Other state political blogs picked up this weekend on a story by Markeshia Ricks of the Montgomery Advertiser.
Ricks reports that a janitor employed at the Alabama State House ... well, how can we summarize this? He already had a criminal record when he was hired to work in the State Capitol; then, he was suspected of either stashing marijuana in or selling it out of the State Capitol; then, he was suspected in a shooting; now, he is in jail awaiting trial on charges that he was trafficking crack cocaine.
Yes, that’s the summary. Check out Ricks’s story for more.
My friend Brian had some thoughts about this over on his Flashpoint blog. You can read his complete post here.
But my favorite part was his closing. After pondering why this story has been kept under wraps for two and a half years, Brian writes:
I’m curious if there are more past felons cleaning the floors than there are future felons making our laws.
If you like space travel and science and all that good stuff, you might be interested in this Space.com article about NASA’s ongoing thoughts about visiting the martian planet.
No, a trip to Mars isn’t imminent. But the good men and women at America’s extraterrestrial research agency are always thinking about it, playing with ideas and working through possible scenarios.
They already know how it can be done. Now, it’s just a matter of getting things together and doing it.
One really interesting part of the Earth-to-Mars plan is that the gear that would be needed to land on Mars would actually have to be assembled in space. Astronauts would be ferried to the intergalactic warehouse after all the components had been rocketed there.
Other mind-boggling points:
The trip itself would take about 180 days;
Communication between Mars-bound astronauts and Earth would be hampered by a 40-MINUTE delay;
Once there, astronauts would require a “storm shelter” of sorts to shield them from deadly radiation from storms of high-energy particles from the sun and deep-space cosmic rays; and
Astronauts would be on the Red Planet for 500 days—two and a half YEARS—at a time.
Scientists believe they have found a “missing link” in the evolution of the virus that causes AIDS. It bridges the gap between the infection that does no harm to most monkeys and the one that kills millions of people.
That link is a virus that is killing chimpanzees in the wild at a disturbingly high rate, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Nature. Chimpanzees are the first primate besides man shown to get sick in the wild in significant numbers from a virus related to HIV. Chimps are also man’s closest relative among primates.
And chimps are already endangered.
But the discovery of the disease killing chimps may help doctors come up with better treatments or a workable vaccine for humans, experts said.
That’s exciting enough. But there’s more: The lead researcher on this project is right here in Alabama!
Beatrice Hahn is a professor of medicine at UAB (that’s the University of Alabama at Birmingham, for you outsiders). She is the lead author on this important study.
I told you Tuesday that I saw a great interview U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint did with Neil Cavuto about his now-famous “Waterloo” remark in reference to President Obama’s health care reform plans.
Here it is, courtesy of YouTube:
I hope you’ll take the time to watch it. It’s only six minutes, and it is really a great interview.
Far from retracting his comment, DeMint emphasized it, and he explained why he believes it’s so important for Congress to put the brakes on Obama’s plan.
Note here that DeMint isn’t against reforming the health care system generally. This is something that Republicans and conservative and moderate Democrats need to be saying more: We don’t oppose reform. We just oppose this kind of reform.
DeMint’s objections to the plan are philosophical in nature. He doesn’t believe the government should be in the position of dictating what is and isn’t covered in health care plans. And make no mistake: Under some provisions now being discussed in Congress, lawmakers—not insurers, not doctors and certainly not patients—would be making the decisions about what is and isn’t covered. This isn’t rhetoric or fearmongering; it’s reality. The Associated Press says so.
The president has used DeMint’s “Waterloo” comment to try to convince the public that Republicans are opposing reform efforts just because he, Obama, is supporting them.
If you’ll listen to what DeMint is saying, you’ll see that that premise couldn’t be further from the truth.
So who is making this about Obama?
Obama.
Think about it. How many of you had heard of DeMint’s comment before the president used it in his remarks on Monday?
Exactly.
It’s pretty brilliant, actually. By repeatedly repeating DeMint’s comment, the president is making it about himself—even while insisting that he isn’t.
Still not convinced?
How about this little tidbit from U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who recounted for the National Journal a conversation he had with a Democratic congressman:
Grassley said he spoke with a Democratic House member last week who shared Obama’s bleak reaction during a private meeting to reports that some factions of House Democrats were lining up to stall or even take down the overhaul unless leaders made major changes.
“Let’s just lay everything on the table,“ Grassley said. “A Democrat congressman last week told me after a conversation with the president that the president had trouble in the House of Representatives, and it wasn’t going to pass if there weren’t some changes made ... and the president says, ‘You’re going to destroy my presidency.‘“
No. This isn’t about Obama at all ... except for Obama.
And as for the president’s charge that DeMint stands for obstructionism and “old-school politics” and “the politics of the past” and all these other sound bites he’s fond of using, here’s the reality:
For those of you who missed President Obama’s news conference tonight, you might be interested in my instant reactions from my Twitter feed. You can check them out here.
Also, if you did watch the news conference, you might be interested in this fact check piece that the Associated Press had out within the hour of the end of the president’s hour on the podium. Guess what? There are some factual problems with some of the president’s central claims about the effort. Here’s an excerpt:
OBAMA: “If we had done nothing, if you had the same old budget as opposed to the changes we made in our budget, you’d have a $9.3 trillion deficit over the next 10 years. Because of the changes we’ve made, it’s going to be $7.1 trillion.“
THE FACTS: Obama’s numbers are based on figures compiled by his own budget office. But they rely on assumptions about economic growth that some economists find too optimistic. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, in its own analysis of the president’s budget numbers, concluded that the cumulative deficit over the next decade would be $9.1 trillion.
Oh, and there’s so much more.
Please note: This information is compiled by the AP—NOT the Republican caucus.
And, while we’re at it, here’s a piece CNN has on the concerns pro-life Republican and Democratic congressmen have with the health care reform package—and how the president and Democratic congressional leadership refuse to assuage them.
I’ll have a lot more to say about this in my column this weekend.
