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Tuesday, April 24, 2007
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Political Wire: "'Only a few months ago, the vast majority of black elected officials in New York were expected to support the presidential candidacy of' Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). 'But no longer,' reports the New York Times."
"2008 pres"
6:58:08 AM 
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TPM Muckraker: "If there's one good thing that's come out of the U.S. attorneys scandal, it's that it's shining a bright light on the Justice Department. And as a result, it's become clear that the most grossly politicized section of the department is the Civil Rights Division.
"The reason is plain. As we've seen, many Republicans, and Karl Rove in particular, are obsessed with 'voter fraud' -- the idea that minorities in Democratic strongholds are taking advantage of lax record systems to stuff the ballot. There's evidence that at least two of the fired U.S. attorneys were let go because they did not pursue such prosecutions. But the obsession is nothing new; it's one of the defining preoccupations of the Bush administration. The hysterical claims have led Republicans to push voter I.D. laws in several swing states -- efforts that have been backed by the White House."
Josh Marshall: "Huckabee: Gonzales should resign."
Josh Marshall: "Like pins in a bowling alley (from the St. Pete Times)...'The FBI has asked U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney for information about his dealings with Jack Abramoff as part of its ongoing investigation into the lobbyist convicted of defrauding clients. FBI agent Kevin Luebke refused to say whether Feeney, a Republican from the Orlando area, is under federal investigation. Federal agents also have asked the St. Petersburg Times for an email sent to the newspaper by Feeney's office describing a golfing trip the congressman took with Abramoff to Scotland in 2003.'"
"2008 pres"
6:52:20 AM
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From today's Denver Post, "Leaders of a congressional effort to boost embryonic stem-cell research will huddle soon to develop strategies for passing their bill around President Bush's promised veto.One option is adding the legislation to a bill Bush will have a harder time vetoing. 'There's going to be a bill at some time that President Bush has to sign,' said Jennifer Mullin, spokeswoman for Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, a co-sponsor of the bill passed in the Senate earlier this month. Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado, Democratic author of the House version of the bill, said she would repeatedly add it to legislation that goes to Bush - an approach that could make for a lengthy game of political ping-pong. Political analysts and opponents of the research predict Bush would repeatedly veto any bill that contains the language of DeGette's legislation."
"How much the issue influences voters isn't clear. In 2006, five senators who had voted against the stem-cell bill lost their seats. Senators who supported federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research replaced four of those senators. But there were many other issues in all of those races. In Missouri, voters in polls said they cared about stem-cell research, although it was never the No. 1 issue, said Richard Martin, campaign manager for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who defeated Republican Jim Talent. That makes it hard to determine how much impact it has, he said."
"2008 pres"
6:44:09 AM
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The North American Monsoon is changing, due to global warming, according to water resources engineer Katrina Grantz, reports the Rocky Mountain News. From the article, "New Mexico and Arizona have been getting wetter in August and September and drier in July in recent decades - and the likely culprit is the warmer Pacific Ocean temperatures. That's the conclusion of Colorado researchers who studied the monsoons that bring rain to the Southwest, including parts of Colorado, each summer. Blame more frequent El Niños, the phenomenon that brings warmer Pacific Ocean temperatures during certain years, says lead author Katrina Grantz, of the University of Colorado at Boulder. The more frequent El Niños likely stem from global warming, according to the researchers. Since the 1970s, the start, peak and end of the monsoons have moved later into the summer by about 15 days...
"The later monsoons haven't changed the overall rainfall numbers for New Mexico and Arizona, Grantz said. But as the winters grow wetter in the Southwest, the Pacific Northwest tends to have drier winters, which is causing problems in farming and the orchard industry there. Grantz, a water resources engineer for the University of Colorado's Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems (CADSWES), studied monsoon trends from 1948 to 2004. She wrote the paper, which appears in next month's issue of the American Meteorological Association's Journal of Climate, for her doctoral dissertation in engineering. She expects the information will help water managers with long-term forecasts of rain and stream flow."
More Coyote Gulch coverage of last summer's monsoon season here.
Here's another article about the report from Colorado University. They write, "The southwestern United States has experienced a significant delay in its annual summer monsoon rains in recent decades due to warmer sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, according to a new study at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The study is scheduled for publication May 1 in a special issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate focusing on the North American monsoon system. The study's principal author, Katrina Grantz, is a water resources engineer at the Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems (CADSWES) in CU-Boulder's department of civil, environmental and architectural engineering. Grantz studied trends in the timing and amount of monsoon rainfall in New Mexico and Arizona from 1948 to 2004 and discovered a delay of 10 days to 20 days depending on specific location in the beginning, peak and closing stages of the monsoon in recent years. The study also showed a decrease in rainfall during July and a corresponding increase in rainfall during August and September, while the total annual rainfall stayed approximately the same."
"colorado water"
5:37:37 AM
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© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/15/09; 12:52:46 PM.
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