In August of 2005 The New Yorker Magazine published Malcolm Gladwell's The Moral-Hazard Myth: The bad idea behind our failed health-care system

Several years ago, two Harvard researchers, Susan Starr Sered and Rushika Fernandopulle, set out to interview people without health-care coverage for a book they were writing, “Uninsured in America.” They talked to as many kinds of people as they could find, collecting stories of untreated depression and struggling single mothers and chronically injured laborers—and the most common complaint they heard was about teeth.

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In a front page story Tim Harper of the Toronto Star reports that 27 year old lobbyist Frank Sensenbrenner is at the "epicentre of a scandal over a leaked Canadian memo which wounded Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama."

Sensenbrenner, was not registered as a lobbyist at the time he received a no-bid contract from the Canadian government with the backing of Prime Minister Harper's office and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day. The Canadian embassy employed Sensenbrenner to exert influence in Congress where his father, Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) was once the head of the House Judiciary Committee. He introduced the Patriot Act.

Frank Sensenbrenner denies having anything to do with the scandal.

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What? Hey I resemble that remark.

In Houston there's an investigation going on regarding Republican District Attorney "Mr. Executioner" Chuck Rosenthal's contempt case. He's alleged to have destroyed thousands of e-mails, embarassing e-mails. According to Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle in When is a Canadian not a Canadian?

It's one e-mail, only about 100 words, sent in 2003. But it had achieved near-urban legend status in some corners before being unearthed recently and leaked to a few members of the media.

The document — yet another gem from the Harris County District Attorney's Office's treasure trove of embarrassing and inappropriate correspondence — is being debated on local lawyer listservs, blogs and in secret meetings.

Earlier this week, it was announced that the mysterious missive may be a topic of questioning in Chuck Rosenthal's contempt hearing next week — even though it has nothing to do with the DA's deletion of thousands of subpoenaed e-mails.

Instead, the e-mail involves another unlikely topic — Canadians. And not the hockey-playing, Molson-gulping, health insurance-having kind, either.

Earlier today U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates criticized NATO allies for their conduct of the war in Afghanistan. It seems America's friends just don't measure up.

In a Los Angeles Times article by Peter Spiegel Gates faults NATO force in southern Afghanistanthe British, Dutch and Canadian forces were criticized by implication.

But coming from an administration castigated for its conduct of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, such U.S. criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is controversial. Many NATO officials blame inadequate U.S. troop numbers earlier in the war in part for a Taliban resurgence.

"It's been very, very difficult to apply the classic counterinsurgency doctrine because you've had to stabilize the situation sufficiently to start even applying it," said one European NATO official, who discussed the issue on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the alliance. "Even in the classic counterinsurgency doctrine, you've still got to get the fighting down to a level where you can apply the rest of the doctrine."

Have a look at this article over at Scientific American! TASER Seeks to Zap Safety Concerns by Larry Greenemeier

Scientific American for God's sakes!

When did Scientific American become the public relations arm of the stun gun industry? What happened to the science in Scientific?

The only expert quoted is Steven Ashley, former police officer, stun gun industry consultant, and a guy who works for two stun gun manufacturers. Without bias? I think not.

But Ashley, a senior master instructor for Scottsdale, Ariz.–based TASER International and an instructor for its competitor, Stinger Systems, Inc., in Tampa, Fla., disagrees that TASER weapons damage the heart or other internal organs. "The energy they emit follows the grain of the muscles and impacts sensory motion and the motor control," he says. "It doesn't go off searching for internal organs." The most common lingering effect after the muscle contractions, he says, is muscle fatigue lasting a few hours. But, he admits, "you don't know exactly how each individual will react." Other variables determining victims' injuries are how hard they fall and where they land.

Neocon publisher Conrad Black's trial is expected to wrap up today. At the outset I was excited by the prospect of the trial. So too were members of the Canadian and British press who turned up by the hundreds. But Tubby's tedious speechifying lawyers decided to forgo the pile driver defense opting instead for the sleeper hold. "If the peeps are asleep they can't convict the creep" Johnnie Cochrane might have said. Only one brief moment of excitement came from Barbara Amiel when she hissed at a TV producer "Slut" and dismissed journalists as "vermin". Then the trial returned to week, upon week, upon week of tedium.

Intrade couldn't even generate enough business on their futures market to justify the listing. It appears less than $1000 was put down, worldwide. Yawn! For what it is worth the punters are betting "Not Guilty" on all available contracts. Don't trust the predictive powers of such a thin market. For all we know that's all Con's money on the table.

So what's going to happen in the next few days to former Canadian, Conrad?

Here's my analysis:

A sainted one is holy. Holiness is a state of being that honors and serves God, (or Gods there are Hindu saints too!) In the Judeo-Christian tradition holiness separates the sacred from the profane. Observation of the laws is an individual responsibility, necessary for the order of the nation and the world.

Ireland's beloved St. Patrick is remembered today for driving out the snakes. Believers know that the tale does not have to be literally true to be honored because the story has its own powerful allegorical truth.

There are modern day saints. In the public life of the US there are two secular saints worthy of honor today.

Patrick Leahy and Patrick Fitzgerald deserve a place at the front of the parade for helping to drive the snakes out of the American body politic.

Crossposted at The Next Agenda
Conrad Black's trial on a variety of fraud charges continues with jury selection today in Chicago.

For months Black's supporters have claimed that he is being persecuted by a runaway justice system. The motive for the prosecution, they say, is envy.

Conrad and the American Way  Is Lord Black the victim of a new culture of envy in the US, asks Margareta Pagano She quotes an article by Alykhan Velshi, head of a neo-con think thank, The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies:

The crux of Velshi's argument is that the vendetta against Black came about because existing laws, such as that which allows the pre-trial seizure of assets, have been corrupted by a growing culture of envy. Add to this the way corporate governance in the US has shifted in favour of minority shareholders and you have a poisonous climate in which business now operates.

The law, writes Velshi, is focused "less on securing justice than on bringing down the high and mighty, all the while pandering to the politics of envy."

Crossposted at: The Next Agenda

What is it about Conrad Black that causes others to imitate his multisyllabic rhetoric? He's laid down the fog of war. The battlefield is obscured with the smoke of vocabulary so seldom used, and sentence structure so convoluted, that the audience is well confused before the first fact can be found. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation pundit Rex Murphy's commentary was almost unintelligible last night. Everywhere I look and listen the commentators are showing off their prowess with the thesaurus.

So many sycophants are using this means of expression to excuse Black's behaviour that I'm tending to believe the accounts of the story with the lowest word counts. And I think the jury will feel the same way too. This is the way three card monte is played at the Empire club. It won't work on the streets of Chicago.

Here's a story that I think lays the case out fairly clearly. The Independent Online

Conrad Black, the once and future Canadian, is about to face trial in Chicago on a variety of fraud charges related to the governance of Hollinger International. Jury selection begins Wednesday.

Crossposted at The Next Agenda

In 2002 Canadian Maher Arar was arrested by US authorities in New York then rendered to Syria where he was tortured. Today Arar received an apology from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. According to the Toronto Star:

"On behalf of the government of Canada, I wish to apologize to you . . . and your family for any role Canadian officials may have played in the terrible ordeal that all of you experienced in 2002 and 2003," Harper said.

"I sincerely hope that these words and actions will assist you and your family in your efforts to begin a new and hopeful chapter in your lives."

Harper also called on United States to remove Arar from its security watch list, which prevents him from travelling to the U.S.

How much might he get from the US government?

The first episode of Little Mosque on the Prairie aired this evening on CBC.

CBC has high hopes...

The show, a comedy about Muslims trying to interact with their small-town neighbours in a fictional Canadian prairie town called Mercy, has been written up in the New York Times and the Houston Chronicle, with CNN and Stephen Colbert, the fake late-night talk-show host, also taking notice.

Crossposted at: The Next Agenda

Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. Today is such a day.

I grew up in Canada's Hockey Town, Peterborough, during its most glorious days. That kid, second from the right could be me.

Although I enjoyed hockey, my passion was different. I loved basketball above all.

Crossposted at: The Next Agenda

Jeffery Ewener, writing in the Toronto Star,   Actually we can all just get along says the world view view promoted by Samuel P. Huntington is history. Bad History.

Huntington is perhaps best known for his 1993 article  The Clash of Civilizations and the book that followed: The Clash of Civilizations and the Re-making of World Order

Ewener notes:

... the one thing that has gone largely unchallenged is the political world view that gave rise to the Iraq War in the first place, and which continues to push the United States and its Western allies into a confrontational posture against the Islamic world, against China, and potentially against every other major global player.

Crossposted at: The Next Agenda

New leader of the Liberal Party, Stephane Dion, has been dubbed somewhat derisively "Red Green" by the pundits and press. The red-green show: shades of things to come

MONTREAL—Stéphane Dion can be described as a mix of Liberal red and environmental green — seasonally appropriate hues, but also perhaps the next big political-fashion combination for 2007.

Elected on the strength of a healthy youth push within the party, Dion's win also served as a rebuff to the old party establishment, most of whom had lined up behind either Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff.

Dion rode to victory on his reputation for unity — within the Liberal party and as a former intergovernmental minister — and also his strong environmental pedigree when he was the minister in charge of that department under prime minister Paul Martin.

He's a red-blooded partisan but a green-friendly politician too, in other words, and Liberals are betting that this is the colour combination that can beat back the deep-blue conservatism of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Sunday is a special day in Canada. Across the country hundreds of thousands will participate in the Terry Fox Run. More than 1000 people in my little town are going to get up early to assemble in our park beside the lake. We're going to register and contribute some money. There will be an aerobic warm-up, some heart-warming speeches then we'll get behind some honourary guests (who wish they weren't being honoured) at the line. Bicyclists in front, runners next, then walkers all waiting for the ceremonial start to an event with no prizes. We're here for the man who isn't here today and for every one of our friends, family and strangers who have ever been diagnosed with cancer. We're here to help finish a run Terry Fox began 26 years ago.

Crossposted at [http://www.thenextagenda.ca]

Who woulda thunk sports reporters, sports reporters for heaven's sake, might find themselves in the jail for covering their beat?

Let's spend a minute thinking about reporters - from those who write about war and government policy to those who write about home runs.

At issue for the latter group, embodied by San Francisco Chronicle writers Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, is whether they'll be sent to prison by federal prosecutors for refusing to divulge who leaked them grand jury testimony implicating Barry Bonds and other well-known athletes in the Balco scandal in 2004.

David Aldridge: Reporters could be jailed, but Balco leak woke us up

George W Bush is the Rodney Dangerfield of politics. Now a small Canadian University has kicked off a promotion campaign using the Preznit. Yale Shmale