Hi. Here are three pressing subjects with several views. The first adds poignancy to my return yesterday, with our pilot progressively changing the flight weather-forecast from 'calm until Burbank' to 'keep your seat belts on,' a hundred miles out of Oakland. I'm sure each of you has a story and we'll share many more, for a long while. I write light, but take these articles quite seriously. Great trip, btw. Ed
<http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/hardrain.shtml> UCAR Release: Warmer Seas, Wetter Air Make Harder Rains as Greenhouse Gases Build October 13, 2005 BOULDER—Storms will dump heavier rain and snow around the world as Earth's climate warms over the coming century, according to several leading computer models. Now a study by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) explains how and where warmer oceans and atmosphere will produce more intense precipitation. The findings recently appeared in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. The greatest increases will occur over land in the tropics, according to the study. Heavier rain or snow will also fall in northwestern and northeastern North America, northern Europe, northern Asia, the east coast of Asia, southwestern Australia, and parts of south-central South America during the 21st century. "The models show most areas around the world will experience more intense precipitation for a given storm during this century," says lead author Gerald Meehl. "Information on which areas will be most affected could help communities to better manage water resources and anticipate possible flooding." NCAR authors Meehl, Julie Arblaster, and Claudia Tebaldi analyzed the results of nine atmosphere-ocean global climate models to explain the physical mechanisms involved as intensity increased. Precipitation intensity refers to the amount of rain or snow that falls on a single stormy day. Both the oceans and the atmosphere are warming as greenhouse gases build in the atmosphere. Warmer sea surfaces boost evaporation, while warmer air holds more moisture. As this soggy air moves from the oceans to the land, it dumps extra rain per storm. Though water vapor increases the most in the tropics, it also plays a role in the midlatitudes, according to the study. Combined with changes in sea-level pressure and winds, the extra moisture produces heavier rain or snow in areas where moist air converges. In the Mediterranean and the U.S. Southwest, even though intensity increases, average precipitation decreases. The authors attribute the decrease to longer periods of dry days between wet ones. The heavier rain and snow will most likely fall in late autumn, winter, and early spring, while warmer months may still bring a greater risk of drought. Related sites on the World Wide Web NCAR Climate and Global Dynamics Division Geophysical Research Letters To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green *** ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 5:30 PM Subject: Helen Miers Pals Say she will Overturn Roe vs. Wade- Wall Street Journal 10/17 http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110007415 JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL Judgment Call Did Christian conservatives receive assurances that Miers would oppose Roe v. Wade? Monday, October 17, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT Two days after President Bush announced Harriet Miers's Supreme Court nomination, James Dobson of Focus on the Family raised some eyebrows by declaring on his radio program: "When you know some of the things that I know--that I probably shouldn't know--you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, that I believe Harriet Miers will be a good justice." Mr. Dobson quelled the controversy by saying that Karl Rove, the White House's deputy chief of staff, had not given him assurances about how a Justice Miers would vote. "I would have loved to have known how Harriet Miers views Roe v. Wade," Mr. Dobson said last week. "But even if Karl had known the answer to that--and I'm certain that he didn't because the president himself said he didn't know--Karl would not have told me that. That's the most incendiary information that's out there, and it was never part of our discussion." It might, however, have been part of another discussion. On Oct. 3, the day the Miers nomination was announced, Mr. Dobson and other religious conservatives held a conference call to discuss the nomination. One of the people on the call took extensive notes, which I have obtained. According to the notes, two of Ms. Miers's close friends--both sitting judges--said during the call that she would vote to overturn Roe. The call was moderated by the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. Participating were 13 members of the executive committee of the Arlington Group, an umbrella alliance of 60 religious conservative groups, including Gary Bauer of American Values, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation and the Rev. Bill Owens, a black minister. Also on the call were Justice Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court and Judge Ed Kinkeade, a Dallas-based federal trial judge. Mr. Dobson says he spoke with Mr. Rove on Sunday, Oct. 2, the day before President Bush publicly announced the nomination. Mr. Rove assured Mr. Dobson that Ms. Miers was an evangelical Christian and a strict constructionist, and said that Justice Hecht, a longtime friend of Ms. Miers who had helped her join an evangelical church in 1979, could provide background on her. Later that day, a personal friend of Mr. Dobson's in Texas called him and suggested he speak with Judge Kinkeade, who has been a friend of Ms. Miers's for decades. Mr. Dobson says he was surprised the next day to learn that Justice Hecht and Judge Kinkeade were joining the Arlington Group call. He was asked to introduce the two of them, which he considered awkward given that he had never spoken with Justice Hecht and only once to Judge Kinkeade. According to the notes of the call, Mr. Dobson introduced them by saying, "Karl Rove suggested that we talk with these gentlemen because they can confirm specific reasons why Harriet Miers might be a better candidate than some of us think." What followed, according to the notes, was a free-wheeling discussion about many topics, including same-sex marriage. Justice Hecht said he had never discussed that issue with Ms. Miers. Then an unidentified voice asked the two men, "Based on your personal knowledge of her, if she had the opportunity, do you believe she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?" "Absolutely," said Judge Kinkeade. "I agree with that," said Justice Hecht. "I concur." Shortly thereafter, according to the notes, Mr. Dobson apologized and said he had to leave the discussion: "That's all I need to know and I will get off and make some calls." (When asked about his comments in the notes I have, Mr. Dobson confirmed some of them and said it was "very possible" he made the others. He said he did not specifically recall the comments of the two judges on Roe v. Wade.) Judge Kinkeade, through his secretary, declined to discuss the matter. Justice Hecht told me he remembers participating in the call but can't recollect who invited him or many specifics about it. He said he did tell the group that Ms. Miers was "pro-life," a characterization he has repeated in public. But he says that when someone asked him about her stand on overturning Roe v. Wade he answered, "I don't know." He doesn't recall what Judge Kinkeade said. But several people who participated in the call confirm that both jurists stated Ms. Miers would vote to overturn Roe. The benign interpretation of the comments is that the two judges were speaking on behalf of themselves, not Ms. Miers or the White House, and they were therefore offering a prediction, not an assurance, about how she would come down on Roe v. Wade. But the people I interviewed who were on the call took the comments as an assurance, and at least one based his support for Ms. Miers on them. The conference call will no doubt prove controversial on Capitol Hill, always a tinderbox for rumors that any judicial nominee has taken a stand on Roe v. Wade. Ms. Miers meets today with Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and Chuck Schumer of New York, both stalwart Roe supporters, who surely will be interested to learn more about her views. After Mr. Dobson's initial comments about "things . . . that I probably shouldn't know," Sen. Arlen Specter, the pro-Roe Judiciary Committee chairman, said, "If there are backroom assurances and if there are backroom deals and if there is something that bears on a precondition as to how a nominee is going to vote, I think that's a matter that ought to be known." He and ranking Democrat Pat Leahy of Vermont threatened to subpoena Mr. Dobson as a witness. Some participants in the Oct. 3 conference call fear that they will be called to testify at Ms. Miers's hearings. "If the call is as you describe it, an effort will be made to subpoena everyone on it," a Judiciary Committee staffer told me. It is possible that a tape or notes of the call are already in the hands of committee staffers. "Some people were on speaker phones allowing other people to listen in, and others could have been on extensions," one participant told me. Should hearings begin on Nov. 7 as is now tentatively planned, they would likely turn into a spectacle. Mr. Specter has said he plans to press Ms. Miers "very hard" on whether Roe v. Wade is settled law. "She will have hearings like no nominee has ever had to sit through," Chuck Todd, editor of the political tip sheet Hotline, told radio host John Batchelor. "One slipup on camera and she is toast." Should she survive the hearings, liberal groups may demand that Democrats filibuster her. Republican senators, already hesitant to back Ms. Miers after heavy blowback from their conservative base, would likely lack the will to trigger the so-called nuclear option. "The nomination is in real trouble," one GOP senator told me. "Not one senator wants to go through the agony of those hearings, even those who want to vote for her." Even if Ms. Miers avoids a filibuster, it's possible Democrats would join with dissident Republicans to defeat her outright. There are philosophical reasons for Republican senators to oppose Ms. Miers. In 1987, the liberal onslaught on Robert Bork dramatically changed the confirmation process. The verb to bork, meaning to savage a nominee and distort his record, entered the vocabulary, and many liberals now acknowledge that the anti-Bork campaign had bad consequences. It led to more stealth nominees, with presidents hoping their scant paper trail would shield them from attack. President Bush has now gone further in internalizing the lessons of the Bork debacle. Harriet Miers is a "superstealth" nominee--a close friend of the president with no available paper trail who keeps her cards so close to her chest they might as well be plastered on it. If Ms. Miers is confirmed, it will reinforce the popular belief that the Supreme Court is more about political outcomes than the rule of law. ### From: dave saldana Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2005 21:49:18 GMT Subject: On the Financial Times piece The Financial Times article by Caroline Daniel and Patti Waldmeir on Harriet Miers and her potential role on the Supreme Court makes intersting point about Miers's loyalty to Bush and what that might mean should she be elevated to the high court. They suggest that her fealty to Bush may not mean much in the grand scheme, and provide a few examples, most notably retiring Justice Sanda Day O'Connor. But another example cited is misleading in its over-simplification of the executive-judiciary transition. "Justice Robert Jackson, for example, served as federal attorney-general under Franklin D. Roosevelt, and then wrote a famous 1952 opinion sharply limiting the president's war powers," they write. Daniel and Waldmeir fail to note that between his service in FDR's administration and his penning the war powers opinion, Jackson served as the Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal. Supreme Court historians are in virtual unanimity when they say that the experience of prosecuting the Nazi genocidists altered Jackson's outlook on executive power utterly. In Meirs, however, I don't believe we will find such enlightenment. The christo-fascists of the Bush administration are not given to restraint in their pursuit of executive power, and Meirs's long history with Bush-- noted for his Manichaean ideas on loyalty and service-- does not lend itself to feelings of optimism on her judicial independence. Dave Saldana *** Reporter, Times Are Criticized for Missteps Media Analysts Question Decisions by Miller, Newspaper's Editors Regarding Leak By Howard Kurtz - Washington Post Staff Writer http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/16/AR2005101601040.html Washington Post October 17, 2005 Media analysts assailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller and her editors yesterday for what they called a series of missteps and questionable decisions revealed in two lengthy articles about the problems of covering the CIA leak investigation while defending the embattled journalist. Alex Jones, a former Times reporter who heads the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, noted the paper's disclosure that Executive Editor Bill Keller had told Miller in 2003 she could no longer cover Iraq and weapons of mass destruction after some of her stories turned out to be wrong. "If the New York Times does not trust Judy Miller to do stories in her area of expertise, what do they trust her to do, and why should we trust what she does?" Jones asked. "She's a great, energetic talent, but investigative reporters need to be managed very closely, and her characterization of herself as Miss Run Amok is something an institution like the New York Times can't afford." Critics inside and outside the paper said they were amazed that Miller would not answer questions about her dealings with editors or show her notes to colleagues investigating the matter. They were equally surprised that Keller and Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. left most legal decisions to Miller without pressing her about her conversations with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's top aide, or asking to see her notes during the battle that landed her in jail for nearly three months. Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor, said Miller's limited cooperation was "unforgivable" and provided "dead giveaways of someone who's hiding the truth." "I just don't think there is any more Judy Miller credibility," Rosen said, while crediting Times editors with "telling some uncomfortable truths about themselves." He predicted that Miller will not return to the Times after a leave during which she plans to write a book -- a view shared by a number of her colleagues. In yesterday's Times, Miller said Libby had told her on two or three occasions that Valerie Plame, the wife of a White House critic, worked at the CIA. Miller said she agreed to testify in the case only after Libby persuaded her to accept a waiver of their confidentiality agreement that his lawyer says was available all along. Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, applauded the Times for its "candor" in revealing "a serious divide within the paper" about Miller and management's handling of the case. But, he said, "the acknowledgment that the editor and publisher of the paper did not know what Miller's source had told her is remarkable. . . . It is still not clear entirely what principle Miller felt she was protecting that also allowed her to testify. Is it the waivers? Or is it that she just got tired of jail and scared she might have to stay there?" Claudia Payne, a Times editor and friend of Miller, said the reporter "cooperated to the best of her ability under the circumstances." Payne said much of the criticism "is based on perceptions of Judy that are uninformed. Some of the declarations about high- handedness and trampling on people are simply not what I've experienced." Others disagree. Craig Pyes, a former contract writer for the Times who teamed up with Miller for a series on al Qaeda, complained about her in a December 2000 memo to Times editors and asked that his byline not appear on one piece. "I'm not willing to work further on this project with Judy Miller," wrote Pyes, who now writes for the Los Angeles Times. He added: "I do not trust her work, her judgment, or her conduct. She is an advocate, and her actions threaten the integrity of the enterprise, and of everyone who works with her. . . . She has turned in a draft of a story of a collective enterprise that is little more than dictation from government sources over several days, filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies," and "tried to stampede it into the paper." Pyes said yesterday he had no problem with the articles as published, which helped win one of two Pulitzer Prizes he shared at the paper. Miller, who is traveling, did not respond to a phone message, and her attorney declined to comment. No single facet of yesterday's Times account drew more condemnation than Miller saying she cannot recall the name of another source who told her about "Valerie Flame," as she recorded the name in her notebook. Miller said the notation was in a different part of the same notebook used for her first interview with Libby in June 2003. "It's hard for anyone to imagine that Judy either didn't know who provided that information or, if it was clearly someone else, why she did not make that available," Jones said. Bloggers were much blunter. "This is as believable as Woodward and Bernstein not recalling who Deep Throat was," wrote columnist Arianna Huffington. Magazine writer Andrew Sullivan accused Miller of "pulling a Clinton." And Editor & Publisher columnist Greg Mitchell said Miller "should be promptly dismissed for crimes against journalism." Several Times staffers, who asked not to be identified because of a reluctance to criticize their bosses, expressed skepticism about Miller's contention that she pushed an editor she would not identify to pursue the story of Plame's outing. Managing Editor Jill Abramson said Miller made no such request. Staffers also complained that Miller's legal battle curtailed the paper's coverage. The Times delayed posting an online article on her release from jail -- which was ready at 2 p.m. -- until the Philadelphia Inquirer broke the story hours later. "The Times felt helpless," Rosen said. "It couldn't print the news. It was very much trapped." (c) 2005 The Washington Post Company ------------------------ Yahoo! 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