Even if Congress would impeach both Bush and Cheney, would President Hastert be an improvement? The sleaze runs deep! We have to get Congress back in the hands of the Dems to make impeachment a reality, and then we'd at least have a Dem to fall back on if we did a Bush/Cheney tar & feather routine. But is it possible to take back the House and Senate when Diebold and their ilk run the voting systems? Aye, there be a fly in the ointment. Part of this empire thing has been gaining control of the levers of democracy and making them a sham. I fear 2006 will change nothing. Why don't the Dems make this issue number one? Why haven't they made it issue number one since 2000? They have sorely abandoned a struggling democracy to the fascists, many becoming fascists themselves. Corruption has become so integral a part of Washington politics that one wonders how we will ever recover.

Of course a lot of areas in this country are subject to potential natural disasters. And yes, improvements in building codes to match the regions type of disasters would be sensible and long overdue (I used to build houses along the Florida Atlantic coast out of 2x4s, stucco, sheetrock, and cardboard. Yes, they met code! I could hardly believe those idiotic codes, these things would blow away in a heartbeat). I have also very directly experienced hurricanes, in fact being in the eye when Hugo set a world wind speed record as it hit Guadeloupe. One of my greatest frustrations is to see, after a major devastating hurricane in Florida, trainloads of plywood headed their way to rebuild. Didn't anybody there ever read The Three Little Pigs? Building stick houses in hurricane zones should be illegal. Every unemployed mason in the country should have been on their way to Florida after Andrew and their other big storms.

That said, most areas prone to various types of natural disasters have building types that'll stand up pretty well. Stick houses are best in earthquake zones because they'll flex. Concrete/cinderblock homes best in hurricane areas. But building a city in a hole below sea level in a hurricane-prone area of a subsiding delta is just asking for trouble. All the romance of New Orleans history aside (romance not being a particularly sound basis for siting a city), if money's going to be sunk into giving New Orleans' displaced citizenry a home, the money would be better spent building concrete/cinderblock/brick homes on the mainland nearby which is above sea level and not in imminent danger of flooding during hurricanes. Yes, relocate the residential areas to safer ground nearby. People could still commute to what's left of New Orleans to work or party or whatever, but for goodness sake don't throw good money after bad. And don't allow rebuilding of the areas newly vacated, not by residential or commercial interests. Parks would be fine, but somewhere along the line it would make sense to come to grips with the fact that the sea owns the delta, especially since we've altered river systems to such an extent that the silt and periodic flooding that used to keep them in existence aren't part of the equation anymore. Sorry, we can't have our cake and eat it too.

My main question is whether the reservation clinic will not only be open to all South Dakotans, but if they'll make it a point to publicize that fact and encourage non-Native Americans to avail themselves of their services. If so, I would bet they'd be deluged with donations and kudos from around the country. Any word on that?

I've been involved in fisheries for decades, and have spent a lot of time investigating the many possible reasons for declines of fish and in the predators of fish. And while I have no doubt that we're experiencing global warming due to human activity, this article has glaring gaps in its evidentiary arguments, and presents several possible alternative reasons as to why the fish might—and I stress might—be declining.

If there were any measurements which show a decline in algae production or zooplankton concentration, those would be important. Clearly the fact that nobody seems to have a handle on what the actual harvest is in the first place kind of begs the question of whether there's anything here to be concerned about. But if we accept the premise that the populations of fish are declining, it may well have to do with the increased fishing and the increased fishing technology which is allowing fishermen to very possibly overfish their stocks.

We've seen this in so many fisheries around the world, it's either naive or intentionally disingenuous to barely mention it and seem to pin the blame on global warming. (I'm not a global warming apologist, I'm writing a book which deals with it in large part.) Increasing human populations depending on fixed resources to keep up by improving technology and thus increasing catch rates has taken one fishery after another over the edge. It may well be that such a lack of foresight and regulation is doing the same, sadly, to this fishery. Unfortunately, there is likely no way to manage this fishery since the politics are so complex and chaotic. Outlawing the big boats with the big lights and motors would probably be the greatest help in the short term, but like politics everywhere it probably wouldn't fly because those fleet owners have the political clout by virtue of their relative wealth.

No easy answers, I'm afraid, but pretty shaky ground upon which to build a case that global warming is the culprit. I think this article could have used a little more research and a few more caveats.