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Eagleburger on Bolton
Former Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger has this piece on United Nations ambassador designate John Bolton:
President Bush’s nomination of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has generated a bad case of dyspepsia among a number of senators, who keep putting off a confirmation vote. That hesitation is now portrayed as a consequence of Bolton’s purported “mistreatment” of several State Department intelligence analysts. But this is a smoke screen. The real reasons Bolton’s opponents want to derail his nomination are his oft-repeated criticism of the United Nations and other international organizations, his rejection of the arguments of those who ignore or excuse the inexcusable (i.e., the election of Sudan to the U.N. Human Rights Commission) and his willingness to express himself with the bark off.
As to the charge that Bolton has been tough on subordinates, I can say only that in more than a decade of association with him in the State Department I never saw or heard anything to support such a charge. Nor do I see anything wrong with challenging intelligence analysts on their findings. They can, as recent history demonstrates, make mistakes. And they must be prepared to defend their findings under intense questioning. If John pushed too hard or dressed down subordinates, he deserves criticism, but it hardly merits a vote against confirmation when balanced against his many accomplishments….
These are but two examples of why I believe Bolton possesses the substantial qualifications necessary to be our ambassador to the United Nations. By now it should be obvious to all that the halcyon days when our advice was sought and our leadership welcomed because the security of others depended on the protection we gave are no more. I recognize that John’s willingness to speak bluntly has raised questions. Perhaps there was a time when those concerns had merit — but not now. Given what we all know about the current state of the United Nations, it’s time we were represented by someone with the guts to demand reform and to see that whatever changes result are more than window dressing…
Enough Said.
Give him an up or down vote.
Remember President Bush won the election last November and he wants John Bolton.
Hear this well Republican Senators (the President will enforce Party Discipline!).
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Root Canal Instrument Inventor Sentenced to 15 Years
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Bear Flag League Round-Up Redux Part 1
Justene over at Calblog is completing a quite exhausting treatise on Bear Flag League Members:
Bear Flag Roundup Part 1
The league is large and doing things like filing an amicus brief (yes, I will keep mentioning it until you have all read it). Who are these league members? For those of you not watching the NFL draft, here’s your roundup:
A is for Apple v. Does
Aaron has returned in Aaron’s cc: I’ll break the rules at the beginning and instead of sending you to one of Aaron’s post, take a look at the third, THIRD, year of buy a gun day.
Over at Absinthe & Cookies, Ith is on vacation. You can still get cookies, though. Angela has posted this recipe for Blackberry Jam Bars. She says to cook at 400 degrees and watch for dark edges. I appear to be the only person in the country who cooks by smell. I can tell you if the food smells done, close, or burning and I am generally more accurate than the timer or looking at it.
There are baby pictures at Accidental Verbosity. I love baby pictures.
American Digest is on a ten-day hiatus and has left a list of posts worth reading from his archives. If your new to the League or just new to American Digest, this is a cornucopia of good stuff.
Annika has a good report on Pope Benedict’s early burst of ecumenism.
B is for Bear Flag League
Baldilocks commisserates with Condi over her rusty Russian. Rusty Russian or not, it’s tough to confuse Da and Nyet. Condi forgot it was a secret. She really is running for President (please, please, please).
Beautiful Atrocities has lots of good stuff. (Note to self. Read Beautiful Atrocities more often.) This post though best fits the blog title.
Beekeeper gets extra points for mentioning the NFL draft. For some of his analysis, though, check out this post on Sacramento Unified School District’s latest move.
Below Street Level has been quiet for too long. He sneaks some good stuff in if you go looking.
Ben’s Law explains taxes. Someone needs to do it.
Body Parts shares an interesting glimpse into his neighbor’s life. There’s not enough people-watching left in this world.
BoiFromTroy is my only source for news on the Mayoral election. What is that a picture of?
Bear Flag Roundup Part 2
C is for California
California Conservatives 4 Truth reports on the growing acceptance of bloggers.
New member California Mafia falls into a moment of panic. It can’t be that bad.
At California Republic, Eric Hogue reports on the emptiness of the Democrats’ rhetoric on education.
Caltech Girl gets mega-points for mentioning AND analyzing the NFL draft.
Enjoy the pride in Citizen Smash’s post about his wife.
Cobb: Head over for conversation, stay for the comics.
Coffee with Cranky Beach has lots of good hiking photos, though they had trouble loading for me. This post is the most interesting observation of the bunch.
D is for Digger Causes Trouble
Da Goddess has a not-for-the-children joke.
David Brown is posting on Daily Pundit. I missed the memo. Show of hands — how many of you had Dads like this?
You should have seen the email list this week. There was infighting, to put it mildly. On a number of topics. Some of it spilled over into the public eye. By the way, Digger is the cause because he jumped first. He wasn’t the only one though. Even yours truly started arguing over who knows what.
Kasey is in charge of adding new League members. If it’s been quiet lately, get a look at this list of reasons.
Reminding me that I’m old, Drink This blogs about people I have never heard of until she gets to 1959 and Buddy Holly.
Bear Flag Roundup Part 3
E is for the Eastern Half Of the Western Sandwich
e-Claire is on the story of the Minutemen and the ACLU observers. The Minutemen project is a good idea that I fear is doomed to end badly.
Education Wonks host the Carnival of Education. Thusfar, I have spared you my rants on education and the strain it places on me when the girls have to do a 35 page report on the entire Civil War. Go read intelligent posts instead.
F is for Fun
Faute de Mieux follows stories that the rest of the League doesn’t pay that much attention to — like the EU constitution.
Feste has lost inspiration. Perhaps a few visits and a few comments will help.
I is for Individualism
Like many folks, I ordered a couple of Cardinal Ratzinger’s books from Amazon right after he was elected. Infinite Monkeys headed over to Barnes & Noble and found something that surprised me.
J is for Just Missed Him
I was supposed to have lunch with Jeff Doolittle a couple of weeks ago but blew him off to head to SF for a Fox News interview that got cut to about 20 seconds. I should have eaten lunch first. Jeff needs to post more entries like this one on poverty.
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Politician Calls Out a Dentist Over NHS failures
Rhona Brankin really got her teeth into the election campaign this week.
Rhona Brankin accused the dentist of staging “a political stunt”Here is an interesting story from the U.K. where a minister calls out a dentist for a Political Stunt. What did the dentist do? He limited his practice to non-National Health Service (NHS) patients or as they call it across the pond – went private.
The story goes on:
She’s the deputy health minister who launched an astonishing attack on a dentist in Stranraer.
Rhona Brankin accused the dentist of staging “a political stunt”
She didn’t actually bite Kenneth Barr but she stood up in parliament and said his behaviour was “appalling”.
His decision to go private – and leave 3,000 patients without an NHS dentist – was “a political stunt”, she said.
Mr Barr says he has been defamed and is consulting his lawyer.
All he’s doing, he said, is giving patients the time necessary for quality treatment.
“There’s been a steady erosion of funding in NHS dental services over the years,” he told BBC Scotland.
We’ve become used to the SNP using question time to drop yet another embarrassing statistic on the first minister’s head
“We are no longer able to maintain and indeed advance our high quality of service.”
He is taking on 1,000 private patients and will continue only to treat children and special needs cases on the NHS.
Ms Brankin was furious and said: “It’s not good enough for dentists to be able to train at the expense of the public purse, to build up an NHS list, to build up the trust and confidence of patients in Stranraer and then walk away.”
The Scottish National Party’s Roseanna Cunningham – convener of the health committee – was able to make the point that Mr Barr was doing what many dentists have been doing all over Scotland, because the fees paid by the NHS are too low.
Only 3% of Scotland’s 3,700 dentists are expecting to increase their NHS work.
Ms Brankin told MSPs that dentists should stay loyal to the NHS. The executive is investing an extra £150m over the next three years in dental services.
There will be 200 more dentists trained, grants of up to £20,000 to help dentists set up in rural areas and “the biggest tooth brushing education programme in Europe”.
Wow, they are doing a tooth brushing education programme! How about some dietary counseling and an anti-smoking campaign? How about some privitization of your miserable healthcare system?
Will these socialists ever get a clue?
Now, they resort to name calling.
Shame!
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Day By Day by Chris Muir
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U.S. Senate Hearings on Methamphetamine
On Thursday Dr. Nora D. Volkow, Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse testified before the U. S. Senate Labor, HHS, and Education Subcommittee Hearing on Methamphetamine abuse.
Nora D. Volkow, M.D. is the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Before assuming this position on May 1, 2003, Dr. Volkow was Associate Director for Life Sciences at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Director of Nuclear Medicine at BNL, and Director of the NIDA-Department of Energy Regional Neuroimaging Center at BNL. She was also Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook and Associate Dean for the Medical School at SUNY-Stony Brook. Dr. Volkow received her M.D. in 1981 from the National University of Mexico, in Mexico City, Mexico, and performed her residency in psychiatry at New York University.
Her main area of interest is the investigation of the mechanisms underlying the reinforcing, addictive, and toxic properties of drugs of abuse in the human brain. Dr Volkow was the first to use imaging to investigate the neurochemical changes in the human brain that occur during drug addiction. Her studies have documented a decrease in function of the dopamine system in addicted subjects that is associated with a disruption in function of frontal brain regions involved in motivation and drive. Her work has also focused on the investigation of the neurochemical mechanisms responsible for intersubject variability in response to drugs of abuse and its potential link to vulnerability to drug abuse and alcoholism.
Her testimony before the Committe is here:
Her conclusions:
In closing, I would like to say that as someone who has spent almost 25 years studying the effects of psychostimulants on the brain, I am particularly concerned about the methamphetamine problem in this country both because of its powerful addictive potential and because of its high toxicity. One of NIDA’s most important goals is to translate what scientists learn from research to help the public better understand drug abuse and addiction and to develop more effective strategies for their prevention and treatment. NIDA has long supported research on methamphetamine, which is now paying off in the development of effective treatments, and it is critical that these treatments become more readily available to those who need them.
Hopefully, the Senate will take action to limit the availability of the chemical precursors that are used in Methamphetamine manufacture.
And the President must direct the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to enforce federal drug, import/export laws, and immigration laws to eradicate large Methamphetamine Labs operated by the Mexican Drug Cartels on American Soil.
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Blackberry Thumb
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Lay Off Our Judges
Ted Olson former Solicitor General of the United States has this biting, but learned commentary on our independent judiciary:
….We might start by getting a firm grip on the reality that our independent judiciary is the most respected branch of our government, and the envy of the world…..
…This is not to say that some judges don’t render bad decisions. Arrogant and misguided jurists exist, just as such qualities may be found in the rest of the population, and our citizens and elected representatives are fully justified in speaking out in forceful disagreement with judges who substitute their personal values or private social instincts for sound jurisprudential principles. But the remedies for these aberrations consist of reasoned, even sharp, criticism, appeals to higher courts, and selection of candidates for judicial positions that respect limits on the roles of judges….
…No discussion of the judiciary should close without reference to the shambles that the Senate confirmation process has become. It does no good to speculate about how or when the disintegration began, which political interest has been the most culpable, or the point at which the appointment of judges became completely dysfunctional. That sort of debate is both endless and futile. The only hope for an end to the downward spiral is for the combatants to lay down their arms; stop using judicial appointments to excite special-interest constituencies and political fund-raising; move forward with votes on qualified, responsible and respected nominees so that those who have the support of a majority of the Senate can be confirmed, as contemplated by the Constitution; and remove the rancor and gamesmanship from the judicial selection process.
We expect dignity, wisdom, decency, civility, integrity and restraint from our judges. It is time to exercise those same characteristics in our dealings with, and commentary on, those same judges–from their appointment and confirmation, to their decision-making once they take office.
Hopefully, we will have some votes soon on the appeals court judges (Texas judge Priscilla Owen and California judge Janice Rogers Brown) voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committe last week.
I wonder if North Carolina judge Terrence W. Boyle, a former aide to retired Senator Jesse Helms, will ever get a hearing in the Judiciary Committee?
Come on Senators …… vote yea or nay!
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Berekeley Professor’s Laptop Goes Missing
Did you hear about the UC Berkeley Professor who lost his laptop? La Shawn Barber has the story here:
Did you hear about the Berkely professor (Jasper Rine ) whose laptop was stolen, and he warned the crook that the feds would be looking for him? You can listen to the audio here and read the transcript here.
I’m not a techie (euphemism for nerd), but the warning sounded scary to me. One of Michelle Malkin’s readers thinks the professor is bluffing:
Interesting speech from Professor Rine. And a total bluff. I…have extensive knowledge of data communications, radio communications, radio signal tracking, computer security, and so forth. There are several things that Professor Rine stated that demonstrate that his story is false.
Laptops are stolen all the time, but I didn’t realize laptop stealing at Berkeley was so newsworthy.
Eccentric and absent-minded are the adjectives that come to my mind, Professor. Hope he does not lose any of the genetic code he so deftly manipulates. Heh!
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Paul Martin Hardly Needs Another Scandel
Paul Martin has his hands full with the Adscam Scandel. But……. read this piece about his involvement with Maurice Strong and the United Nations.
Why is he sticking around?
