an... interesting choice

The people of East Timor feel strongly about colonialism, and who can blame them? Nonetheless, in the interest of integrating themselves into the world as independent members, it seems like an odd choice to unite their polyglot people by teaching them the non-colonial language of finnish.

The positives and the somewhat more numerous negatives of this decision are at Rittenhouse.

things that make you say snort

TBogg extrapolates.

Truly, Madly, Deeply

the movie that asks the rhetorical question: would you give up a relationship with Alan Rickman just because he was dead?

Those whacky british.

Portrait of a (pragmatic) Republican

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Representative Robert Ehrlich, Republican candidate for Governor of Maryland. He is, he says, a moderate. Lt. Gov. Kennedy Townsend is, he says, out of line with the mainstream of Maryland political thought and insufficiently appreciative of the african-american vote.

Allow me to introduce you to Rep. Ehrlich.

I'm reading the Washington Post online, and I see this article about Rep. Morella (R-MD) trying to distance herself from her party's candidate for Governor. She all but gave herself a cootie shot. Now I'm wondering - what's up with that? Put it together with this,, about Ehrlich's growing popularity with Maryland moderates, and this, about Morella's problems with liberal groups who have always supported her before, and I'm thinking: why is such a reasonable guy a problem for another moderate? Then I saw this:.

Ehrlich Says He'd Review Gun Laws
Candidate Questions Impact on Md. Crime
Saturday, September 14, 2002; Page A01
U.S. Rep. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) said yesterday that if elected governor he will review Maryland's strict gun laws and consider repealing two of the most far-reaching measures if they proved ineffective.

The Republican nominee said he doubted that several major gun laws passed by the General Assembly had reduced gun violence. He said laws intended to regulate cheaply made handguns and make it easier to use ballistics evidence to trace handguns deserved particular scrutiny.

"If they're working, if they're actually doing what they're sold to do, then maybe we should expand them," he said. "We'll look at the evidence and try to make rational decisions. . . . But I think they've done nothing to reduce gun crimes."

Ehrlich's comments, made to reporters at his Towson campaign headquarters, were denounced by his opponent, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D), whose spokesman said any attempt to weaken the state's gun laws "defies common sense."

Ehrlich said he would consider abolishing the Handgun Roster Board, a state agency with the authority to ban certain kinds of cheaply made low-caliber handguns that are often called Saturday night specials.

He also said he wanted to review the effectiveness of a 2000 law that was designed to create a database with ballistics information on every handgun sold in the state. That law was intended to give police a tool to trace shell casings recovered from crime scenes to the original owner of a gun.

Well, that's an interesting position for a moderate to take, don't you think? Volunteering to find the state gun laws ineffective and roll them back?

Well, around the same time someone posted a link to this list of exceptionally cool search engines, and I thought to myself, maybe this would be a good way to test them, because Mr. Ehrlich is practically non-existent on Google.

Turns out, there's less to the 'moderate' Representative Ehrlich than meets the eye. That's because the moderate Representative Ehrlich doesn't actually exist.

Does anyone remember the Contract with America? Bob Ehrlich doesn't. Nonetheless, as a freshman, he signed it. He also enforced it.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga) was one of the first Republicans to sign a petition demanding that Congressional Republicans punish high-ranking GOP Members who team with Democrats on certain votes, according to Rep. Robert Ehrlich (R-Md), who is spearheading the effort. By Friday afternoon, nearly 100 Members had signed the petition, which will be sent to the GOP Steering Committee soon. The Steering Committee is the Republican leadership's panel that determines committee assignments. "When Members, especially those in positions of leadership within the committees or our conference, fail to support the conference on procedural matters, we believe those actions should be taken into consideration when determining committee chairs and sub-committee chairs in order to ensure the continued unity of the Conference," Ehrlich and his allies argued in their undated letter, a copy of which was obtained by Roll Call.

A year later, Rep. Ehrlich introduced an amendment which would have restricted political activity by anyone who received a federal grant, but not (coincidentally, I'm sure) by recipients of federal contracts.

Earlier this year, Representatives Ernest Istook (R-OK), David McIntosh (R-IN), and Robert Ehrlich (R-MD) introduced legislative language that would restrict the advocacy voice of federal grantees. Their proposals raise concerns about establishing different standards for federal grantees than for federal contractors. Accordingly, the Let America Speak Coalition commissioned the enclosed analysis to compare restrictions on lobbying and political activity imposed on federal grantees and federal contractors.

The report, prepared by Janne G. Gallagher of the law firm Harmon, Curran, Gallagher & Spielberg, reviews all existing law and regulation covering grantees and contractors with respect to lobbying and campaign activities. She found that recipients of federal funds have worked under virtually identical rules with respect to lobbying and political advocacy restrictions -- regardless of whether they are a grantee or a contractor.

For the first time ever, as a result of the Istook-McIntosh-Ehrlich amendment (and subsequent amendments by Istook and McIntosh individually) there would be significant differences between restrictions imposed on federal grantees and federal contractors. Federal grantees would have a limit imposed on the amount of private money they could spend on advocacy activities, whereas contractors would not. Federal grantees would have new reporting requirements that deal with lobbying and political activity, whereas contractors would not.

It is ironic that the focus of the Istook-McIntosh-Ehrlich amendment is on grants and not contracts. The amount of money spent of federal contracts ($196.4 billion in FY 1994) is eight times the amount spent on grants covered under the Istook-McIntosh-Ehrlich amendment ($24.5 billion in FY 1994).

He's demonstrably not in the Maryland mainstream on gun control: the way-more-reactionary-than-the-NRA GOA gives him a C, while the rest of the Maryland delegation get Ds and Fs, possibly because of these votes targetted by the Brady campaign:

• In 1996, Ehrlich voted to repeal the so-called "assault weapons" ban, which prohibits the importation, manufacture and sale of weapons that gun control advocates argued were disproportionately used by drug traffickers and other criminals. The repeal effort failed.

• In 1999, Ehrlich voted to weaken a proposal to require clients at gun shows to submit to background checks. The original bill, which died, would have required the checks to be completed within 72 hours, the same deadline as for other gun sales. Ehrlich voted for an amendment that would have set the gun show deadline at 24 hours, saying a quicker check is necessary because most gun shows last only two days.

• In 2001, Ehrlich opposed an effort to force the Justice Department to keep computer records on gun purchases for at least 90 days, saying "there's no reason" to keep records after the sales are approved.

The Brady Campaign and federal law enforcement officials argue that the records must be maintained to audit the system's performance. Last month, the General Accounting Office found that records between one and 90 days old were used to retrieve firearms from more than 100 people over a three-month period whose purchases should not have been approved.

• This year, Ehrlich voted to amend the campaign-finance bill to exempt "communications pertaining to the Second Amendment of the Constitution." The amendment failed.

Gosh. That's just not moderate. Doesn't sound like the Rep. Ehrlich who's running now. What could have happened?

Well, as it turns out, Rep. Ehrlich the right-wing house member wasn't looking so good .

With polls in hand and money in the bank, the Maryland Republican Party's pinup boy was strutting his way to certain re-election. Ehrlich even talked boastfully about challenging Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes in 2000, saying he'd raise $6 million to do the job.

What a difference an election makes. The 18-wheeler that rumbled through Maryland on Nov. 3 left Ehrlich and the GOP flat in its path.

For openers, Ehrlich's candidate for governor, Ellen R. Sauerbrey, was decapitated by a margin of 164,000 votes. He coaxed Del. Kenneth Holt, R-6th, into the race against state Sen. Michael J. Collins, a Democrat in the Essex area, an Ehrlich stronghold. Holt was creamed.

As if that weren't enough, Ehrlich's patron, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, was forced out of Congress in the backwash of the Republican Party's disastrous election returns in November.

And Gingrich's successor as speaker, Robert Livingston, was compelled to surrender the post and resign from Congress after his stunning admission to a series of infidelities.

The departures of Gingrich and Livingston leave the Republican party without a national leader at a time when public contempt is running heavily against the GOP in the wreckage of President Clinton's party-line impeachment.

Finally, the former go-along, get-along guy from the House of Delegates is becoming an increasingly partisan and haute conservative in his effort to ascend the GOP leadership ranks in Congress. Ehrlich is now numbered among the many majority whips assigned to the ceremonial post as a way of assuring party discipline.

Well, he held on, hoping for a shot at Sarbanes' seat until this past year, when redistricting put him into the same space as Rep. Gilchrest, who you may remember as being rather more in line with the moderate-to-liberal politics of Maryland, to the dismay of the Club for Growth (their candidate, parenthetically, tanked).

Here are his actual votes. His current positions: he's against underfunded social services and traffic jams.

He's also for something else, although he isn't talking about it.



Hell, vote for him if he rings your bell, but it's a hell of a thing to say about an eight year record in Congress if you've got to run away from it to get elected.

Sorta makes you wonder if the man actually believes in anything. You'd better hope not - because if you vote for moderate Bob, could be Bob the bombthrower will end up running your state.

If I get some time later, there's more.

OK, what's wrong with this picture?

The wails and anguished cries echo through the halls of NASA - the empty chairs, the dwindling of the future, the hopeless loss to rocket science...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - The Bush administration is proposing deep reductions in Medicare payments for a wide range of drugs and medical devices used to treat people who are elderly or disabled.

The proposed cuts are part of a new system of paying hospitals for outpatient services. With advances in medical technology, hospitals report explosive growth in the number and kinds of procedures that can be performed in outpatient clinics, without the need for an overnight stay. Outpatient care accounts for nearly half the revenue at some hospitals.

The cuts would affect many drugs, devices and high-technology procedures, including cancer drugs and cardiac defibrillators like the one implanted in the chest of Vice President Dick Cheney to prevent an irregular heartbeat.

Medicare would also pay less for blood products given to people who receive transfusions but do not need overnight hospitalization. The Medicare payment for a unit of red blood cells - about a pint - would be cut 39 percent, to $83 next year, from $137 this year.

Work with me here.

If you have an outpatient procedure, which is, like, cheap, the hospital gets less money for blood.

If you have to stay overnight, which is, like, expensive, the hospital gets way more money for blood.

Think about it.

It's coming. I can feel it.

MISHAWAKA, Indiana (CNN) -- The woman who was caught on videotape repeatedly striking her 4-year-old daughter in the rear of her SUV called the whole incident "a blessing in disguise."

"Maybe it's ruined my life. Maybe it will save some other child, some other mother," Madelyne Gorman Toogood, 25, said in an exclusive interview with CNN's Gary Tuchman.

...

"I know they were looking for me," Gorman Toogood said. "When I knew they had issued a warrant, I came back."

Last week, authorities arrested Gorman Toogood's sister, Margaret Daley and charged her with failing to report child abuse and assisting a criminal. Daley witnessed the beating, investigators said.

Once her sister was arrested, Gorman Toogood said, she took the child from Indiana to Maryland and then to Bayhead, New Jersey, where she said she arranged for a trauma specialist to examine the girl. The doctor pronounced her in good health, the mother said.

The tape shows a woman putting the girl into a car seat in the rear of an SUV, then apparently beating her child for about 25 seconds.

Gorman Toogood said she apologized to her daughter as they drove from the parking lot. She said she had spanked her children before but "never battered or abused them before." She described her own parents as lenient and said she was not abused as a child.

...

Gorman Toogood said she comes from a community called Irish Travelers, which is known for the itinerant lifestyles of its members.

Gorman Toogood says her husband is licensed to do paving work, and the family moves around to take jobs around the country.

She indicated that Irish Travelers often feel discriminated against, and "that's why I was nervous" in the department store.

Steven Rosen, Toogood's attorney, disputed his client's claim that her status as an Irish Traveler has worked against her. "She's been treated fairly," he told reporters.

...

Prosecutor Maggie Jones told CNN Sunday that she was not moved by Gorman Toogood's entreaties that the girl be allowed to stay with other family members.

"My sympathies do not go to Madelyne at all," Jones said. "These are the same family members who, after they witnessed the beating on videotape, refused to bring the child forward for medical assessment or medical treatment."

Jones said that the doctor's clean bill of health does not mean the girl was not abused. Bruises could have healed in the eight days the girl was gone, she said.

Gorman Toogood said she had a message for other parents: "Don't raise your hand to a child. It ain't worth it." (emphasis, of course, mine)

Note: they left out the part where, despite her loss of control and her lack of experience in child abuse, she looked around to make sure no-one was watching before she hit the kid. I'd say she's a natural.

If I were a betting woman, I'd give you odds this is a TV movie by late November.