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A Wine Diet? Study Shows Alcohol Helps Women Lose Weight
Tweet Share on Facebook March 10, 2010 Comment (20)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Ladies, great news today! According to the New York Times, "new research suggests that women who regularly consume moderate amounts of alcohol are less likely to gain weight than nondrinkers and are at lower risk for obesity."
The study was published in the current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, and get this: It states that compared with nondrinkers, the risk of becoming overweight is almost one third lower for middle-aged women who drink one or two "alcohol beverages" a day (let's just cut the mumbo-jumbo and say WINE).
Other gems buried in the research: The less-weight-gain-if-you-drink rule doesn't apply to men (sorry, guys, I'll just drink your wine for you), for two reasons. First, alcohol seems to speed up a woman's metabolism, but not a man's. So we might actually burn calories drinking wine? Is that like the story that chewing the grapefruit uses up more calories than the grapefruit contains? How great is that?
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Why Cheney, Kristol Are Wrong About DOJ Al Qaeda Lawyers
Tweet Share on Facebook March 10, 2010 Comment (100)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
More than a little on Thomas Jefferson Street have I poked conservatives for abandoning their libertarian principles when their espoused values clashed with partisan gain. It's fair, then, to praise conservatives like Ken Starr, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and others for defending the Al Qaeda 7 from attack by Liz Cheney, Bill Kristol, and other right-wing opportunists.
The issue is not whether enemy combatants are entitled to the same rights under our Constitution as American citizens. They are not--though our conservative Supreme Court is, slowly and deliberately, awarding foreign detainees considerable protections. The question is whether an American lawyer who represents an unpopular cause should be the target of a witch hunt. And that is where your rights, and mine, get whittled away by folks like Cheney and Kristol, in their drive for personal influence and attention, or partisan profit.
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Are Republicans Trash Talking Into a Healthcare Reform Trap?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 10, 2010 Comment (11)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Republican leaders' concern for centrist House Democrats is really rather touching. But it may for a couple of reasons be self-defeating. Blue Dogs and other fiscally focused House Democrats wrestle with the issue of whether to vote for the Senate's version of healthcare reform--which has provisions they don't like--on the promise that the Senate will then pass a bill fixing said problems. One issue: House Democrats simply don't know if they can rely on their upper chamber brethren to follow through and pass whatever changes are agreed upon. Now come House and Senate Republican leaders with helpful advice for wavering Democrats: Don't trust the Senate, they'll hang you out to dry.
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Pelosi: Pass Health Reform So You Can Find Out What’s In It
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2010 Comment (32)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It has been said well and famously that politicians only really commit a gaffe when they tell the truth without meaning to. Add House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the list.
Speaking Tuesday to the 2010 Legislative Conference for the National Association of Counties, Pelosi began the windup of her healthcare pitch by alluding to the controversies over the healthcare bill and the process by which it has reached its current state. Then, just after saying, "It's going to be very, very exciting," Pelosi gaffed, telling the local elected officials assembled that Congress "[has] to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it, away from the fog of controversy."
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Romney's 2012 Health Reform Problem
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2010 Comment (10)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Mitt Romney told Fox News Sunday this past weekend that the healthcare overhaul he presided over in Massachusetts was the "ultimate conservative plan" which has little to nothing in common with the villainously liberal Obamacare plan inching through the Congress. Of course as the Huffington Post's Sam Stein points out, the Romney and Obama plans have several things in common, like insurance mandates, minimum standards, and subsidies for people who can't afford coverage. The key differences, according to Romney, are that his plan lacks price controls, and that Obama's plan is federal, rather than state based.
Anyway, as Greg Sargent reports, the actually conservative Club for Growth isn't buying Romney's healthcare repackaging. According to Sargent, one club official said "unequivocally" that it is "not a conservative plan," and that if Romney thinks otherwise, he's "in the wrong party."
Especially in 2012--and especially if the health overhaul passes--this is going to be a problem for Romney.
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Government’s GM-Chrysler Ties Make Toyota Probe Look Bad
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2010 Comment (17)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There are a lot of places a politician does not want to get caught in Washington. One is leaving the scene of an accident. Another is coming out of a strip club. A third is in the middle of an apparent conflict of interest.
The charge that an appearance of a conflict of interest exists is, more often than not, used as a smear, as a way to blacken someone's reputation without having all the facts in order. It's hard to defend against, something on the order of deciding how answer the question "Hey buddy, when did you stop beating your wife?" in a way that doesn't add to your troubles.
An apparent conflict of interest, being largely subjective and based on the way an aggrieved party or crusading journalist interprets the facts, is a difficult thing to explain. Which makes it far more difficult to deal with than an actual conflict of interest--which these days is usually dispatched easily by admitting to it or reporting it, apologizing, and then seeking and receiving a waiver from the controlling legal authorities, which allows everyone to go forward as if nothing untoward happened.
For that reason, apparent conflicts get far more attention than actual conflicts. And it's a shame.
Take the case of Toyota. The giant Japanese automaker is now being investigated by several federal agencies and--thanks at least in part to pressure from the White House--at least one committee of the U.S. Congress, which are looking into allegations that many of the cars it currently manufactures have safety problems.
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Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh Unwise to Embrace Nutty Eric Massa
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2010 Comment (37)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Is it possible that ex-Rep. Eric Massa is some sort of Democratic sleeper agent? Perhaps a clever test devised by Democratic leaders to tease out the worst cases of Obama-obsessed lunacy on the right? One can almost imagine the chortling in Democratic meetings: They hate Obama so much they'll believe anything if it casts him in a bad light. I'll bet they'd even embrace a patently nutty, single-payer-healthcare-touting, ethically tainted, backbencher if he was nasty to Rahm.
Consider the evidence.
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Texas Gov. Rick Perry Won the Battle but Could Lose the War
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2010 Comment (6)By Laura Chapin, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Memo to Rick Perry: Santa Anna thought it was all over after the Alamo, too.
Last week--ironically, on Texas Independence Day--Texas Gov. Rick Perry won a smashing victory over his primary challenger, Texas's senior United States senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, by 21 points. He did it the old-fashioned way: jingoism and vitriol, appealing to the lowest common denominators among Republican base voters.
Rick Perry may have won the battle and lost the war, because here's the truly offensive part: He doesn't believe a word of it. Every outrageous pronouncement is simply a foil to set himself as the True Texan in the race. The more eastern pundits attack him, the better he likes it. Perry has reincarnated himself as Ricky the 14th: Texas, C'est Moi.
So what's behind the hairspray? Rick Perry is as cynical and mundane a politician as they come. He talks about promoting jobs while raising taxes on small businesses. He talks about being a stand-up guy and fighting Washington corruption while protecting the lobbyist/government revolving door in Texas. He rails against Washington while ensuring that Texas remains a federal tax "donor state." And he relentlessly ensures that Texas kids end up at the bottom of the economic ladder.
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Iraqi Elections Hold Lessons for American Voters
Tweet Share on Facebook March 8, 2010 Comment (9)Mary Kate Cary, the Thomas Jefferson Street blog
As I was driving across East Texas last week, I was listening to former Ambassador Ryan Crocker's take on the Iraqi elections on NPR. He made this point:
"I do expect that these elections, as important as they are, are really a prelude to what is probably going to be a difficult and protracted period of government formation ... I think it's unlikely that any particular coalition is going to gain an absolute majority, so there will be a lot of negotiations to follow, much as we saw after the last national elections. I think what's different this time though is the quality and quantity of Iraq's security forces. And I think they will meet the challenges of maintaining order during the period of government formation."
Ambassador Crocker said that on Thursday, and was proven right over the weekend. While there was some violence yesterday, for the most part the Iraqi security forces allowed the elections to safely take place. Crocker knows what he's talking about. Not only was he our ambassador to Iraq, he was also U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Kuwait, Syria, and Lebanon, and he speaks fluent Arabic.
Here's the most remarkable part of the weekend's voting: Despite the fact that extremists killed 39 people in an effort to intimidate voters, Reuters reported that turnout yesterday in Iraq was 62 percent--higher than in American voter turnout in 2008, which was 56 percent. That to me says the most about the Iraqi people's determination to see free and fair elections succeed. Here in the United States, we worry about rain falling on Election Day and get 56 percent. There, they wait for the grenades to stop exploding and get 62 percent. Maybe there's hope for democracy in other parts of the Middle East as well.
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Virginia Republicans Back to Gay Bashing and Bedroom Policing
Tweet Share on Facebook March 8, 2010 Comment (53)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Every time one of the two political parties appears to have learned its lesson, and actually seems to be working in the interest of our lives and liberties, rather than its aggrandizement, we seem doomed to disappointment.
The latest example comes from Virginia, the great state of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, the Washingtons and Lees and other heroes, where a newly-elected Republican attorney general has decided that what the commonwealth really needs is a good dose of discrimination, harassment and hate crime.
