Month: August 2005

Potential Vaccines Unlikely to Head Off Bird Flu Pandemic

Buck Banks

Two stories have emerged on the influenza front, both dealing with potential vaccines — one specific to avian H5N1 flu and the other an all-around flu panacea.

U.S. government scientists say they have successfully tested in people a vaccine that they believe can protect against the strain of avian influenza that is spreading in birds in Asia and Russia. Health officials have been racing to develop a vaccine because they worry that, if the H5N1 strain mutates and combines with a human influenza virus to create a new virus, it could spread rapidly through the world.

Tens of millions of birds have died from infection and culling to prevent spread of the virus. As of Aug. 5 112 people have been infected, and 57 have died from the H5N1 strain of avian influenza. So far, there has been no sustained human-to-human transmission.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that while the vaccine that has undergone preliminary tests could be used on an emergency basis if a
pandemic developed, it would still be several months before that vaccine is tested further and, if licensed, offered to the public. He cautioned: “We don’t have all the vaccine we need to meet the possible demand. The critical issue now is, can we make enough vaccine, given the well-known inability of the vaccine industry to make enough vaccine.”
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A College Republican Leader Shows Why He’s Too Busy to Fight in Iraq

Jon Ponder

When asked why he didn’t volunteer to fight in the Iraq, which President Bush describes as “the central front in the War on Terror,” one young Republican said he felt compelled to stay stateside and fight in the “war of ideas.” We’re pretty sure Paul Gourley, treasurer of the national College Republicans organization, had signed onto that argument before the events depicted in the photos above.

But if you’re reading this, Mr. Gourley, when the dawn breaks – and it will, my friend, it will – and you’re looking for a way to expiate your sins, we’d like to refer you to Operation Yellow Elephant, where there is a place for you on the next plane out to Sadr City.

Photos: Truth Caucus

Michael Schiavo Awarded; Monk Pissed

Trish
“We see a lot of situations where family steps away. He stuck by. He didn’t walk away.”
–President of the Florida State Guardianship Association

Michael Schiavo was recently noted for doing the right thing and honoring his wife’s wishes. The Southwest Florida Herald Tribune:

Michael Schiavo, 42, was given the Guardian of the Year Award by the Florida State Guardianship Association on Friday, just months after Terri Schiavo died…

“As you know,” Michael Schiavo said as he accepted the award, “I’m not much of a speechmaker. I don’t talk much. But on behalf of my wife Theresa, I thank you.”

Brother Paul O’Donnell, a Franciscan friar who serves as the Schindler family spokesman, criticized the award, calling it “offensive.”

Most group members are appointed by judges to represent people who have been officially deemed incapacitated. They said Michael Schiavo was a controversial choice, but they decided to honor him because of his commitment to honoring what he says was his wife’s wish to not be kept alive artificially.

“We see a lot of situations where family steps away,” said association President-elect Michelle Kenney. “He stuck by. He didn’t walk away.”

The Right Questions

Trish

The St. Petersburg Times did an excellent job of asking the right questions about the Miami Herald’s firing of a reporter linked to the suicide, in the Herald’s lobby, of a Miami politician.

The year was 1987, the politician was Gary Hart, and the reporter was Tom Fiedler. After the Colorado senator denied rumors of womanizing and invited reporters to watch him, Fielder got a tip, staked out Hart’s Washington townhouse and found him there with another woman.

The story derailed Hart’s presidential hopes and ignited a national debate over how far journalists should go in covering politicians’ private lives.

Fiedler, now the executive editor of the Herald, finds himself at the center of a new ethical firestorm after firing Jim DeFede, the paper’s hard-hitting local columnist. DeFede lost his job for taping a phone conversation with a Miami politician, Arthur Teele, shortly before Teele killed himself in the newspaper’s lobby on July 27.

More than 500 reporters and editors around the country, including nearly 200 current or former Herald employees, have signed a petition protesting the firing.

Fiedler and the Herald’s publisher jointly fired DeFede late on a chaotic night, a few hours after Teele’s suicide. DeFede lost his job even though he disclosed the taping and admitted his mistake.

“To me, it has the smell of corporate panic about it,” said Carl Hiaasen, a Herald columnist and novelist. “I think there’s a lot of very serious resentment at the newspaper, and I think the scars are going to take a long time to heal.”

Read the rest yourself, but I do recommend such a reading. Great editorial, especially in light of some of journalism’s deserved criticism lately.

Government Fears Attack from Homegrown Rightwing Terrorists

Jon Ponder
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s estimates that 762 extremist right-wing hate groups were active in the United States last year, up slightly from the 751 groups tallied the year before.

USNews.com:

When FBI agents raided the home and storage facilities of William Krar in Noonday, a small town in East Texas, two years ago, they stumbled upon a small arsenal. There were about 2 pounds of deadly sodium cyanide, 65 pipe bombs and several remote-control briefcase bombs. They also recovered more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition and a collection of white supremacist books. If mixed with some of the other chemicals Krar had, the cyanide compound could have created enough poison gas to kill everyone inside a large office building.

In the decade since the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, local police and federal agents have foiled roughly 60 right-wing extremist terrorist plots, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. While homeland security and intelligence officials understandably focus today on terrorism threats from abroad, hate-group experts say the danger from homegrown extremists like Krar, now in federal prison, shouldn’t be ignored. “The fact that the only chemical weapon incident in the United States involved a domestic extremist suggests that domestic terrorism is still a serious threat,” says Mark Pitcavage, director of fact finding at the Anti-Defamation League. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s estimates that 762 extremist right-wing hate groups were active in the United States last year, up slightly from the 751 groups tallied the year before.

Scooter Libby Said He Met with Judith Miller about Plame

Jon Ponder
The new disclosure that Miller and Libby met on July 8, 2003, raises questions regarding claims by President Bush that he and everyone in his administration have done everything possible to assist Fitzgerald’s grand-jury probe.

American Prospect has a new leak in the Bush CIA Leak investigation – this time not from Karl Rove’s attorney but from “legal sources familiar with” the testimony of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

[Libby] has told federal investigators that he met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, and discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to legal sources familiar with Libby’s account.

The meeting between Libby and Miller has been a central focus of the investigation by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald as to whether any Bush administration official broke the law by unmasking Plame’s identity or relied on classified information to discredit former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, according to sources close to the case as well as documents filed in federal court by Fitzgerald.

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THE TICKER – Bush killed inquiry :: WH withholds 9/11 files :: Financiers pledge liberal dollars

Jon Ponder

  • Bush killed inquiry: A U.S. grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor and the inquiry ended soon after. The previously undisclosed Guam inquiry is separate from a federal grand jury in Washington that is investigating allegations that Abramoff bilked Indian tribes out of millions of dollars.
  • WH withholds 9/11 files: Members of the now-disbanded 9/11 commission are going public with complaints that the Bush Administration is stonewalling on the release of files that show whether the government is taking action on the commission’s recommendations for preventing new attacks on the United States. The GOP chair of the commission, Tom Kean, says he disappointed and surprised. Well, that’s one of us, Tom.
  • Financiers pledge liberal dollars: At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades.The money will be channeled through a new partnership called the Democracy Alliance, which was founded last spring — the latest in a series of liberal initiatives as the Democratic Party and its allies continue to struggle with the loss of the House and the Senate in 1994 and the presidency in 2000.

Poll: More Horrendous News for Bush – 61% Say He’s Bungled Iraq

Jon Ponder
Bush’s approval ratings have dropped to 42 percent; 51 percent of Americans say they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president.

Newsweek:

As U.S. troops endured a deadly week in Iraq, 61 percent of Americans polled say they disapprove of the way President George W. Bush is handling the war in Iraq, according to a new NEWSWEEK poll. Thirty four percent say they approve. This is Bush’s lowest rating on Iraq and the first time it has dropped below 40 percent in the NEWSWEEK poll. And 50 percent of those polled say the United States is losing ground in its efforts to establish security and democracy in Iraq; just 40 percent say the U.S. is making progress there…

Meanwhile, Bush’s approval ratings have dropped to 42 percent; 51 percent of Americans say they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president. Bush’s approval ratings reached a high of 88 percent in his first term, in the month after the September 11 attacks. Forty-two percent is his low.

Grieving Mother Leads Anti-War Protest at Bush’s Ranch

Jon Ponder

Associated Press:

The angry mother of a fallen U.S. soldier staged a protest near President Bush’s ranch on Saturday, demanding an accounting from the president of how he has conducted the war in Iraq.

Supported by more than 50 shouting demonstrators, Cindy Sheehan, 48, told reporters, “I want to ask George Bush: Why did my son die?”

Sheehan arrived in Crawford aboard a bus painted red, white and blue and emblazoned with the words, “Impeachment Tour.”

Her son, Casey, 24, was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, on April 4, 2004. He was an Army specialist, a Humvee mechanic…

[Sheehan] led a caravan of about 20 vehicles down a winding road toward Bush’s ranch. The group stopped along the way and sheriff’s deputies advised them that if they wanted to go farther toward the ranch, they would have to walk in a ditch along the road.

The marchers walked about half a mile until the deputies stopped them, saying that they had violated their instructions by walking on the road itself instead of staying in the adjacent ditch.

Sheehan protested, saying she had not walked on the road. The deputies refused to let her go farther.

The protesters then began chanting, “W killed her son.”