BREVITAS

BUSH WHACKS

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. has announced that the House Committee on the Judiciary will hold a hearing on the Imperial Presidency of George W. Bush and possible legal responses. "Over the last seven plus years, there have been numerous credible allegations of serious misconduct by officials in the Bush Administration," said Conyers. "At the same time, the administration has adopted what many would describe as a radical view of its own powers and authorities. As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I believe it is imperative that we pursue a comprehensive review commensurate to this constitutionally dangerous combination of circumstances." The Committee is expected to examine a range of legal and legislative responses to allegations of administration misconduct and their expansion of executive branch power.

ECO CLIPS

Think Progress Nancy Pfotenhauer, senior energy adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and a lobbyist for Koch Industries, lied to MSNBC's David Schuster, claiming, "We withstood Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and didn't spill a drop." She said: "When Senator McCain opposed lifting the ban in the past, it was because there were concerns about environmental capability. Like, could we do this and still maintain a pristine environmental um uh climate and and area around the drilling? And basically, what we've seen is the technology has progressed to the point where we could do that. We withstood Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and didn't spill a drop." . . . The hurricanes, unsurprisingly, caused 124 offshore spills and hundreds more onshore.

Metafficient A great example of rainwater harvesting can be found at the Langston Brown Community Center and High School in Arlington, Virginia. The community center has two 24-foot-tall 11,000-gallon cisterns that store rainwater. The tank at the front of the school is covered with panels, and fits seamlessly into the overall design of the building. The building captures 280,000 gallons of water a year. Regrettably, the rainwater is only used for onsite irrigation, sidewalk washing, and other non-potable uses. However, the center does have waterless urinals which result in a 23% reduction in potable water use.

THE MIX

A new Field Poll in California finds the proposed gay marriage ban headed for defeat with only 42% in favor.

HEALTH CARE

Jon Ponder, Brad Blog As the campaign manager for the presidential bid of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Kent Snyder received a lot of credit for raising $35 million from grassroots supporters, a phenomenal accomplishment for an insurgent campaign. But, like 48 million other Americans, Snyder had no health insurance, and when he died from pneumonia on June 26 after a two-month hospital stay, he left medical bills totaling over $400,000. It is emblematic of our age that Snyder's boss, Rep. Paul, is a physician.

Annals of Improbable Research From an anonymous MIT professors: I wish to report a discovery made by my female colleague (identified here as "F") working with me ("M"). I am male. M snored. His great thundering stentorian waves of sound even woke people in other bedrooms. The snoring was a side-effect of sleep apnea, an ailment characterized by pauses in breathing. M stopped breathing for such periods of time that F was ready to call an ambulance. Between the snoring and the fear of waking up beside a corpse, F got very little sleep. She tried shaking M, which served only to wake and anger him. She tried tickling his ribs and underarms but to no avail. The snoring and apnea continued and sleep was impossible. Then in a moment of inspiration, she went to M's nexus. She tickled his testicles. Sweet, blissful silence ensued. The snoring stopped or the sleep apnea disappeared, time after time and without fail. F had discovered a reliable, hands-on treatment for male sleep disorders.

A HISTORY OF MEDICARE AND EFFORTS TO STOP IT

MONEY AND WORK

TAKING IN BOARDERS IS COMING BACK

ARTS & CULTURE

Shreveport Times The nearly yearlong battle between Shreveport Symphony Orchestra musicians and management has come to an end with all musicians on board for the 2008-09 season. . . . The new contract switches core or full-time musicians to a per-service pay structure, resulting in a 75 percent salary cut, from $12,693 to $3,123 for the 2008-09 season and the elimination of 24 full-time core positions as of Sept. 1. The board has insisted that such drastic changes were necessary to overcome years of financial instability that stem as far back as 2001, when the symphony accumulated a loss of more than $700,000.

MEDIA

Publishers Weekly Bookstore sales rose again in May, albeit at a much more moderate clip than the surprising 8% rate posted in April. According to preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, bookstore sales increased 2.6% in May, to $1.15 billion. Sales for the entire retail segment were up 2.5% in the month. For the first five months of the year bookstore sales were up 4.9%, to $6.60 billion.

Alejandro Lazo Washington Post - The subprime mortgage meltdown has hit many Spanish-language radio stations hard. Real estate companies that targeted the Hispanic community have closed their doors or cut back on advertising and sponsorships. . . Radio Fiesta's ad revenue from Hispanic businesses has declined by about 40 percent over the past year; it's down 10 percent from non- Hispanic businesses, Aragon said. . . The Washington area has 11 Spanish-language radio stations, though only El Zol at 99.1 FM, which took over the alternative rock station WHFS three years ago, has a market-wide signal. That station has gained in audience share over the past three years and now captures 3.7 percent of the market. Hispanics make up 11.7 percent of the entire market, according to figures from the research firm Arbitron. Numbers are not available for the other stations. . .

OUTLYING PRECINCTS

Third Party Watch A just-released Reuters poll shows Barack Obama leading John McCain 47-40 in the national popularity contest. . . However, when Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are added to the options, Obama's lead over McCain grows to 10%. . . Says the London Guardian: "When independent candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr, who are both in the process of trying to add their names to state ballots, are included in the survey Obama's margin over McCain grows to 10 percentage points, 46 percent to 36 percent. Nader and Barr each picked up 3 percent, but nearly all of their support came from McCain.

Politics 1 Speaking to the New York Times, John McCain (R) said "I think that we've proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don't believe in gay adoption." On Tuesday, McCain's campaign spokesperson issued a formal statement clarifying (i.e., changing) the candidate's position. The new stance: "McCain could have been clearer in the interview in stating that his position on gay adoption is that it is a state issue, just as he made it clear in the interview that marriage is a state issue. He was not endorsing any federal legislation. McCain's expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible. However, as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative."

Julie Poppen, Rocky Mountain News Hundreds of Denver's homeless could be cooling their heels in a movie theater or museum while the Democratic National Convention is in town next month. The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless plans to get 500 movie tickets as well as passes to the Denver Zoo, Denver Museum of Nature and Science and other cultural facilities for the people it helps. Bus tickets will be provided for events beyond walking distance, said John Parvensky, the non-profit's president. . . "It just sounds like another way to get rid of them," said Kayne Coy, 17, who volunteers feeding the homeless twice a week at Civic Center Park through the Food Not Bombs organization.

Politics 1 The Workers World Party -- a Marxist-Leninst party -- has decided it will not field a Presidential ticket this year for the first time since 1980. Instead, the WWP is formally endorsing Green nominee Cynthia McKinney for President. In a written statement, the WWP described McKinney's campaign as "Black-led, anti-imperialist, working-class-centered and has a multinational radical base with the potential of unlimited growth."

Ny Times Every day around 8 a.m., foreign policy aides at Senator Barack Obama's Chicago campaign headquarters send him two e-mails: a briefing on major world developments over the previous 24 hours and a set of questions, accompanied by suggested answers, that the candidate is likely to be asked about international relations during the day. . . Behind the e-mail messages is a tight-knit group of aides supported by a huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy, organized like a mini State Department, to assist a candidate whose limited national security experience remains a concern to many voters. "It is unwieldy, no question," said Denis McDonough, 38, Mr. Obama's top foreign policy aide, speaking of an infrastructure that has been divided into 20 teams based on regions and issues, and that has recently absorbed, with some tensions, the top foreign policy advisers from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign. "But an administration is unwieldy, too. We also know that it's messier when you don't get as much information as you can."

Angry Arab It is not surprising that there is not a single Middle East expert in the team. For years now, Middle East experts are deliberately excluded from foreign policy making in the U.S. government. The view in the U.S. government (after the demise of "the Arabists" and their marginalization from policy making) is that Middle East experts are not sufficiently fanatically pro-Israeli.

This from Stephen Dinan in the conservative Washington Times: At times it appears Sen. John McCain's Straight Talk Express should stop and ask for directions. From signature issues such as immigration and climate change to tax cuts, the presumed Republican presidential nominee sometimes just seems lost as to his own record and his stance on hot-button social issues. After Mr. McCain said he opposed child adoptions to gay and lesbian couples, his campaign clarified that he wasn't making policy and would leave the issue to the states. In the past week, the candidate was unable to say whether he thought health care plans that cover drugs to treat impotency also should cover contraceptives. Mr. McCain voted against such a proposal in 2005. For a candidate who delights in telling audiences that it's time for "a little straight talk," he has given his opponents chances to question that reputation. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund announced a TV ad campaign showing Mr. McCain's eight-second pause and his fumble for an answer to the question on coverage for birth control.

Political Wire For a long time, pollster have wondered whether the increased use of cell phones over the last decade is skewing polling results and making them less reliable. A new Pew Research poll finds that Sen. Barack Obama holds a 48% to 40% lead over Sen. John McCain in their national sample that includes cell phones, and a 46% to 41% advantage in the landline sample. Furthermore, when the results are narrowed "to voters who are certain about their vote choice, there is almost no difference between the landline and combined samples: Obama has a 38%-28% advantage in the combined sample, while the margin is 38%-30% in the landline sample."

FREEDOM BEAT

Glenn Greewald, Salon Of all the constitutionally threatening and extremist powers the Bush administration has asserted over the last seven years, the most radical -- and the most dangerous -- has been its claim that the President has the power to arrest U.S. citizens and legal residents inside the U.S., and imprison them indefinitely in a military prison, without charging them with any crime, based on his assertion that the imprisoned individual is an "enemy combatant." Beginning with U.S. citizen Yasser Esam Hamdi (detained in Afghanistan), followed by U.S. citizen Jose Padilla (detained at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport), followed by Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri (in the U.S. on a student visa and detained at his home in Peoria, Illinois), the Bush administration has not only claimed that power in theory but has aggressively exercised and defended it in practice. The Bush administration's strategy of imprisoning these "enemy combatants" in a South Carolina military brig has (by design) ensured that subsequent legal challenges are heard by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most right-wing judicial circuit in the country. In September, 2005, a three-judge panel from that circuit issued a ruling in the Jose Padilla case that actually upheld the President's power to arrest and indefinitely detain even U.S. citizens arrested on U.S. soil without charging them with any crime -- a decision which the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review (because the Bush administration, after 3 1/2 years of lawless imprisonment, avoided that review by finally charging Padilla with a crime), thus leaving that Padilla decision as still-valid law in this country.

Immigration cases continue to heavily dominate federal enforcement efforts, making up well over half -- 58% -- of all federal prosecutions in April, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. By comparison, prosecutions falling under the general category of drugs and narcotics made up only 16% of the total, while matters classified as involving white collar violations limped in at just under 5% for the same month.

WFAA-TV Dallas-Ft. Worth Those driving down the road without an insurance card of driver's license with a correct address may find themselves in jail if they get pulled over by Irving police. In fact, it happened to two women who were pulled over by the same two Irving cops last weekend. Both women said their traffic stops turned into a nightmare. Mikki Stokes, of Irving, said she was headed to the store for some sour cream when she was stopped by two Irving police officers. She was initially stopped for not making a complete stop when exiting the parking lot. Stokes second offense was that her current address was not on her Texas driver's license. However, she said she never dreamed that those two minor offenses would result in her being cuffed and stuffed into the backend of a squad car. . . Two hours later it was Leanna Onstott, of Fort Worth, who became the next target of the same two officers. "And he said, 'You are under arrest,'" she said of when she was pulled over without have proper proof of insurance in her car. "And he turned me around and put handcuffs on me and I was just like, 'Is this really happening? I mean, can they do this?'" . Yet, Stokes said she spent two hours behind bars. Onstott said she spent five hours in jail before posting a $600 bond. However, none of that was what Onstott said was the worst part of her arrest. "They asked me to take off my clothes," she said. Onstott was then forced to put on jail clothes.

Raw Story The post-9/11 airline watch list that is supposed to keep terrorists off of airplanes has swelled to more than 1 million names, including at least one investigative reporter who had been critical of the Transportation Security Agency, which maintains the watch list. CNN's Drew Griffin reported on the bloating of the watch list, which an ACLU count pegged at 1,001,308 names Wednesday afternoon. Griffin's is one of those names, he says. "Coincidentally, this all began in May, shortly after I began a series of investigative reports critical of the TSA. Eleven flights now since May 19. On different airlines, my name pops up forcing me to go to the counter, show my identification, sometimes the agent has to make a call before I get my ticket," Griffin reported. "What does the TSA say? Nothing, at least nothing on camera. Over the phone a public affairs worker told me again I'm not on the watch list, and don't even think that someone in the TSA or anyone else is trying to get even."

ELITE ETHNOGRAPHY

TMZ Donald Trump finally sold his Palm Beach pile to that Russian billionaire -- for $95 million. The new owner wants to bulldoze the whole thing, reports the Palm Beach Post, making the house probably the most pricey teardown ever. . . Dmitry Rybolovlev says the purchase is an "investment" and doesn't plan to live in the house

INDICATORS

A new study by The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System finds that the United States health care system is getting worse, and that despite spending more on health care than any other industrialized nation, the US overall continues to fall far short on key indicators of health outcomes and quality, with particularly low scores on efficiency.

- The number of uninsured and underinsured continues to rise. As of 2007, 42 percent of all working age adults were either uninsured or underinsured-up from 35 percent in the four years since 2003.

- US fell from 15th to last among 19 industrialized nations when it comes to premature deaths that could potentially have been prevented by timely access to effective health care.

- Rates for basic preventive care failed to improve. Currently, only half of all adults receive the recommended preventive health care, including screening for cancer.

- Health insurance premiums rose far faster than wages, rising as a share of median incomes. Yet, insurance protection eroded. By 2007, 41 percent of adults reported that they had medical debt or trouble paying medical bills, up from 34 percent in 2005.

Leonard Doyle, Independent UK The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England. Huge disparities have also opened up in income, health and education depending on where people live in the US, according to a report published yesterday.

The American Human Development Index has applied to the US an aid agency approach to measuring well-being - more familiar to observers of the Third World - with shocking results. The US finds itself ranked 42nd in global life expectancy and 34th in survival of infants to age. Suicide and murder are among the top 15 causes of death and although the US is home to just 5 per cent of the global population it accounts for 24 per cent of the world's prisoners.

Despite an almost cult-like devotion to the belief that unfettered free enterprise is the best way to lift Americans out of poverty, the report points to a rigged system that does little to lessen inequalities.

"The report shows that although America is one of the richest nations in the world, it is woefully behind when it comes to providing opportunity and choices to all Americans to build a better life," the authors said.

Some of its more shocking findings reveal that, in parts of Texas, the percentage of adults who pass through high school has not improved since the 1970s.

Asian-American males have the best quality of life and black Americans the lowest, with a staggering 50-year life expectancy gap between the two groups.

FURTHERMORE . . .

Springwise New Yorkers are getting in on the mobile dessert action with a few different trucks that deliver high-end ice cream and baked confections. The Treats Truck, for one, uses its two trucks-aptly named "Sugar" and "Dot"-to sell cookies, brownies and other baked goodies to customers on the streets of Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs. Favourite delectables on the company's trucks include the Oatmeal Jammy and the Cran Almond Crispy along with peanut butter sandwich cookies, caramel cream sandwich cookies, four kinds of chocolate brownies daily, frosted sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies and a rotating list of specials. All goodies are baked from natural ingredients at the Treats Truck's Brooklyn bakery. The Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream Company, meanwhile, sells specially crafted ice cream from its truck, which serves the SOHO area each afternoon. Ginger, Giandujia and Red Currant are among the flavours Van Leeuwen makes using locally sourced, hormone-free milk and cream. The company uses only cups, straws, bowls and spoons made from renewable sources, and it donates one percent of its profits to Wildlife Direct. Then there's Wafels & Dinges, aimed at serving "good things Belgian" from its roving truck throughout the city-not to mention DessertTruck, which serves up such delectables as chocolate bread pudding, goat cheese cheesecake and a dark chocolate mousse bombe. DessertTruck can be found seven days a week at St. Mark's place and 3rd Ave.