BREVITAS

OBAMALAND

Craig Crawford - The Obama Administration is following its predecessor's tradition of keeping secret the logs of those who visit the White House. So much for the quaint idea that the White House is the people's house. It's only for the people who get clearance and enjoy complete anonymity, thanks to Obama's veil of secrecy. This matters because it's important to know who is getting access to the President and his immediate staff. What are they hiding? Probably less than it seems, but it's difficult to know when the logs are classified.

CRASH TALK

NY Times - An extensive new report on residential real estate by Deutsche Bank calls for home prices in metropolitan New York City (which includes Westchester, northern New Jersey and other nearby areas) to fall 40.6% from the prices that prevailed in March. Ironically, that dire forecast is wrapped in an improving forecast for nationwide home prices. Back in March, Deutsche Bank analysts had expected national home prices to decline 16.5%; now they foresee just a 14% decline. . . New York City's big problem is not so much the financial-industry meltdown as it is an intense lack of affordability. As the report notes, metropolitan-area New York home prices peaked in the second quarter of 2007 at $552,000. By the first quarter of 2009, the median price had dropped 19%, to $446,000, but the market swoon was less than half the drop recorded in many other areas of the country. Today among the 10 biggest metropolitan areas, New York ranks as the least affordable.

ECO CLIPS

Sky Spark - On June 10, at 8:09 pm SkySpark took off for the first time from the Turin Aeritalia airport. The goal to fly during the prestigious World Air Games 2009 has been reached. . . Very large attendance for the SkySpark flight early today. Maurizio Cheli managed to fly during 8 mn reaching a top speed of 250 km/h, a record for a 100% electrically powered aircraft.

CIVIL LIBERTIES

Dave Lindorff - President Barack Obama, referring to the violent attacks on protesters against the controversial election results in Iran's just-completed presidential election, this week lectured Iran's government, saying, "Peaceful dissent should never be subject to violence." . . . But there is a certain hypocrisy going on here. Just days ago, the ACLU of Northern California issued a press release announcing that it had filed a complaint over a Pentagon anti-terrorism training manual. That training manual, aimed at Pentagon personnel, describes domestic protests as "low-level terrorist activity." As Staff Attorney Ann Brick and ACLU Washington National Security Policy Council member Michael German write in their complaint letter to the Department of Defense, "For the DoD to instruct its employees that lawful protest activities should be treated as 'low-level terrorism' is deeply disturbing in and of itself. It is an even more egregious insult to constitutional values, however, when viewed in the context of a long-term pattern of domestic security initiatives that have attempted to equate lawful dissent with terrorism."

Washington Post - Prisoners do not have a constitutional right to DNA testing after their conviction, the Supreme Court ruled, even though the technology provides an "unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty." In the court's first examination of how to treat the rapidly evolving field of biological testing, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a majority that said it is up to the states and Congress to decide who has a right to testing that might prove innocence long after conviction. The "challenges DNA technology poses to our criminal justice systems and our traditional notions of finality" are better left to elected officials than federal judges, Roberts wrote for the majority in a 5 to 4 decision. . . Dissenting justices, led by John Paul Stevens, said the right to post-conviction DNA testing should not depend on the widely varying laws enacted by the states. Allowing a prisoner to test DNA evidence at his own expense would "ascertain the truth once and for all," Stevens wrote. "On the record before us, there is no reason to deny access to the evidence and there are many reasons to provide it, not least of which is a fundamental concern in ensuring that justice has been done," he wrote. He was joined in dissent by Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

STUPID GOVERNMENT TRICKS

DC mayor Adrian Fenty has increased the number of speed bumps in his city from 157 to 691 in just two years. That's one speed bump for every 1.5 miles. Meanwhile Fenty is doing everything he can to increase the number of non taxpaying suburban commuters using city streets.

MID EAST

JTA - A former Pentagon analyst who pleaded guilty to passing secret information to two former AIPAC staffers had his sentence drastically reduced. Larry Franklin was sentenced to probation and 10 months of "community confinement," or a halfway house, along with 100 hours of community service. In 2005 he had received a sentence of 12 1/2 years in prison but was free pending his cooperation with prosecutors in the case against the two formers AIPAC staffers, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.

ROSES TO. . .

Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) who has introduced legislation today to remove criminal penalties for possession of up to 3.5 ounces of marijuana and the not-for-profit transfer of 1 ounce.

The Coast Guard Auxiliary, which will be 70 years old next week. In !939 Congress established a volunteer wing of the Coasdt Guard to help the regulars and promote boating safety. Following America's entry into the World War II in December of 1941, recruits flooded into Auxiliary flotillas . . . Throughout the war, there Auxiliarists patrolled bridges, factories, docks, and beaches. During the past decades, the Auxiliary has continued to grow in membership which today totals more than 30,000 members in the United States and its territories. Under legislation passed in 1996, the Auxiliary's role was expanded to allow members to assist in any Coast Guard mission, except direct law enforcement and military operations, as authorized by the Commandant.

Rhode Island, which has become the third state to permit the use of marijuana by chronically ill patients.

MEDIA

Editors' Weblog - The latest poll by Zogby International shows a majority of Americans view the web as the best source of information. When presented with a scenario in which they had to choose only one source of news, 56% of adults picked the Internet. Nearly half said the web sites of national newspapers are important and 43% said the same for national TV sites. Internet-only operations fared much worse. Less than 30% stated that blogs that shared their political views were important, and just 14% said the same for blogs with the opposite political view. Ten percent of adults named Facebook as an important source of news, and a mere 4% said the same of Twitter. . . When asked which was the most reliable source of information, the Internet was again far and away the leader. Forty percent of those surveyed chose the web, whereas 17% opted for TV and 16% for newspapers.

In a particularly crummy piece of media suck-up, ABC will do a special on healthcare broadcast from the White House. It, of course, says it will be unbiased, but there are little problems such as a lack of opposing views. Single payer will probably not only be off the table, it won't be on mike either.

HEALTH & SCIENCE

Bernie Sanders is circulating a petition in support of single payer health care. You can sign it here

FURTHERMORE. . .

Overheard on DC's Metro from the driver: "Alright now, you people want to get off this train onto the platform. There are a whole lot of people on the platform who want to get on this train. [perfectly timed pause] There is a conflict there. You people on the train, however, have the upper hand. Use it responsibly and have a great day"