New York – Barack Obama, Toni Morrison, and Robert Gates share hard-won wisdom on how to live, love, and prosper

“Don’t settle for happiness”
Toni Morrison
Rutgers University

I HAVE OFTEN wished that Jefferson had not used that phrase, “the pursuit of happiness,” as the third right—although I understand in the first draft it was “life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.” Of course, I would have been one of those properties one had the right to pursue, so I suppose happiness is an ethical improvement over a life devoted to the acquisition of land, acquisition of resources, acquisition of slaves. Still, I would rather he had written life, liberty, and the pursuit of meaningfulness or integrity or truth.

I know that happiness has been the real, if covert, goal of your labors here. I know that it informs your choice of companions, the profession you will enter, but I urge you, please don’t settle for happiness. It’s not good enough. Of course, you deserve it. But if that is all you have in mind—happiness—I want to suggest to you that personal success devoid of meaningfulness, free of a steady commitment to social justice, that’s more than a barren life, it is a trivial one. It’s looking good instead of doing good.

“Be fully present”
Samantha Power
Occidental College

IN WHATEVER YOU do, try to be present, fully present. As Satchel Paige put it, “Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.” You gotta be all in. This means leaving your technology behind occasionally and listening to a friend without half of your brain preoccupied by its inner longing for the red light on the BlackBerry. I have gotten some glimpses of modern learning: In many college classes, laptops depict split screens—notes from a class, and then a range of parallel stimulants: NBA playoff statistics on ESPN.com, a flight home on Expedia, and a new flirtation on Facebook….I know how good you are at multitasking. You have developed the modern muscle set. I know of what I speak because I, too, am a culprit. You have never seen a U.S. government official and new mother so dexterous in her ability simultaneously to BlackBerry and breast-feed. But I promise you that over time this doesn’t cut it. Something or someone loses out. No more than a surgeon can operate while tweeting can you reach your potential with one ear in, one ear out. You actually have to reacquaint yourself with concentration. We all do. We should all become, as Henry James prescribed, a person “on whom nothing is lost.”

“Choose to stand up”
President Barack Obama
Miami Dade College

WE’VE GONE THROUGH periods of great economic turmoil, from an economy where most people worked on farms to one where most people worked in factories to now one fueled by information and technology. Through it all, we’ve persevered. We’ve adapted. We’ve prospered. Workers found their voice, and the right to organize for fair wages and safe working conditions. We carried forward.

When waves of Irish and Italian immigrants were derided as criminals and outcasts; when Catholics were discriminated against, or Jews had to succumb to quotas, or Muslims were blamed for society’s ills; when blacks were treated as second-class citizens and marriages like my own parents’ were illegal in much of the country—we didn’t stop. We didn’t accept inequality. We fought. We overcame. We carried the dream forward.

We have carried this dream forward through times when our politics seemed broken. This is not the first time where it looked like politicians were going crazy. In heated debates over our founding, some warned independence would doom America to “a scene of bloody discord and desolation for ages.” That was the warning about independence. One of our greatest presidents, Thomas Jefferson, was labeled an “infidel” and a “howling atheist” with “fangs.” Think about that. Even I haven’t gotten that one yet. Lincoln, FDR, they were both vilified in their own times as tyrants, power hungry, bent on destroying democracy. And of course, this state has seen its fair share of tightly contested elections.

And we’ve made it through those moments. None of it was easy. A lot of it was messy. Sometimes there was violence. Sometimes it took years, even decades, for us to find our way through. But here’s the thing. We made it through. We made it through because in each of those moments, we made a choice. Rather than turn inward and wall off America from the rest of the world, we’ve chosen to stand up forcefully for the ideals and the rights we believe are universal for all men and women.

“All medicine is local”
Atul Gawande
Stanford Medical School

HALF A CENTURY ago, medicine was neither costly nor effective. Since then, however, science has combatted our ignorance. It has enumerated and identified, according to the international disease-classification system, more than 13,600 diagnoses—13,600 different ways our bodies can fail. And for each one we’ve discovered beneficial remedies—remedies that can reduce suffering, extend lives, and sometimes stop a disease altogether. But those remedies now include more than six thousand drugs and four thousand medical and surgical procedures. Our job in medicine is to make sure that all of this capability is deployed, town by town, in the right way at the right time, without harm or waste of resources, for every person alive. And we’re struggling. There is no industry in the world with 13,600 different service lines to deliver.

It should be no wonder that you have not mastered the understanding of them all. No one ever will. That’s why we as doctors and scientists have become ever more finely specialized. If I can’t handle 13,600 diagnoses, well, maybe there are fifty that I can handle—or just one that I might focus on in my research. The result, however, is that we find ourselves to be specialists, worried almost exclusively about our particular niche, and not the larger question of whether we as a group are making the whole system of care better for people. I think we were fooled by penicillin. When penicillin was discovered, in 1929, it suggested that treatment of disease could be simple—an injection that could miraculously cure a breathtaking range of infectious diseases. Maybe there’d be an injection for cancer and another one for heart disease. It made us believe that discovery was the only hard part. Execution would be easy. But this could not be further from the truth. Diagnosis and treatment of most conditions require complex steps and considerations, and often multiple people and technologies. The result is that more than forty per cent of patients with common conditions like coronary artery disease, stroke, or asthma receive incomplete or inappropriate care in our communities. And the country is also struggling mightily with the costs. By the end of the decade, at the present rate of cost growth, the price of a family insurance plan will rise to $27,000. Health care will go from ten per cent to seventeen per cent of labor costs for business, and workers’ wages will have to fall. State budgets will have to double to maintain current health programs.

And then there is the frightening federal debt we will face. By 2025, we will owe more money than our economy produces. One side says war spending is the problem, the other says it’s the economic bailout plan. But take both away and you’ve made almost no difference. Our deficit problem—far and away—is the soaring and seemingly unstoppable cost of health care.

We in medicine have watched all this mainly with bafflement, even indifference. This is just what good medicine is like, we’re tempted to say. But we’d be ignoring the evidence. For health care is not practiced the same way across the country. There is remarkable variability in the cost and quality of care. Two communities in the same state with the same levels of poverty and health can differ by more than fifty per cent in their Medicare costs. There is a bell curve for cost and quality, and it is frustrating—but also hopeful. For those getting the best results—the hospitals and doctors measured at the top of the curve for patient outcomes—are not the most expensive. They are sometimes among the least.

Like politics, all medicine is local. Medicine requires the successful function of systems—of people and of technologies. Among our most profound difficulties is making them work together.

“There will always be evil.”
Robert Gates
University of Notre Dame

A RECURRING THEME in America for nearly a century has been a tendency to conclude after each war that the fundamental nature of man and the iron realities of nations have changed. That history in all of its unpredictable and tragic dimensions has come to a civilized end. That we will no longer have to confront foreign enemies with size, steel, and strength. Another tendency, repeated over the last century, has been for Americans repeatedly to avert their eyes in the belief that remote events elsewhere in the world need not engage this country—from the assassination of an Austrian archduke in unknown Bosnia–Herzegovina in 1914 to the rise of a group called the Taliban in Afghanistan and their alliance with an organization called al Qaida in the 1990s. The lessons of history tell us we must not diminish our ability or our determination to deal with the threats and challenges on the horizon, because ultimately they will need to be confronted.

If history and religion teach us anything, it is that there will always be evil in the world, people bent on aggression, oppression, satisfying their greed for wealth and power and territory, or determined to impose an ideology based on the subjugation of others and the denial of liberty to men and women. More perhaps than any other secretary of defense, I have been a strong advocate of soft power—of the critical importance of diplomacy and development as fundamental components of our foreign policy and national security. But make no mistake, the ultimate guarantee against the success of aggressors, dictators, and terrorists in the 21st century, as in the 20th, is hard power—the size, strength, and global reach of the United States military.

---

All selections are excerpts of longer speeches. Copyright ©2011 by The New York Times Co.

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New York – A landmark Oregon study suggests it does — though not everyone is convinced

 

A groundbreaking study by some of the nation’s top health economists “gives the clearest answer yet to a key question” that, surprisingly, we don’t have much good data on, says Anna Wilde Mathews in The Wall Street Journal: “How are people affected by gaining health insurance?” Due to budget constraints, Oregon held a lottery in 2008 for 10,000 slots in its Medicaid program, creating a randomly selected pool of newly insured low-income residents, and a control group to compare them against — the “gold standard “of scientific research. And it turns out that the Medicaid recipients were not only happier, but healthier, too. The issue is particularly relevant because, under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), a huge influx of Medicaid participants and other newly insured citizens will enter the U.S. health care system in 2014. Does this Oregon study prove that health insurance make you healthier?

Not surprisingly, yes: The study found that people with Medicaid aren’t just better off than people without insurance, they’re “a lot better off,” says Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic. They go to the doctor more often, report feeling much healthier and happier than the control group, and are financially better off. Much of this should be “a no-brainer,” but it wasn’t to the “cadre of conservative writers” who have been arguing that Medicaid and President Obama’s health care reforms are useless.
“Attention conservatives: Yes, Medicaid works”

The study doesn’t prove much, actually: “ObamaCare” supporters want this paper to justify their leap-of-faith expansion of Medicaid, but it “does not provide the vindication they seek,” says Michael F. Cannon at National Review. The study doesn’t meet their burden of proof that Medicaid not only improves health, but also does so “at a lower cost to taxpayers than alternative policies,” like lowering taxes. Also, much of the purported gains among these Medicaid recipients appear to be psychological.
“Oregon’s verdict on Medicaid”

The research is persuasive, but not perfect: “There are limits to what you can extrapolate from one, single-year study of 10,000 Medicaid recipients in Oregon,” says Ray Fisman at Slate. Still, this represents “the best evidence we’ve got” on how insurance affects mental and physical health, and the initial verdict is that the impact “is enormous, and delivered at relatively low cost.” The shocking increase in happiness alone makes “Medicaid ridiculously good value for money.”
“Does health coverage make people healthier?”

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The Nation — On June 17, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced a slate of reforms to its Secure Communities program that director John Morton said are about prioritizing its limited resources and “making sure we focus on those people it makes the most sense to remove.” In reality they amount to a political attempt to salvage Obama’s flagship immigration program, which despite a multi-million dollar mandate to target “dangerous criminal aliens,” has been undermined by ICE’s own data, which shows the majority of those it deports have no criminal record, or were charged with minor offenses like traffic tickets. Critics argue that the program has reestablished racial profiling as a legitimate policing practice. If the 1990s catch phrase was “Driving While Black,” now it could be “Driving While Immigrant.”

Take the example of Salvador Licea. Last August he was returning to his construction job in McGregor, Texas after a lunch break when a routine traffic stop turned into a check of his immigration status. A local police officer noticed Licea’s expired inspection sticker and pulled him over, then checked to see whether his driver’s license was also expired. It was. Recent changes in Texas law make it impossible for undocumented immigrants to renew their once valid licenses. So instead of getting a ticket, Licea was arrested and booked into a McLennan County jail that participates in Secure Communities. His fingerprints were automatically shared with federal immigration agents and he was marked eligible for deportation.

“What crime did I commit?” Licea asks. “I was just doing my thing, just trying to get to work.” He says he often felt nervous when he saw a police officer while driving, even when he had a valid license. “Is he going to stop me for breaking the law?” Licea says he would ask himself. “Or is he just going to stop me for the color of my skin?”

Mr. Licea’s charge was driving with an invalid license. He was among 80 percent of the 118 immigrants McLennan County has transferred into ICE custody since January 2010 who were non-criminals or accused of low-level traffic or misdemeanor offenses. This scenario has played out across the 1,417 jurisdictions that have enrolled in Secure Communities since it started in 2008 and report similar statistics. It has been cited by the three Democratic governors who backed out of the program this year – Pat Quinn of Illinois, Andrew Cuomo of New York, and Deval Patrick of Massachusetts.

These governors wanted to opt-out of Secure Communities —just like Arlington County, Virginia, which voted 5-0 to opt-out last September — but have found themselves similarly powerless to block the controversial program. Instead, in an attempt to address state and local concerns, Morton says he will grant more discretionary powers to federal attorneys handling deportation cases. Special consideration will now be given to veterans, victims of domestic abuse, women who are pregnant or nursing, and single parents like Licea, who is the sole provider for his two US-born daughters.

“It gives the ICE trial attorney the ability to do the right thing,” says David Leopold, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “They can look at the person on the other side of the courtroom table, and evaluate them as a human being with individual circumstances.” This sounds good in theory, but other advocates say that such discretion could be exercised unevenly. And it comes long after an immigrant may have been unfairly singled out by police. “This reform happens five steps down the road,” notes Sunita Patel, a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, “once the person is already detained, once they may have already waived their rights, once the harm has already been done.”

Even though Secure Communities doesn’t empower local police officers to check the immigration status of people they stop, it is clear it will be checked if he or she is arrested. With a nod to this increasingly common practice, Morton says ICE chose a group of “stakeholders” and gave it 45 days to come up with improvements to the program. But he limited their scope to considering whether immigrants who are charged with minor traffic offenses should only be deportable upon conviction. Patel says this fails to address racial profiling complaints.

Morton’s new reform package does include a training video produced for local law enforcement agencies enrolled in Secure Communities that explain what racial profiling is and remind officers that it is illegal. The problem? These officers already know racial profiling is against the law. “Putting into a video information that law enforcement should not be racially profiling—that is not likely to have a whole lot of impact,” says Margaret Huang, Executive Director of Rights Working Group, a DC-based organization founded after the bipartisan End Racial Profiling Act died on the floor of Congress in the aftermath of 9/11.

“Part of the reason it’s become acceptable to use racial profiling in immigration enforcement is because it has been deliberately tied into the national security context,” says Huang. But while many Americans may feel comfortable with airport screeners pulling aside someone wearing a turban, it is still worth asking if local police go too far by stopping people based on the color of their skin. If the answer is yes, then the Secure Communities program remains fatally flawed. Says Huang, “The theory and reality of Secure Communities is so far apart, it’s hard reconcile.”

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New York – Mississippi tips the scale more than the other 49 states, but every member of the union could stand to lose (quite) a few pounds

Obesity is an epidemic across the country, but according to a new report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, it’s the worst in Mississippi. But the rest of America isn’t far behind. Here, a brief guide, by the numbers:

34.4
Percent of adults who are obese in Mississippi, the fattest state in the union

19.4
Percent of adults who were obese in Mississippi 15 years ago. It was the fattest state then, too.

19.8
Percent of adults who are obese in Colorado, the least obese state

10
Michigan’s ranking amongst the most obese states. It’s the first state on the list above the Mason-Dixon line. “The highest obesity rates are in the South, large swaths of which are poor and rural, and where fried foods are eaten in abundance,” says Katy Steinmetz at TIME.

12
Number of states where the adult obesity rate is above 30 percent

0
Number of states that had an adult obesity rate above 15 percent 15 years ago

1
Number of states that had an adult obesity rate over 30 percent four years ago. “It’s not unlike with individuals,” says Jeffrey Levi with Trust for America’s Health. “You add a pound or two every year and after 10 or 20 years, it becomes a significant thing, and that’s sort of what the country has done.”

16
Number of states where the obesity rate has gotten worse in the past year

0
Number where it has gotten better

190 million
Number of Americans who are overweight or obese, according to the report

311,719,884
Current population of the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau

Sources: NY Daily News, Reuters, TIME, U.S. Census Bureau

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The Nation — The big story out of Washington—and rightly so—is the debt-ceiling fight that President Obama seems to be coming very close to losing. If the president abandons his 2008 campaigvn promise to be an absolute defender of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, he will have very little indeed to run on in 2012.

But that won’t be what beats him.

Because the biggest story in America is a different one from the biggest story in Washington. Americans are not that into the debt-ceiling debate. Polling has suggested that less than a quarter of Americans are “closely following” the fight. Those numbers will rise a bit as the deadline gets closer and as the media hypes the issue.

The issue that Americans have been following closely, and will continue to follow straight through the 2012 election cycle, the issue that tops the polls on the list of concerns, is the jobs crisis. Americans are worried about unemployment and underemployment.

And on Friday they got a lot more worried.

The Los Angeles Times headline was stark: “Dismal Jobs Report Shows Unemployment Rising to 9.2%.”

The New York Times headline was, if anything, bleaker: “Job Growth Falters Badly, Clouding Hopes for Recovery.”

The 9.2 percent official unemployment rate—up from 9.0 percent two months ago and 9.1 percent a month ago—is only a pale shadow of the real rate. Categorized in official terms as the “U6″ unemployment, the real rate includes the offically unemployed as well as Americans who are underemployed and those who have given up on the search for work. It stands at more than 16 percent nationally. And in depressed states, such as Michigan (which Obama carried handily in 2008 but where is approval ratings are now troublingly low), it is well over 20 percent.

The official and the real unemployment rates are devastating. These numbers are some of the worst since the Great Depression. But they are not getting the response that high unemployment rates got from Democrats in the Depression era of other periods of economic downtown in the years since.

President Obama and his team have never focused on job issues with the intensity that is needed. And now they  are simply being ridiculous.

David Plouffe, the president’s political czar, said on the eve of the release of Friday’s dismal jobs numbers that he does not believe that the high unemployment rate poses a threat to President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

Speaking to reporters this week, Plouffe said, “The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers. People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate, they’re going to vote based on: ‘How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?’ ”

The almost 10 percent of Americans who are officially unemployed probably don’t feel all that great about their situation. The same goes for the the tens of millions of additional Americans who are underemployed or who have fallen off official radar because they have given up on the search for work in communities where there are simply no jobs to be had.

The unemployed, the underemployed and the abandoned add up to almost one in five Americans. And an awfully lot of them live in battleground states such as Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania —all of which President Obama won in 2008, all of which President Obama needs to win in 2012.

Now, let’s be clear, no one in their right mind thinks that Republicans who would be president are any more concerned about jobless Americans than is the Obama administration.

But neglecting unemployment as an issue—or presuming, as Plouffe does, that Americans will give Obama the benefit of the doubt—is political madness.

When unemployment reaches the level that it has nationally, and the even higher levels that it has in battleground states,  potential Obama voters start losing faith that “the president makes decisions based on me and my family.”

Some of the disappointed may still vote for Obama out of fear of the Republicans, some will find social issues that draw them to the Republicans, but millions will simply stay home —as they did in 2010.

That’s the danger heading into the 2012 race, and it is more profound today that at any time in Barack Obama’s presidency.

Obama is toying with the notion of running for reelection as the president who did what George Bush could not: cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

That calculus suggests that Obama and his team really are out of touch with the electoral dynamic.

But that is not the most politically tone deaf scheme to come out of the president’s camp this week.

While the president’s apparent willingness to take the best argument available to Democrats going into the 2012 election cycle—the promise that they will defend Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—suggests that Obama learned nothing from the Democratic party’s devastating electoral experience in 2010, his top political aide’s statements with regard to unemployment suggest that his team has learned even less.

No president since Franklin Roosevelt has won reelection when the unemployment rate was over 7 percent. And Roosevelt won because he ran as a candidate who was fully willing to use the power of the federal government to create jobs —and programs like Social Security.

The notion that a Democratic president can win reelection with an unemployment rate that is edging upward—perhaps toward double digits—and talk of cutting Social Security is not merely unrealistic. It is evidence of a disconnect that could devastate not just Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012 but Democratic prospects for years to come.

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New York – The GOP presidential hopeful is the first candidate to sign an Iowa group’s controversial “Marriage Vow”

The Family Leader, one of Iowa’s most influential social conservative organizations, says that in order to receive the group’s endorsement, GOP presidential candidates must sign a 14-point pledge affirming a commitment to traditional marriage. By signing the pledge, called The Marriage Vow, a candidate agrees to remain faithful to his or her partner, oppose gay marriage, reject pornography, reject Islamic Sharia law, and uphold the assertion that married couples have better sex, among other things. Michele Bachmann has already signed it. How will this affect her campaign? Here, a brief guide:

Bachmann is banning porn?
Well, not exactly. According to Vow 9, the Minnesota congresswoman is pledging to protect women and children from “all forms of pornography.” As Justin Elliott at Salon notes, this could certainly be read as effectively being “a porn ban.” And that’s problematic, says Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress, because porn is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, and only the most “patently offensive” material may be banned outright. “Our Constitution does not leave this choice up to the whims of government officials.”

What does the pledge say about homosexuality?
According to the pledge, which Instinct calls “disturbing,” homosexuality is both a choice and a health risk. Same-sex marriage is classified alongside polygamy and adultery as a threat to the institution of marriage.

What’s the most controversial aspect of the pledge?
The anti-porn language may be winning the most headlines, but perhaps the biggest outcry is over an aspect of the pledge that states a child born into slavery was “more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household” than one born after the election of President Obama. The anti-Sharia language is also being met with howls of outrage on the Left.

Will this hurt her campaign?
While it might hurt her in a general election, it could actually help in Iowa. Some of the basic themes in The Marriage Vow may ring true to many Bachmann supporters, and the social conservatives who will decide the critical first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, says Ron Chusid at Liberal Values. Indeed, “Bachmann nails it” with this anti-Sharia pledge, says Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs. “Finally, a candidate who isn’t afraid to say A is A.” Certainly, the congresswoman “had no qualms” about signing the pledge, says Bachmann aide Alice Stewart. ”She has been married for over 30 years and has a strong marriage and faith.” 

Will anyone else sign?
Republican candidates are in a tough spot, says Alex Roarty at National Journal. The pledge is rife with widely “unpopular stands on cultural issues,” but a failure to sign would potentially anger a “still-important bloc of social conservatives in Iowa.” The tough anti-Sharia language may be too much for Mitt Romney, says Tim Murphy at Mother Jones, especially after he defended American Muslims at June’s New Hampshire debate. The pledge also creates an “acute dilemma” for Tim Pawlenty, says Roarty at National Journal, since he’s pledged to make campaigning in Iowa a major part of his strategy. But he risks angering the establishment if he signs this pledge, and grassroots activists in Iowa if he fails to sign. A spokesman for moderate Jon Hunstman says the candidate will not sign this — or any — pledge. Rick Santorum signed the pledge late Friday afternoon.

Sources: Atlas Shrugs, Daily Kos, Liberal Values, Mediaite, Mother Jones, National Journal, Politico, Salon, ThinkProgress

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WASHINGTON — Ernesto Betancourt was not exactly your normal kind of friend. He could tell you stories about how he was the one chosen to wake up Fidel Castro every morning when the Cuban leader was here in 1959. He could clarify just about every misconception of the Cuban Revolution, and he was annoyingly always right. He could tell you stories that kept you in hysterical laughter for hours about revolutionaries in Latin America.

You may have guessed that my beloved friend Ernesto was Cuban-born, but you would not just naturally know how loyal he was to this, his adopted country. Nor would you know how, for the last half-century, he was a kind of one-man truth-checker on just about every facet of modern Cuba for virtually every Cuban specialist I know. Nor would you know that there is no one to take his place.

As I recall, the first story that Ernesto corrected to me was the then-popular one that when Castro visited Washington in 1959, the U.S. had refused to offer the new revolutionary leader any aid in building the “new Cuba.” It was part of the bigger story of how Americans wouldn’t help revolutions in the post-World War II world. The only problem was that it was false.

As it happened, Ernesto, a trained economist, was among those advising Fidel, and Fidel sat next to him, on the floor, on the plane ride to Miami and then Washington. In the elegant old Cuban Embassy, Fidel slept in the back room for safety and Ernesto slept in the front room.

“He always slept with a pistol on the night table,” Ernesto recalled once to me, “so when he told me he wanted me to wake him up so we could have an hour’s briefing, or a discussion while we were getting ready for the day’s meetings, I said, ‘Well, as long as you keep in mind that you are being awakened by a friendly person.’” At this, they both laughed. Then.

Ernesto Betancourt and I met in 1965, both of us fascinated with Latin America. After one year of working with Presidente Castro in Cuba and in America, Ernesto had broken with him. Ernesto was a democratic revolutionary, and it had soon become clear that Fidel was, if not a communist (which he was not), simply a Fidelista — he believed perfervidly in HIMSELF! Ernesto was working in various high positions as an economist and consultant for the World Bank and others, and I was a foreign correspondent with the Chicago Daily News.

We became fast friends and, most amazing of all in Washington, I had discovered a man who had been deeply involved in an important cause, but who could now tell me the absolute truth about every single fact. This was, to me, little less than amazing, since most political refugees who have been true believers in their original homes can never truly give up that revolutionary fervor, even when they no longer believe.

But when Ernesto came here with Fidel in 1959, he found that the State Department, far from ignoring the Cuban “lider maximo,” gave a fancy luncheon for him, at which Secretary of State Christian Herter instructed Castro’s men to leave their guns outside. More important, beforehand, Fidel strongly instructed his men not to accept or appear to accept American funds under any circumstances!

This is now known to be the true story, thanks to Ernesto’s careful, scholarly correction of many writers’ accounts. I had it right from the beginning because I knew whom to believe. Yet stories like the “no American aid” one went out as truth for years. These false stories were important because they wrote in historical cement the wrong impression that the United States could not and would not support revolutionaries in the Third World.

One recalls, too, another story Ernesto brought out from Cuba. In that first year of Castro’s regime, when he remained in Cuba, Ernesto was part of Castro’s team of economists, but Castro, never a slave to professional training, had named Che Guevara as minister of economics. The fact that the Argentine Che was a doctor and knew not a whit about economics didn’t seem to bother anyone.

The story had Castro and his top men seated around a big table in the Havana Hilton when Castro said that he was looking for an “economista.” Che immediately raised his hand and volunteered. In later years, he would say that it was all a mistake — Che had thought Fidel was asking for a “Comunista.”

In the early 1980s, after conducting a number of interviews with Castro myself in Cuba and with a lifelong interest in the beautiful isle, I decided to write a much-needed biography of Castro. Ernesto became my invaluable backup. He read every page, providing his impeccable, scholarly eye to the stories. I was more grateful than I can possibly say.

The outcome of my/our book, “Guerrilla Prince: The Untold Story of Fidel Castro,” was a happy one. The book was well-received, most importantly because I had such a wise and perspicacious adviser.

Ernesto Betancourt died last week in his 80s at his home in Silver Spring, Md., respected by everyone and beloved of those close to him. His dear wife, Raquel, survives him, as well as his four children and just about everybody who cares about Cuba.

There are many “Ernestos” across the world who have lost their beloved countries to ruthless dictators, and it is up to these Ernestos to tell the world the truth. He lived a particularly important life, serving as an invaluable filter to Fidel’s rantings. I know that he served my own intelligence on Cuba in the most valuable of ways, showing me where truth lay — and where it did not.

The Nation — One measure of enthusiasm among a party’s base heading into an election year is early fundraising returns. In the second quarter of 2007 leading Democrats hauled in major campaign cash, an early sign of the enthusiasm gap that they would enjoy throughout the 2008 election cycle. And when Barack Obama outraised Hillary Clinton, $32.5 million to $27 million for that quarter, it demonstrated that Obama would be able to mount a serious challenge to the frontrunner. 

This time Republicans, as the party out of power and fueled by an angry electorate, are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the enthusiasm gap. The stronger turnout among their base in the 2010 midterms was a major reason for their victory. And so the remarkably weak fundraising numbers among Republican presidential candidates for the second quarter of 2011 may be a bad sign for the party as a whole. 

Among the candidates who have released their numbers so far — Rick Santorum, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and President Obama have not — Mitt Romney is the clear leader. The former Massachusetts governor raised $18.25 million dollars, all of it for the primaries. (Sometimes a frontrunner will get donations from donors who have already given the maximum for the primaries and will hold that in reserve for the general election.) His next closest contender? Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, with $4.5 million. Since Paul is too eccentric to win the nomination that means none of the plausible alternatives to Romney have mustered the financial migh to challenge him. Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has raised $4.2 million, but that number does not break out how much might be general election funds that he cannot currently use and whether there are debts or delayed payments he must meet. Reportedly, some of Pawlenty’s top aides have been working without pay. 

Former Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman took in $4.1 million, but that includes money he donated to his campaign from his own personal fortune, after saying that he would not self-fund. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s campaign continues to falter, with only $2 million raised this quarter and, according to some news accounts, only $225,000 cash on hand $1 million in campaign debt. 

Even Romney’s returns could be considered underwhelming. In addition to lagging far behind the money that Obama and Clinton brought in four years ago, they lag his own stated goals. This Spring — as rival campaigns are eager to point out — Romney was hoping to raise $50 million by early Summer, a mark he has missed by a wide mile. But they are not shy about doubling down on that goal. “We are extremely proud of the strong support Mitt has received across the country. We intend to raise $50 million and more for the primary campaign and we’re off to a very good start,” said Andrea Saul, spokesperson for the Romney campaign.

One possible explanation for the unimpressive returns is the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which opened the floodgates to unlimited fundraising by outside groups. Republican donors who want to help the cause generally without picking a specific candidate too soon now have plenty of other places to park their money. Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS is already spending $20 million dollars on ads attacking President Obama. Of course, attacking President Obama is something all Republicans can agree on. Eventually they need a candidate to be for, not just a president to be against. So far, it seems, they remain underwhelmed by all their choices. 

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New York – A violent storm is churning on the ringed planet, and now scientists know exactly what it looks like

The image: Scientists have known about Saturn’s recurring “Great White Spot” since it was first observed in 1876. But only this year has the famous storm been photographed in “unprecedented detail,” by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. (See a photo below.) Unlike Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, which is a constant feature of our solar system’s largest planet, Saturn’s storm usually only shows up every 30 years. And this time around, it’s “the most intense storm ever seen on the ringed planet.” The spot is a storm of churning ammonia and water that packs as much energy as Earth receives from the sun in a whole year. It’s casting out loud radio noise and “almost continuous lightning discharges.” At about 6,200 miles wide, the storm nearly matches the width of the Earth, and its tail wraps around Saturn completely.

The reaction: This is “one bad mutha shut-yo-mouth of a thunderboomer,” says Geoff Brumfiel at Nature.com. Imagine the lightning that must be “dancing prodigiously beneath those clouds,” says Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy. The raw power of this storm, and the fact that it’s roughly the size of Earth, is “amazing to ponder.” Now the challenge will be predicting when the next storm will appear, says Professor Peter Read of Oxford University, as quoted by Britain’s Telegraph. But there’s no denying that these are “some of the most detailed observations so far of such a dramatic event.” See the storm for yourself:

NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

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Creators Syndicate – Splendid news: Our homeland security officials have sent fresh warnings to foreign governments that “human bombs” may try to board planes with surgically implanted explosives. The ticking terrorists are reportedly getting help from murder-minded Arab Muslim physicians trained in the West. Infidels beware: Dr. Jihad’s version of the health care oath omits the “no” in “Do no harm.”

The death docs may be using their expertise to play “Hide the IED” in body cavities that bomb-detection equipment cannot penetrate. At least one Saudi operative has been nabbed with explosives in his bum, and British intel picked up on Arab website chatter last year about possible breast-bomb inserts. Officials are now said to be on the lookout for physicians’ notes requesting that passengers be allowed to carry syringes — which could carry detonation chemicals.

Lest you shrug off reports of these literal booby-traps as empty fear-mongering, listen up:

“It’s more than aspirational,” one U.S. official told The Wall Street Journal. “They’re trying to make this happen.”

There should be no shock at the role of purported healers in these and other hellish plots to destroy masses of innocent lives in the name of Allah. Anyone who still clings to the bleeding-heart belief that poverty breeds terrorism — including, alas, our commander in chief — is willfully blind to past history and present reality.

Medical charities have long served as front groups for jihad. Palestinian jihadists used ambulances owned and operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) — subsidized with billions in American tax dollars — to ferry explosives and gunmen from attacks. Hezbollah terrorists used ambulances as props in Lebanon to stage anti-Israel propaganda and elicit sympathy from Western media.

And radical Islam’s bloody perversion of the medical profession traces back to the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, the global terror operation that wooed wealthy young docs and other intellectual elites with cushy union benefits.

— Ayman al-Zawahiri, a surgeon from a family of doctors, was raised in the Muslim Brotherhood; helmed the murderous Islamic Jihad; and masterminded myriad al-Qaida plots before succeeding Osama bin Laden this summer.

— Former Hamas leader Abdel Rantissi, bent on wiping out the children of Israel, was a pediatrician.

— Convicted al-Qaida scientist Aafia Siddiqui studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis.

— Rafiq Abdus Sabir was a Columbia University grad who served as an emergency room physician in Boca Raton, Fla., before his terrorism conviction in 2007 for agreeing to provide medical aid and treatment to wounded al-Qaida fighters so they could return to Iraq to kill American soldiers.

— Rafil Dhafir, an Iraqi-born oncologist, practiced in New York before being convicted in 2004 on 59 criminal counts related to violating Iraqi sanctions and committing large-scale medical charity fraud.

— A den of well-heeled jihadi doctors from around the world was implicated in the 2007 London/Glasgow bombings. At least one of the convicted terror MDs worked for Britain’s National Health Service.

— Mahmoud al-Zahar, another bloodthirsty Hamas biggie and medical doctor, described his specialty to a New York Times reporter in 2006 this way: ”’Thyroids: I’m very good at cutting throats,’ Dr. Zahar said, drawing his forefinger across his neck as a rare smile spread across his face.”

Evil zealots who’ll use children as human shields won’t hesitate to employ revered caregivers as human explosive-enablers. They’ve warned us for years. Days after the 2007 terror doc conspiracy unraveled in London, a Church of England clergyman, Andrew White, recounted to National Public Radio a warning he received from a Sunni fanatic in Amman, Jordan:

“I listened to him for 40 minutes, and he went on about how they were going to destroy Britons and Americans and how they were going to be doing more in the U.K. and U.S., and he finished by saying ‘those who cure you will kill you.’”

Closer to home, Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan starkly diagnosed the ideological fanaticism of every soldier of Allah in a Koranic-inspired PowerPoint presentation that concluded: “We love death more then (sic) you love life!”

Military officials plagued by political correctness ignored Hasan. Thirteen Fort Hood soldiers and civilian personnel, and one unborn child, paid with their lives.

How many more Dr. Jihads are operating in the open, exploiting our borders and tolerance, wielding medical licenses to kill?

Michelle Malkin is the author of “Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks Cronies” (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.

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Creators Syndicate – By refusing to accept tax increases in a deal to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans are behaving like “fanatics,” writes David Brooks of The New York Times.

Anti-tax Republicans “have no sense of moral decency,” he adds.

They are “willing to stain their nation’s honor” to “worship their idol.” If this “deal of the century” goes down, as he calls the Barack Obama offer, “Republican fanaticism” will be the cause.

“The GOP has become a cult” that has replaced reason with “feverish” and “cockamamie beliefs,” writes Richard Cohen of The Washington Post. The Republican “presidential field (is) a virtual political Jonestown,” the Guyana site where more than 900 followers of the Peoples Temple drank the Kool-Aid that Rev. Jim Jones mixed for them.

Does anyone think this an appropriate description of such mild-mannered men as Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman?

“The GOP’s Hezbollah Wing Is Now Fully in Control,” screams The New Republic over a recent lead editorial.

Other columnists charge the GOP with holding America “hostage” by refusing to accept tax hikes to avert a default on the debt.

What to make of this hysteria?

The Establishment is in a panic. It has been jolted awake to the realization that the GOP House, if it can summon the courage to use it, is holding a weapon that could enable it to bridle forever the federal monster that consumes 25 percent of gross domestic product.

To bully and blackmail the GOP into surrendering the weapon and betraying its principles and signing on to new taxes, that establishment has unleashed rhetoric more befitting a war on terror than a political dispute.

For how, exactly, are Republicans threatening the republic?

The House has not said it will not raise the debt ceiling. It must and will. It has not said it will not accept budget cuts. It has indicated a willingness to accept the budget cuts agreed to in the Biden negotiations.

Where the GOP has stood its ground is on tax increases.

Is fanaticism behind this stance? Does this manifest insanity? How does this imperil the nation’s honor and future?

Behind the GOP opposition to tax hikes is the party’s word given to the country that elected it in 2010, its political principles, its traditional view of what not to do when the nation is in a slump, and party history.

Fully 235 Republican House members signed a 2010 pledge not to raise taxes. And by giving their word they were rewarded with victory.

Should they now dishonor that pledge, what would differentiate them from George H.W. Bush, who famously promised in 1988: “Read my lips! No new taxes!” then went back on his word and took the party down to defeat with him?

Second, the GOP is the party of small government and low taxes.

Why would it agree to raise taxes on the private productive sector when federal spending, now at a peacetime record of 25 percent of GDP, is the problem?

Third, America is in a slump, with 9 percent of the workforce unemployed, another 7 percent underemployed and the economy growing at a tepid 1.8 percent.

What school of economic thought — Keynesian, supply-side or monetarist — says raising taxes in a slumping economy is the recipe for a return to prosperity? There is no such school.

Why, when the whole country is talking about the need to create jobs, would Congress raise taxes on a private productive sector that employs six in seven Americans and is the creator of real jobs?

In 1982, President Reagan agreed to the same deal being offered the party today: three dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in tax increases to which he assented. As he ruefully told this writer more than once, he was lied to. He got one dollar in spending cuts for every three in tax increases.

What of the charge that the Republican House is holding America hostage, blackmailing the nation with a suicidal threat to throw us all into national default if it does not get its way?

This smear is the precise opposite of the truth.

The Republican Party has not said it will refuse to raise the debt ceiling. It has an obligation to do so, and will.

The House has simply said it will not accept new taxes on a nation whose fiscal crisis comes from overspending.

If the GOP keeps its word, raises the debt ceiling and accepts budget cuts agreed to in the Biden negotiations, the only people who can prevent the debt ceiling’s being raised are Senate Democrats or Obama, in which case, they, not the GOP, will have thrown the nation into default.

It is the establishment that is resorting to extortion, saying, in effect, to the House GOP: Give us the new taxes we demand, or Obama will veto the debt ceiling and we will all blame you for the default.

They’re bluffing.

The GOP should stand its ground — and fix bayonets.

To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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Creators Syndicate – Casey Anthony killed her daughter. She may not have meant to, and she may have been much more interested in her own social life than in her daughter’s well-being, but I have absolutely no doubt that she was responsible for her daughter’s death.

So why was she acquitted? Could it really be a case of it is better to be rich (or at least enough of a celebrity to be well-represented) and guilty than poor and innocent, as so many of my students think? The short answer is sometimes. The long answer is that it depends as much on the skill and judgment of the prosecutors as it does on the defense.

If you want to be God, I always tell my students, go be a prosecutor. I’d like to believe that God is infallible, but I know for a fact that prosecutors aren’t.

There is an old joke prosecutors tell each other about how convicting a guilty person is no great accomplishment. It’s convicting someone who is not guilty that is the real challenge.

Anthony is as guilty of killing her child as O.J. Simpson was of killing his former wife and Ron Goldman. He got off — as did Anthony — because he is a celebrity (and because of the animosity among minority jurors toward the LAPD) and because celebrities are not always favored by the system.

The danger when you represent a celebrity is not that he will be treated with white gloves, but rather that prosecutors (either because they love the publicity or because they fear the pressure it brings) will go too far too fast to overcharge and overprosecute precisely because of the publicity.

The Anthony case was based entirely on circumstantial evidence. There was no real forensic proof, no cause of death, no damning DNA. The defendant was the mother of the victim — which in many ways makes the crime worse. But it also makes it even more critical, and more important, to have evidence of purposeful intent. Ditto for husbands and ex-husbands and wives and ex-wives who kill their spouses.

In all of these cases, it is far easier to conclude that the defendant caused the death — that he or she was the only person with the opportunity and motive — than it is to prove that they did so with malice aforethought, in a premeditated and purposeful way, which is what is required in a first-degree murder case. Reasonable doubt has a different meaning when it’s a life or death decision.

Forgive me the pedestrian analogy, but I think the easiest way to grasp this may be by thinking about shopping. You go to the department store and try on a jacket. The tag tells you it’s 70 percent off. I love it, you say, and you do. For $50 dollars, it’s spectacular. For half off, you love it almost as much. At full price, even a minor flaw — a missing button, a pulled thread — is enough to end the love affair. Reasonable doubt is equally flexible.

Had the jury been asked whether Anthony was guilty of voluntary manslaughter, I think they would have been able to conclude that she was, beyond a reasonable doubt. Had O.J. Simpson been charged, as most ex-wife killers are, with either second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter, I’d like to think he would have been convicted.

The irony is that most men who kill their former wives (and even innocent bystanders) in a fit of jealous rage serve about seven years in prison — which is less than the sentence meted out to Simpson for what otherwise would be a rather minor offense. Simpson was Caponed.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Justice is very rough, but if I were Casey Anthony (and to be honest, she is one woman I can’t even imagine being), I’d watch my step from here on, very, very carefully. She may have gotten away with murder, but she won’t get away the next time.

Justice may not be blind, and sometimes it seems to be deaf and dumb, but rough justice can be very rough on those who get away with murder.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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Creators Syndicate – After nearly 40 years in Washington, I’m leaving the nation’s capital pretty much as I found it when I arrived. The players have changed, but the problems haven’t.

Richard Nixon occupied the White House then, and the United States was involved in a long and unpopular war and faced economic problems at home. In 1971, to combat nearly 6 percent inflation, and a trade and balance-of-payments deficit, and to protect the value of the dollar, Nixon imposed a 90-day freeze on wages and prices, and a 10 percent import surcharge, and ended the convertibility of dollars into gold. He also launched the war on drugs — a ‘war’ we still haven’t won.

Forty years later, Barack Obama presides over an economy in far worse shape than has existed at any point in the intervening period, and the U.S. is about to lose its ability to borrow money — yet Congress and the president can’t agree on how to fix it. Relations between congressional Republicans and Democrats are as rancorous as they were during the Watergate period, maybe more so. (I can say that with some authority because I worked on the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings.) And the U.S. is involved in another unpopular war, in Afghanistan, the longest in our history.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. But just as Americans got through the lousy economy of the 1970s, I’m confident we’ll recover from the mess we’re in now. Unemployment will recede, and so will government spending — not because of political deal-making but because Americans will boot politicians who fail to do their job out of office and replace them with those who will. Just ask Jimmy Carter.

I look back on a life in politics that took me from Capitol Hill to the Reagan White House to the public policy and media worlds with as much frustration as pride. Some of the policies I hoped to play a role in changing — like racial preferences in hiring and education — have become so ingrained and widespread many people no longer seem to notice their corrosive effect.

But there were successes as well as failures, albeit modest ones. Bilingual education — which as columnist Michael Barone once quipped is neither bilingual nor education — has largely been replaced by English instruction for non-English speakers, a goal I advocated for more than 30 years.

And I met — and in some cases worked for — some truly great Americans during my Washington years. President Reagan tops the list. It was a great privilege to work in the Reagan administration, first as staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and later as director of public liaison at the White House.

Even President Reagan’s critics acknowledged that he was a true leader, but it has taken time and the publication of his handwritten diaries and speeches for some people to recognize the intellectual skills that those of us who worked with him saw first-hand.

But there were also Democrats I admired — even when I didn’t always agree with them. Former Vice President and Senator Hubert Humphrey was a gentleman to the end of his long political life in 1978. I first met him when I was a young lobbyist walking the halls of Congress. And even as he fought cancer, he never failed to be the “happy warrior,” as he was known, with a smile and a kind word for everyone he met.

Unfortunately, I’ve also encountered some downright mean-spirited and arrogant politicians. I won’t name names, but suffice it to say that they can be found on both sides of the political aisle. I won’t miss having to deal with the outsized egos Washington breeds, but I will miss the many good friends and colleagues I’ve worked with over the years.

I leave Washington to return to my childhood roots in Colorado. I’ve lived almost two-thirds of my life in the East, but the West is in my blood. I’ll still be commenting on what goes on inside the Beltway, but with a new perspective. I’ll call on the insights I’ve earned working in Washington, but now I’ll be looking in from the outside, like most Americans.

Linda Chavez is the author of “An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal.” To find out more about Linda Chavez, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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Creators Syndicate – Actor David Schwimmer, best known as the sad sack Ross Geller on the hit ’90s sitcom “Friends,” is now bemoaning the sex-saturated Hollywood business atmosphere and its corrosive effects on society and women in particular. The first question many Hollywood critics should ask: Isn’t it curious that Schwimmer would care about this issue — after he earned a million dollars per episode on one of the most sex-obsessed sitcoms of all time?

Schwimmer granted an interview to the British newspaper The Telegraph while promoting his new film, “Trust,” which opened July 8. “Sex sells, and unfortunately, there’s this inbuilt hypocrisy in our society: We’re always talking about how inappropriate it is to see an older man with a very young girl, but at the same time, all our advertising is based on that,” he said.

He asserted that “both here and in the UK, we have this real emphasis on how important it is to look young and sexual, so that’s the message we’re sending our girls. Look at the biggest pop stars around at the moment. Everything they do is about sex.”

Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Rihanna? Check, check and check.

At the most extreme edge of all this mediated sexuality is sexual violence. Schwimmer said his new passion is inspired by his relationship with two women, both child sexual abuse victims and one a later date-rape victim, which led him to take a position as a director with the Santa Monica Rape Treatment Center in Los Angeles. Schwimmer also may be growing more concerned as a new husband and father of a baby girl.

But Schwimmer’s new film raises as many questions as it asks. It has a moralistic plot that bemoans our sexualized culture. It centers on the gradual Internet seduction and rape of a 14-year-old girl whose unwitting father, in an ironic twist, is working on a seductive advertising campaign at the time. (Think Brooke Shields for Calvin Klein.) The assailant portrays himself online as 16, but by the time he meets his teenaged prey, she knows he’s more like 40.

The problem comes when the actress playing the rape victim is 14, just like the character. Schwimmer admitted in his Telegraph interview that it was tough on the young actress, Liana Liberato. “It was extremely difficult to film and so important not to do anything gratuitous. I know that it was pushing the boundaries just to have Liana come out in her lingerie, and I made sure that there was modesty lining on the underwear and that the scene was done tastefully and respectfully with regards to her and her body.” He deliberately put that scene at the end of the filming schedule and insisted there was “no one in the room who didn’t have to be there.”

Clearly, Schwimmer didn’t get it. The one person in the room who didn’t have to be there was a girl who could have better spent the day in an eighth-grade classroom. There is no such thing as a “respectful” rape scene with a 14-year-old actress.

Time magazine critic Mary Pols described the end product as an “innocence snuff film” and found it “excruciating to watch” actress Liberato in her underwear, appearing delicate and awkward, be assaulted on screen. It was so unsettling, she wrote, that “had I not been obliged to stay, I could easily have seen myself storming out of the theater at that point, spitting about prurience and such.”

Pols tried to resist the urge to “spit” like a prude … or a parent. But Pols argued that “the film gains power in its gritty depiction of the aftermath.”

For some, this may recall the filming of then-12-year-old Dakota Fanning, the star of “Charlotte’s Web” and other family films like “The Cat in the Hat,” in a five-minute rape scene in a little movie that never went anywhere called “Hounddog.” Some adult scenes should cause a director to look for an adult with a childlike quality instead of an actual child.

Sometimes, Hollywood directors take uber-realism to new heights of silliness. When making “Titanic,” director James Cameron demanded the set include carpeting woven by the original suppliers of Titanic’s carpets and meticulously reproduced plates and silverware with the White Star Line crest on each piece. But when you film rape scenes with 14-year-olds, you’ve gone over the top. This simply should not happen.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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Creators Syndicate – Suddenly Republican leaders in Congress, after months of staring down the Democrats over a potentially disastrous debt default, began blinking so fast that they might be signaling in Morse code. Although their message is muddled and illogical — with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., saying he can accept closing tax loopholes only if such measures are “revenue neutral,” thus canceling their budgetary value — the Republicans now appear to understand that they will be blamed by voters if the negotiations collapse.

And Democrats appear to understand that they have the political advantage, as they voiced support for a proposal by Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad, D-N.D., to reduce future deficits by $4 trillion with an even split between increased revenues and reduced spending.

But just when the Republicans are showing fear and losing momentum, there is one important Democrat who seems to think it is time to wave the white flag — and give his enemies a historic victory on the eve of his own re-election bid.

According to The Washington Post, President Obama wants “significant” cuts to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican agreement to let tax breaks for the nation’s wealthiest families expire at the end of this year. While White House press secretary Jay Carney would say only that the president is opposed to “slashing” Social Security benefits, that is a semantic dodge leaving open the prospect of substantial cuts.

Why would the president undermine his party’s longstanding support for the two highly popular federal programs — especially when polls consistently show overwhelming majorities in both parties continue to oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits? It isn’t as if there is any great enthusiasm for Obama or his economic leadership among Democratic voters. Indeed, he and congressional Democrats only began to achieve political traction again — for the first time since the midterm elections — when the Republicans foolishly lined up behind the plan promoted by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to transform Medicare from a public entitlement to a privatized voucher.

Over the past several weeks, Democrats pressed that advantage by portraying the Republicans as defenders of tax loopholes for corporate jet owners and oil companies and enemies of middle-class families. Ideological and belligerent, the Republicans eagerly leaped into that trap. But the Democratic strategy worked so well that even the most extreme elements in the Republican leadership — such as Cantor — suddenly saw that they had closed themselves into a very dangerous box.

That is why Cantor — and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. — began to babble the usual euphemisms about “increased revenues,” “user fees” and “closing loopholes” over the past few days, using language that directly contradicts their own earlier hard-line rhetoric.

Of course, Republican support for fee hikes and closed loopholes that add up to a negligible amount — or to nothing at all, as Cantor apparently prefers — won’t satisfy Democrats who now know that pushing back works. They might well imitate Republican intransigence, accept the concessions by Kyl and Cantor, and push back even harder.

The Senate Democratic budget plan would reduce the deficit from $4 trillion to $5 trillion over the coming decade, according to Conrad’s calculations. By requiring that half of the total come from tax increases and ending tax loopholes, Conrad would raise roughly $2 trillion to match a similar amount in spending cuts, which is far more than the president has proposed. Last spring, for instance, the White House suggested that Congress should cut $3 in spending for every dollar in revenue raised.

Conrad is among the most conservative of Senate Democrats, but he is retiring after this year, which may permit him to take positions he might avoid if facing re-election in his home state. What he proposes would be fairer to American families, better for the American economy and more desirable for his party, too, than Obama’s deal.

But the restored courage demonstrated by Democratic senators in support of his plan will not accomplish much if the president is determined to capitulate on fundamental principles. Should he prove to be so foolish, then he will find himself another step closer to the end of his presidency.

To find out more about Joe Conason, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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Creators Syndicate – It’s impossible to read Ying Ma’s fascinating memoir, “Chinese Girl in the Ghetto,” without wincing. She was born in Guangzhou, China’s third largest city. Throughout her mostly carefree early childhood years, she kept her family’s secret: that her parents repeatedly sought permission to emigrate to the United States.

Her family was not poor, at least not by Chinese standards of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Yet her daily life would be considered squalid by first world standards. Her family lived in a two-bedroom apartment. She, her brother and her parents shared one bedroom (and two plank beds). Her paternal grandparents and an uncle shared the other. At times, another uncle slept in the living room. They shared the kitchen and bathroom (such as it was) with the family next door. There was no running hot water, and the toilet was a hole in the floor. The elderly had a particularly hard time crouching.

Ying Ma’s childhood was nonetheless relatively carefree. She longed for more possessions and eagerly consumed whatever Western products — like nail polish and candy — her relatives brought from nearby Hong Kong. But she excelled in school, was surrounded by friends, was doted upon by her grandfather and looked forward (here’s the wince) to a fantastic new life in America.

As a child, Ying could not comprehend the more menacing aspects of totalitarian rule. Her third grade teacher, for example, announced one day that instead of doing math, “You are all going to spend the hour confessing.” When the pupils expressed confusion, teacher Fu explained, “The school knows that each of you, or someone you know, has behaved wrongly. … Now start writing.”

Ying recalls, “I always believed my teachers. Now I was genuinely worried. Did the school already know I had relatives from Hong Kong who brought me toys and clothing from the world of the capitalist running dogs? Did it know I really, really liked American movies…?”

Panicky, she wrote about her brother’s choice to hang out with some bad elements in the seventh grade. “For days after my confession, I lived in abject horror.” She thought the police might come for her brother. She wanted to warn him, but didn’t dare, because to do so would reveal her betrayal. Such are the torments communism imposes on 8-year-olds.

In a better world, the Ying family would emigrate to the sunny uplands of the United States and bask in prosperity and freedom. Emigrate they did — but without money and speaking no English, they settled in a poor neighborhood of a poor city, Oakland, Calif. And there, Ying Ma was forced to confront some of the shameful aspects of life in this country.

Though far less poor than her classmates in China, the Oakland kids felt entitled to steal. On one of her first days in an American classroom, Ying Ma was shocked by the brazen theft of a shiny mechanical pencil one of her Chinese classmates had given her as a farewell present. Her outrage was pure:

“Every one of my former (Chinese) classmates understood stealing to be shameful. … Our parents and instructors repeatedly condemned it. Those who disobeyed were severely punished with public reprimands in class followed by potential corporal punishment at home. … In the ghetto, however, I could not count on my classmates to know right from wrong, nor could I count on the adults to ferret out fault and dispense punishment.”

In a way that counted very much to a young teenager — safety and security — Oakland was less civilized and less just than Guangzhou.

Ying Ma was also a victim of racism — though not in the way Americans are comfortable dissecting and condemning. Her mostly black and Hispanic classmates and neighbors engaged in daily racist taunts and sometimes violence. They victimized Asians of every stripe, calling Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese and Filipinos “Chinaman,” “ching chong” or “chow mein.” Black high school students screamed abuse at a middle-aged Cantonese cafeteria worker, calling her a “stupid Chinaman.” Though Ying burned with fury, she could do little to respond. “Physically, we were usually no match for those who discriminated against us. Culturally, we were predisposed to be less confrontational than our non-Asian peers.”

A black teacher who took an interest in Ying Ma and helped to place her in the “gifted” program despite her limited English is remembered gratefully, along with the black friend who stood by her when she was physically attacked by a racist (Hispanic) bully.

As with many other immigrants, the Ying family was able to escape poverty by fierce hard work, planning and mutual support. Ying Ma herself was able to go to Cornell and then Stanford Law School. Despite her difficult path, she loves America. Her journey has made her the very best kind of conservative — one whose love of liberty, order and self-reliance has been forged through gritty experience.

To find out more about Mona Charen and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM

New York – Moscow reportedly believes Moammar Gadhafi is open to stepping down. But the embattled despot may have already missed his best chance to negotiate

A Russian newspaper says Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is sending signals to Moscow that he might agree to step down if he’s given “security guarantees.” Gadhafi’s government says the report is “simply untrue,” and that the regime’s loyalists will “die to defend him.” Western diplomats also can’t confirm that Gadhafi has begun looking for a way out after a rebel advance and sustained NATO bombing. Is there really any chance he’ll give up after vowing to fight to the death? (Watch a BBC report about Russia’s role.)

Gadhafi might recognize he has no choice: “Moammar Gadhafi likes to play chess,” says Robert Zeliger at Foreign Policy, “and it may be that he sees a checkmate nearing.” His money and fuel are running out, and the rebels and NATO are pummeling what’s left of his military. He can’t let his supporters know defeat is an option, but at some point, if there’s a plane on the runway waiting to carry him to safety and freedom, he might decide the best thing to do is climb aboard.
“Could Russia broker a way out for Gadhafi?”

It might be too late: If Gadhafi wanted to make a deal, says Merv Benson at PrairiePundit, he should have spoken up months ago. “It will be more difficult to meet now than it would have been before he was indicted by the International Criminal Court.” Now he’s not simply a pariah, he’s wanted for crimes against humanity, so finding a country that will take him in “is much more complicated.”
“Gadhafi wants security guarantees if he leaves”

Plus, the rebels won’t accept Gadhafi’s terms: Even if Gadhafi agrees to step down, says Jason Ditz at Antiwar, he apparently wants his son, Saif al-Islam, to succeed him, plus immunity from prosecution, plus all his family’s frozen assets. Those terms would obviously “be a non-starter for Libya’s rebels.” The only hope for changing their minds is for NATO to get behind a rapprochement, and so far, “NATO’s hostility to peace” has made any deal unlikely.
“Russian official: Gadhafi agreed to resign if son takes over”

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New York – Terrafugia, a company that manufactures “roadable aircrafts,” scores government approval to make vehicles of the future a reality

In 1989′s Back to the Future Part II, Michael J. Fox travels in a DeLorean to the year 2015, when flying cars and hoverboards are the norm. Now, in 2011, that sci-fi fantasy is looking like it could one day be a reality… sort of. Terrafugia, the company that developed the Transition flying car, is one step closer to making its futuristic product available to the public. How does the Transition work, and when might it hit the market? Here, a brief guide:

There’s really a car that can fly?
The Transition is more accurately called a “roadable aircraft.” It’s a multi-purpose vehicle that can drive on the highway and take off on the runway. Its wings fold up neatly on its sides when its not in flight, allowing it to fit in a standard road lane while driving. (See it in action.) The Transition has been in planning stages for more than five years, and has been seeking approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

What’s the holdup?
For one thing, the windshield specifications don’t meet normal automobile standards, so Terrafugia needed special exemptions from the NHTSA before it makes the vehicle commercially available. The laminated safety glass ordinarily required for cars’ windshields would be too heavy for an aircraft, and could easily crack, obscuring the pilot’s view. The company needed special approval to use a more lightweight polycarbonate windshield, which, as a bonus, can “withstand impacts with birds,” says Jonathan Welsh at The Wall Street Journal.

Anything else?
Indeed. There was also a conflict over wheels, as the NHTSA needed to give Terrafugia an exemption to use tires required by the FAA to withstand the impact of landings. Last year, the FAA also granted permission for the Transition to weigh 110 pounds more than is normally allowed for “light sport aircraft,” says Nic Halverson at Discovery News.

When will this flying contraption be available?
Now that it’s received the special exemptions, Terrafugia said it expects to begin delivering the first few Transition vehicles late next year.

How much would it cost?
The car of the future carries a hefty price tag. The price for the “casual motorist” is expected to be $250,000. And that’s not the only thing that could turn off potential customers: The Transition’s maximum load is only 330 pounds, says Anthony Ingram at All Car Tech.

So, “watch out, George Jetson”?
Not quite. Inevitably, commuters are hearing this news and fantasizing about being able to beat rush hour traffic “simply by flying over it,” says Unthinkable. But that may not be entirely plausible. The Transition does need a runway to take off and land on, after all. The biggest advantage of the car may be the ability to drive to an airport and then immediately take off. Unless you happen to live on a quiet road. Then “you could really impress the kids if they’re fans of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

Sources: All Car Tech, Digital Trends, Discovery News, Unthinkable, Wall Street Journal

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New York – The Obama administration warns that terrorists might try to sew explosives inside suicide bombers to get through airport checkpoints

The FBI and Homeland Security Department are warning airlines that terrorists might try to surgically implant bombs inside terrorists to get by airport security. Intelligence officials have been saying for months that al Qaeda was actively working on hiding bombs inside humans, putting them in the bellies of men or breast implants in women. The tactic — known as “body packing” — has worked for drug traffickers, who sometimes sew narcotics inside couriers. But terrorists have tried — and failed — to blow up planes with bombs in their shoes and underpants. Could they really succeed with exploding implants?

This could be a serious new threat: “Crotch bombs, printer bombs, now this,” says Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs. The Obama administration, despite this warning, insists there’s no imminent danger to airlines. Yet these “belly bombs” would be specifically designed to get past airport security measures in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. Sounds like we can add one more threat to worry about in the war against Islamist extremists.
“Islamic jihad’s latest: ‘Belly bomb’ developed to beat airport security”

We just have to figure out how to spot implanted bombs: Americans erupted in outrage when the Transportation Security Administration started using screeners that could see through our clothes, says William Saletan at Slate, but it turns out they didn’t go far enough. “Now that the U.S. government is sounding international alarms about implanted explosives, the next step in ‘Hide the Bomb’ is obvious: Airport scanners that can see not just through your clothes, but through your whole body.”
“Sew-inside bombers”

There is no need to panic: In theory, this could be a devastating tactic, says investigative journalist J.M. Berger, as quoted by The Orange County Register. Fortunately, “it would be extraordinarily difficult to make it happen.” Most terrorists “can’t even manage to set their shoes or underwear on fire, let alone perform surgery on themselves, then build a bomb, then detonate it.
“U.S. warns of breast implant bombs”

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New York – With the financial credibility of our nation at stake, and both parties facing massive political risks, lawmakers might agree to a grand bargain after all

This president wasn’t elected to abet the dismantling of the New Deal and the Great Society. That’s change we can’t believe in. But if a stalemate on raising the debt ceiling sets back the recovery, or double dips the economy into renewed recession, Barack Obama may have bigger problems than a damaged re-election campaign.

The Republicans in Congress weren’t elected to acquiesce on tax increases. Ronald Reagan raised taxes after promising to cut them, and repeatedly proposed and signed higher debt limits. Of course, that was then and this is now — before the GOP morphed into a cult. But Republicans are still a party with a House majority that has to be re-elected — and they might not be if they bear a hefty share of the blame for another financial collapse and global economic crisis. Instead of scheming to replace John Boehner as House speaker, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), a latter day Newt Gingrich, albeit in better shape, could find himself competing for minority leader.

Ineluctable realities suggest that the debt limit negotiations now underway could end in a deal after traversing the political equivalent of “the Perils of Pauline.” After deadlocks, walkouts, threats, and partisan intransigence, there are five factors pushing both sides toward an unhappy agreement — which I won’t like, progressives will assail, and the Tea Party will have trouble swallowing — but which is the least bad alternative compared to potentially hundred of billions, or trillions, in lost financial value, and millions of lost jobs.

First, no one can be certain who would pay the electoral price for this catastrophe. GOP presidential candidates can calculate that voters would punish Obama for the economic pain. They may be right. But surely the White House has a Plan B to pin the blame on Congressional Republicans. If the worst happens, all eyes will turn to the president; for once in this fragmented media culture, he will command the bully pulpit. His narrative could carry the day, and the next year, dooming GOP chances to take the Senate, or even keep the House. Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell proclaim that their highest priority is to defeat Obama, but self preservation undoubtedly ranks higher.

Second, the president can let the GOP off the hook of Rep. Paul Ryan’s anti-Medicare plan – a hook which Republicans themselves baited, then swallowed, but could choke on in 2012. Obama will never agree to replace Medicare with vouchers. But he can, and likely will, offer “reforms” — for example, trimming reimbursement rates and payments to hospitals, nursing homes, and drug companies. He will pledge that this involves no reduction in Medicare benefits for the elderly. Medicaid is another story, but here, too, he can argue that the cost savings will come from providers, from eliminating waste and inefficiencies. The lobbyists will work overtime to block such measures, but the GOP may find it hard to do this bit of special interest bidding.

The one element of “ObamaCare” that Republicans don’t want to repeal — indeed the Ryan plan relies on it — are the savings already enacted from Medicare. The provisions were cynically and fraudulently denounced as “rationing;” in fact, there is evidence that they are beginning to shift the focus of medical services from quantity to quality — from number of procedures to effectiveness of outcomes.

Democrats will bridle at letting Republicans off the Medicare hook by easing their shift from Ryan to an alternative plan. Still, that seems safer than Democrats having to run next year amid economic wreckage; once more, no one can be sure who would be hit hardest by the falling debris. (And in any case, Democrats would continue to accuse the other side of seeking to “end Medicare as we know it” — since most Republicans in Congress voted in lockstep to do just that. Bring on the ads.)

Third, there are ways to raise additional revenues, despite the fulminations of someone named Grover Norquist, someone most Americans have never heard of, who functions as the anti-tax Torquemada, the unelected ideological grand inquisitor of elected Republicans in Washington. In the end, can the GOP really afford to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States in a last ditch defense of tax loopholes for hedge fund managers and Gulfstream V jets?

In addition, it’s possible to raise taxes without raising taxes — by replacing the current cost of living formula, which keeps individuals paying less in a lower tax bracket for a longer time, with a formula that many economists regard as more accurate. Conveniently, more people would then be more swiftly pushed into a higher bracket and pay more income tax sooner. This would provide cover for Republicans who claim that they hadn’t raised tax rates. Similarly, a deal could lower the corporate tax rate in return for shutting down corporate loopholes. Most companies would be satisfied with that — even if this increased net revenues at the expense of some companies.

Fourth, a change in the cost of living formula could also modulate spending on Social Security and other federal pension programs. This would be the unkindest cut of all for Democrats; over time it would reduce benefits by 3 percent, rising to a 9 percent cut for seniors who live to 95. It’s unfair, but it may also be inescapable: No way would Republicans accept a new cost of living formula applied to taxes that doesn’t also apply to benefits.

This deal, or anything like it, would be unpalatable for both liberals and the Tea Party. Boehner couldn’t round up enough Republican votes to pass it in the House without substantial Democratic support. So as negotiations move toward decision, Nancy Pelosi can no longer be treated as the half-forgotten congressional leader. She will have to be a full participant. And wherever she ultimately stands, enough House Democrats will have to hold their noses and vote for the final product. She might be able to demand something the president wants, too — an extension of the payroll tax holiday, which would boost the economy through 2012. And Obama will bargain to backload the spending cuts and tax rises for consumers so that they take effect as the recovery picks up, rather than draining demand and depressing the economy.

There is a delicate balance here, nearly an impossible one. But the president does hold the high card and so far he has deployed it skillfully. It’s the fifth factor that can make the difference. If Republicans reject all reasonable compromise, Obama could invoke the 14th Amendment’s prohibition against questioning the “validity of the public debt of the United States” — which has already been “authorized by law” through spending measures enacted by the Congress. Thus the president could simply ignore the debt limit. This would provoke a constitutional confrontation unequaled since Harry Truman seized the steel industry during the Korean War. But the industry had standing to sue — its property was being taken — and the suit was won in the Supreme Court. In this situation, legal experts generally agree that no one, including Congress, would have standing to successfully challenge Obama in court. Obviously, the GOP would try to mount such a challenge. As the confrontation unfolded, markets might be destabilized anyway — although certainly to a lesser degree then in the event of a default.

The president has refused to take this card off the table — and that can pressure Republicans to a compromise. At the same time, he’s made it plain that he won’t turn to this nuclear option for the sake of an all-or-nothing Democratic deal — and that can pressure members of his own party to compromise as well.

So a grand bargain just may be struck — even if it isn’t so grand from a progressive point of view. But at least Obama will then have preserved the fundamentals of the social safety net and the prospect of a sustained recovery.

Finally there is truth but no point in insisting that the debt limit should never have been misused as a political and ideological football — that senators and representatives who take their oath seriously should never contemplate crushing the financial credibility of the nation. But we are where we are. Across the negotiating table, Democrats and Republicans are eyeball to eyeball. Time is short. The territory is uncharted. The stakes for jobs, for the economy, and for our democracy itself are high. The question is: Will both sides blink?

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How many months of man-hours did Florida police spend searching for little Caylee Anthony back in 2008, while her mother, Casey Anthony, knew exactly where the child’s body was?

If you were the victim of a crime in Orlando, Fla., between July and December 2008, you should be enraged that the police couldn’t prevent or investigate your crime because they were too busy looking for a missing child whose mother already knew the kid was dead.

It’s a zero-sum game with police resources. Cops combing through the woods searching for a missing child are not going to be patrolling your street or arresting suspects.

From repeat domestic violence calls to Los Angeles car chases, hit-and-run drivers and the balloon-boy hoax, worthless louts consume vastly more law enforcement resources than the rest of us. Cops in any town will tell you all the domestic violence calls come from the exact same homes, over and over again.

As long as we’re looking for new revenue streams, how about billing these white trash low-lifes for their massive consumption of police resources? The dregs of society need to be assessed a fee for their abuse of government services and thrown in debtors prison in the unlikely event that they can’t pay.

As I described in my last book, “Guilty,” the leading cause of all social pathologies is single motherhood. One way or another, Casey Anthony’s refusal to give up Caylee for adoption was going to cost society — and cost Caylee.

The statistics are so jaw-dropping that not giving up an illegitimate child for adoption ought to be considered child abuse.

Various studies have shown that children raised by a single mother comprise about 70 percent of juvenile murderers, delinquents, teenaged mothers, drug abusers, dropouts, suicides and runaways. Imagine an America with 70 percent fewer of these social disorders and you will see what liberals’ destruction of marriage has wrought.

A 1990 study by the (liberal) Progressive Policy Institute showed that, after controlling for single motherhood, the difference in black and white crime rates disappeared.

Meanwhile, adopted kids, on average, turn out better than even biological kids raised in two-parent families.

Of course, there aren’t a lot of studies of adopted children because they aren’t constantly mugging us. They’re too busy running Oracle (Larry Ellison), the District of Columbia (Anthony Williams), or fantastic political websites, like “Big Government” (Andrew Breitbart).

One four-year study by the Search Institute in Minnesota found that adopted teenagers had greater empathy, higher self-esteem and more close friends than non-adopted teenagers in public schools, and were also less likely to engage in high-risk behavior, such as stealing and excessive drinking. In all, they scored higher than the control group on 16 indicators of well-being.

They were as strongly attached to their parents as their non-adopted siblings. Indeed, contrary to Hollywood movies portraying adopted kids mystically driven to find their biological parents, the majority of adopted teenagers rarely thought about the fact that they were adopted. (Apple’s Steve Jobs has shown little interest in his biological father and corrects people who refer to his “adoptive parents,” saying, “They were my parents.”)

We could wipe out chronic poverty in America tomorrow — and the new iPad would be even more awesome, if such a thing were possible! — if only women would get married before having children or give up their illegitimate kids for adoption.

And yet, between 1979 and 2003, we went from about 600,000 babies being born out of wedlock, with about a quarter of them put up for adoption, to 1.5 million illegitimate births with fewer than 1 percent of them (14,000) given up for adoption. That’s why Angelina Jolie and Madonna are constantly having to break up tribal wars to adopt Third World children.

A 2008 study led by Georgia State University economist Benjamin Scafidi conservatively estimated that single mothers cost the U.S. taxpayer $112 billion every year — in addition to asking the rest of us to keep an eye on their kids while they go clubbing.

We could have had two Iraq wars — Obama could have “saved or created” half a million stimulus jobs — at that price.

But in fact, Scafidi underestimated single mothers’ burden to society by excluding additional costs of single mothers to poverty programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit.

That makes his estimates very low: Single mothers are six times more likely to be in poverty than married families. More than 80 percent of homeless families are single mothers.

Scafidi’s study also did not consider the burden single mothers place on law enforcement because of their higher likelihood to neglect or kill their children.

Eighty-five percent of mothers who kill their children through neglect are single mothers.

The plague of single motherhood isn’t an inevitable decay brought on by stupid choices of the underclass. Destroying the family is the active social policy of liberals. They enjoy experimenting with other people’s lives and leaving the taxpayer with the bill.

The mainstream media and Hollywood studios are constantly issuing propaganda about the joys and triumphs of single mothers.

Thus, for example, the noted scientific periodical Us Weekly celebrated single motherhood with an article titled “The New Single Moms and How They Do It,” which delusionally proclaimed that the “sisters are doing it for themselves.”

No, they’re not. They’re “doing it” at an enormous and unasked-for cost to every man, woman and child in America. They’re doing it at incalculable cost to the children themselves, such as helpless, innocent Caylee.

A 2007 New York Times op-ed column about three gold-diggers fighting for custody of Anna Nicole Smith’s illegitimate daughter said: “Surely this change is a welcome corrective to the injustice of traditional marriage laws and family values that stigmatized ‘bastards’ for life.”

Except one can’t help noticing how many more illegitimate children there are — and the accompanying child abuse, neglect, suicide, runaways and murders — now that the stigma is gone.

New York – Not everyone is so sure that Mark Zuckerberg’s Skype-integrated video chat is as groundbreaking and “awesome” as he says

Last week, Facebook head honcho Mark Zuckerberg teased that his company was about to “launch something awesome.” On Wednesday, he unveiled the awesomeness, delivering a handful of new Facebook features. First and foremost among them, Skype video chat will be integrated into the mammoth social network. But, given the widespread availability of video chat on a number of platforms, some aren’t so sure Zuckerberg delivered on his big promise. Is Facebook video chat really so awesome? (Watch an AP report about Facebook’s new feature.)

Yes… from a business standpoint: This could be “really really sexy and exciting,” says Patricia Handschiegel at Daily Patricia. The telecom industry is on edge of a major shakeup. With features like Skype-integrated video chat, “Facebook could become telecom competition, or even better for investors, a telecom acquisition.” It’s still early on, but change is imminent. “For almost a decade, carriers have kept voice calling via the internet mostly to themselves. Now, Facebook is going to put it at the fingertips of its hundreds of millions of users.
“Go Facebook go”

It’s OK, but hardly awesome: This is “just another feature,” and one few people will use, says Dan Costa at PCMag. Sure, Facebook’s implementation is “pretty elegant,” but video chat has been around a long time, on many platforms, from AIM to Yahoo Messenger to Skype itself. And, Facebook video chat doesn’t even work on mobile devices. As I see it, the video chat audience is pretty much limited to people with children, and those who like to show naked pictures of themselves to others online. “There is no reason Facebook shouldn’t include it… but I wouldn’t call it ‘awesome.’”
“Facebook video chat: So what, big deal”

This is really disappointing: “To call this new feature ‘awesome’ is just delusional,” says Casey Johnston at ARS Technica. It might have been “awesome” in 2005, but now “Facebook video chat is just licking the bowl to find the few remaining customers who might want to video chat with each other but haven’t made it that far for whatever reason.”
“Analysis: Facebook video chatting handy, definitely not ‘awesome’”

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New York – From 2004 to 2008, the number of American moms giving birth at home increased dramatically. Why?

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, home births were on the decline. But in recent years, they’ve seen an “astounding” surge in popularity. From 2004 to 2008, home births increased by 20 percent. Of course, home births still represent less than 1 percent of total births. Of the 4.2 million babies born from 2004 to 2008, 28,357 were born at home, according to a recently released CDC study. But the tally of home births is still trending upward. What’s behind the rise? Here, five theories:

1. Home births are no longer just for hippies
“At first, in the 1970s, it was largely a hippie, countercultural thing to give birth outside of the hospital,” says Robbie Davis-Floyd, a medical anthropologist, as quoted by Care2. “Over the years, as the formerly ‘lay’ midwives have become far more sophisticated, so has their clientele.”

2. And home births have gotten hip
“The ‘hipness’ of home birth was signaled in 2008 by the release of The Business of Being Born, a documentary produced by Ricki Lake, which extolled the virtues of home birth,” says Amelia T. at Care2. The film was controversial, but it was also popular, and it brought home birth into the mainstream.

3. Women are taking charge
“Finally, women are taking childbirth back!” says Jacqueline Burt at The Stir. “For decades, mainstream medicine has handled childbirth with the same alarmist regulatory practices they use for procedures like open heart surgery,” and, at last, women are realizing that it doesn’t have to be that way. “Our bodies are built to deliver babies.”

4. It’s a backlash against C-sections
“Some home birthers cite concerns over Caesarean sections,” says Leanna Italia for the Associated Press. “The U.S. rate of C-sections in hospitals hovers around 32 percent, soaring up to 60 percent in some areas.” The rise of home births might be, in part, a response to the Caesarean birth boom, a “too posh to push” mentality, and the rise of scheduled inductions for the convenience of all involved.

5. They’re cheaper, and, some say, safer
“While home births are appealing because they’re less expensive, especially for the uninsured, they’re also safer for low-risk births than going to a hospital,” says Amelia T. For women who are unlikely to have complications, giving birth at home means more personalized care and “a more individualized experience.”

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New York – NASA has big plans for life after the space shuttle retires. But can it turn them into reality?

As NASA prepares for the last flight of the 30-year space shuttle program, astronauts and scientists are leaving the space agency in droves. The brain drain threatens to undermine what is already an uncertain future for NASA once the shuttle Atlantis completes its final trip. And for the foreseeable future, the U.S. will have to pay Russia to carry astronauts into orbit on Soyuz rockets. Where will America’s space program go from here?

NASA is in real trouble: With the shuttle’s retirement, the U.S. is “looking at a yawning gap in human spaceflight,” says Martin Barstow, a Leicester University space science professor, as quoted by Britain’s Guardian. It could be a decade before NASA gets astronauts aloft again, and in the meantime, America’s appetite for space exploration could fade. “It may come back, but I see a lot of things losing momentum.”
“Space shuttle retirement leaves ‘yawning gap’ in human spaceflight”

Actually, this will free NASA to shoot higher: “We were in much the same place in the 1970s,” says Phil Plait in the New York Post, when people were predicting the space agency’s demise after the end of the Apollo moon shots. Then along came the shuttle, and NASA’s mission changed to making low-orbit flight more routine. Now, with private companies able to take over launches to low orbit, NASA will be “free to pursue literally loftier goals,” sending humans farther into space than ever before.
“One small step”

Don’t be too quick to buy NASA’s rosy outlook: NASA leaders insist the space agency will fund private companies that will send astronauts to low-Earth orbit, says Eric Berger at the Houston Chronicle, while it works on sending people to Mars a couple decades down the road. “It all sounds great,” but it won’t be easy to develop the kind of heavy-lift rocket we’ll need to go deeper into space. “NASA doesn’t exactly have a good history of sticking with the development of new programs.” So it’s hard to be too confident that NASA’s future is as bright as it says.
“Are you buying NASA’s happy talk on the future of human spaceflight?”

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New York – Even the founder of online matchmaker eHarmony says couples planning to take the plunge should reconsider

Judging by the statistics, marriage has seen better days. Census figures indicate that for the first time ever, married couples make up fewer than half of American households, and a Pew survey late last year found that an increasing number of people believe marriage is “obsolete.” Now, psychologist Neil Clark Warren, founder of online matchmaker eHarmony, says at The Huffington Post that hundreds of thousands of the more than 2 million U.S. couples who will get married this year should wait, or call the whole thing off, because they’re poor matches and will just drag down the institution further. Is marriage really in such bad shape?

It’s not the institution it used to be: The old idea that you have to get married to be happy is dead, says Briana Rognlin at Blisstree. “There are all kinds of relationships that can be fulfilling and great — even if they don’t last a lifetime and aren’t officially registered under the state.” Go ahead and walk down the aisle if you’ve found a truly compatible partner, but if you’re just doing it because you think you’re supposed to, maybe you should call it off.
“eHarmony founder’s advice in love: Don’t get married”

A strong, healthy marriage is still the ideal: Enough with the doom and gloom, says Dawn Damalas Meehan at Babble. “More than 70 percent of adults under the age of 30 say they wish to get married someday. That doesn’t sound like marriage is becoming obsolete to me.” We’re all happier when we have someone we can share our lives with — the trick is making sure we’ve found the right person for the long haul.
“Marriage isn’t obsolete. Yet”

Marriage can make a comeback: It odd for the eHarmony guy to be declaring that “marriage is passé,” considering his vocation, says Amarelle Wenkert at BlackBook. Maybe he was shaken by news of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s divorce from Maria Shriver. But chin up. “Perhaps with gay endorsement, marriage will be made cool again, just like boat parties, dim sum, and Aol.”
“eHarmony founder declares institution of marriage dead”

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