Katherine Harris and Celestial Drops

This is not a fake story... I repeat...this is not a fake story.

...But for more than six months, the state, at the behest of then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris, did pursue one alternative method -- a very alternative method.  Researchers worked with a rabbi and a cardiologist to test "Celestial Drops," promoted as a canker inhibitor because of its "improved fractal design," "infinite levels of order" and "high energy and low entropy."  But the cure proved useless against canker. That's because it was water -- possibly, mystically blessed water....read on

[Crooks and Liars]

Just another indication of how wacky those politicians are in Florida.What sort of pseudo-science will they ask for next?  10:21:01 PM    

Report on Medical Investigations of Iraq/Afghan Prisoner Homicides.

Dr. Steven Miles has published a comprehensive analysis of medical investigations of prisoner homicides in Iraq and Afghanistan in Medscape MedGenMed e-journal. The article is available here, free registration required.

This article reviews another human rights issue -- the medical evaluation of cases of which prisoners potentially died of because of mistreatment or under suspicious circumstances.

Sources for the article include:

... government documents, including reports of US Army and US Navy criminal investigations, death certificates, autopsy reports, sworn statements, official correspondence between military personnel, and US Department of Defense policies. To a lesser degree, it cites reports by human rights organizations and well-sourced media reports.

Some of Dr. Miles' findings:

[TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]

A very interesting read examining how the Armed Forces Office of the Medical Examiner (AFME) 'failed to fulfill its own policy and its Geneva obligation to ensure that death investigations could be used for sentinel public health research to identify torture as a pattern of preventable death. ' Undermanned and over worked, they often ignored the regulations regarding death certificates. In some cases, it just looks like it was easier to write natural causes than the truth.  10:17:09 PM    

Test for Security Efforts: Next Harry Potter Book Book 6. The New York Times covers some of the madness surrounding Book Six. The security plans are in place, the delivery efforts are under way and lawyers are standing by in case any copies of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" go astray before 12:01 a.m. on July 16, the official time of release for the latest installment in the J. K. Rowling series.

Steve Riggio, the chief executive of Barnes Noble, said the company expected to sell 50,000 of the new Harry Potter book per hour in the first 24 hours after its release. "Less than 1 percent of all books published sell that many copies in a lifetime," he said. [LISNews.com]

Wow. I'll be waiting in line.  9:54:25 PM    

US Afghan tactics 'need rethink'. The Afghan government calls for a rethink in the US-led fight against the Taleban after recent civilian deaths. [BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition]

I am really sorry to see Afghanistan back in the news. I hope we can do it right this time.  7:17:03 PM    

Congress already requires Iraq benchmarks. Hidden in all the talk about pullout dates and performance benchmarks in Iraq is the fact that such benchmarks are already congressionally mandated.

President Bush is facing a legal deadline to deliver what he has been most resistant to providing: a set of specific benchmarks for measuring progress toward military and political stability in Iraq.

Under a little-noticed provision of the defense spending bill passed by Congress in May, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld has until July 11 to send Capitol Hill a "comprehensive set of performance indicators and measures of stability and security" two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein [...]

The information required is specific and detailed. It includes measures of the security environment, including the number of engagements per day, the count of trained Iraqi forces and more. It orders up indicators of economic activity. It directs Rumsfeld to provide -- either in public or in classified annexes -- an estimate of U.S. military forces needed in Iraq through the end of calendar 2006 and the criteria the administration will use to determine when it is safe to begin withdrawing forces.

That's next Monday. [Daily Kos]

I wonder what the response will be. Congress mandated this. Will it be ingired or not? WHat will it say? Could be interesting?  6:54:57 PM