Monday, November 18, 2013
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips Of The Day


DC insurance commissioner fired a day after criticizing Obamacare steps – NBC
By Kristen Welker and Ali Weinberg, NBC News

Washington, D.C.'s insurance commissioner confirmed Sunday that he was fired after questioning President Barack Obama's proposed fixes to his troubled health-care law. 
William White told NBC News that Mayor Vincent Gray's office didn't explicitly link his dismissal to his comments. But he strongly suggested it wasn't a coincidence.

"Anyone who looks at this can draw their own conclusions. My statement came out on Thursday, and by Friday [at] 4:15 I was out," he said.
White's deputy, Chester McPherson, takes over as acting insurance commissioner. Gray's office didn't respond to a request for comment.

In a statement Thursday, White criticized Obama's announcement earlier in the day that insurance plans scheduled to be canceled next year under the new law could be extended for a year.

White said the extensions would create problems for health-care exchanges because they contradict legislation the District and many states passed to implement the law. 
"The action today undercuts the purpose of the exchanges, including the District's DC Health Link, by creating exceptions that make it more difficult for them to operate," he said Thursday.

White told NBC News that he was disappointed "that I won't be able to complete all of what I was trying to do." 
"I understand the mayor has every right to change his mind, and I respect that," he said.


It always looks wrong when anyone is fired for simply criticizing something. I notice his words weren't quoted, however. In the article several days ago it was stated that four states, including Florida, were proceeding in accordance with the “fix,” without finding it to be as great a problem as White apparently did. One other Internet article on Breitbart website concerning White's firing simply said that the Mayor felt that he should have vetted his statement before publishing it.

According to a UPI article, though, White asked the Mayor's office for permission by email to publish his critique, but waited only fifteen minutes for a reply – during which time the Mayor didn't respond – and White went ahead to publish his criticism immediately without permission. The UPI article also said that the Mayor was “unhappy with the tone of White's statement.” That does look like grounds for firing.

Mayor Vincent Gray is a Democrat. None of the news articles stated White's political party. It was stated that he was among the first of state Insurance officials to make a complaint about the fix, though.





Volcano under Antarctic ice may erupt, accelerate melting – NBC
John Roach


A newly discovered volcano rumbling beneath nearly a mile of ice in Antarctica will almost certainly erupt at some point in the future, according to a new study. Such an event could accelerate the flow of ice into the sea and push up the already rising global sea levels.

When the volcano will blow is unknown, "but it is quite likely" to happen, Amanda Lough, a graduate student in seismology at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., told NBC News. 


Surprise discovery
Hints of the unnamed volcano's existence first appeared in seismic data collected by an array of instruments strung across the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Lough's job was to analyze the data for earthquakes. "I found this grouping of events that kept being located at the same location over and over again," she said. "And when you see something like that, you want to go see what is causing it."

She typed the quakes' location into Google Earth to look for any features that could explain the shaking. She saw a group of nearby mountains, but ruled them out as the source since they were not an exact match. But as more and more earthquakes popped up in the seismic data, her team revisited the mountains.

"We realized they are actually a chain of volcanoes that date younger as they go south and the earthquakes were south of the volcanoes," Lough said. A subsequent examination of the bedrock topography made with airborne radar revealed a slight rise above the source of the weak, low-frequency quakes.


Intrigued, Lough shipped her seismic data off to a volcano seismologist who said the signature was consistent with a type of earthquake caused by magma coursing through the Earth's crust. Though these quakes could also be caused by the movement of glacial ice, they occurred between 15 and 25 miles beneath the surface of the ice, much too deep to be related to the pile of ice not quite one mile thick.

The final clue came from a distinct layer of ash dated to about 8,000 years ago in the vicinity of the earthquake cluster. At first, Lough said, she and her colleagues thought it was from an earlier eruption of the suspected volcano, though they later concluded it was more likely from Mount Waesche, a known existing nearby volcano that, in geological terms, erupted recently.

"All of the lines of evidence just fell together nicely," Lough said. The clusters of earthquakes "are indicative of magma movement in the crust and that this area is still quite active."


The earthquakes, Lough noted, are "not necessarily a precursor" to an imminent eruption. "Any volcano that is still not extinct, that still has an active magma chamber, is going to be showing seismicity whenever you have the magma moving around in the crust."


So little is known about the bottom of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that models of ice motion over it are unable to reliably predict what to expect from a subglacial eruption, noted Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

However, the new paper, he added in an email to NBC News sent from Antarctica, "serves as an important reminder that, in addition to climate changes, one-off events such as volcanic eruptions or subglacial lake floods may influence the rate at which Antarctica looses ice to the ocean."


An active volcano under Antarctica is not good news. According to this article it has been 8,000 years since it last erupted, so it could be time for it to erupt again. According to this news article, it probably wouldn't completely melt the ice sheet, but rather add to the water that is under the glacier on which the glacier slides.

Since there is a problem with the addition of more fresh water to the ocean, thus reducing its salinity, it is still a problem. According to one theory, lowered salinity at the North Pole is expected to change the flow of the ocean currents, especially the Gulf Stream, which warms the North American continent, Western and Northern Europe and preserves our climate.




­ Gut Bacteria Might Guide The Workings Of Our Minds – NPR
by Rob Stein
­ Could the microbes that inhabit our guts help explain that old idea of "gut feelings?" There's growing evidence that gut bacteria really might influence our minds.

"I'm always by profession a skeptic," says Dr. Emeran Mayer, a professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of California in Los Angeles. "But I do believe that our gut microbes affect what goes on in our brains."

Mayer thinks the bacteria in our digestive systems may help mold brain structure as we're growing up, and possibly influence our moods, behavior and feelings when we're adults. He says, "It opens up a completely new way of looking at brain function and health and disease."

So Mayer is working on just that, doing MRI scans to look at the brains of thousands of volunteers and then comparing brain structure to the types of bacteria in their guts. He thinks he already has the first clues of a connection, from an analysis of about 60 volunteers.

Mayer found that the connections between brain regions differed depending on which species of bacteria dominated a person's gut. That suggests that the specific mix of microbes in our guts might help determine what kinds of brains we have — how our brain circuits develop and how they're wired.
­
Of course, this doesn't mean that the microbes are causing changes in brain structure, or in behavior.
But other researchers have been trying to figure out a possible connection by looking at gut microbes in mice. There they've found changes in both brain chemistry and behavior. One experiment involved replacing the gut bacteria of anxious mice with bacteria from fearless mice.

"The mice became less anxious, more gregarious," says Stephen Collins of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who led a team that conducted the research.
It worked the other way around, too — bold mice became timid when they got the microbes of anxious ones. And aggressive mice calmed down when the scientists altered their microbes by changing their diet, feeding them probiotics or dosing them with antibiotics.

Can We Eat Our Way To A Healthier Microbiome? It's Complicated
To find out what might be causing the behavior changes, Collins and his colleagues then measured brain chemistry in mice. They found changes in a part of the brain involved in emotion and mood, including increases in a chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which plays a role in learning and memory.
Scientists also have been working on a really obvious question – how the gut microbes could talk to the brain.

A big nerve known as the vagus nerve, which runs all the way from the brain to the abdomen, was a prime suspect. And when researchers in Ireland cut the vagus nerve in mice, they no longer saw the brain respond to changes in the gut.
"The vagus nerve is the highway of communication between what's going on in the gut and what's going on in the brain," says John Cryan of the University College Cork in Ireland, who has collaborated with Collins.

Gut microbes may also communicate with the brain in other ways, scientists say, by modulating the immune system or by producing their own versions of neurotransmitters.
"I'm actually seeing new neurochemicals that have not been described before being produced by certain bacteria," says Mark Lyte of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Abilene, who studies how microbes affect the endocrine system. "These bacteria are, in effect, mind-altering microorganisms."

This research raises the possibility that scientists could someday create drugs that mimic the signals being sent from the gut to the brain, or just give people the good bacteria — probiotics — to prevent or treat problems involving the brain.
Could Detectives Use Microbes To Solve Murders?

One group of scientists has tested mice that have behaviors similar to some of the symptoms of autism in humans. The idea is that the probiotics might correct problems the animals have with their gastrointestinal systems — problems that many autistic children also have.

In the mice, many of their autism behaviors were no longer present or strongly ameliorated with probiotics, says Paul Patterson at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. His research will be published soon in the journal Cell.

Experiments to test whether changing gut microbes in humans could affect the brain are only just beginning.
One team of researchers in Baltimore is testing a probiotic to see if it can help prevent relapses of mania among patients suffering from bipolar disorder.
"The idea is that these probiotic treatments may alter what we call the microbiome and then may contribute to an improvement of psychiatric symptoms," says Faith Dickerson, director of psychology at the Sheppard Pratt Health System.

"It makes perfect sense to me," says Leah, a study participant who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She agreed to talk with NPR if we agreed not to use her full name. "Your brain is just another organ. It's definitely affected by what goes on in the rest of your body."

It's far too soon to know whether the probiotic has any effect, but Leah suspects it might. "I'm doing really well," she says. "I'm about to graduate college and I'm doing everything right."

Mayer also has been studying the effects of probiotics on the brain in humans. Along with his colleague Kirsten Tillisch, Mayer gave healthy women yogurt containing a probiotic and then scanned their brains. He found subtle signs that the brain circuits involved in anxiety were less reactive, according to a paper published in the journal Gastroenterology.

But Mayer and others stress that a lot more work will be needed to know whether that probiotic — or any others — really could help people feel less anxious or help solve other problems involving the brain. He says, "We're really in the early stages."


So, now our digestive system is affecting our brain biochemically. Both possibilities – the vagus nerve and the production of neurotransmitters by the bacteria – are surprises. According to Wikipedia, more than one cause of autism has been suspected, with variances in cause from case to case. This bacteriological cause was strongly suggested in the mice, since the severing of the vagus nerve relieved the neurological symptoms. I think it is hard to prove that the “autism” of the mice is the same thing as autism in humans, though.

Yet, assuming that the potential production of brain chemicals by the bacteria could be the primary cause of autism, with the vagus nerve being the pathway for the chemicals to reach the brain, it would be a great advance. It would save a lot of psychiatric bills if probiotics solve the problems of autism and bipolar disorder. This article said it might reduce anxiety, but that is a much less serious illness that either of the other two. I feel skeptical that something this simple could be a complete cure. Still, it's interesting.




­

States Aim To Cure Hyper-Partisanship With Primary Changes – NPR
by Mara Liasson
­ Several states are trying to do something about so-called hyper-partisanship by changing the way congressional districts are drawn and the way elections are held.
Their goal: Force members of Congress to pay attention to general election voters more than their base voters on the right or left.

John Fortier, the director of the Democracy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, which is working on ways to make politics less dysfunctional, says U.S. political parties have become more polarized.

"One thing that that means is that Republicans are sitting in pretty safe Republican seats and Democrats are sitting in safe Democratic seats," Fortier says. "So, really it is across the board. There are not as many centrists, not as many competitive seats."

During the government shutdown fight we learned that conservative Republicans in the House answered to a different political calculus than national Republicans. They represented safe conservative districts, which meant they were more concerned about a primary challenge from the Tea Party than a general election fight with a Democrat.
One reason is that congressional district boundaries are drawn by politicians to make their seats as safe as possible. It is a system where politicians get to choose their voters instead of the other way around.

The redistricting process occurs once every 10 years, after a new census is taken, but several states are trying to change that. In North Carolina, a bill to do just that is before the legislature.

"It would take redistricting out of the hands of politicians and put it into the hands of professional staff who would be forbidden from drawing those districts for political purposes," says Steve Greene, a political scientist in North Carolina.
Population, not political affiliation, would be the only criteria. Greene says that would be a big change for North Carolina's congressional district map.

"Right now, North Carolina has nine Republican seats and four Democratic seats in a variety of really crazy shapes," he says. "To be honest that has got to be one of the most effective gerrymanders in what is really essentially a 50/50 state."

A New Way To Primary
Several states already have a bipartisan or non-partisan redistricting process. California, for instance, enacted another reform aimed at limiting hyper-partisanship called the top-two primary. It was passed by a voter referendum and spearheaded by Steve Peace, a former Democratic state legislator. He is also famous for producing the cult movie series Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which Peace says was really about politics.

"Killer Tomatoes was, I hate to have people take it too seriously, it is about killer tomatoes, but it also really was about government dysfunction and about the absurd way in which we react and overreact to crisis," Peace says.

With the top-two primary system, Peace set out to make California politics a little less absurd and a little less partisan. Under the system, just one open primary is held in each congressional district. All of the candidates are on the ballot: Republican, Democrat, third party. Any registered voter can participate, and the top two candidates go on to the general election.

In extremely conservative districts, it is often two Republicans. In very liberal districts it is two Democrats. The law went into effect just last year so it is too early to draw conclusions, but Peace says it is already having an effect on elected officials.


I am glad to see any serious plans to reduce partisanship. The warfare that goes on now is getting frightening, with one party making a plan to shut down the government in the hope of driving an unpopular piece of legislation through. We need more cooperation and more give and take. That's supposed to be the secret to a good marriage, and the governing of the country should be like a marriage. There should be some loyalty to each other between the parties – not unmitigated hatred.




Murder charges called for in Minn. Nazi case – CBS
BERLIN A German federal prosecutor in charge of investigating Nazi crimes says he is recommending murder charges against a Minnesota man shown in a June AP report to be a former commander in a Nazi SS-led unit accused of burning villages filled with women and children.

Thomas Will, the deputy head of the special prosecutors' office that investigates Nazi crimes, said Monday he has found enough evidence to recommend that state prosecutors pursue murder charges against 94-year-old Michael Karkoc.
Will's office has no powers to file its own charges and it was not clear how long state prosecutors would need to make a decision.

He says "we have determined the requirements for murder charges are there."
Karkoc's son and family spokesman, Andriy Karkos, has denied his father's involvement in any war crimes.

The Associated Press found that 94-year-old Michael Karkoc entered the U.S. in 1949 by lying to American authorities about his role in the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion, which is accused of torching villages and killing civilians in Poland. AP's investigation could only find that he was in the area of the massacres, although no records link him directly to atrocities.

Germany has long taken the position that people involved in Nazi crimes must be prosecuted, no matter how old or infirm, as it did in the case of retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk, who died at age 91 while appealing his conviction as a guard at the Sobibor death camp.


One more Nazi has escaped capture and trial after World War II. America is said to have allowed some of these criminals in willingly, though this article says he lied to authorities here. I hope that's true. I think they should all be tried and punished.




Supreme Court rejects plea to look at NSA program – CBS
The Supreme Court is refusing to intervene in the controversy surrounding the National Security Agency, rejecting a call from a privacy group to stop NSA from collecting the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers in the United States.

The complaint, from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, was the first against the NSA to reach the Supreme Court since former government contractor Edward Snowden began leaking information about the NSA's sweeping surveillance programs.
Congress considers Senate confirmation for NSA chief

In depth: NSA surveillance exposed
While the justices on Monday declined to get involved in this issue, other lawsuits on the topic are making their way through the lower courts around the country.
But in the case at hand, EPIC bypassed lower courts and said that only the Supreme Court can overrule a decision by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose order allowing NSA to get the records cannot be reviewed by other federal courts.

The FISA Amendments Act, which serves as part of the legal basis for NSA surveillance activities, was challenged in the Supreme Court last year in Clapper v. Amnesty International USA. In that case, plaintiffs including lawyers and journalists sued, arguing their communications with foreign contacts were targeted by the U.S. government. In its ruling this year, the court essentially punted on the case, arguing the plaintiffs had no standing (in other words, that the plaintiffs had no proof that they were either the targets of surveillance or would be in the future).
The case is In Re Electronic Privacy Information Center, 13-58.


From Wikipedia:
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is a public interest research group in Washington, D.C. EPIC was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values in the information age. EPIC pursues activities including privacy research, public education, conferences, litigation, publications, and advocacy.

EPIC maintains web sites (epic.org and privacy.org) and publishes the online EPIC Alert every two weeks on privacy and civil liberties issues. EPIC also publishes Privacy and Human Rights, Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws, The Public Voice WSIS Sourcebook, The Privacy Law Sourcebook, and The Consumer Law Sourcebook. EPIC litigates privacy, First Amendment, and Freedom of Information Act cases. EPIC advocates for strong privacy safeguards.

EPIC was founded in 1994 as a joint project of the Fund for Constitutional Government and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Early on, the organization focused on government surveillance and cryptography issues, such as the Clipper Chip and the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. After becoming an independent non-profit 501(c)(3) organization in November 2000, EPIC continued to work on governmental issues: surveillance; transparency, using the Freedom of Information Act to publicize documents; and the security, verifiability, and privacy of electronic voting. It has also taken up consumer privacy issues, such as identity theft, phone record security, medical record privacy, and commercial data mining.
EPIC is registered as a non-profit public charity, and receives most of its funding from contributors, as well as through grants and the sale of its publications.


I favor controls on government surveillance of US citizens without probable cause, and the building up of large stores of miscellaneous data about the general public. It has been said by the NSA that the databases on individual Americans would only be searched if a criminal connection were suspected, but the “Big Brother” aspect of the matter is capable of leading to abuse.

The Tea Party and others like them are always afraid of “big government,” but yet they approve of the laws that were enacted after 9/11 giving the NSA and Homeland Security overly broad powers. To me, the surveillance by the government should be limited on a case by case basis to actual suspected criminal activity. That would give us the power we need to stop enemy powers from succeeding in attacking the US again, but would not cause innocent people to have secret files held in their names at the FBI or CIA.

It's a shame Edward Snowden felt he had to commit possible treason by blowing the cover of the NSA, but I think he had cause to do it. It was a brave, if illegal, act. I hope he continues to go unpunished, in that he could get a very severe penalty if he is captured and tried, which, to me, is not fair. He was uncovering an abuse of power. He should be convicted of “whistle blowing,” not treason, and the Legislature should reexamine the law that allows overweening government surveillance without probable cause.