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We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for May 3, 2013

Fri May. 3, 2013 6:39 AM PDT

M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks, AAVP7 RAM/RS amphibious assault vehicles, and an M88A1 Hercules from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit train during an exercise in the 5th Fleet area of responsibility, April 23, 2013. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Edward Guevara.

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Europe Bans Bee-Harming Pesticides; US Keeps Spraying

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| Fri May. 3, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

On Monday, the European Commission voted to place a two-year moratorium on most uses of neonicotinoid pesticides, which are a widely used class of chemicals suspected of contributing to a severe global decline in honeybee health.

In the wake of Europe's decisive action, the US Environmental Protection Agency dithered. Well, it did release a joint report with the US Department of Agriculture on Thursday, generated from a "National Honey Bee Health Stakeholder Conference" the two agencies held last fall. The report fingered no single culprit behind colony collapse disorder, the name for the steep annual bee die-offs that have been stumping beekeepers since 2006. Instead, it pointed to a "complex set of stressors and pathogens," including poor nutrition (mainly from loss of flowering weeds due to increased herbicide use), viruses, gut parasites, and, yes, pesticides. But it includes a summary of a presentation by USDA scientist Jeff Pettis noting that "several studies" have shown that low-level exposure to neonics make bees more vulnerable to the common gut parasite Nosema. (Pettis himself is the coauthor of one of those studies.)

Yet, as Natural Resources Defense Council senior scientist Jennifer Sass put it in a Thursday blog post, the joint EPA/USDA report limits itself to "recommendations about best management practices and technical advancements for applying pesticides to reduce dust," while avoiding "recommendations that would reduce the overall sales and profits for chemical makers."

Nor does the report express much urgency; it promises an "action plan [that] will outline major priorities to be addressed in the next 5-10 years."

In the United States, neonic-treated crops cover a land mass equivalent to as much as twice the size of California.

Meanwhile, the European Commission's decisive action came amid what the Guardian called a "fierce behind-the-scenes campaign" to stop it from Syngenta and Bayer, the Europe-based chemical giants that market them. The move was prompted by a January report by the European Food Safety Authority, which identified "high acute risks" for bees from exposure to neonic-treated crops like corn and sunflower. And studies from independent researchers implicating neonics in declining bee health have mounted.

Even before the decision, France, Italy, Slovenia, and Bayer's home country, Germany, had all suspend use of the chemicals pending more research on bee health. Now neonics will face severe restriction in all 27 European Union countries for two-year period starting December 1, 2013, during which time the commission will continue its assessment of their impact.

The move trains a harsh light on the EPA, which approved the chemicals based on what its own scientists have called flawed research and is currently reviewing them in light of the threat to bees and other pollinators. Earlier this month, an agency spokesperson told CBS News that the review would take five years—meaning that they'll continue to be used widely on farmland in the US during that period. As I reported a while back, neonic-treated crops cover between 150 million to 200 million acres of farmland in the US each year—a land mass equivalent to as much as twice the size of California.

I contacted the EPA to ask whether the EC decision might speed the agency's timeline on reassessing neonics and their threat to bees. The response, in an emailed statement: "At this time, the data available to the EPA do not support a moratorium." The time frame for completing the reassessment remains in place, the statement added, with this caveat: "If at any time the EPA determines there are urgent human and/or environmental risks from pesticide exposures that require prompt attention, the agency will take appropriate regulatory action, regardless of the registration review status of that pesticide."

 

Yes, People Are Giving Their Pets Medical Marijuana

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| Fri May. 3, 2013 3:00 AM PDT
Photoillustration based on a photo by Pashin Georgy/Shutterstock.

Is it ever a good idea to get your dog or cat stoned? California veterinarian Doug Kramer says the answer depends on whether your pet could be classified as a medical marijuana patient.

"I do think there are therapeutic benefits to it," says Kramer, who some years ago found that his homemade pot tinctures helped his own dog, a husky named Nikita, fight pain and regain her appetite after she came down with cancer.

Despite the spread of medical pot laws around the country, marijuana still remains taboo within the veterinary establishment; its medical journals won't publish anything about it, and Kramer is one of the few veterinarians even willing to discuss using medical marijuana for pets. He points out that a slew of medical studies on the effects of pot have relied on rats and dogs as substitutes for humans, suggesting that "mammals have the same cannabinoid receptors as humans do" and "would benefit in the same ways."

[Read more]

Yes, There Sure Are a Lot of Vacancies in the Executive Branch

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 10:28 PM PDT

Whose fault is it that there are so many vacancies in the executive branch? The New York Times investigates:

The White House faults an increasingly partisan confirmation process in the Senate and what officials say are over-the-top demands for information about every corner of a nominee’s life. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew received 444 questions from senators before his confirmation, more than the seven previous Treasury nominees combined, according to data compiled by the White House. Gina McCarthy, Mr. Obama’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, got 1,000 questions from the Senate, White House officials said.

....But members of Congress and a number of agency officials say the bottleneck is at the White House, where nominees remain unannounced as the legal and personnel offices conduct time-consuming background checks aimed at discovering the slightest potential problem that could hold up a confirmation. People who have gone through the vetting in Mr. Obama’s White House describe a grueling process, lasting weeks or months, in which lawyers and political operatives search for anything that might hint at scandal.

Frankly, I'm surprised there's anyone left in the entire country who's willing to go through the modern vetting process just to be an assistant deputy secretary of something or other. The whole process has gotten way, way out of hand.

But what's the answer? Certainly part of the answer is to cut way back on the number of these appointments that require Senate approval. Another part of the answer is some kind of truce about what counts as disqualifying in a nominee. Beyond that, I'm not sure. But the article is worth reading, since this has long been a sore spot for a lot of liberals.

Keeping Up With the Latest Benghazi Conspiracy Theories

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 9:45 PM PDT

Have you been keeping up with the latest on Benghazi! Yeah, me neither. But I guess it's time to correct that. It turns out there are two new developments that the wingers are pretty sure will finally blow the lid off the whole thing.

First up is a dramatically anonymous "military special ops member" who told Fox News that there was a team based in Croatia that could have been scrambled to Benghazi in time to do....something:

“I know for a fact that C-110, the EUCOM CIF, was doing a training exercise in ... not in the region of North Africa, but in Europe,” the operator told Fox News' Adam Housley. “And they had the ability to act and to respond.”

....“We had the ability to load out, get on birds and fly there, at a minimum stage,” the operator told Fox News. “C-110 had the ability to be there, in my opinion, in a matter of about four hours...four to six hours.” Being so close, C-110s would have been able to respond had there been a second attack, the source added.

And why are we only hearing about this now? Because everyone who knew about it was afraid to come forward, natch. You know how ruthless Obama can be. Today, though, Billy Birdzell, a former special ops team leader, pretty much torched the whole conspiracy theory. He makes three points. First, Obama ordered the C-110 group to launch at 2:39 am. Four hours later the attacks were over, so the team couldn't possibly have gotten there in time to stop anything. Second, even if they'd been launched earlier, it's fantasy to think they could have gotten to the compound within four to six hours. Third, even if, miraculously, they could have gotten there in time, they couldn't have done anything to stop mortar fire, which is what killed the two consulate guards in the annex.

"The person in the interview is a clown," says Birdzell. Click the link for his extremely persuasive full analysis.

So that's one down, but next up are four, count 'em, four anonymous whistleblowers who are said to be "career-level officials at the State Department and the CIA." One of the State Department whistleblowers is represented by Victoria Toensing, a longtime Republican operative whose name you might recall from both the Monica Lewinsky and Valerie Plame affairs. Ed Henry of Fox News asked Obama about all this at his press conference on Tuesday, but apparently even the vast apparatus of the West Wing can't keep up with the latest Republican conspiracy theories on Benghazi. Obama had no idea what he was talking about. In any case, supposedly the four whistleblowers will be testifying in front of Darrell Issa's oversight committee next week:

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, has promised bombshells at the hearing, which he says will “expose new facts and details that the Obama administration has tried to suppress.”

....Lawyers Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, who say they are trying to represent Benghazi witnesses who want to testify publicly about what they know, on Thursday repeated claims that access to their clients was being inhibited by pressure from unidentified administration officials. Mr. diGenova said on Fox News that the hurdles he faced amounted to a “cover-up” and that the Accountability Review Board failed to interview key witnesses for its report, starting with Mrs. Clinton.

And not only did Obama try to "suppress" this bombshell testimony, but now that he's (apparently) failed, the four officials from State and CIA are in considerable danger thanks to their decision to come forward. Issa has so far declined to provide the names of next week's witnesses because, he claims, he's concerned about "possible retaliation whistleblowers could face at the hands of administration officials."

What's it all about? Beats me, but among other things I gather the witnesses are going to rehash old charges about Hillary Clinton turning down requests for more security at the Benghazi consulate and dropping the ball on the night of the attacks. There's also a bunch of background sniping involved in the whole thing, including Toensing's claim that the State Department refused to give her a security clearance and Issa's pique over the rules under which his committee has been allowed to view documents. Beyond that, who knows? I guess we'll find out next week.

George Washington Himself Could Not Get a Revenue Increase Out of the Modern Republican Party

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 3:25 PM PDT

Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part 3:

Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.

You know, I don't really enjoy writing endlessly about Barack Obama's essential powerlessness when it comes to dealing with an increasingly fanatic Republican Party. It's just so damn gloomy and special pleadingish. But I keep getting pulled back in. Today, a friend of mine emails with a short summary of Ron Fournier's appearance on Morning Joe today:

John Heilemann asked Fournier the same question that everyone asks Fournier, which he dodges: well, what would you have the President do? Fournier then said, "let me turn that question back on you" and went off a tangent, but not without dropping in at the end of the segment that Obama can get revenue increases if he just engages with the Republicans. I yelled at the television and scared my 4 year-old. Did he really say that? Yes, he did.

I just don't get it. What does it take to convince the Dowds and Milbanks and Fourniers of the world? How can any of them still believe that Republicans will ever agree to real revenue increases? George Washington himself could rise from the grave and the House Republican caucus wouldn't agree to pass a revenue increase for him. What then? Would Dowd and Milbank and Fournier sigh theatrically and mourn the fact that Washington just isn't the leader he used to be?

Republicans aren't going to let Obama raise revenues. They aren't going to let Obama pass a gun bill—even a watered-down one. They aren't going to let Obama close Guantánamo. They aren't going to let Obama fill the vacancies on the DC Circuit Court. They aren't going to help Obama implement Obamacare. They aren't going to let Obama address climate change. Period.

They've made this crystal clear to anyone who asks. They are true believers and there's nothing Obama, or Fournier, or anyone else can offer them that would break through their glinty-eyed zealotry. There are no deals to be made, no leverage that can be used, and no schmoozing that will change their minds. This isn't an Obama problem, it's a Republican Party problem. Why is such a simple and unambiguous fact so hard to acknowledge?

But just to keep things on an even keel around here, go read Jon Chait's "What Obama Can Actually Do About Congress." I endorse all of it. So you see, I agree that there are things Obama could do better, just as there are issues (like Guantánamo detainees) where Obama himself bears some of the blame for our current gridlock.

Now, none of Chait's suggestions would actually make more than a hair's breadth of difference. But Obama should do them anyway. After all, you never know, do you?

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Want to Get Married? Buy a Cable Modem.

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 12:11 PM PDT

Via Brenda Cronin, here's a fascinating study suggesting that faster adoption of broadband internet leads to higher marriage rates. The author, Andriana Bellou of the University of Montreal, presents the basic regression chart on the right, and then runs through a variety of tests to find out whether this is really a causal relationship. After all, maybe tech-friendly places have always produced higher marriage rates. Or maybe sociable people like the internet and also like getting married. Or it could be that causality runs in the other direction: maybe people who are more likely to get married are also more likely to move to tech-friendly places. Etc.

Bellou takes a variety of strategies to test causality. For example, it turns out that broadband penetration in 2000-05 doesn't predict marriage rates in the pre-internet era (1990-95). This suggests that her results aren't due to something special about the geographic areas that eventually adopted broadband at high rates.

Long story short, her conclusion is that this association is probably causal. Other things equal, better access to the internet really does produce a greater number of marriages. eHarmony really does work.

In a way, this isn't too surprising, but there's obviously a lot of noise in the data. I'll be interested to see if her result holds up once the rest of the world starts banging away on it.

"How Not To Die"

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 11:30 AM PDT

From Dr. Angelo Volandes, on the way physicians routinely treat patients near the end of life:

Physicians are good people. They want to do the right things. And yet all of us, behind closed doors, in the cafeteria, say, "Do you believe what we did to that patient? Do you believe what we put that patient through?" Every single physician has stories. Not one. Lots of stories.

Volandes is making a series of stark videos that he hopes might change that:

The first film he made featured a patient with advanced dementia. It showed her inability to converse, move about, or feed herself. When Volandes finished the film, he ran a randomized clinical trial with a group of nine other doctors. All of their patients listened to a verbal description of advanced dementia, and some of them also watched the video. All were then asked whether they preferred life-prolonging care (which does everything possible to keep patients alive), limited care (an intermediate option), or comfort care (which aims to maximize comfort and relieve pain).

The results were striking: patients who had seen the video were significantly more likely to choose comfort care than those who hadn’t seen it (86 percent versus 64 percent).

Volandes published that study in 2009, following it a year later with an even more striking trial, this one showing a video to patients dying of cancer. Of those who saw it, more than 90 percent chose comfort care—versus 22 percent of those who received only verbal descriptions. The implications, to Volandes, were clear: “Videos communicate better than just a stand-alone conversation. And when people get good communication and understand what’s involved, many, if not most, tend not to want a lot of the aggressive stuff that they’re getting.”

Jonathan Rauch has the rest of the story here. It's worth a read.

Republicans Not Even Pretending Anymore That They Aren't the Party of the Rich

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 10:38 AM PDT

Obviously I haven't been keeping up with Republican shenanigans at the state level. I knew about all the abortion restrictions, and I knew about all the voting restrictions. But somehow I missed this:

Friction over tax policy within the GOP has flared in states such as Louisiana, Nebraska, Kansas and Ohio, as Republican lawmakers raise concerns over projected revenue losses from income-tax cuts. Three of those states shelved big income-tax cuts that would be paid for by broadening the sales tax, and in Kansas, legislators will return next week to a continuing debate over the size and speed of proposed cuts.

Last week, the Indiana legislature passed a plan giving Gov. Mike Pence an income-tax cut that was smaller and phased in over a longer period than his original proposal. Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin agreed to an income-tax-cut deal with Republican lawmakers, but they postponed it until 2015 over revenue concerns. North Carolina lawmakers have been discussing a tax overhaul for months but haven't come up with a plan.

Really? I knew about Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, and his plan to scrap the (progressive) state income tax and make up the revenue by raising the (regressive) state sales tax. But Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma, and North Carolina have all been contemplating the same thing?

WTF? Is this now a conservative thing? Did ALEC or the Heritage Foundation release a white paper about this last year? What possible excuse can they be offering for such a direct tradeoff between lower taxes on the well-off and higher taxes on the middle class? Why risk their reputations on such a transparent sop to the rich? Have they now officially given up even pretending?

Obama Administration Continues Blocking Access to Emergency Contraception

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 10:14 AM PDT

On Wednesday night, President Barack Obama's administration indicated that is challenging an April court decision that would make emergency contraception available to everyone without a prescription. The announcement means that, after a decade of fighting between reproductive rights advocates and the Food and Drug Administration over this issue, there's still no resolution.

In 2011, the FDA approved Plan B One-Step, one of the most common forms of emergency contraception, for purchase over-the-counter for all women. But the Department of Health and Human Services overruled the FDA, instead making it available without a prescription only to women ages 17 and older. Reproductive rights groups sued, and on April 5, Federal District Court Judge Edward R. Korman issued a scathing decision that said that the administration's policy was "was politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent." His ruling directed HHS and the FDA to make emergency contraception available to all by May 5.

On Wednesday evening, however, the Department of Justice announced that it is appealing Korman's ruling. "The Court's Order interferes with and thereby undermines the regulatory procedures governing FDA's drug approval process," said the DOJ in a statement.

The DOJ statement is misleading. The FDA actually approved Plan B for women of all ages in 2011. Then HHS interfered.

The appeal comes a day after the FDA announced that it has approved the sale of Plan B One-Step to women ages 15-and-over without a prescription. In its announcement, the FDA claimed that decision "is independent of" the lawsuit and "is not intended to address the judge's ruling." However, as Washington Post's Sarah Kliff reports, the DOJ's appeal uses the FDA's decision to make its case:

The Justice Department, in fact, relied on that new decision to argue that none of the federal case’s plaintiffs — who are 15 or older — would be harmed by a court decision to delay Korman’s ruling from taking effect.
"The approval has the effect of ensuring that all of the plaintiffs in this case (including the youngest of them) now have access without a prescription and without significant point-of-sale restrictions to at least one form of emergency contraceptive containing levonorgestrel," the Justice Department argued, referring to the active ingredient in Plan B.

The judge's ruling clearly stated that Plan B should be available to everyone without a prescription and without government-issued ID. The Obama administration is not complying with that order. This doesn't sound like the same Obama who, just last week, said in a speech to Planned Parenthood that he is a president "who is going to be right there with you, fighting every step of the way" on reproductive rights.

The administration's latest position seems to be that lowering the age to 15 is a compromise. Yes, it is two years younger than the previous limit, and the FDA's new guidelines would also mean Plan B is now available on the shelf and not only during pharmacy hours. But it still means that women will need to have some manner of government-issued ID to obtain it. Not every woman has that sort of ID—especially 15- and 16-year-olds that can't yet drive and don't have a passport, or simply don't want to have a cashier know their names.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit challenging the restrictions, said on Thursday that they will continue to press for universal access. "We are deeply disappointed," CRR president Nancy Northup said in a call with reporters, pledging to "continue the battle in court to remove these arbitrary restrictions."