David Drake

Senator Ted Kennedy, who is gravely ill with brain cancer, has sent a letter to Massachusetts lawmakers requesting a change in the state law that determines how his Senate seat would be filled if it became vacant before his eighth full term ends in 2012. Current law mandates that a special election be held at least 145 days after the seat becomes available. Mr. Kennedy is concerned that such a delay could leave his fellow Democrats in the Senate one vote short of a filibuster-proof majority for months while a special election takes place.

[...]

What Mr. Kennedy doesn't volunteer is that he orchestrated the 2004 succession law revision that now requires a special election, and for similarly partisan reasons. John Kerry, the other Senator from the state, was running for President in 2004, and Mr. Kennedy wanted the law changed so the Republican Governor at the time, Mitt Romney, could not name Mr. Kerry's replacement. "Prodded by a personal appeal from Senator Edward M. Kennedy," reported the Boston Globe in 2004, "Democratic legislative leaders have agreed to take up a stalled bill creating a special election process to replace U.S. Senator John F. Kerry if he wins the presidency." Now that the state has a Democratic Governor, Mr. Kennedy wants to revert to gubernatorial appointments.

Beacon Hill has long sported heavy Democratic majorities, so the state legislature has the votes to grant Mr. Kennedy's wish. But does it have the chutzpah? An election is the more democratic option. After witnessing recent attempts by incompetent Governors in Illinois and New York to fill Senate vacancies, Massachusetts voters may have soured on such appointments. Especially when Mr. Kennedy's motivation for changing the law is so obviously born of partisan interest, not principle.

As the media continues to revere the life of recently deceased Senator Ted Kennedy, there is something they fail to mention: Kennedy liked to joke about Chappaquiddick.

During a discussion on “The Diane Rehm Show” on National Public Radio, Edward Klein – a friend of Ted’s – reminisced about Kennedy. The former editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine and former foreign editor of Newsweek stated:

[Laughter] I don't know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, ‘Have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?’ I mean that is just the most amazing thing. It's not that he didn't feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.

This newspaper traces its roots to before Las Vegas was Las Vegas.

We've seen cattle ranches give way to railroads. We chronicled the construction of Hoover Dam. We reported on the first day of legalized gambling. The first hospital. The first school. The first church. We survived the mob, Howard Hughes, the Great Depression, several recessions, two world wars, dozens of news competitors and any number of two-bit politicians who couldn't stand scrutiny, much less criticism.

[...]

We're still here doing what we do for the people of Las Vegas and Nevada. So, let me assure you, if we weathered all of that, we can damn sure outlast the bully threats of Sen. Harry Reid.

On Wednesday, before he addressed a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Reid joined the chamber's board members for a meet-'n'-greet and a photo. One of the last in line was the Review-Journal's director of advertising, Bob Brown, a hard-working Nevadan who toils every day on behalf of advertisers. He has nothing to do with news coverage or the opinion pages of the Review-Journal.

Yet, as Bob shook hands with our senior U.S. senator in what should have been nothing but a gracious business setting, Reid said: "I hope you go out of business."

Later, in his public speech, Reid said he wanted to let everyone know that he wants the Review-Journal to continue selling advertising because the Las Vegas Sun is delivered inside the Review-Journal.

Such behavior cannot go unchallenged.

You could call Reid's remark ugly and be right. It certainly was boorish. Asinine? That goes without saying.

But to fully capture the magnitude of Reid's remark (and to stop him from doing the same thing to others) it must be called what it was -- a full-on threat perpetrated by a bully who has forgotten that he was elected to office to protect Nevadans, not sound like he's shaking them down.

No citizen should expect this kind of behavior from a U.S. senator. It is certainly not becoming of a man who is the majority leader in the U.S. Senate. And it absolutely is not what anyone would expect from a man who now asks Nevadans to send him back to the Senate for a fifth term.

If he thinks he can push the state's largest newspaper around by exacting some kind of economic punishment in retaliation for not seeing eye to eye with him on matters of politics, I can only imagine how he pressures businesses and individuals who don't have the wherewithal of the Review-Journal.

For the sake of all who live and work in Nevada, we can't let this bully behavior pass without calling out Sen. Reid. If he'll try it with the Review-Journal, you can bet that he's tried it with others. So today, we serve notice on Sen. Reid that this creepy tactic will not be tolerated.

We won't allow you to bully us. And if you try it with anyone else, count on going through us first.

That's a promise, not a threat.

Regional banks in Maryland, Minnesota and California were closed by regulators Friday, bringing the total number of failed banks this year to 84, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said.

Baltimore, Md.-based Bradford Bank, which operated nine branches, will reopen Monday as part of Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company.

M&T, which is based in Albany, N.Y., agreed to assume all of Bradford Bank's $383 million in deposits and will purchase "essentially all" of its $452 million in assets, the FDIC said.

In Minnesota, the eight branches of Mainstreet Bank of Forest Lake will be taken over by Stillwater-based Central Bank.

[...]

With Friday's closures, the number of banks shut this year is more than three times the number of banks that failed in 2008, and it's the highest tally since 1992, when 181 banks failed.

The majority of this year's failures have been small, regional banks that fell victim to losses on real estate and consumer loans as unemployment surged to a 25-year high. But there have also been a number of large institutions closed in 2009.

Last week, regulators in Texas closed Guaranty Bank, which had about $13 billion in assets and was the third-largest bank to fail this year. That came one week after Alabama-based Colonial BancGroup became the sixth-largest bank failure in U.S. history on Aug. 15.

The wave of failures is expected to continue, raising concerns about the size of the FDIC's insurance fund.

The father of Terri Schiavo, who became a national symbol in a closely watched right-to-die fight, has died, his son said Saturday. Robert Schindler was 71.

Schindler, a tireless activist through years of legal wrangling, died from heart failure at a hospital in St. Petersburg. Terri Schiavo, who courts ruled was in a "persistent vegetative state," died in 2005 after the feeding tube that had nourished her for years was removed according to her husband's wishes.

"I am heartbroken over the loss of my father and yet I know at this moment he is rejoicing with my sister, Terri," his son, Bobby Schindler, said Saturday in a statement.

[...]

...family members described Schindler as a compassionate man who led with a quiet strength during the hardest times.

"Even at the height of the battle to save my sister Terri's life, when his patience and temperance was near exhaustion, he managed to display a gentleness of spirit," Bobby Schindler said.

Robert Schindler and other family members founded the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation after her death in 2005.

The Los Angeles County coroner's office said Friday that it had officially ruled Michael Jackson's death a homicide and determined that a surgical anesthetic combined with other medication killed him.

In a one-page statement, officials listed the cause of Jackson's June 25 death as "acute propofol intoxication" with the additional factor of "benzodiazepine effect."

Three different sedatives that fall into the benzodiazepine drug class were in Jackson's system, but only the anti-anxiety medication lorazepam, often known by the brand name Ativan, was cited alongside propofol as "the primary drugs responsible for Mr. Jackson's death."

Jackson's personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, has acknowledged administering both medications to Jackson in the hours leading up to his death, according to search warrant affidavits.

The cardiologist told detectives that in an effort to get the insomniac singer to sleep on the morning of his death he administered the sedatives lorazepam, midazolam and diazepam, and that when they proved ineffective, he complied with Jackson's request for propofol, a powerful anesthetic intended for use in operating rooms, the affidavits state.

Toxicology tests also detected two other medications, the local anesthetic lidocaine and ephedrine, commonly used as a stimulant, according to the coroner's statement.

The complete toxicology results and the final coroner's report were not made public at the request of the LAPD and the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, the coroner's office said.

The coroner's classification of homicide -- the killing of one person by another -- does not always translate into criminal charges, and those close to the investigation have said Jackson's history of drug use and health problems could complicate any prosecution.

But the designation was additional confirmation that Murray, already identified in search warrant documents as the target of a manslaughter investigation, remained the focus of the ongoing, multi-agency inquiry into the entertainer's sudden death.

A law enforcement source told The Times on Friday that toxicology reports have led investigators to suspect that Murray gave Jackson more propofol than he told police. Murray's attorney answered that allegation by calling on authorities to release the entire report so independent experts could examine the results.

Kennedy earned C grades at the private Milton Academy, but was admitted to Harvard as a "legacy" -- his father and older brothers had attended there, so the younger and dimmer Kennedy's admission was virtually assured. While attending, he was expelled twice, once for cheating on a test, and once for paying a classmate to cheat for him. While expelled, Kennedy enlisted in the Army, but mistakenly signed up for four years instead of two. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to England, pulled the necessary strings to have his enlistment shortened to two years, and to ensure that he served in Europe, not Korea, where a war was raging. Kennedy was assigned to Paris, never advanced beyond the rank of Private, and returned to Harvard upon being discharged.

While attending law school at the University of Virginia, he was cited for reckless driving four times, including once when he was clocked driving 90 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood with his headlights off after dark. Yet his Virginia driver's license was never revoked.

The Boston Golf Club is once again putting out the fragile tableware.

I shan’t rejoice at the man’s passing like some people dance a jig of glee when a Republican dies.

I am not celebrating. No...really. I am not although Ted Kennedy has finally croaked...

Watching the Funeral Mass. Pastor offers the homily, and a bunch of knee-biting trustfundies lucky in the genetic Olympics are allowed to blatantly politicize what should be a familial, personal occasion.

Rot in hell you fat bastard.

When cops rolled over the body of celebrity spinner DJ AM Friday night, they discovered a near-empty bag of crack stuck to his chest, a police source said Saturday.

The 36-year-old ex-fiance of Nicole Richie, whose real name is Adam Goldstein, was discovered in bed wearing only sweatpants at his $2 million SoHo pad, sources said.

"He hadn't been there long," a police source said.

Investigators found a glass crack pipe in his bedroom and at least seven bottles of prescription drugs on his kitchen counter, including the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, sources said.

Goldstein was on his stomach with the bag of crack underneath him, suggesting he rolled on top of it before he died, a source said.

[...]

Goldstein's death comes less than a year after he barely survived a plane crash with buddy and musical collaborator Travis Barker, the former drummer for Blink-182.

Four people were killed when the plane skidded off a South Carolina runway. Goldstein suffered severe burns.
"After the accident, he changed," said close pal and fellow deejay Scott Schroer, 36. "He was more humble. He cared more about people and life."

But the harrowing accident changed Goldstein in other ways, too, Schroer said.

"Prescription drugs? If you had been in a plane crash a year ago, I'm sure you'd have prescription drugs, too," he told a Daily News reporter.

[...]

Born in Philadelphia, Goldstein battled addiction, obesity and depression as a teenager.

He landed in rehab at age 17 but returned to the California late-night rave scene and relapsed hard, doing drugs until 10 a.m. in his apartment.

"I would deejay until 2 a.m., go get drugs and stay up until 10 in the morning doing drugs in my apartment," Goldstein told People in 2005.

"Then I would wake up and eat like a beast. I was the only fat crackhead in L.A.," he told People in 2005.

Goldstein's weight ballooned above 300 pounds, and his cocaine use continued until one night in 1997 when he shoved a .22-caliber gun into his mouth.

"My whole life flashed in front of me, and I knew this was not my destiny," said Goldstein. "I started bawling my eyes out. I was like, 'God, please help me.' "

After getting sober, he got gastric bypass surgery in 2003. He lost 155 pounds, dropping from a high of 324.

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."

[...]

The privacy implications of sweeping changes implemented before the legal review is finished worry Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "As soon as you're saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it's going to be a really big issue," he says.

Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to "direct the national response to the cyber threat" if necessary for "the national defense and security." The White House is supposed to engage in "periodic mapping" of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies "shall share" requested information with the federal government. ("Cyber" is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)

"The language has changed but it doesn't contain any real additional limits," EFF's Tien says. "It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)...The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There's no provision for any administrative process or review. That's where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it."

* Ted Kennedy has been sober for 12 hours now.

* I wonder if Ted Kennedy’s funeral will be open bar?

* How did people find out Ted was dead? He didn’t show up to the bar this morning.

* Ted Kennedy never became president because unlike George Washington, he couldn’t cross a river.

* Ted Kennedy is a shovel ready project. (My favorite so far!)

* If Ted Kennedy is to be buried in Martha’s Vineyard, the island will sink below sea level.

* They have named a drink after Ted Kennedy. It’s called the Chappaquiddick. It’s made by mixing Gin and murky water.

Mike Huckabee tossed a hand grenade into the debate over who's politicizing Ted Kennedy's death Thursday morning when he told his radio audience that under Obamacare, Kennedy would be told to "go home to take pain pills and die."

Which Democrat will toss it back first?

Will any Republicans jump on it by challenging Huckabee head-on?

Kennedy made a mistake but made up for it

Accidents happen to everyone. It's sad to see people write about this who, if they were caught in the same circumstances don't know how they would have handled it, don't know what they would have done. If you're one of those people, the Internet trolls running around today, don't get upset if people treat you like you're treating Senator Kennedy after his death.

I for one, will not clap in glee at your tragedy.

Get this straight: Ted Kennedy had his day in court 40 years ago, was sentenced, and that was excused by the judge. You can't retry a case decades later and double jeopardy is a violation of Kennedy's constitutional rights.

When George W. Bush nominated Ben Bernanke to be Federal Reserve Chairman in late 2005, we wrote that there was "at least rough justice" in the fact that Mr. Bernanke would have to clean up a monetary bubble that he had helped to create. Alas, that was truer than even we feared, and yesterday President Obama rewarded Mr. Bernanke for his efforts by nominating him for a second four-year term.

[...]

Mr. Bernanke does deserve credit for easing money when the panic became a stampede last autumn. With credit markets frozen and the economy shutting down, the Fed acted to offset a collapse in confidence and money velocity. Some of the Fed's creative liquidity measures also reduced fear and revived the market for the likes of commercial paper. These probably did help to prevent the panic from becoming a crash.

But none of this absolves the Fed from creating the mania that ultimately led to the panic. The first duty of any central banker is to protect the value of the currency, and the nearby chart tracks the value of the dollar against both oil and gold from Mr. Bernanke's appointment as a Fed Governor in late 2002. This is not a history of careful, stable monetary policy. The chart shows how the dollar plunged against commodity prices in the middle part of the decade, the first signal of the credit bubble that would spread to housing and across financial markets.

The second spike reveals how the dollar sank—and oil and gold soared—as Mr. Bernanke eased money abruptly in August 2007 when the credit mania first broke. This commodity spike weakened the economy further in 2008 and contributed to the failures that struck after Labor Day. As economists Anna Schwartz and John Taylor have noted, Mr. Bernanke misdiagnosed as a liquidity crisis what was principally a bank solvency problem. This is one reason his easing did little to stem the panic throughout 2007 and 2008. A steadier monetary hand might well have avoided the autumn panic. But the Bernanke Fed was taken as much by surprise as Lehman Brothers.

The deaths of four American soldiers Tuesday in Southern Afghanistan bring the number of foreign troops who have died in Afghanistan to 295, making 2009 the deadliest year for these soldiers since the Taliban was overthrown in 2001. The bombings came on the same day that the government released a partial, inconclusive count of Afghanistan's presential vote. The soldiers were killed in a southern region of the country, where the Taliban is strongest, but the NATO statement announcing the deaths provided no additional details. The deadliest year before this year was 2008, when 294 Western troops were killed in the country. There are now more than 100,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, including 63,000 from the U.S., after the Obama administration sent more than 30,000 additional troops this year.

There's been grumbling for years that the government should limit how long passengers can be cooped up on a plane that's waiting to take off or after it's landed. Despite the grumbling, there's been no legislation. But incidents involving two recent notorious flights bound for Minnesota may change that.

From January to June this year, a little more than 600 flights out of over 3.2 million, about 0.019 percent, were stuck on runways for more than three hours.

None attracted as much attention as did a Continental Express flight diverted earlier this month to Rochester, Minnesota. Passengers sat 50 yards from the terminal for about six hours in a cramped plane with crying babies and a stinking toilet.

Federal officials blamed the situation on a bad call by an employee of Twin Cities-based Mesaba Airlines.

This past Monday, a Sun Country flight from New York City to Minneapolis-St. Paul waited nearly six hours on a runway before the flight was cleared to take off.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said those two ill-fated, Minnesota-bound flights are giving new impetus to legislation limiting how long passengers can be kept on a plane, while it's on the ground.

"It's just ridiculous," Klobuchar said. "These passengers are packed in like sardines, and they can't get out of the plane. It makes sense to no one."

Neo-Nazi boss Bill White, long given to swaggering threats and proposals for violence, this week went even further than normal — announcing plans for a magazine cover headlined “Kill This NIGGER?” with a photo of Barack Obama and, two days later, publishing the home address of a juror who helped convict another neo-Nazi leader in a federal conspiracy case.

With a growing-yet-ambiguous mission and no clear exit strategy, the war in Afghanistan is fast becoming a key political liability for President Barack Obama.

Last week, the White House gamely tried to characterize Thursday's Afghan elections as a milestone for democracy. But the administration's tepid relationship with presumptively re-elected President Hamid Karzai is one symptom of a larger struggle for Obama.

"Our goal is clear: To disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and their extremist allies," Obama said of Afghanistan. "This is not a challenge that we asked for; it came to our shores when al Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks from Afghanistan."

Obama has tried to bring stability to Afghanistan by sending more troops and shaking up the military command. He broadened the regional strategy to include Pakistan and rooting out terrorist safe havens.

But even so, a Washington Post/ABC News poll last week found 51 percent of Americans said the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting. Among Democrats, 70 percent are against the war.

[...]

"I think most Americans were on board with the limited objective of getting rid of al Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11," said Malou Innocent, a Middle East expert at the Cato Institute. "Since that time, however, it's morphed into a more robust state-building effort that many Americans didn't sign up for."

The president and his family Sunday fly to Martha's Vineyard for a week of vacation. Also heading to the island resort is Cindy Sheehan, the durable anti-war protester who spend consecutive summers protesting near former President George W. Bush's Texas ranch.

"The only change I have seen in foreign policy is, unfortunately, things are getting worse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan," Sheehan said Friday on MSNBC. "We need to revive our anti-war sentiment."

Sheehan's critique from the Left is problematic for Obama in part because it underscores a criticism from some Democrats that he is merely extending Bush war policies.

Some lawmakers have said they want the president to clearly explain why the United States is still in Afghanistan and what the end-game will be. For now, Obama describes the conflict as one that will go on.

"It's at great cost," Obama said in a radio interview last week. "I mean, you know, I have to sign letters to family members who have fallen, and a lot more are falling in Afghanistan than in Iraq. And as a consequence, we've got to make sure that we are really focused on finishing the job in Afghanistan. But it's going to take some time."

US President Barack Obama was accusing Washington's chattering political class of getting bed-wettingly nervous when he said the capital gets "all wee-weed up," his spokesman said Friday.

[...]

"There's something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up," the president said, adding: "I don't know what it is. But that's what happens."

Asked for a definition of the term, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs hesitated, but explained that "'wee-weed up' is when people just get all nervous for no particular reason.

"This is sort of an August pundit pattern between people getting overly nervous for something that still has a long way to go," he said.

"Bedwetting would be probably the more consumer-friendly term," he added.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 29% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-nine percent (39%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -10 This is the first time since July 31 that the President’s Approval Index has fallen to negative double digits[.]