making people feel safer every day...NOT:  NYT

For years, Johnson & Johnson obscured evidence that its popular Ortho Evra birth control patch delivered much more estrogen than standard birth control pills, potentially increasing the risk of blood clots and strokes, according to internal company documents.

But because the Food and Drug Administration approved the patch, the company is arguing in court that it cannot be sued by women who claim that they were injured by the product -- even though its old label inaccurately described the amount of estrogen it released.

This legal argument is called pre-emption. After decades of being dismissed by courts, the tactic now appears to be on the verge of success, lawyers for plaintiffs and drug companies say. The Bush administration has argued strongly in favor of the doctrine, which holds that the F.D.A. is the only agency with enough expertise to regulate drug makers and that its decisions should not be second-guessed by courts.

Let me recap:  If the drug company hides the evidence that would negatively impact approval of their drug, and the FDA approves it on the basis of incomplete information, and the people who take said drug experience death or injury, the drug company cannot be sued because the FDA approved their drug.

In the case of EVRA:

More than 3,000 women and their families have sued Johnson & Johnson, asserting that users of the Ortho Evra patch suffered heart attacks, strokes and, in 40 cases, death. From 2002 to 2006, the food and drug agency received reports of at least 50 deaths associated with the drug.

Disgusting.

My, how things have changed...Boston Globe

In the Woodstock era, the advent of coed dorms caused a stir, with Life magazine proclaiming the development "an intimate revolution on campus." Coed floors came along over the next two decades, giving college students immediate proximity to each other. The next step, coed suites and bathrooms, brought the sexes even closer together.

Now, some colleges are crossing the final threshold, allowing men and women to share rooms. At the urging of student activists, more than 30 campuses across the country have adopted what colleges call gender-neutral rooming assignments, almost half of them within the past two years.

Once limited to such socially liberal bastions as Hampshire College, Wesleyan University, and Oberlin College, mixed-gender housing has edged into the mainstream, although only a small fraction of students have taken advantage of the new policies so far. Clark and Dartmouth universities introduced mixed-gender rooms last fall, and Brown and Brandeis announced plans last month to follow suit.

Like, he and the Iraqi army (oh, and the US army too) are pretty much ineffective against Al-Sadr's militia? Yahoo

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued his strongest warning yet to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to disband his Mahdi Army militia or face political isolation. The Sadrists fired back Monday, saying a move to ban them from elections would be unconstitutional.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said two more soldiers died in roadside bombings on Sunday, raising the day's American death toll to at least five. The announcement comes as the top two U.S. officials in Iraq prepare to brief Congress on the prospects for the eventual withdrawal of American troops.

Al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, told CNN Sunday that al-Sadr's followers would not be allowed "to participate in the political process or take part in upcoming elections unless they end the Mahdi Army."

Yeah, give out ultimatums, that's the ticket...that'll keep those pesky rockets out of the Green Zone.

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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

(From Saturday)

Another poor year for overseas aid

Developing countries are betrayed by richer nations failing to fulfil their pledges

Growing alarm over the amount of global aid to the developing world was justified yesterday when the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said that financial assistance to the world's poorest countries had fallen for the second year in a row.

Campaigners said the figures showed that G8 and EU targets for tackling global poverty by doubling aid flows by 2010 were in serious jeopardy. Aid rose every year for the past decade until 2006.

[...]

The EU's spending target on aid of 0.7% of national income by 2015 also looks badly off track, with aid from the world's richest countries falling from 0.31% in 2006 to 0.28% in 2007.

The OECD report shows only seven countries met or surpassed the 0.7% target, with Norway (0.95%) and Sweden (0.93%) topping the chart.

Though the United States made the largest donation ($21.75bn), it contributed lowest percentage of national income, coming bottom of the charts at 0.16%. The US spends the equivalent of $73 per American each year on aid, but $1,763 a person on defence.

[...]

The European commission urged member states to increase aid levels in a bid to ensure they kept their promises.

José Manuel Barroso, president of the European commission, said: "We cannot afford to reduce aid while trying to achieve the UN millennium development goals. We need more money to cut extreme poverty by half. We need more predictable and sustained aid."

John McCain - Less Jobs More War

Here's an interesting horror story by John Dean:
Airline passengers beware:  The government doesn't protect your rights when you fly

Several years ago, I was stuck on an airplane that sat on the tarmac for just over three hours before taking off. As we waited, a flight attendant treated passengers just as a good Nazi might have. With this experience in mind, I applauded the fact that New York lawmakers recently took action to deal with the growing problem of imprisoning passengers upon planes from which, despite many-hour waits, they are forbidden to disembark.
Unfortunately, that very effort -- which was going to be followed by several other states' reforms -- has been overturned by U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Meanwhile, Congress has completely failed to respond to the problem, apparently bowing to pressure from the airlines, which oppose such reforms.

Read it and think twice before you book that next flight.

(via Matt Yglesias and NYT)

by the one drop rule we may have already voted:

Warren G. Harding

Our First Black President

Will Americans vote for a black president? If the notorious historian William Estabrook Chancellor was right, we already did. In the early 1920s, Chancellor helped assemble a controversial biographical portrait accusing President Warren Harding of covering up his family's "colored" past. According to the family tree Chancellor created, Harding was actually the great-grandson of a black woman. Under the one-drop rule of American race relations, Chancellor claimed, the country had inadvertently elected its "first Negro president."

[.]

Genetic testing and genealogical research may one day prove the truth or falsity of such claims. In the meantime, as the campaign season plunges us headlong into a "national conversation" about race, it's worth thinking about why that truth has been so hard to come by for so long -- about what makes it into our official history and what we choose to excise along the way.

if we apply the one drop rule, many Americans who are descended from African slaves look white.

there's Carol Channing who hid her ancestry until age 82.

Well, "You can't vote for war and disown the results"

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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

So this makes sense, let me state in the beginning that I am a white guy.  My almost almost 30 year old daughter is engaged to an African American, for which I am 90% thrilled because he is far and away the best guy she has been involved with.  He's her best friend, and I love him for that.  My 10% problem with him:  He's a fucking Republican.  How can that be?  He's smart.  AAARRRGGGGHHHHH.

But at least he and I agree that what makes us both hopeful about Obama and my future grandchildren (and millions of other Americans) is that they will biologically represent our transcendence of race thinking.  Will my grandchildren be white or black, or grey as my daughter says?  To those of us who will love them, who gives a shit.  I love this guy like an almost son, but my God, a Republican.  I keep hoping it is just a really, really long practical joke, and he'll tell me the real truth some day.  He's smart enough to marry my daughter, he's too smart to be a Republican.

Just because the Clintons are showing their true "primary colors" doesn't mean we can forget the moral imperative:Impeach Bush.