Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, was taken to the hospital with a fever today, the second emergency treatment for the 80-year-old ailing justice in two months.
Rehnquist, who has cancer, had been taken by ambulance to Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va., in July and admitted for observation and tests.
Supreme Court spokesman Ed Turner said Rehnquist returned to the same hospital “for evaluation” after developing a fever on Thursday.
“Miami New Times” Editor Jim Mullin addresses the expose his weekly paper published on ex-county commissioner Art Teele the day Teele committed suicide in the lobby of the “Miami Herald.” Does he apologize? Nope. Does he explain? Kind of.
It’s interesting to note that all references to the “New Times” article and its allegations of sleaze and sex duly noted that it was based “on public records.” Turns out the public records were the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s investigative report prepared for Teele’s prosecution on a variety of federal charges. While the report was released to the public, it is anything but definitive proof that Teele paid a male prostitute for sex, the allegation many thought drove Teele to bite the bullet, as it were.
Mullin’s essay neither acknowledges nor apologizes for what appeared in the July 28 issue. Maybe it should.
Arthur Teele’s death last week brought to a shocking and tragic end a life as complex as it was compelling. Teele was a gifted politician beloved by his supporters and feared by his opponents. His superior intellect gave him a chess master’s advantage over the amateurs who sat with him on the dais at the Miami-Dade County Commission and later at Miami City Hall; he was almost always three or four moves ahead of them in the esoteric game of government. When it came to advancing an agenda — the community’s, the commission’s, or his own — he was without peer. Add to those talents a sharp wit and generous personal charm, and it’s no wonder many journalists found him captivating.
But now we all know there was another side to Art Teele, a darker side. I caught my first glimpse of it in the mid-Nineties at the old 1800 Club, just north of downtown. Demolished three years ago to make way for a condo project of the same name, the 1800’s deliciously noir ambiance, extended hours, and reasonable prices made it a favored haunt of journalists and politicians.
[…]
RadarOnline reports that former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey is negotiating a mid-six-figure book deal with Regan Books for a tell-all of his side of the scandal that drove him from office.
It was August 2004 when McGreevey’s surprising resignation and self-outing made headlines. The married father of two reportedly stepped down as his longtime aide, Golan Cipel, was preparing to mount a sexual harrassment suit against the guv. Rumors also abounded that Cipel had sought $5 million to keep mum about McGreevey’s being gay.
If the deal goes through, McGreevey will be in good authorial company. Regan has published tell-alls by porn star Jenna Jameson, gangster Frank Gotti Agnello and ex-baseball player, inveterate liar and braggart Jose Canseco.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, found that the public’s attitudes towards gay marriage have moderated slightly from 2003 and 2004.
Today, 36% of Americans favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry, up from 32% in December 2004. The percentage favoring gay civil unions has risen as well. Currently, 53% favor allowing gays and lesbians to enter into legal arrangements providing them with many of the same rights as married couples; that compares with 48% last August.
Support for gay marriage and gay civil unions has increased slightly among most religious groups. However, support for civil unions has increased significantly among white evangelical Protestants, from 26% in December 2004 to 35% today. This increase, however, is concentrated primarily among low-commitment evangelicals, a majority of whom now support civil unions.
There remain substantial divisions in views of gay marriage and civil unions across political groups. Nearly seven-in-ten liberals support gay marriage and eight-in-ten support civil unions, up from 59% and 70%, respectively in 2004. Among conservatives, however, support for gay marriage stands at 14%, and support for civil unions has actually declined slightly (from 35% in 2004 to 31% today).
Similarly, Democrats and independents are more supportive of gay marriage and civil unions today than they were a year ago, and remain much more supportive of both proposals than are Republicans.
In line with these findings, there has also been a slight decline (from 35% in August 2004 to 29% today) in the number of Americans expressing support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
U.K. and U.S. teams used computer models to work out the possible scenarios that could occur if the H5N1 avian influenza virus mutated and became capable of spreading from human to human. The result could be deaths on the scale of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic that claimed between 20 million and 40 million lives. However, a combination of surveillance and the targeted use of antiviral drugs could halt it, the teams told the journals “Nature” and “Science.”
The models used by both teams were nased on incidences and controls used in Thailand, one of the countries at highest risk from bird flu. More than 50 people have died from the virus in southeast Asia since the first human cases were reported in 1997.
Currently, the H5N1 avian influenza poses a limited threat to humans because it is difficult to transmit from person to person. But health experts fear the H5N1 virus could acquire this ability, causing an influenza pandemic that could kill as many as 50,000 people in the United Kingdom alone.
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College in London and his colleagues found two specific conditions that would have to be met to limit an outbreak of human-transmissible avian influenza to fewer than 200 cases. First, the virus would have to be identified while confined to about 30 people. Second, antiviral drugs would have to be distributed rapidly to the 20,000 people nearest the infected individuals.
[…]
“Make no mistake about it, we are at war,”
President Bush said yesterday, as he began the record-breaking 51st vacation of his presidency.
He was reacting – obliquely, as ever – to the news that a Marine amphibious assault vehicle patrolling during combat operations in the Euphrates River valley hit a roadside bomb, killing 14 Marines from the same Ohio battalion that lost six men two days ago.
Mr. Bush also said, “The violence in recent days in Iraq is a grim reminder of the enemies we face.”
We would simply ask: A reminder for whom, Mr. President?
Last month, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced to give up a multimillion dollar contract with a muscle magazine publisher because of ethical conflicts. Now we learn that three of his top staffers have been moonlighting as campaign consultants – and taking rather hefty paychecks on top of their government salaries.
The campaign work by Patricia Clarey, the governor’s chief of staff; Richard Costigan, his legislative-affairs secretary; and Rob Stutzman, the director of communications — all of whom earn more than $100,000 for their day jobs — troubles government watchdogs, such as Larry Noble, the executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C.
“The question is how close are they to various special interests” that fund the campaign committees for which the aides work, Noble said. “It raises questions about the amount of time and work they put in on their jobs. And it raises questions about what hat they are wearing when people come to talk to them.”
Margita Thompson, the governor’s spokesperson, was perplexed at all the fuss:
Forty-one percent of the public views [the CIA leak] controversy as of great importance to the nation — more than what was said about the Whitewater scandal in its early days, and about the same as was measured for Iran-Contra in the spring of 1987…
Only 12 percent think the Bush administration is telling the entire truth about the matter; more than half –- 55 percent — think the administration is mostly telling the truth but hiding something, and another 22 percent think it is lying.
Many Republicans doubt the administration is telling all it knows to the public. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans think the administration is hiding something or lying — although 28 percent think it is telling the entire truth. Democrats are much more skeptical.
Bird flu. Doesn’t sound very threatening, does it? Perhaps you’re more concerned about the possibility of getting West Nile virus or SARS (sudden acute respiratory syndrome). But you should be worried about bird flu, or the H5N1 virus, as it’s known. Very worried.
Avian flu virus has every earmark of becoming a pandemic, or worldwide epidemic. The last pandemic the United States experienced was the influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed 675,000 Americans and several million people worldwide. The H5N1 virus could easily top that, as humans have absolutely no resistance to the virus. It’s too new.
H5N1 only emerged in Asia a couple of years ago. Like swine flu, it is a trans-species virus that mutated and crossed over from birds into humans from close contact. It can be transmitted through feces or sputum, from touching, eating or just being close to infected birds. Not all infected birds show symptoms. It has already crossed over to swine in China — only a short hop from there to people.
At this writing, 54 people have died from bird flu in Asia since December 2003. Millions of domesticated and wild fowl have been killed to stop infection or have died of the infection. Millions more have been vaccinated with a vaccine developed in China that has not been proved effective. Indeed, some health experts think it could spread a vaccine-resistant super-version of the illness.
Where is it? Infections have been detected in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, China and, most disturbing, eastern Russia, Siberia and Kazakhstan. Human deaths have been confined so far to Vietnam, Indonesia, Hong Kong and China.
H5N1 has been found in flocks of migratory geese, and when those birds migrate, well, they take the virus with them. Hence, the pandemic scenario, with eastern Europe having a high probability of infection in 2005. Health experts also fear that the virus is being spread through illegal meat imports.
What can you do? Nothing. The virus is spreading and will continue to spread, inexorably, across the planet. Take vitamins, exercise and read this News Watch column regularly, as this topic is still under the radar of Western journalists.
We will post the latest information on avian flu here, as it becomes available, from a variety of international new sources.
From Trump’s “stolen election” lies, we can’t get no relief,
He carps on about stolen votes, but he never names the thief.
Somebody needs to tell this guy
Americans aren’t buying his lies,
And that he’s turned us into the United States of Disbelief.
