Letters to the Editor
Jim White
Published Letters: 949 Editor's Choice: 15
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How to find the emails
[Read the article: Yeah, that's the ticket]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It seems to me that if the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to read all of the emails in question, all they have to do is check with Homeland Security. Aren't they capturing all communications on the internets?
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Coverage
[Read the article: Alberto Gonzales testifies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How is it that decisions are made at CSPAN regarding live coverage on their various channels? Clearly, the Gonzales testimony is the most important matter in Washington today, yet we are relegated to watching in streaming video rather than through cable outlets. In a similar vein, does anybody know if CNN was planning on providing live coverage prior to the Virgina Tech shootings?
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Has the blossom come off the turd?
[Read the article: Karl in the middle]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let's hope they include the Tim Griffin appointment process in this investigation. The only testimony from Gonzales last week that I found even remotely convincing was his insistence that he preferred Senate confirmation for Griffin. Was Sampson acting on Rove's orders when he pulled the trigger on the recess appointment process? This would explain what appeared to be an undercurrent of anger on Gonzales' part here. The best thing that could happen for beginning to restore some integrity to our government would be the jailing of Rove. Did AG rat him out?
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If only he could be fired...
[Read the article: Wolfowitz on the rocks]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, a vote of 85% of the Board is required for a major move such as firing Wolfowitz. The US has a voting interest of just over 16%, and there is no chance Bush will allow the US vote to be for firing. This is yet another straw on the poor camel's back of America's standing in the arena of international respect for doing what is just.
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The end of business journalism
[Read the article: Rupert Murdoch wants to buy the Wall Street Journal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's been a few years since my subscription expired when I dropped out of the business world, but WSJ's reporting on Enron, WorldCom, the conflict of interest inherent in the same industry providing both securities analysis and securities sales and the similar conflict of interest in big pharma designing all drug trials was top-notch and months to years ahead of the rest of the media. With Murdoch in charge, all public benefit will disappear and the news pages will be no different from the "pump and dump" spam now polluting our inboxes.
In the spirit of Glenn Greenwald's "sea change", however, we can hope that the eventual outcome of this coming melt-down will be business schools snapping out of their current cheating scandals to become the new home of securities analysis. I know I'm dreaming here, but couldn't you see individual front-line schools specializing in market sectors and providing true long-term performance metrics? The we could also have medical schools taking over design and control of drug trials, with every trial comparing the new drug to currently accepted practice in efficacy, side effects and cost.
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It's not possible to micromanage
[Read the article: Memo to Mitch McConnell: It's already broken]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]something that has been hopelessly mismanaged since the beginning. It's time for serious push-back on the use of "micromanage" by the Bushies and to simply point out that Congress is trying to put in the first real management for this effort.
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How they got there
[Read the article: The right's explicit and candid rejection of "the rule of law"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Even though Mansfield attempts to place their views in academic language, one small bit of this article highlights the basis of how most of the Bushies arrived at their views:
In that article, Mansfied claimed, among other things, that our "enemies, being extra-legal, need to be faced with extra-legal force"
This is not a movement based on rational analysis but rather has a very hefty dose of Old Testament vengeance (albeit extraordinarily unfocused vengeance).
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Blame a different aspect of modern mass agriculture
[Read the article: The latest word on GM crops and honeybees]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A microsporidian such as Nosema would make a lot of sense as the causal agent for colony collapse disorder. It's my impression from limited reading in the press that the colonies collapsing primarily are those maintained in very large numbers and moved around commercially to pollinate large monoculture crops. I know from previous personal experience that mass culture of insects invites outbreaks of all sorts of pathogens within the insect rearing facility. Think of the bee production facility as a giant detector and amplifier for whatever pathogens are in the environment. Microsporidia are especially devastating because they produce long lasting spores that are resistant to heat and drying and are virtually 100% fatal. Prolonged contact with fairly concentrated bleach is the only treatment that I have seen to be even partially effective in killing spores. Once a commercial bee operation is infected, the only truly effective course of action is to destroy all of the insects present, bleach (or discard) everything that has potentially come into contact with the infected colony and re-start from a healthy population that has been analyzed very thoroughly to confirm that it is not infected. Half-measures almost certainly have been carried out by the affected production facilities, resulting in the field deployment of apparently healthy colonies that succumb shortly after deployment. The only potential silver lining is that native bee colonies stand some hope of surviving these outbreaks because they tend to be more robust than the commercially produced insects.
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Comey for AG!
[Read the article: A meeting with Karl]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Did anybody else catch Comey's testimony yesterday and begin to wonder what a good Attorney General he would make? His testimony was clear, concise and centered around a true concept of justice. I then checked out his history a bit and found the reference to his refusing to okay shady dealing on illegal wiretapping while he was acting AG during Ashcroft's surgery. That action, of course, immediately accounted for both why he is no longer in the Justice Department and why he would be one of those best suited to return it to its true purposes.
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They "win" on one count only
[Read the article: Have Bill Frist and right-wing bloggers plagiarized their new Iraq plan?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why hasn't anyone in the MSM or Congress pointed out that Bush's attack on Iraq now accounts for more American deaths than bin Laden's attack on the US?