Go East, Young Whale

— By Julia Whitty

| Tue Jan. 18, 2011 2:21 PM PST

— Photo: NOAA.

A 13-year-old western Pacific gray whale(Eschrichtius robustus) is shining some light on the travels of his kind.

Flex—as he's called by researchers—was tagged on 4 October on his summer feeding grounds in the Okhotsk Sea off Sakhalin Island, Russia. 

Western Pacific gray whales are among the most endangered whales on Earth, with a population of only 113 to 130 individuals. In contrast, the gray whales who migrate along the western coast of North America—known as the eastern Pacific gray whales—comprise a population estimated at between 15,000 and 22,000 individuals.

Gray whale. Photo by Jim Borrowman, Straitwatch, courtesy NOAAThe good news is that as recently as 1972 Flex and thewestern grays were believed extinct.  Still, the margins are thin. The IUCN Red List categorizes the western grays as critically endangered—the last stage before extinction:

[B]ased on an extinction probability exceeding 50% within three generations, or a projected continuing decline of the subpopulation in combination with a mature population size less than 250. In addition, the small absolute subpopulation size, and the estimate of at most 35 reproductive females means that the subpopulation would easily qualify as Endangered.

Until now, no one has known where Flex and his kin go after leaving the Okhotsk Sea. At this time of year the eastern grays have migrated south to the breeding lagoons along Mexico's Baja Peninsula.

But the western whales—or at least, Flex—show no signs of heading for warmer water.

Image: the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University.*

You can see in the inset map Flex's journey for the first 101 days after tagging. In the last two weeks he's swum halfway across the Bering Sea.

As of 13 January 2011, Flex's transmitter had  sent 1,427 messages along a journey of 4,840 kilometers/3,007 miles. That's 47 kilometers /28 miles a day. But the story is actually way more interesting than that. From the Marine Mammal Institute site: 

"Flex" departed the Kamchatka coast on 3 January and took one week to cross most of the Bering Sea before arriving at the slope edge of the eastern Bering Sea shelf on 9 January. Since 3 January, he has covered 1,689 kilometers/1.049 miles in 238 hours for an average of 7.09 kilometers/4.4 miles an hour. Since attaining the slope edge, he has trended to the south, toward the Pribilof islands. During the last several days we have obtained individual transmissions during several orbits, so we know the tag is still attached and functioning, but not enough transmissions to obtain reliable locations. Some of this may be due to regional bad weather.

But based on the disturbing Nature paper this week revealing the unacceptably high cost of tagging penguins—both in terms of mortality for penguins and skewed data for researchers—the question arises: Is there any harm to a whale weighing many tons from a tracking device the size of a small cigar? Might this tiny tag be skewing Flex's behavior in any way? From theabstract of the king penguin study:

Over the course of a 10-year longitudinal study, banded birds produced 39% fewer chicks and had a survival rate 16% lower than non-banded birds, demonstrating a massive long-term impact of banding and thus refuting the assumption that birds will ultimately adapt to being banded. Indeed, banded birds still arrived later for breeding at the study site and had longer foraging trips even after 10 years. One of our major findings is that responses of flipper-banded penguins to climate variability (that is, changes in sea surface temperature and in the Southern Oscillation index) differ from those of non-banded birds. We show that only long-term investigations may allow an evaluation of the impact of flipper bands and that every major life-history trait can be affected, calling into question the banding schemes still going on. In addition, our understanding of the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems based on flipper-band data should be reconsidered.

Meanwhile, stressors on western gray whales are growing. The Anchorage Daily News reportsthat in the past four years five females have died entangled in fishing gear.

And just yesterday the World Wildlife Fund announce that Sakhalin Energy Investment Company—partly owned by Shell—has announced plans to build a major oil platform near crucial feeding habitat of the western grays in waters  already besieged by multiple oil and gas exploration and development projects. The company will conduct a controversial seismic survey this summer. WWF states their concerns:

"We still do not know how badly the whales were affected by major seismic activity last summer—and will not know until the whales return to their feeding grounds again this year and scientists can determine if any are malnourished. It is totally inappropriate for Sakhalin Energy to plan another seismic survey in 2011 before we have the opportunity to examine the health of the animals," said Doug Norlen, Policy Director at Pacific Environment. 

Other concerns regarding another offshore platform:

• Potentially disrupting the whales' feeding behaviors 
• Increasing the chance of fatal ship strikes
• Increasing the risk of an environmentally catastrophic oil spill on the whales' feeding grounds

You can follow Flex's travels here. The site is updated weekly.

The paper:

• Claire Saraux, et al. Reliability of flipper-banded penguins as indicators of climate change. Nature. 2011. DOI:10.1038/nature09630

*This research was conducted by A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IEE RAS) and Oregon State University Marine Mammal Institute; in collaboration with the University of Washington, Sakhalin Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography, and Kronotsky State Nature Biosphere Reserve. The research was contracted through the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) with funding from Exxon Neftegas Ltd. and Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd.

Clearing Out the Regulatory Smog

— By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Jan. 18, 2011 1:30 PM PST

— Photo by urbanfeel, via Flickr.

The Obama administration's announcement today that it plans to "root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb" was, rather transparently, meant to appease business interests. It's not really clear the degree to which the administration will follow through on that directive, or whether the move is a rhetorical flourish meant to stave off gripes that they're ignoring the economy. But howdangerous is their repetition of talking points from the forces of deregulation—and with it the impression that federal agencies are sitting around making up rules just for the heck of it?

All this talk about getting rid of "dumb" rules certainly makes it sound as if there are a lot of them to go after. But many business and trade groups want us to believe that any and all regulations are baseless or harmful—often excluding in their talking points both the benefits of the rule to the public and the fact that stakeholders have numerous opportunities to weigh in on a rule before it is ever finalized.

Take a look at the example of rules on ozone pollution, better known as smog. In January 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency released tougher new rules that would lower the limit to between 60 and 70 parts per billion, reversing one of the Bush administration's most controversial environmental decisions to set the limit at 75 parts per billion in 2008 against the recommendations of the agency's own scientists. The weaker rules—and the delay of the more aggressive ones—have real implications for public health. Up to 186 million people in the United States are breathing unhealthy levels of smog every day under the weaker standard, according to the American Lung Association. According to the EPA's estimates, the tougher standard of 60 ppb would prevent 4,000 to 12,000 premature deaths a year by 2020, while setting the standard at 70 ppb would save between 1,500 and 4,300 lives per year.

Public health and environmental groups cheered the new proposed rule, but the agency faced a good deal of pressure from industry groups and some politicians to back off the more aggressive standard. Under pressure, the agency delayed the release of the final standard last August. And then last month, the agency again pushed back the due date for the final rule to July 2011. The ozone rule is atop the list of targets for industry groups and anti-regulation politicians. And it will likely remain so—especially if the administration does in fact make attempts to trim the regulatory agenda. And every day the new rule is delayed leaves open the possibility of more pollution-related deaths and illnesses. The implications of this are not abstract.

"All of these industries had the opportunity to participate fully in developing these rules," said Paul Billings, vice president for national policy and advocacy at the American Lung Association. "They don't come out of thin air. They have deadlines, there are laws." But the ozone rule isatop the list of targets for industry groups and anti-regulation politicians. And it will likely remain so—especially if the administration does in fact make attempts to trim the regulatory agenda.

And it's not just in the internal agency commenting process that stakeholders get to weigh in; after the agency drafts a rule, it undergoes review in the Office of Management and Budget, where stakeholders again get to weigh in. We saw that in the example of the pending regulations on coal combustion waste. EPA proposed an aggressive new rule that emerged from OMB, after a good deal of lobbying from the industry, with a weaker alternative rule also up for consideration. That rule, too, has been long-delayed, thanks to a good deal of pressure from industry groups.

Tuesday's announcement also feeds the idea that these agencies have enough excess resources to not only continue to fulfill their current obligations, but to now also go back and revisit each and every rule that they've already promulgated.

"The misunderstanding is that somehow the government has oodles of people working on this stuff and the capacity to regulate the hell out of the American economy," said Sidney Shapiro, associate dean for research and development in the Wake Forest University School of Law and vice president of the Center for Progressive Reform. "They really don't."

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Obama's Regulatory Overture: Digging a Trench or a Grave?

— By Kate Sheppard

| Tue Jan. 18, 2011 11:04 AM PST

The Center for Progressive Reform—among of the most pro-regulatory organizations you'll find in Washington—isn't pleased with Obama's announcement on Tuesday that the administration plans to overhaul existing regulations and evaluate pending rules with an eye toward being more business-friendly. The group takes particular issue with his pledge in Wall Street Journal ope-ed "to review outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive."

"By casting the discussion in those terms, the President swallows the GOP’s frame for the debate hook, line, and sinker," writes CPR president Rena Steinzor, a professor of law at the University of Maryland, in their blog. She argues that the president is moving "to the right" on regulation, as this executive order and the op-ed indicate. This move could have particular consequences for environmental and health rules from federal agencies, many of which are already under attack from foes of regulation.

In Obama's op-ed and in the administration's remarks, they point to saccharin, which though cleared by the Food and Drug Adminstration was considered a hazardous substance by the EPA until last December 2010, as an example of an unnecessary reg that they have already done away with. But as Steinzor notes, that rule wasn't costing jobs or burdening the economy; it's a rather trivial example that neither jibes with the stated reasons behind the administration's overhaul nor gets at the heart of the kind of rules that corporations and anti-regulatory politicians want to see thrown out. Steinzor argues that the adminstration's initiative could have insidious impacts:

Forcing beleaguered agencies to "look back" and find more saccharin examples will have real costs, though, because they are already pushed to their limits by funding shortfalls that give them, in many cases, the same budgets in real dollars as they had in the mid-1980's, when the White House also was hounding them to control themselves. Does the President really intend regulators to freeze-frame efforts to solve public health crises that abound all around them so that they can engage in a draining search to placate companies already rushing to Republicans in Congress with regulatory "hit lists"?

What the foes of regulation are gunning for are rules like those the EPA is currently undertaking on planet-warming emissions—much more complicated, far-reaching, and important than a sugar substitute. Perhaps it's heartening, then, that Obama explicitly lists the administrations work on greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles as a "victory," and heralds the Clean Air Act as "common sense rules of the road that strengthen our country without unduly interfering with the pursuit of progress and the growth of our economy."

It's clear, though, that the administration is going to be on defense on the new EPA regulations —and adopting the mantra of its adversaries isn't likely to help them on that front

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Murdoch's Fox propagandists, degrading journalism

 
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, January 19, 2011;
Amid the recent hubbub over the violent and paranoid rhetoric that stems from much of the American right, one name has been conspicuously absent. We've heard a great deal about Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly - the usual suspects. We've heard very little about the man who employs many of them for his financial and political gain: Rupert Murdoch.
Most coverage of Murdoch for the past couple weeks, in fact, suggests a very different story. The Good Rupert has been hard at work with Apple's Steve Jobsdeveloping a digital newspaper, to be called the Daily, for the iPad. Veteran journalists have been hired. For a modest fee, reports the New York Times, readers will be able to subscribe and have the Daily pop up on their iPad tablets every morning.
If it succeeds, the Daily will join Murdoch's Wall Street Journal as two of the very few newspapers for which readers are willing to pay to read online. This is why Murdoch is often hailed, even by people who detest his politics, as a kind of journalistic savior - the man who figured out how to monetize the Web.
The other Murdoch story of recent weeks concerns the attempt of his company, News Corp., to buy Britain's Sky Broadcasting company, and whether theongoing police investigation into illegal hacking by reporters at one of Murdoch's British papers, News of the World, will make government regulators less inclined to approve the deal. But the deal has raised additional concerns - chiefly, whether combining News Corp. and Sky will give Murdoch too much control over news in the United Kingdom. An Enders Analysis study of Sky's ratings and News Corp. readership concluded that 22 percent of the news that Brits consume would come from the merged conglomerate.
Even if Murdoch had no clearly defined political agenda, that level of concentration would still raise huge questions - about, for instance, such a company's ability to slant news in ways that enhanced its financial prospects, or its market power to exclude certain stories from public scrutiny. The political slanting of news from News Corp. outlets, however, is conscious and constant. Consider, for instance, the memo (subsequently leaked) that Fox News Vice President Bill Sammon sent at the height of the health-care debate, shortly after Republican pollster Frank Luntz said on Sean Hannity's Fox show that Americans were split on a "public" option but that when it was called a "government option," voters overwhelmingly opposed it. Sammon directed news staffers to "use the term 'government-run health insurance,' or, when brevity is a concern, 'government option,' whenever possible."
Murdoch's appetite for news outlets in both old media and new is no less insatiable here than in Britain. His acquisitory zeal may at times appear less menacing because the product he turns out for elite audiences is often high-quality stuff. His purchase of the Wall Street Journal initially sparked concerns about what direction the Journal's news pages might take. But in his bid to undercut the New York Times, he has turned the Journal's weekend arts and literature section into an extremely smart cultural weekly with no discernible political bent.
Yet the stuff his company feeds mass audiences is the most sustained and coordinated dose of right-wing propaganda this country has ever seen. Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, George Wallace and their ilk were freelancers, much as Limbaugh is today. The choir at Fox News, by contrast, sings from Murdoch's hymnal. Their mission, promoted by Fox News president and former Richard Nixon aide Roger Ailes, is to advance right-wing causes and Republicans.
Does Murdoch believe all the things that his Fox News employees say on the air? That, as Glenn Beck has alleged, President Obama hates white people? That the specter of socialist authoritarianism lurks behind Obama's reformist policies? We have no way of knowing, though the fact that Murdoch has in the past endorsed reformists in the Obama mold - Tony Blair as Britain's prime minister, Hillary Clinton for New York senator, when, to be sure, they looked likely to win - suggests that Murdoch personally doesn't swallow all the swill he pays for. But even if he doesn't exactly bank on the accuracy of Beck & Co.'s arguments, he finds their hyperbole useful in pushing the nation to the right.
So I'm hardly going to celebrate the debut of the Daily, media-business-breakthrough though it may be. No one did a better job of spinning and spreading the paranoid fantasies in which the right is awash than Murdoch's Fox News employees. Time will tell if Murdoch has found a way to save journalism. It's already clear that he's found a way to degrade it.
meyersonh@washpost.com

O’s Backdoor Land Grab Sends Shockwaves Across West

Omnibus double whammy: The Dems’ lame-duck land grabs

By Michelle Malkin  •  December 15, 2010 09:14 AM

Yesterday, Senate Democrats dropped their 1,924-page omnibus spending bomb on Capitol Hill. My column today reports on the other omnibus bomb up their sleeves — a massive omnibus land grab that Dingy Harry Reid vowed yesterday to bring up before the stretched-out lame-duck session ends. It’s green pork galore: “Reid’s staff sees a natural resources [...]

Another Obama stealth land grab: Salazar and the NLCS

By Michelle Malkin  •  November 22, 2010 10:19 AM

Map via Frank Jacobs, Strange Maps blog/Big Think The TSA isn’t the only one with grabby hands. I’ve been reporting on the stealth Obama land and ocean grabs for the past several months now — and there is another new, under-the-radar-screen development that deserves your attention. Quick review: In August, I told you about the [...]

Obama’s Beltway Chainsaw Massacre

By Michelle Malkin  •  August 25, 2010 09:15 AM

Building on my continuing War on the West/War on Jobs series, today’s column initiates an Obama jobs death toll. The social justice Left has always used Alinskyite story-telling to get its way. Time for the Right to better tell the stories of the forgotten victims of the Obama job-killing machine. Regarding the new CBO report [...]

The White House War on Jobs

By Michelle Malkin  •  August 23, 2010 10:13 AM

Loathsome cowboys How’s that Summer of Recovery working out for you? Continuing my series on the White House War on the West, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s attack on the economy, and the White House land lock-up (Part 1, Part 2) and ocean grab, here is the latest on Barack Obama’s deliberate job destruction policies. According [...]

And now: The stealth Obama ocean grab

By Michelle Malkin  •  August 20, 2010 09:07 AM

For the past few months, I’ve been spotlighting the Obama administration’s War on the West, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s War on Jobs, and the White House land lock-up (Part 1, Part 2). Today’s column exposes the next Obama environmental power grab — into the sea. *** And now: The Stealth Obama Ocean Grab by Michelle [...]

How Obama is locking up our land, continued

By Michelle Malkin  •  August 16, 2010 11:00 AM

Lawless.

How Obama is locking up our land

By Michelle Malkin  •  August 14, 2010 08:44 AM

Waving goodbye to property rights… My column today raises bright red flags about a little-noticed, radical green land grab program underway at the White House called the “Great Outdoors Initiative.” Keep in mind my previous coverage of Obama’s War on the West and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s job destruction. The War on the West is [...]

The Democrats’ War on the West

By Michelle Malkin  •  July 23, 2010 09:50 AM

The Democrats’ war on the west by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2010 “Why do they hate us?” It’s a burning question on the minds of border-dwelling taxpayers, small business owners, farmers, and Rocky Mountain oil and gas industry workers suffering under punitive Democrat policies. Eighteen months into the Obama administration, the war on the [...]

Salazar's wild lands policy sends shockwaves across the West

CFACT NEWS

Salazar’s move is widely seen as the Obama administration’s way of dealing with a new Congress that is unlikely to create new wilderness areas legislatively.

January 18, 2011

by BONNER COHEN, PH. D.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s Dec. 22 announcement directing the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to survey its vast holdings with a view towards determining which should be designated as “wild lands” has sent shock waves across the West.

Salazar’s move is widely seen as the Obama administration’s way of dealing with a new Congress that is unlikely to create new wilderness areas legislatively. The administration is rebranding wilderness as wild lands so it can make millions of acres of public land off-limits to development through regulatory fiat.  Salazar unveiled the plan after Congress had adjourned for the year and before the new, 112th Congress had been sworn in.

Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), who has since become the new chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, blasted the move.  In a statement issued the day after Salazar’s announcement, Hastings said, “This backdoor approach is intended to circumvent both the people who will be directly affected and Congress…The Natural Resources Committee will fully review this decision next year (2011) and its impact on our nation’s economic competitiveness and ability to keep and create jobs.”

One of the first battlegrounds will be Alaska’s energy-rich North Slope.  There, the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska (NPR-A) is home to as much as 900 million barrels of crude oil and 53 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to an October 2010 estimate by the U.S. Geological Survey.  Several environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Wildlife Conservation Society, are already urging the BLM to “protect” large swaths of NPR-A from any energy development.

The 23.5 million-acre NPR-A was designated as an oil reserve in 1923 and was administered by the Defense Department until it was transferred to the Interior Department in 1976.  Its vast energy reserves, like those of the nearby Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) remain untapped. In addition to the restrictions on energy production facing Alaska, the wild lands policy is expected to negatively affect drilling, mining, and cattle-grazing throughout the West.  Altogether, the BLM manages 250 million acres of land, 22 million of which already are designated as wilderness.  The National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service also administer wilderness areas.

The prospect that the administration could use its new wild lands policy to further thwart energy development in Alaska has infuriated Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), chairman of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs.  “The extreme environmentalist groups couldn’t get their wilderness bill past Congress and so now they are circumventing this country’s legislative body and having the agencies do their dirty work.”

FBI says backpack on Spokane parade route was a bomb

Thomas Clouse
The Spokesman-Review

The FBI is seeking information connected to the identity of the person or persons seen with this Swiss Army-brand backpack. The t-shirts were contained in the backpack. The backpack was found on a bench at the corner of North Washington Street and West Main Avenue in Spokane, Wash. on Monday, Jan. 17, 2011.

The abandoned backpack found Monday along the route of Spokane’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. march contained a bomb capable of inflicting “multiple casualties,” the FBI has confirmed.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s terrorism task force is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for planting the bomb. The FBI on Tuesday issued a bulletin asking for the public’s assistance.

Frank Harrill, special agent in the charge of the Spokane FBI office, would not discuss what specifically made the bomb so dangerous but said the investigation has become a top priority.

“It definitely was, by all early analysis, a viable device that was very lethal and had the potential to inflict multiple casualties,” Harrill said. “Clearly, the timing and placement of a device _ secreted in a backpack _ with the Martin Luther King parade is not coincidental. We are doing everything humanly possible to identify the individuals or individual who constructed and placed this device.”

Two security sources, who did not want to be named because they were not authorized to give information, told The Spokesman-Review that they received a briefing suggesting that the bomb was designed to detonate by a remote device, such as a key-less entry remote for a vehicle or a garage door opener. The bomb apparently also had its own shrapnel that could have caused significant injuries to anyone near the blast.

Ivan Bush, who has helped organize the celebration march in Spokane for more than 20 years said news of the backpack’s potential was “just painful to see and hear.”

“Man, that’s a sad testament,” said Bush, who works in human resources for Spokane Public Schools. “Here we are in the 21st century and these types of things are still happening. It just hurts.”

The purpose of the march was to bring residents together to celebrate a man who championed passive resistance, he said.

“This community came together to get a street dedicated to Dr. King and thousands come out to celebrate him every year,” Bush said. “When something like this takes place, it’s just painful.”

The bomb was discovered in a Swiss Army-brand backpack that was placed on a park bench at 9:25 a.m. at the northeast corner of North Washington Street and West Main Avenue.

Two T-shirts were located in the bag. One reads “Stevens County Relay For Life June 25th-26th 2010” and another shirt reads “Treasure Island Spring 2009.” The FBI is working with other federal agencies and virtually all local police agencies with the investigation as part of the Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force.

“I think the link to the Martin Luther King celebration and march is inescapable,” Harrill said. “At that point, it falls directly in the realm and sphere of domestic terrorism. Clearly, there was some political or social agenda here.”

Harrill said agents have conducted interviews, but said he could not discuss any potential suspects.

Meanwhile, federal investigators continue to investigate an explosive device that was discovered March 23 alongside the Thomas S. Foley U.S. Courthouse. Harrill said agents have not made an arrest in that previous case.

“We don’t know, at this point, of any linkage to any other incident,” Harrill said, referring to the Monday discovery. “We are not aware of any other events that prefaced this event … or threats associated with this device. Nor does it appear to be linked to any other incidents in Spokane or anywhere else in the country. But, that certainly is a focus for us.”

Harrill praised the residents who discovered the backpack.

“The individuals who found this backpack, they were the heroes of the day. They did what we all should do. They brought it to the attention of police,” Harrill said. “They took quick action, rerouted the parade and immediately called for the” bomb disposal unit.

(Watch for continuing updates throughout the day on this story)

Gov. Bentley's Christian Brotherhood

— By Jen Phillips

| Tue Jan. 18, 2011 5:08 PM PST

All Alabamans are apparently not equal, at least not in the eyes of new governor Robert Bentley. Bentley told an audience at a Baptist church where Martin Luther King Jr. was a pastor that he was "color-blind" but also that non-Christians were not his "brother and sister." According to the Birmingham News, Bentley told the congregation: 

''There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit... But if you have been adopted in God's family like I have, and like you have if you're a Christian and if you're saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister. Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

The Anti-Defamation League is the first to jump on the indignation wagon, issuing a statementreading that "It is shocking that Governor Bentley would suggest that non-Christians are not worthy of the same love and respect he professes to have for the Christian community... His comments are not only offensive, but also raise serious questions as to whether non-Christians can expect to receive equal treatment during his tenure as governor." Bentley said that he wasn't trying to offend, and his communications official said he governs all Alabamans.

I'd have to agree with the ADL that Bentley is walking a tight line between professing his faith and protelyzation. Bentley has been up front about his love of Christianity: he's known to be devout and once said that he felt he had been put in the position of Governor by divine will. He told the Birmingham News that "I don't feel obligated to anyone except the people who voted for me." So, far, though, Bentley has seemed more preoccupied with Alabama's economic condition than that of its heathen souls, something the 9% of the state's workforce that's unemployed, regardless of faith, will surely appreciate.

Did Obama steal a GOP Talking Point?

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The full Pelosi/Maddow interview

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But most incredible is that PRESIDENT HIMSELF MADE THIS CALL!!! I mean, can you imagine?

JANUARY 17, 2011

by JESSE

Put This On: LBJ Buys Pants from Put This On on Vimeo.

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson needed pants, so he called the Haggar clothing company and asked for some. The call was recorded (like all White House calls at the time), and has since become the stuff of legend. Johnson’s anatomically specific directions to Mr. Haggar are some of the most intimate words we’ve ever heard from the mouth of a President.

We at Put This On took the historic original audio and gave it to animator Tawd Dorenfeld, who created this majestic fantasia of bungholiana.

Enjoy this special treat from Put This On: LBJ Orders Pants. Then share it with a friend who loves pants.

Palin: I am not going to shut up

	Palin: I am not going to shut up  Posted on 1/18/2011 Ex-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin defended herself against criticism that she used the term "blood libel" to describe comments made by those who falsely tried to link conservatives to the assassination attempt against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Sarah Palin Comments  Palin said, "I think the critics again were using anything that they could gather out of that statement."  She said, "You can spin up anything out of anybody's statements that are released and use them against the person who is making the statement." Palin said, "Blood libel obviously means being falsely accused of having blood on your hands. In this case, that's exactly what was going on."  Palin: Can't make us shut up Palin said the criticism won't stop her from speaking out and accusing Democrats of taking the country in the wrong direction. She said, "They can't make us sit down and shut up."  Palin on Crosshairs  Palin said her political action committee's use of crosshairs to identify targeted congressional districts for Republican pickups was not original and has been used by Democrats.  She said, "The graphic that was used was crosshairs. That's not original. Democrats have been using them for years."  The ex-governor said the crosshairs graphic was taken down by the PAC's hired graphic artist after the criticism began.  She said, "I don't think that was inappropriate."  Palin said, "I know that a lot of those on the left hate my message and they will do all they can to stop me because they don't like the message." She said, "I receive a lot of death threats. My children do." Palin said she supported calls for civility in politics.  But she said,, "We should not use an event like that in Arizona to stifle debate." Palin on Obama Speech  Asked what she thought of Obama's speech at a memorial for the victims, Palin said, "I thought there were parts of it that really hit home that all of us can hold onto and live out." Palin appeared on Fox's Sean Hannity show.

House set to begin health care repeal debate

Posted on 1/18/2011 Floor debate is scheduled to begin Tuesday in the House of Representatives on a repeal of President Obama's health care overhaul bill. House Speaker John Boehner, R-OH, has scheduled floor debate for Tuesday.  A vote on the measure is planned for Wednesday. Rep. Boehner Comments  Boehner said, "Repealing the job crushing health care law is critical to boosting small business job creation and growing the economy."  Democrats said they were prepared to cooperate in the elimination of certain measures considered excessively burdensome to businesses.  Sen. Gillibrand Comments  Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, said, "A lot of our small businesses came to me (after the health care overhaul passed) and said there's a lot of paperwork I now have to fill out."  Sen. Gillibrand said, "We can change that. That's something we can absolutely agree on."  Gillibrand appeared Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation."  Read the CNN story  Read: Repeal vote is just Republicans' first step on health care  Read: Healthcare repeal vote to test House Dems' strength in new minority role

Video: Pawlenty: 'Call their bluff' on debt ceiling

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