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Catching up on the news
Decided to give blogging a break over the weekend and concentrate on family time and the wonderful weather we are having in the Bay Area this summer. The dreaded fog has barely been seen this summer, and when it has been around, it has burned off early. You won't hear any complaints about the weather from me. I had a great family hike out at Pt. Reyes. Recommended.
So I turn the computer back on and what do I find? Enough to turn an optimist into a pessimist. The Bush administration, taking advantage of everybody on vacation, led of course by our fearless leader taking a month off, has rolled back the medical records privacy protections created by the Clinton administration. Says the NYT:
The administration decided to abandon the core of the Clinton rules, a requirement that doctors, hospitals and other health care providers obtain written consent from patients before using or disclosing personal medical information for treatment or paying claims.
Now your pharmacists can be paid by the drug companies to get you to switch medicines. Confirmed by the administration.
In other news, the Justice Department, deaf to the voice of the people as ever, announces that it will go ahead with a modified version of Operation TIPS. And it announced that it now will argue that National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 doesn't apply to the vast majority of oceans under United States control.
On the more positive side, Robert K Brown pointed me to a great editorial by Ted Rail, The Truth About September 11, It's Time For Our Government To Answer Questions. I didn't realize how many questions are still open about Sept 11 until I saw Ted Rail's list. Highly Recommended. I'm starting to get suspicious of the Bush administration's stonewalling a 9-11 investigation. What is our government hiding, besides the incompetence that we already know about? The last time we had a intelligence failure this big was Pearl Harbor, and that failure was investigated and people at the top took responsibility for mistakes and lost their jobs. Is Bush afraid he would get impeached if some truth gets out? Or just that his popularity rating would crater as fast as it soared after the attacks? I wonder.
I caught this great article in the Washington Monthly, Confidence Men, Why the myth of Republican competence persists, despite all the evidence to the contrary by Joshua Micah Marshall. This wonderful article points out that we all (even die hard democrats) expected that Bush Jr. would bring competent experienced people into the administration, so we assume he did. However, Marshall looks at the legislative and administrative record so far and shows that it is mostly image that the Bush people have been good at. Recommended Reading. 
Finally, on the fun side, there is this great picture from the folks at the cellar. Here is a small version - click on it to go to the original:
There were a lot of comments speculating on the relationship between the cat and the mouse. My favorite was someone named russotto's comment:
It's just an unusually patient cat. She's tasting him. When he's perfect, she'll eat him.
Thanks to Tapped, Robert K Brown, the Grey Lady, and the Talking Points Memo for helping me catch up on the news, and the cellar for the humor.
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