Collective Sigh

The Rev. Jerry Falwell was hospitalized in critical condition Tuesday, battling his second case of viral pneumonia in just five weeks, hospital and church officials said.

Falwell, 71, was admitted to Lynchburg General Hospital shortly before midnight Monday suffering from "respiratory arrest," the hospital said in a statement.

He was put on a ventilator and stabilized but remained in critical condition, the hospital said.

Challenging the White House, 59 former American diplomats are urging the Senate to reject John R. Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

"He is the wrong man for this position," they said in a letter to Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which must consider the nomination before it goes to the full Senate for confirmation. Lugar has scheduled hearings for April 7.

"We urge you to reject that nomination," the former diplomats said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press and dated Tuesday.

(snip)

The former diplomats also chided Bolton for his "insistence that the U.N. is valuable only when it directly serves the United States."

IMAX theaters in several Southern cities have decided not to show a film on volcanoes out of concern that its references to evolution might offend those with fundamental religious beliefs.

What's bad for your ticker may be good for your bean, according to research from a team of scientists at Boston University.

The team looked at 18 years of data from the long-running Framingham Heart Study and found an association between naturally high levels of blood cholesterol and better mental functioning. The results were recently published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

Although the team of specialists at the National Naval Center in Bethesda, Md., declared President George W. Bush "fit for duty" after his annual physical exam on Saturday, they still recommended that he take a daily aspirin and a statin to help prevent heart disease.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton has named Matthew J. Hogan to be acting director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Norton announced the appointment yesterday, following last week's resignation of Director Steve Williams. Hogan was formerly the chief lobbyist for Safari Club International (SCI), an extreme trophy hunting organization that advocates the killing of rare species around the world.

"Having a Safari Club lobbyist in charge, even temporarily, of the federal agency that is supposed to protect endangered species is precisely the wrong course to pursue for any Administration," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The HSUS. "Someone with a true wildlife conservation ethic, not an allegiance to the trophy hunting industry, should be nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate for the permanent director position as soon as possible."

"This court concludes that Theresa Schiavo's life and liberty interests were adequately protected by the extensive process provided in the state courts," the judge wrote.

He acknowledged the "gravity of the consequences of denying injunctive relief."

"Even under these difficult and time strained circumstances, however, and not withstanding Congress' expressed interest in the welfare of Theresa Schiavo, this court is constrained to apply the law to the issues before it," the ruling said.

I am sure that Dr. Wolfson, who indicated his reliance on ‘good science-based medicine,’ understands the importance of knowing which good scientists and good doctors he relied on to reach certain conclusions.

(snip)

Nothing in Dr. Wolfson’s report leads me to believe the stay should be lifted at this time, or that Mrs. Schiavo should be deprived of her right to live.”

Tampa -- Defiant to the end, the ringleaders of one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history, both in their 60s, received lengthy prison sentences Monday.

Gerald Payne, founder of Greater Ministries International Church, received a 27-year sentence from U.S. District Judge James Whittemore, who called the church's fraudulent investment program ``absolutely despicable.''

Betty Payne, the founder's wife, received a sentence of 12 years and seven months - longer than she faced before she angered the judge by repeating a declaration portraying her and her husband as victims of a zealous government.

Jurors convicted the Paynes and three others on multiple counts of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering. The church claimed international trades and lucrative mining ventures fueled a money-doubling financial program, but prosecutors proved it was a Ponzi scheme that paid established investors with money from recent investors.

Thousands of people nationwide lost huge sums of their money when the system collapsed in 1998. Gerald Payne, 65, is much thinner and walks more feebly since jurors convicted him on 19 counts March 12. He suffered a stroke, his fourth, while in jail awaiting his sentence last month, said attorney Ron Smith.

``This is the last time these two will be sitting together, the last time they'll be able to hold hands or touch each other,'' Smith said of the Paynes.

But Whittemore said Gerald Payne is a danger to the community who would commit more fraud and take more money if free. He blistered the defendant for using ``the word of God to perpetuate a fraud.''

Betty Payne, 61, is in good health and appeared headed for judicial leniency until her words prompted the judge to add 16 months behind bars.

Whittemore had just reduced her sentencing guideline based upon his finding that her role was minor compared to the other defendants. Then she read a statement, verbatim to what her husband read minutes earlier, claiming their constitutional rights were violated and their actions, all guided by the Holy Spirit, broke no laws.

The Paynes and their fellow defendants argued that a church program enjoyed First Amendment protections. Many of the program's followers harbor antigovernment beliefs and blame its collapse on government conspiracies.

``We are innocent of all charges,'' both Paynes said. The only difference in their statements came at the end. ``Glory be to God,'' she said. Smith later said he had tried to dissuade the Paynes from making such statements. ``They both feel that God will intercede,'' he said. ``And I told them both not to count on it.''

Attorney Anne Borghetti tried to minimize the harm, telling the judge that Betty Payne was under the control of other people: ``That's not her statement that she just read. She was given that by other people.'' ``That was my statement,'' her client insisted. Whittemore appeared surprised by the resistance.

``It's one thing to have blind faith,'' he told Betty Payne. ``It's quite another to cast yourself as a martyr for no apparent good. I just deliberated a matter that you could serve 33 months less. What you've just done is throw that right back in my face.''

Her sentence was 16 months longer than the sentencing guideline minimum. As much as $500 million flowed through the Tampa church during the 1990s, making it one of the largest Ponzi schemes investigated by the Internal Revenue Service. The church told investors it could double their money in 17 months or less based on biblical verse.

The Bible also contains passages pertaining to people who abuse God's words, Whittemore told Gerald Payne. ``You're going to have time to study those passages.''

(emphases mine)

”The dogs didn’t scare me.

But the big black snake under the house sure did.”

The black snakes are there to catch rodents. Remove the mice and rats and the snakes will leave. In the meantime, I would suggest you go through every room and make sure all holes are patched so the varmints (rats, mice, snakes) cannot get into your living quarters. Pay special attention to drain and water pipe holes. When there is no food for the snakes, they will leave of their own accord.

Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are more likely to take chances with other kinds of sex that increase the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, a study of 12,000 adolescents suggests.

The report by Yale and Columbia University researchers could help explain their earlier findings that teens who pledged abstinence are just as likely to have STDs as their peers.

(Thanks to Steve for the tip & link)

Research from the heavily studied Rakai district in southern Uganda suggests that increased condom use, coupled with premature death among those infected more than a decade ago with the AIDS virus, are primarily responsible for the steady decline in HIV infections in that area.

(snip)

The U.S. researchers found that the single greatest factor lowering the percentage of Rakai people infected by HIV was the premature deaths of those who were infected earlier with HIV and subsequently died of AIDS. As the number of AIDS patients decreased, the percentage of those who remained infected or became newly infected decreased in the late 1990s.

I was telling Mother in the limousine, I don't remember talking to her about 401(k)s when I was a little guy. I don't remember IRAs, defined contribution plans. This world has changed since -- since I was raised.

Now, ownership is powerful. Ownership was -- you know, it means you can -- somebody can inherit something from a mom or dad. And that shouldn't be the privilege of just the wealthy. That should be the opportunity of everybody who lives in America.

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George W. Bush has nominated Paul Wolfowitz as the next president of the World Bank. Is the Pentagon's deputy secretary of the past four years, and the Bush administration's most dogged advocate of using US power to transform the Muslim world, really the right man for the job?

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Bush said today that he would bring down gasoline prices by creating enough political good will with oil-producing nations that they would increase their supply of crude. “I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply. Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot.”

After years of their lobbyists calling for caps on plaintiff's damage awards, squeezing lawyers' contingency fees and trying to throw litigation roadblocks in the way of injured patients and their families, the state's doctors may have found a legitimate way to cut medical malpractice premiums: Get their malpractice insurance company to quit gouging them.

State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler announced Wednesday that he had ordered the state's largest medical malpractice insurer, Physicians Insurance and its affiliate, Western Professional Insurance Company, to refund more than $1.3 million plus interest in excess premiums charged in 2003.

Nearly 2,400 doctors are in line for premium refunds as high as $4,681. The average refund is expected to be $534.

One insurance company spokesman called it a "paperwork error," and, sure, even a $4,600 refund check won't make much of a dent in an obstetrician's $80,000 annual med-mal insurance premium. But these are the folks who've been trying to literally blame the victims for the high cost of medical malpractice premiums.

The $1.3 million refund order came just one day after Kreidler's office released a report analyzing a decade's worth of medical malpractice claims. The report appears to give lie to allegations of a "crisis" in medical malpractice.

The insurance commissioner's office asked the top five medical malpractice insurers to supply information on claims that were closed between July 1, 1994 and June 30, 2004. These five insurers account for more than 90 percent of the regulated malpractice market for the state's physicians and surgeons, according to Kreidler.

The 10-year period produced just over 10,000 closed claims. That number is probably a good place to start. Ten years, 10,000 claims. That's 1,000 a year.

Of those 10,000 cases, juries decided in favor of plaintiffs in just 50 cases. Not 50 percent of cases, but 50 cases total. Runaway juries? Lottery justice? Based on normal win-loss ratios in cases that go to trial, the final jury score was apparently patients: 50 and docs: 307.

In all, 3,248 of the 10,000 cases were closed without plaintiffs getting a dime and without defendants having to spend a dime to defend themselves. In about 6,100 of the cases, defendants incurred costs for attorneys and expert witnesses. But it was money well spent. Defendants prevailed in 61 percent of those cases.

Only about 2,700 claims -- 27 percent -- resulted in any payment to the injured party.

And what about those blockbuster, multibillion-dollar jury awards? Over the 10 years, 200 claims resulted in compensation payments of more than $1 million. And that's apparently for all compensation, including economic damages and the non-economic or "pain and suffering" awards that lobbyists have been pressuring lawmakers to cap at $250,000 and that the current Initiative 300 to the Legislature would cap at $350,000.

Lobbyists and initiative backers have lamented the "explosion" in medical malpractice claims.

The survey shows that the number of medical malpractice claims increased by 4.9 percent a year. Population growth alone would account for nearly 40 percent of that increase. The average amount of the compensation per claim increased by 4.1 percent a year, well below the rate of inflation in health care costs.

The "explosion" appears to be more of a poof than a boom.

(link)

The biggest problem with Medicaid is that it has been deputized to do a lot of jobs it wasn't originally created for. Intended as a health insurance program for families on welfare and people with disabilities, Medicaid has gradually been stretched to cover for Congress's failure to deal with the millions of low-income American workers without health insurance, and the refusal of Medicare to pay for long-term nursing home care for the elderly.

Medicaid is performing a critical service that the public supports - making sure that poor children get proper medical care, that working families have health coverage and that old people get quality care. The driving force behind the recent upsurge in costs, according to an analysis by researchers at the Urban Institute, was a big increase in the number of people enrolled. The wobbly economy left more workers with incomes low enough to qualify for Medicaid and fewer employers offering affordable health coverage. That is hardly an indictment of Medicaid. The program was doing what it was meant to do, filling a gap for people in real need.

"(it) would promote greater self-reliance and individual responsibility as Americans meet their own care needs as opposed to relying exclusively upon government funding."

A Canadian member of Parliament charged with improving ties with the United States apologized on Thursday for saying "let's embarrass the hell out of the Americans in front of other countries."

The gaffe by Marlene Jennings came exactly two weeks after Canada's Liberal government irritated Washington by refusing to join the U.S. missile defense system.

Jennings -- the parliamentary secretary for Canada-U.S. relations -- reports directly to Prime Minister Paul Martin, who came to power in December 2003 saying he wanted better relations with Washington.

"I would apologize to the members in this House that my comments were a little bit exaggerated. I apologize," she told the House of Commons elected chamber of Parliament.

The sponsors of the legislation say that it will have the effect of lowering the costs of goods and services for all consumers by making it easier for companies and issuers of credit to collect unpaid debts rather than passing those costs on to everyone else.

The U.S. military decided Tuesday to conduct an accelerated inquiry to learn why American troops opened fire, killing an Italian intelligence agent and wounding an Italian journalist he helped rescue from insurgents in Iraq - an attack that has strained relations with a key American ally.

Victims' families and many Italians were outraged when the US marine court dropped involuntary manslaughter charges against Capt Ashby in March 1999.

In May 1999 he was jailed for six months and sacked for helping hide a video shot during the flight.

It was a striking -- some said chilling -- moment in the battle for Iraq, captured on videotape: a wounded, un-armed Iraqi, shot to death by a U.S. Marine.

CBS News has learned that military investigators conclude there is not enough evidence to formally charge that Marine.

Columnist Kathleen Parker lets her fears of the blogosphere overpower her sound judgment when she holds a "funeral" for freedom of speech in America ("Speak now -- and forever wish that you hadn't," Feb. 16). In reality, the Internet helps to foster a meaningful exchange of ideas worthy of the nation's debate-rich, rationalist founding.

(snip)

The sheer variety of this rapid-fire debate also is at odds with Parker's portrayal of bloggers marching in lock-step, chasing after CNN's Jordan or CBS's Dan Rather. Just one compendium of North Carolina blogs, the Old North State blogroll, spans the ideological spectrum. From Brian's Political Donnybrook and Collective Sigh on the left to the Charlotte Capitalist and the Locke Foundation's own Locker Room on the right, if you can't a find blog to suit your own outlook then, well, you should start your own blog! Yes, there's plenty of room in the cyber-mob for new recruits.

That does not sound like the death of free speech, more like a glorious re-birth.

(Emphasis mine, of course!)

"Having lived in Ethiopia, I've known a lot of women who have died giving childbirth," Kebede said. "It's almost even normal to hear that women are going to die giving birth."

"(But) there are actually solutions, it's not like a cancer we can't cure -- we actually have treatments," the 27-year-old model said.

If you were sitting in the Oval Office and George W. Bush asked, "Hey, tell me, who could we appoint to the UN ambassador job that would most piss off the UN and the rest of the world," your job would be quite easy. You would simply say, "That's a no-brainer, Mr. President, John Bolton." And on Monday Bush took this no-brain advice and nominated Bolton to the post, which requires Senate confirmation.

The US military is developing a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from afar to use against protesters and rioters.

Documents released under the US Freedom of Information Act show that scientists have received funding to investigate how much pain can be induced in individuals hit by electromagnetic pulses created by lasers without killing them.

Due to be ready for use in 2007, the Pulsed Energy Projectile weapon is designed to trigger extreme pain from a distance of one-and-a-quarter miles.

Social Security jumped to the No. 2 concern affecting affluent American investors' economic outlook in February, according to a survey.

Among millionaire investors, Social Security was the third most important issue affecting their investment outlook, according to Chicago-based consulting firm Spectrem's monthly affluent investor polls.

As the discussion about overhauling Medicaid becomes more urgent, there is a grave danger that it will be narrowly focused on money, trapping lawmakers in an unproductive power struggle between federal and state governments. In truth, America's Medicaid challenges reach well beyond finances and budgets. The system is fundamentally broken, ensnaring the most vulnerable in our society in a cycle of dependence and poverty while failing to realize the benefits of emerging technologies and new capabilities in health and long-term care. Medicaid is beyond reform and cannot be fixed with small cuts and waivers from the bureaucracy. It must be transformed with legislation to bring it into the 21st century.

Poor individuals should be offered vouchers for health savings accounts that sensitize them to the benefits of prevention, wellness and early detection.