the deputy head of homeland security, the head of the state police - conspired to target the powerful Bruno without Spitzer's knowledge defies belief.

Goodwin's right. Spitzer's normal MO when he was attorney general was trial by media first and foremost. There was always a huge amount of incriminating evidence leaked to the press - mostly so Spitzer could get bigger and better headlines. New York deserves answers: how involved was Spitzer in this outright criminal exercise that originated from his offices? WaPo report on the scandal is here.

False Gods

Robert Samuelson devotes his column this week to debunking the Prius politics of many of the true believers. The Prius is described as a "hippie car" by Samuelson's son. The description is apt.

WASHINGTON — My younger son calls the Toyota Prius a "hippie car," and he has a point. Not that Prius drivers are "hippies." Toyota says that typical buyers are 54 and have incomes of $99,800; 81 percent are college graduates. But like hippies, they're making a loud lifestyle statement: We're saving the planet; what are you doing?

This helps explain why the Prius so outsells the rival Honda Civic Hybrid. Both have similar base prices, about $22,000, and fuel economy (Prius, 60 miles per gallon city/51 highway; Civic, 49 mpg city/51 highway). But Prius sales in the first half of 2007 totaled 94,503, nearly equal to all of 2006. Civic sales were only 17,141, up 7.4 percent from 2006. The Prius' advantage is its distinct design that pronounces its owners as environmentally virtuous. It's a fashion statement. Meanwhile, the Civic hybrid can't be distinguished from the polluting, gas-guzzling mob.

The Prius is, I think, a parable for the broader politics of global warming. Prius politics is mostly about showing off, not curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Politicians pander to "green" constituents who want to feel good about themselves. Grandiose goals are declared. But measures to achieve them are deferred — or don't exist…..

…..Just to hold greenhouse emissions steady requires massive gains in efficiency or shifts to non-fossil fuels. The McKinsey Global Institute predicts that, under present trends, worldwide energy use will rise 45 percent from 2003 to 2020. China accounts for a third of the increase, all developing countries for four-fifths. Even after assuming huge improvements in energy efficiency (better light bulbs, etc.), McKinsey still projects an increase of 13 percent in global energy demand.

Samuelson has some ideas as to what to do, I don't necessarily agree with all of them. But the most vociferous advocates of "doing something" generally are clueless as to the real economics involved. (The Prius is actually worse for the planet than a Hummer.) They believe the pious pronouncement of people like Al Gore, who is a poster boy for hypocrisy; preaching that people must change - so he doesn't have to. He'll keep right on gorging on energy while he forces others to bear all the costs. Samuelson's concluding sentence wraps the whole thing up:

Meanwhile, Prius politics is a delusional exercise in public relations that, while not helping the environment, might hurt the economy.

Precisely. But I would say 'definitely', not 'might'.

Feeding Frenzy

She came down from Cincinnati
It took her three days on a train
Lookin' for some peace and quiet
Hopes to see the sun again

Lives down by the ocean
Takin' care to look for sharks
They hang out down around the Waterfront way
And feed right after dark

Chorus:
Can't you feel 'em circlin', honey
Can't you feel 'em schoolin' around
Fins to the left, fins to the right
You're the only bait in town
Oh oh
Oh oh
You got fins to the left, fins to the right
You're the only bait in town
(Jimmy Buffet, Fins - From Feeding Frenzy, 1990)

There's a feeding frenzy in Florida, all right. The annual free-for-all where the spiny lobsters get to try their hand (so to speak) at offing a few scuba divers. They get several every year, despite having to sacrifice about 184,000 of themselves to do it. The Animal Uprising™ works with a slightly different understanding of calculus.

The mad dash got under way at the stroke of midnight, which marked the start of a two-day "mini-season" that gives recreational divers a chance to hunt for lobsters ahead of commercial fishermen.

Law enforcement officials were out in force, trying to ensure the estimated 184,000 lobsters killed in a typical mini-season are the only casualties.

Last year alone, five divers died and several more were injured during the two day lobstermania.

Heart attacks, lack of experience, foul weather, drunkenness, and what one official called "plain stupidity," have been blamed for past casualties.

There have been plenty of cases of boats colliding with divers, people running out of air deep in the deep, and lobster hunters surfacing far away from their rides back to shore..

The US Coast Guard had rescue jets, helicopters and boats on stand-by early Wednesday, and fully expected to use them.

"We're going to have a lot of missing divers," USCG officer Dana Warr said, speaking from experience.

Lobster-rage can also be a problem. Territorially minded divers have been known to threaten each other with harpoons, flares and even guns to protect their catch.

"One year we had a person shoot at someone who was on what he considered his own personal lobster spot," said Becky Harrin of the Monroe Sheriff's office.

Lobster rage? We keep lowering the standards, don't we? People are also known to try to go 'waaaaaay over the limit, not just in behavior, but in the number of lobsters taken, Some people have been "bright" enough to try to hide a freshly caught spiny lobster inside their wet suit. This is when they find out what the "spiny" means in the crustacean's name. D'oh.