Say Anything Blog

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

-NYT-

Every agency must have a political appointee to supervise the development of rules and documents. It seems to me that this system was used before…a good way to ensure that the civil servants stays on the political straight and narrow. If only I could remember who else placed political “officers” throughout the bureaucracy…

I was kind of surprised to see this headline but I watched the video at Think Progress and the AG seems quite serious. Perhaps we’ll see a clarification issued next week but, as Jennifer at Unqualified Offerings illustrates, if one applies the Gonzales interpretation to other Articles of and Amendments to the Constitution then one wonders what rights the American people actually enjoy. That a right can not be abridged or can only be abridged in certain circumstances does not imply that the right exists in the first place seems strange to me and is surely quite revolutionary in the history of Constitutional interpretation. For the sake of my American friends I hope that this was a misstatement and not an indication of future developments.

What happens to scientific discoveries that won’t make a company any money? Take this finding that dichloroacetate (DCA) shrank a variety of tumors in both mice and test tubes. Logic suggests that DCA be tested on human tumors in human bodies and the fact that DCA has been consumed by people for years with none of the nasty side effects seen in approved cancer treatments should interest the medical and pharmaceutical communities alike.

DCA isn’t patented and is not likely patentable and drug companies don’t stand to make much money selling a product that anyone else can sell too. Is it in a drug company’s interest to spend up to $100 million to put DCA through testing and to the FDA for approval? Obviously not but if DCA truly does shrink tumors in humans then don’t we want to see DCA made available? Who should fund the required studies?

I’m thinking Cancer Foundations should be interested and maybe some universities…what about the Government? Your thoughts are welcome.

So says Max Boot. I’d expect to see more like this as the Bush apologists become increasingly marginalised.

They’ve taken over the Weather Channel...can HGTV be far behind?

Why doesn’t Reginald Maudling do something?

The Iraqi Government has issued a warrant for the arrest of an apparently very real Capt. Hussein, the subject of much wailing and gnashing of teeth on some conservative blogs I frequent.

Does this mean that the big trip to Iraq is off?

But wasn’t he a president of the United States? I don’t know if anyone here has any pull with this Goode fellow but somebody should tell him to sit down and take some quiet time.

Spanish bears that is. It seems that some 130 of them in northern Spain haven’t been hibernating the past few years.

“If the winter is mild, the female bears find it is energetically worthwhile to make the effort to stay awake and hunt for food,” said Guillermo Palomero, the FOP’s president and the co-ordinator of a national plan for bear conservation. This changed behaviour, he said, was probably a result of milder winters. “The high Cantabrian peaks freeze all winter, but our teams of observers have been able to follow the perfect outlines of tracks from a group of bears,” he said.

Another interesting data point to consider in the debate over global warming.

Jim Rutz lays out an alarming story at WND.

The dangerous food I’m speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they’re all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore.

Who knew?

I recently referred to the GWOT as a “marketing strategy” because terror is a tactic and we are fighting against terrorists, not a tactic. It seems that Mr. Rumsfeld has similar thoughts:

I don’t think I would have called it the war on terror. I don’t mean to be critical of those who have. Certainly, I have used the phrase frequently. Why do I say that? Because the word ‘war’ conjures up World War II more than it does the Cold War. It creates a level of expectation of victory and an ending within 30 or 60 minutes of a soap opera. It isn’t going to happen that way. Furthermore, it is not a ‘war on terror.’ Terror is a weapon of choice for extremists who are trying to destabilize regimes and (through) a small group of clerics, impose their dark vision on all the people they can control. So ‘war on terror’ is a problem for me.

The entire interview is posted at Townhall. I rarely agree with Rumsfeld but I do appreciate his respect for the English language.

The Canadian Press reports

OTTAWA (CP) - The last major threat to same-sex marriage rights in Canada was soundly defeated in the House of Commons on Thursday, with MPs sending the message they don’t want to revisit the emotional, divisive debate.

The late Pierre Elliott Trudeau once said that “the State has no business in the bedrooms of the nation”. The House of Commons has affirmed that view and once again fans of limited government can raise a toast and tip their hats to the eminently wise nation of Canada.

Hoorah! Hoorah!

Anyone who played Mario on NES will get a chuckle out of this.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Robert Gates, U.S.
President George W. Bush’s choice to run the
Pentagon, said on Tuesday America was not winning in
Iraq and the next year or two would determine whether the Middle East explodes into violence.

Asked by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan if the United States was winning in Iraq, Gates replied: “No, sir.”

There’s no shortage of SA readers who think that the battle in Iraq is being won…maybe this Gates nomination should be rethought.

It appears that Iraqis would prefer foreign troops leave their country sooner rather than later. It’s possible that the poll is biased although I’m pretty sure that Republicans are not underrepresented in this one.