Democratic Central

For those of a certain age, as I have taken to calling myself these days, Joe Gartlan was a true lion of the Virginia Senate.  I am not knowledgeable enough to do a real obituary, and I will leave that to others.  I will simply note that "the distinguished Senator from Mason Neck" was one of the few liberals who, during the bloodthirsty 1980's, was nonetheless willing to stand up and vote against stupid death penalty bills.  

When he announced his retirement in 1999, the Washington Post ran this story: Amid tears and hugs, and quotes from Saint Paul and Edmund Burke, Sen. Joseph V. Gartlan Jr. (D-Fairfax), second in seniority and the leading liberal voice in a conservative body, today announced his upcoming retirement after 28 years in the General Assembly.

During a 60-minute tribute, the "senior senator from Fairfax," as Gartlan is formally acknowledged on the floor, was praised by colleagues on both sides of the aisle for his intellect, wit and passion.

"A generation will be better off" because of Gartlan's support for the mentally ill, mentally retarded and the environment, said the senior Republican, Sen. John H. Chichester (Stafford).

Gartlan, a master of contemporaneous discourse, delivered his eight-minute farewell speech from a prepared text. Befitting his erudite reputation, Gartlan quoted writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ogden Nash and U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), who has reminded elected officials that they "hold the proxies of the people."

A crucial choice for public servants, Gartlan mused, is whether to "follow the voices of their own informed judgment or the opinions of the people they represent." Gartlan cited the "Irish patriot" Burke, who said "a representative owes his constituency not his industry only, but his judgment, and he betrays instead of serving his people if he sacrifices that judgment to their opinion."

Gartlan wondered: "Would a majority of our people today accept this unvarnished Tory doctrine? But if they don't, what is the value of the representative's wisdom and commitment to principled decision-making? At the end of the day, each of us, I suppose, has a point where wisdom and integrity draw the line. Finding that point is, I suggest, a good definition of our responsibility to the people."

In a lighter vein, Gartlan told colleagues, "You have left footprints on my heart - indeed some on my backside."

Sen. Stanley C. Walker (D-Norfolk), the only senator with greater seniority, remarked on Gartlan's propensity for saying "so much, so well."

That prompted Sen. William C. Wampler Jr. (R-Bristol) to joke about the trepidation that he and other lawmakers from far Southwest Virginia, anxious to begin their 300-mile trek home, often felt on Friday afternoons when Gartlan rose to speak.

Gartlan's speech was followed by a four-minute standing ovation, during which the other 39 senators exchanged hugs and high-fives, and more than a few tears, with the tall, white-haired 73-year-old senator, a New York native who came to the Washington area to attend Georgetown University and its law school.

Watching from the front row of the gallery were Gartlan's wife, Fredona, five of their six children, grandchildren and friends.

Because the announcement was not a closely held secret, candidates to succeed him already are in place. Del. Linda T. "Toddy" Puller (D-Fairfax), 54, and former federal prosecutor Dan Rinzel, 56, who unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination for the seat four years ago, are expected to vie for the seat in November.

Eight Democrats and eight Republicans, the latter including former senator and now state Attorney General Mark L. Earley, paid tribute to Gartlan, variously describing him as "an intellectual giant leaving at the top of his game," a man with a "golden tongue and steel-trap mind" and "a feisty Irishman who believes in what he fights for."

In a time when some politicians plea for voters to separate their official and unofficial actions, Sen. Patricia S. Ticer (D-Alexandria) said, "the public and private Joe Gartlan are one and the same."

Sen. Charles J. Colgan (D-Prince William) said that "if someone speaks ill of Joe Gartlan, no one will believe them."

Walker, Gartlan's seat mate on the first row, added: "I knew on that first day" when he arrived in 1972 that he was "bold. He left no doubt that he would challenge the old guard."

Embarrassed after the tribute, Gartlan looked pleadingly at the presiding officer, Lt. Gov. John H. Hager, and whispered, "Are we done?"Governor Kaine  ordered the state's flags flown at half staff to honor Senator Gartlan, and issued this statement:Senator Gartlan was a true statesman. He wore his heart on his sleeve when it came to issues of social and economic justice.  He was a tireless and effective advocate for the environment, the mentally and physically disabled, and for abused and neglected children. He spearheaded efforts for funding natural resources and human service programs during his almost three decades of public service. His role was critical in galvanizing the regional efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.

He earned the respect of both parties for his intellect, integrity, and force of will. Over the years, he served as chairman of three Senate committees - Courts of Justice, Privileges and Elections, and Rehabilitation and Social Services. He also was a bold and active member of the Senate Finance committee, where he chaired the human services subcommittee.

This is a sad day for Virginia, and our hearts are with Senator Gartlan's family and many friends.

KBR's shoddy electrical work in Iraq has killed 13 American soldiers -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Bush adopting the Obama position that it is better to at least try to talk to those who don't like us -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...
and http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

McCain now criticizes Obama for planned travel -- http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes...

Obama has 300 foreign policy advisers -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Krugman sees a long, slow recovery -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Brooks on conservative reformers -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Prediction -- Israel will attack Iran in the next 4-7 months -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

McCain's talk is better than his walk on equality for women -- http://warner.blogs.nytimes.co...

Romney calls $45 million that he gave to his campaign "gifts", not loans -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Gore goes after carbon consumption -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

"Don't attack Iran" events planned for Charlottesville -- http://www.dailyprogress.com/c...

Governor Kaine warns of bad budget year, need for belt-tightening -- http://www.roanoke.com/politic...
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/...

President Bush nominates Trenga for US District Court in Eastern Virginia -- http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/...

Virginia is joining in criminal investigation at Wachovia -- http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/...

Sam Rasoul talks alternative energy -- http://www.roanoke.com/politic...

Obama is correctly focusing on Afghanistan -- http://www.roanoke.com/editori...

Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonss?n Quisling was born on July 18, 1887.  Quisling was a Norwegian army officer and politician; in 1933 he founded the nationalist party Nasjonal Samling (National Unity), and during World War II, from 1942 to 1945, he served as Minister-President of Norway, after being appointed by the German authorities. After the war he was tried for high treason and subsequently executed by firing squad.  And his name has become synonymous with "traitor".

Quisling had been an officer in the Norwegian Army, but in 1933, he began to turn his attention to politics.  He as one of the founders of Nasjonal Samling ("National Unity"), the Norwegian fascist political party.  Nasjonal Samling had an anti-democratic structure, and Quisling was to be the party's F?rer (Norwegian: "leader", equivalent of the German "F?hrer").  The party at first was overtly Christian; it had modest successes; in the election of 1933, four months after the party was formed, it garnered 27,850 votes (approximately 2%).  However, in 1935, the party line changed from a religiously rooted one to a more pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic policy, and Church support began to wane.  In the 1936 elections the party received fewer votes than in 1933.  The party became increasingly extremist, and party membership dwindled to an estimated 2,000 before the German invasion.  Under the German occupation by 1945 some 45,000 Norwegians had become members of the party.

On April 9, 1940, Germany invaded Norway by air and sea. The German plan was to capture King Haakon VII and the government of Prime Minister Johan Nygaardsvold, after which Quisling would be recognized as Prime Minister of a puppet government.

On April 9, King Haakon and the government fled north, away from the invading Germans; Quisling took advantage of the chaos by becoming the first person in history to announce a coup during a news broadcast, declaring that he was now leading an ad-hoc government, hoping that the Germans would support it.  Quisling had visited Adolf Hitler in Germany the year before, and was liked by Hitler, so Quisling's belief that the Germans would back his government were not entirely unfounded.  In hindsight, this treasonous act doomed any chance of persuading Norway to surrender (as Denmark had the previous day).  King Haakon let it be known he would abdicate before appointing any government headed by Quisling, and the government urged the people to continue to resist.  With no popular support, Quisling was no longer of use to Hitler.  The Quisling government lasted only five days, after which Josef Terboven was installed as Reichskommissar (Commissioner), the highest authority in Norway, reporting directly to Hitler. The relationship between Quisling and Terboven was tense, although Terboven, presumably seeing an advantage in having a Norwegian in a position of power to reduce resentment in the population, named Quisling to the post of "Minister President" (as opposed to Prime Minister) in 1942, a position the self-appointed "F?hrer" assumed in 1943, on February 1.  

Quisling's 1940 betrayal was hardly out of character.  In 1922, at 35, he married an Ukrainian 17-year old named Alexandra. When the next year he was seduced by the more appropriately aged Maria, he married her too, demoting Alexandra to their "adopted daughter." She was later spirited away to France.

In contrast to Hitler and Mussolini, Quisling was utterly void of charisma or people skills, being introvert, uptight, stiff, and socially inept. He was a nerd -- one who gives nerds a bad name.

His megalomania stood out even by the standards of fascist usurpers.  Once in "power," he set up office at the Royal Castle, using the exiled King Haakon's chair. He surrounded himself with the Hird, a party militia named for royal guards of the Viking Ages. As residence he chose Villa Grande, a 46-room mansion on a peninsula in the Oslo Fjord, stuffing it with stolen art from the National Gallery and renaming it after a godly dwelling in Norse mythology. (The villa is now a Holocaust center.) For good measure, he claimed to be "of Northern Germanic chieftain lineage traceable right up to Odin himself."

Quisling stayed in power until he was arrested on May 9, 1945.  In the course of the treason trials following the war, Quisling, along with two other Nasjonal Samling leaders, Albert Viljam Hagelin and Ragnar Skancke, was convicted of high treason and executed by firing squad at Akershus Fortress on October 24, 1945. The charges were based on his coup d'?tat in April 1940, his revocation of the mobilization order, his encouragement of Norwegians to serve in the Norwegian SS division, his assistance in the deportation of Jews, his responsibility for the execution of Norwegian patriots and a number of other charges.

Subsequently, these sentences have been controversial, as capital punishment had only been reintroduced by the government-in-exile at the end of the war, specifically in anticipation of the post-war trials.

In some European languages, the term "quisling" has become a synonym for traitor, particularly one who collaborates with invaders. The term was coined by the British newspaper The Times in its leader of April 15, 1940, entitled "Quislings everywhere." The editorial asserted: "To writers, the word Quisling is a gift from the gods. If they had been ordered to invent a new word for traitor... they could hardly have hit upon a more brilliant combination of letters. Actually it contrives to suggest something at once slippery and tortuous." The noun has survived; for a while during and after the War the back-formed verb "to quisle" (pronounced "quizzle") was used. One who was "quisling" was committing treason.

From a Department of Defense manual:If the document has no front cover, the first page will be the front page.  If it has a cover, the first page is defined as the first page you see when you open the cover.  In some documents, the title page and the first page may be the same.I can't figure out what could possibly require this exegesis.

In Charlottesville, the City Council is trying to decide whether to allow Verizon to build a cell phone tower at Greenbrier School -- about two blocks from my house.  My kids no longer attend Greenbrier, and I don't have Verizon phone service, so I have no particular ax to grind, and I have been following from a distance the debate as it has been raging on neighborhood listservs and only occasionally getting into print.

The first thing that I learned that astounded me about this debate is that tower opponents are being told that local governments are prohibited from basing their decisions about whether to approve cell phone towers on questions about the dangerousness of the cell phone radiation.  

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 includes the following from 47 USC section 332(c)(7)(B)(iv)No State or local government or instrumentality thereof may regulate the placement, construction, and modification of personal wireless service facilities on the basis of the environmental effects of radio frequency emissions to the extent that such facilities comply with the Commission's regulations concerning such emissions.And what is particularly odd about it is the appeal process -- if a neighbor is aggrieved by a decision to approve a cell phone tower, he or she can sue in a "court of competent jurisdiction," which could mean either state or federal court, as I read it.  But if a cell phone company is aggrieved by a decision of a local government to deny a permit to build a cell phone tower, and if the decision "is inconsistent with clause (iv)", the appeal is to the Federal Communications Commission.

That, folks, is called home cookin'.  It could also lead to the somewhat ridiculous position of a state court in, say, Charlottesville, ruling that cell phone towers should not be placed on schools, while the Federal Communications Commission might decide in a case out of, say, Arlington, that cell phone towers on schools are just fine.  And the first time that one court could consider the issue in a way that would govern both would be if an appeal is taken to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now, let me be clear -- I don't really understand the science behind the issue of the effect of cell phone radiation on growing children.  

As I understand the pro-cell tower side, the scientific argument is that there is no scientific evidence to say that low levels of electromagnetic radiation are dangerous.  

On the anti-cell tower side, the argument is stated cogently: Studies have shown that even at low levels of this radiation, there is evidence of damage to cell tissue and DNA, and it has been linked to brain tumors, cancer, suppressed immune function, depression, miscarriage, Alzheimer's disease, and numerous other serious illnesses.

Children are at the greatest risk, due to their thinner skulls, and rapid rate of growth. Also at greater risk are the elderly, the frail, and pregnant women. Doctors from the United Kingdom have issued warnings urging children under 16 not to use cell phones, to reduce their exposure to radio frequency (RF) radiation.

Over 100 physicians and scientists at Harvard and Boston University Schools of Public Health have called cellular towers a radiation hazard. Over 100 physicians and scientists at Harvard and Boston University Schools of Public Health have called cellular towers a radiation hazard. And, 33 delegate physicians from 7 countries have declared cell phone towers a "public health emergency". http://www.mountshastaecology....

The same statute, clearly trying to give the advantage to well-financed Fortune 500 companies, provides that Any decision by a State or local government or instrumentality thereof to deny a request to place, construct, or modify personal wireless service facilities shall be in writing and supported by substantial evidence contained in a written record.This, again, leads to an anomalous result -- a local governmental decision to deny a permit must be given in writing and must be, essentially, the product of an administrative hearing.  There is no requirement anywhere in Virginia law for the extensive hearing that the federal Act would require before a City Council could deny a permit.  No local government does business that way, and the drafters of the legislation surely knew that.  So to deny a permit, a local government will have to develop a procedure that they don't have just to consider this one issue.  But to grant the permit, they need no evidence, no procedure, no hearing.  

To make it more interesting, as I read the statute, if a group of Greenbrier residents decided to go to court to contest the decision to approve the cell phone tower, the trial court would have to have a detailed hearing, with experts, etc., and the City would just say to Verizon, "Hey, you want this?  You defend it."  The City Attorney would kick back and watch, and the local citizens would fight it out with Verizon.

But if the City were to deny the permit, and Verizon wanted to appeal to the FCC, the City would have to defend its decision, with expert witnesses, etc.  Just getting a law firm in DC to defend the case for the City would likely cost a minimum of $100,000.

Let's see.

To deny the permit, the City Council will have to create a wholly new administrative process and have extensive and expensive hearings, probably consuming months (with many days of hearings) to generate a written report, and then face expensive litigation in the Federal Communications Commission against an angry Fortune 500 company.

Or grant the permit in a regular City Council meeting of a few hours' duration, and a group of citizens can sue in a local court and you can sit back and let the citizens fight it out with the Fortune 500 company.

Wanna bet that the City is NOT going to base its decision on medical danger to children?

You can read the FEC reports, you can look at all the PAC contributions being received by Virgil Goode, or you can watch this little video.  I give it a 75 -- it's got a good beat.

My favorites -- the Cigar PAC and the Florida Sugar Cane League PAC.   Do we have a lot of Florida sugar cane in our District?  And the National Association of Textile Organizations PAC -- haven't all the textile plants left the Fifth?

Virgil is complaining that Tom Perriello has gotten a lot of money from out of the District; so has Virgil Goode.  The difference is that Virgil's out-of-the-District money has come from PAC's and corporations, not from friends and family.

Since being alerted to the site by Don (of DoninVA fame), I have been looking at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ .  I am not sure that I have come to fully understand just what they are doing with their statistics, but their results seem based on reality -- they look at all of the polls, and they have a basis for weighting them that makes sense.  Then they come up with various measures -- a "win percentage", for example, is the likelihood that the Democrat will win that state, which is very different from where the Democrat stands in the polls.  They consider, among other things, the presence of a hard-core constituency for one side or the other, how the state has voted in the past, etc.  

At the moment, they have a bunch of measures up, and all of them show good news being predicted for Democrats in November.  In one prediction, Obama wins with 309 electoral votes; in another, 293 electoral votes.  They also have been keeping track of Senate races, and they conclude that Democrats will almost certainly have 2 more seats (Mark Warner in Virginia and Tom Udall in New Mexico seem safe), Democrats lead in 2 more states (Mark Udall in Colorado and Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire), and they have a slight edge in 1 (Nick Begich is leading Ted Stevens in Alaska).

Go look at the site for details.  

Iraq not sure about Obama's proposals -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes...

Major news figures looking to accompany Obama to Iraq -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Obama raises $52 million in June -- http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes...
http://blog.washingtonpost.com...

The Federal Reserve is being remade as guarantor of the financial network -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Democratic bills to "fix" housing may make it worse -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
And Henry Paulson isn't really helping either -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Both campaigns have staffers with connections to Fannie and Freddie -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

McCain and Obama could both learn from the Governors -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Perriello outraises Goode again -- http://www.dailyprogress.com/c...

Warner to stump in Fluvanna Saturday -- http://www.dailyprogress.com/c...

Regional transportation planners don't know what's going to come out of Richmond -- http://www.dailyprogress.com/c...

Michael Paul Williams on Obama and Jesse Jackson -- http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/...

Bayh, Nunn don't say "No" to VP -- http://blog.washingtonpost.com...
More VP speculation -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

An Abramoff connection in McCain's bundlers -- http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes...

NYT applauds override of Medicare reimbursement bill, hopes there will be more reforms in 2009 -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Kristof applauds International Court involvement in Darfur -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Massachusetts is counting up possible benefits from out-of-state gay marriages -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Pelosi hanging tough against offshore drilling -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Bush Library fundraiser offering access, for a price -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Obama and McCain are courting Latino vote -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Bush invoking executive privilege on information about Cheney's leak of Valerie Plame's identity -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...  (note -- if Nixon had asserted this broad a view of executive privilege, we would never have found out about the tapes...)

Trans World Airlines (TWA) Flight 800 was a flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York to Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport (FCO) in Rome, Italy, via Charles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG), Paris, France.  On July 17, 1996, at about 8:31 PM EDT, the Boeing 747 flying the route exploded in mid-air and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York. All 230 people on board (two pilots, two flight engineers, 14 flight attendants, 212 passengers) were killed.  The aircraft had left JFK 12 minutes earlier. While investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) travelled to the scene, arriving the following day, much initial speculation centered on the crash being a terrorist attack.  Consequently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiated a parallel investigation into the crash. On November 18, 1997, it announced that no evidence had been found of a criminal act and the NTSB assumed sole control on the investigation.

The NTSB investigation ended with the adoption of their final report on August 23, 2000. In it they concluded that the probable cause of the accident was "an explosion of the center wing fuel tank (CWT), resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture in the tank. The source of ignition energy for the explosion could not be determined with certainty, but, of the sources evaluated by the investigation, the most likely was a short circuit outside of the CWT that allowed excessive voltage to enter it through electrical wiring associated with the fuel quantity indication system."

Alternative theories propose that an external missile strike by a U.S. Navy vessel or terrorist, or, alternatively, an on-board bomb, caused the crash.  The NTSB investigation considered the possibility that a bomb or missile caused the mishap, but "none of the damage characteristics typically associated with a high-energy explosion of a bomb or missile warhead (such as severe pitting, cratering, petalling, or hot gas washing) were found on any portion of the recovered airplane structure".

On the day of the crash the airplane departed Athens, Greece, as TWA Flight 881, and arrived at the gate at JFK about 16:38. Upon arrival at JFK, there was a crew change, and the aircraft was refueled. In charge of the crew this evening was Captain Steven Snyder, an experienced veteran of more than 6,000 flying hours.

TWA Flight 800 was scheduled to depart JFK around 7:00, but the flight was delayed for just over an hour due to a disabled piece of ground equipment and a passenger/baggage mismatch.  After it was confirmed the owner of the baggage in question was on board, the flight crew prepared for departure, and the aircraft pushed back from the gate about 8:02.

Takeoff was normal at 8:19, and the flight climbed.  The last radio transmission from the airplane occurred at 8:30 after the flight crew received and then acknowledged instructions from Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center to climb to 15,000 feet.  TWA 800 was in the process of climbing when the CVR and FDR both abruptly stopped recording data at 8:31:12.  This was the same time as the last recorded radar transponder return from the airplane was recorded by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) radar.  

At 8:31:50 the captain of an Eastwind Airlines Boeing 737 first reported to Boston ARTCC that he "saw an explosion out here", adding "ahead of us here...about 16,000 feet or something like that, it just went down into the water."  Subsequently, many Air Traffic Control (ATC) facilities in the New York/Long Island area received reports of an explosion from other pilots operating in the area.  Other witnesses on land and sea later stated that they saw and/or heard explosions, accompanied by a large fireball over the ocean, and observed debris, some of which was burning, falling into the water.  Many of these witnesses reported that they observed a streak of light moving upward in the sky to the point where a large fireball appeared.

Individuals in various civilian, military, and police vessels reached the crash site and initiated a search within minutes of the initial water impact. There were no survivors.

Search and recovery operations were conducted by federal, state, and local agencies, as well as their contractors.  The first priority of the early search and recovery efforts was the recovery of the victims; wreckage recovery was the second priority.  

As the wreckage recovery progressed, three main debris fields emerged.  As shown on the diagrams to the left, the NTSB designated different parts of the plane with different colors.  The yellow zone, red zone, and green zone contained wreckage from front, center and rear sections of the airplane, respectively.  The red zone was the most widespread.  Some pieces of wreckage from the red zone had light soot deposits, none contained either moderate or heavy soot deposits. There was no evidence of other exposure to fire on wreckage recovered from the red zone.

The yellow zone contained the nose of the airplane, including the cockpit. This structure hit the water basically intact, and showed extensive crushing damage. Wreckage recovered from the yellow zone showed no evidence of soot, fire or heat.  The green zone, with the aft portion of the fuselage, wings and engines, was located the furthest along the flight path. Wreckage from the green zone showed varying amounts of soot, fire and heat damage, much of it extensive, depending upon location and when they separated from the rest of the structure.

The pattern of fire damage upon the wreckage shows that the wreckage resulting from the initial breakup (red zone) had only slight indications of combustion, the nose section which fell further along the flight path had none, and all major evidence of fire occurred upon the wreckage of the aft fuselage and wings which were furthest down the flight course. This shows that aside from the initial explosion inside the Center Wing Tank all fire happened after the aircraft broke up.

Remains of all 230 victims and over 95% of the airplane wreckage were eventually recovered.  

Initial examination of the wreckage revealed potential explosive residue on three samples of material from separate locations in the airplane wreckage; further testing determined that one contained traces of cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine (RDX), another nitroglycerin, and the third a combination of RDX and pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN).  None of the sample locations correlated to the source of the explosion in the center wing tank. There was none of the readily apparent damage caused by a high-explosive detonation in an aircraft found on any of the structure or contents.

There was nothing unusual on the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) tape until 8:29:15 when the Captain stated: ""Look at that crazy fuel flow indicator there on number four. . . see that?"  Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center cleared TWA 800 to climb to and maintain 15,000 feet at 8:30:15, followed by the Captain ordering "climb thrust" and acknowledging the ATC clearance in the next few seconds. At 8:30:35 the Flight Engineer said "power's set."  At 8:30:42 the Cockpit Area Microphone recorded a mechanical movement in the cockpit, followed by an unintelligible word at 8:31:03, followed by sound similar to "recording tape damage" at 8:31:05. The tape suddenly ended at 8:31:12.

The flight data recorder data was consistent with an aircraft in a normal, wings level climb when the recorder suddenly stopped due to termination of electrical power.

Careful analysis of the distribution of the wreckage, the damage found, and patterns of soot and burning, all contributed to understanding the sequence of events during the breakup of the aircraft. Fire was not present at the beginning of the event, and was produced as the result of the systematic failure of the aircraft structure and tanks containing fuel.

The destruction sequence started with a low-order explosion originating within the center fuel tank; the explosion caused cracking and bowing in the fuselage structure that led to a rupture of the fuselage skin and an explosive compression failure.  The compression failure essentially blew the nose off the plane.  The rear of the plane still had engines trying to work; it flew on for

a few seconds before the fuel tanks exploded in a fireball.  

After years of recovery and analysis of the debris, the NTSB concluded that the most likely cause of the explosion was a fuel/air explosion in the center wing tank (CWT).

There had been speculation of a small missile being fired at the plane, or of a bomb in the luggage.  These theories were fueled by reports that residues of explosives were found on some of the seats.  The NTSB's best guess was to say that it was "quite possible" that the explosive residue detected was deposited during or after wreckage recovery operations (after all, military vessels were being used for the recovery effort).   When the radar data from the Islip facility was analyzed, none of the unexplained radar returns intersected TWA 800's flight path at any time, and all of them were moving away from the airplane.  The lack of any corroborating evidence associated with a high-energy explosion led the NTSB to conclude that "the in-flight breakup of TWA flight 800 was not initiated by a bomb or missile strike."  

So what did cause it?  The eventual answer was that there had been a fuel/air explosion in the center wing fuel tank.

The NTSB established a sequencing group to determine the sequence of the airplane's structural breakup and compare proposed accident scenarios with the structural observations.  The group concluded that the first event in the breakup sequence was a failure in the structure of the CWT, caused by excessive pressure ("overpressure") within the CWT.  This led to a series of structural failures, culminating in the complete separation of the forward fuselage and destruction of the airplane.

The investigation then focused on the fuel/air vapors present in the CWT (only a residual amount of fuel was present in the CWT for the flight), and whether they were flammable and the cause of the overpressure event. Examination of the heat flow around the CWT revealed that the airplane's air conditioning packs, located underneath the CWT, may have contributed to heating of the fuel/air vapor while operating for 2 1/2 hours at the gate at JFK.  Tests recreating the conditions of the flight showed temperatures of the fuel/air vapor in the CWT ranging from 101 to 127 ?F; Jet fuel/air vapors under the same conditions as the flight were flammable at temperatures as low as 96.4 ?F (35.8 ?C).  Questions were raised whether a fuel/air vapor explosion in the CWT would generate enough force to break apart the CWT and cause the destruction of the airplane.  Computer modeling and quarter-scale experiments using models of the CWT were used to investigate the mechanics of a CWT explosion.  During these experiments "quenching" of explosions within the CWT was observed, where the internal structure of the multi-compartment fuel tank did not allow for explosions to develop with enough force to cause the expected damage.

Further computer modeling was conducted, and in July and August 1997, using an out-of-service 747 at Bruntingthorpe Airfield, England, tests simulated a fuel/air explosion in the CWT by igniting a propane/air mixture. These tests resulted in the failure of the CWT structure due to overpressure.

Although the test was not an exact parallel, the NTSB to conclude On the basis of the accident airplane's breakup sequence; wreckage damage characteristics; scientific tests and research on fuels, fuel tank explosions, and the conditions in the CWT at the time of the accident; and analysis of witness information, the Safety Board concludes that the TWA flight 800 in-flight breakup was initiated by a fuel/air explosion in the CWT.In an attempt to determine what ignited the flammable fuel/air vapor in the CWT and caused the explosion, the investigation evaluated numerous potential ignition sources.  The NTSB concluded that the most likely source of sufficient voltage to cause ignition was a short from damaged wiring, or within electrical components of the fuel gauge system.  

There are still some who refuse to accept the NTSB opinion; they usually hold to the "shoulder-fired missile" theory.  Their views are colored by two main facts -- reports of a streak of light moving up toward the plane before the explosion, and the presence of explosive residue on some of the seats.  If you want the alternate views, go to http://www.twa800.com/index.htm ,
http://www.whatreallyhappened....
http://www.serendipity.li/more... (it was a Navy missile)
http://www.all-natural.com/twa...
http://www.cashill.com/firstst...
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Reuters is reporting that VP buzz is picking up over Sam Nunn and Evan Bayh.  http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/usa...  Nunn and Bayh are apparently campaigning with Obama, which may be seen as an opportunity for both a road test and for a chance to see how Obama would get along with them for more than an hour or two at a time.

Personally, I would be surprised if either of them were the pick.

First, both are solid but boring.  Actually, they are not boring; they are BORING.  Sam Nunn undercuts the age argument -- he'll be 70 in September.  Bayh will be a young-looking 53 when he would take office.

Second, neither one brings a state with them, if that is important to the decision.  There is no chance that Obama will take Georgia, even with Nunn on the ticket -- the last Rasmussen poll puts him down 10 points there.  There is some chance that Obama could win Indiana -- he is shown by Survey USA as actually being up, 47% to 46% there -- but it is hard to see why Indiana's strong Republican tendencies are going to reverse this year.  Downstate Indiana is basically Appalachia without the mountains, and unlike in traditionally Republican Virginia, where we can point to growth in the D.C. suburbs as a reason for thinking that change is likely, there is no general demographic shift at work in Indiana to explain why the state's Republican tendencies won't re-emerge.

Nunn brings a wealth of defense knowledge, but that knowledge might qualify him better to be Secretary of Defense than Vice President.  He has been out of office for 12 years.

Bayh voted for the Iraq War resolution, but has since said that had he known then what he knows now, he would not have supported it.  He has also voted against the confirmation of Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.

The more I have been thinking about this choice, the more I have come to the conclusion that Obama should NOT say, "I'm going to pick someone with particular knowledge in the areas of foreign policy and national defense."  Or at least that he should not pick someone with the idea of reassuring the American people that the running mate would supply the expertise that Obama himself lacks.

He should say, "There are two big challenges facing us in the next 4 years.  The first is foreign policy -- getting us out of Iraq, rebuilding our relationships with the rest of the world.  The second is economic -- dealing with the banking mess, reinstituting much of the regulation that years of Republican leadership has killed off, etc.  Both are important, but there is one job that only the President can do -- that is to be chief of state.  Only the President can represent the United States credibly on the international stage.  Only the President can pull out troops from Iraq.  That will be my portfolio for the next four years.  I am choosing a Vice President who will have the economy as his or her primary portfolio."

And then he starts to look at people like Chris Dodd, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the economic machinery, being chair of the Senate Banking Committee (on the other hand, he also received some mortgages from Countrywide, which may bite him in the tuchis).  Maybe Kathleen Sebelius, who has had an impressive record in bringing progressive reforms to the insurance industry in Kansas, and who works very well across the political aisle to get things done.  

I also don't think that he should worry much about who can bring a state with him or her -- Obama will win Dodd's Connecticut regardless of who the VP is, and with McCain leading in Kansas by 10 points in the latest Rasmussen poll, if Obama wins Kansas he will be in such a landslide that the VP choice will not have been the reason.

The one exception to this rule might be Ed Rendell, who could probably bring Pennsylvania (Governors usually are better for this than Senators) with him.  At this point, Obama leads by 6% in Pennsylvania, and has been pretty steadily over 50% in the polls, but adding Rendell might bring 1-2% more to guarantee a victory.  And winning Pennsylvania would practically guarantee the White House.  So, Barack, if you're going to sell out the VP pick, sell it out to get a state like Pennsylvania with 21 electoral votes, not to get Kansas with 6 electoral votes.

I continue to believe that Tim Kaine will NOT be the choice -- although he may help some in Virginia, in most parts of the country, people will say, "What did he do in Virginia?  Name me one big accomplishment."  And there won't be one.  If Barack Obama wants someone that he can be comfortable with on the campaign trail, that may be Tim.  But I don't see any other real advantage to picking him.

Finally, what about Hillary?  I don't see him choosing Hillary, for the following reasons.

First, and probably foremost, we know that Barack Obama is a disciplined guy.  His campaign ran a fairly tight ship.  He also knows that if he gets Hillary, he also gets Bill Clinton, whom Barack will not be able to discipline.  I think that Barack fears that the White House isn't big enough for a President and an ex-President.

Second, there has been no discernible warming between Hillary and Barack in the last month.  They don't particularly like each other.

Third, there is the ongoing issue of releasing the donor records and other financial documents on the Clinton Library and the foundation.  If Obama insists on releasing them all -- as he should, given the fiasco surrounding the Marc Rich pardon on January 19, 2001 -- there will be deal-breakers in there.

I don't think we'll see a ticket of Obama-Clinton.

Today, the story was that "McCain's top foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann" was telling the media that if we elect Barack Obama, it will be trading one dumb stubborn SOB for another:On a conference call just now with reporters, McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann compared Barack Obama's insistence on a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq to Bush's insistence that we were winning even as things went badly for years.

"I think the American people have had enough of inflexibility and stubbornness in national security policy," Scheunemann said. When asked later by the Huffington Post's Sam Stein whether the campaign was disparaging President Bush, Scheunemann dug in: "We cannot afford to replace one administration that refused for too long to acknowledge failure in Iraq with a candidate that refuses to acknowledge success in Iraq." http://tpmelectioncentral.talk...

Aside from the inherent "cuteness" of this line, which tends to obscure its error, just who is this Scheunemann guy, anyway?

He was one of the key participants in getting us into the Iraq War in the first place.  He was a close collaborator with Ahmad Chalabi through the 1990s.  He helped draft the Iraq Liberation Act, which created the new funding stream for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. At the start of the Bush administration he signed on as Don Rumsfeld's 'consultant' on Iraq at the Pentagon. And then when the administration started cranking up the machinery for the propaganda campaign in favor of war he went back on the outside to form and lead the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, to lead the press and lobbying campaign to make sure the war got started on schedule.

You may remember Chalabi as the con man who is wanted in Lebanon for embezzling $200 million.  Or you may remember him as the intelligence source whom the CIA code-named "Curveball," because of the quality of his intel (featuring prominently his assertion that Iraq had an active WMD program).  Or you may remember that the Iraqi National Congress (INC), created in 1992 for the purpose of fomenting the overthrow of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, did not win a single seat in the Iraqi Parliament in the 2005 elections.  Or you may remember Chalabi as having pocketed a lot of US taxpayer dollars, and then providing highly classified US intelligence to Iran.

Scheunemann worked closely with Chalabi for years in his efforts to get the US into war with Iraq. He was also a go-between between Chalabi and McCain. Now that he's taking such a high-profile role on the Iraq issue in the 2008, Scheunemann's history with Chalabi and the use of bogus intelligence to get the nation into war is unquestionably highly newsworthy.

Let's hear about it, news media!  When McCain trots Scheunemann out there, will you remind the readers of what an idiot Scheunemann is?

From the Tom Perriello campaign -- The second quarter fundraising reports just filed with the Federal Election Commission show that Democratic challenger Tom Perriello has continued to outraise incumbent Rep. Virgil Goode this election cycle and broke Democratic fundraising records for the fourth straight quarter in the race for the fifth congressional district.  

"Even while rejecting all donations from lobbyists and corporate interest groups, Tom Perriello has continued to generate support at a record pace," said Jessica Barba, Perriello's communications director. "Additionally, our campaign has opened six offices, logged thousands of volunteer hours, and knocked on thousands of doors as we build the largest grassroots movement this district has ever seen. This campaign is not only prepared to win, but prepared to win the right way."  

In the second quarter, the Perriello campaign raised $313,000 with over 95% coming from individuals. With donations from every county and municipality in the district, Perriello has raised over $920,000 this election cycle. Almost 25%  of Rep. Goode's fundraising this cycle has come from political action committees. He has raised over $1.5 million from corporate and DC lobbyists during his congressional career, including over $100,000 from oil, gas, and electric utility interest groups.

With 111 days until Election Day, the Perriello campaign has already raised more than any previous Democratic challenger to Rep. Goode. The Perriello campaign also has logged over 3000 volunteer hours, and tithed 325 hours to local charities through its volunteer tithing initiative. Mr. Perriello has been on the road all July, meeting with voters in all 22 counties and municipalities in the fifth district, discussing his seven-point plan for economic revival. The campaign has opened offices in Franklin County, Bedford, Danville, Martinsville, Farmville and Charlottesville.

Obama up by 8, says Washington Post/ABC poll -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Electorate divided on racial lines about Obama -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

McCain will talk about education to NAACP -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Obama denies making any changes in his positions -- http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes...

Cillizza makes the case for Charlie Crist as McCain's VP -- http://blog.washingtonpost.com...

Warner crushing Gilmore in cash race -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Fannie/Freddie bailout likely to cost U.S. a lot -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
and here's an alternative to putting up lots of U.S. tax money -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Presidential libraries get their money in sleazy fashion -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Maureen Dowd thinks Obama is humorless -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Even if you have voter-verifiable paper trails, you need audits -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Candidates seem to agree on Afghanistan -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Samuelson baffled by this global economy -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Gubernatorial candidates rake in cash -- http://www.dailyprogress.com/c...

Daily Progress has a confusing editorial on court-appointed attorney compensation -- http://www.dailyprogress.com/c...

Obama playing to win in Danville -- http://www.godanriver.com/gdr/...

Governor Kaine is in Europe on trade mission -- http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/...

Albemarle County's green roof is attracting a lot of attention -- http://www.inrich.com/content/...

Warner, Obama running new ads -- http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/...

In 1968, Alexander Butterfield was hired by Presidential Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman to become Deputy Assistant to President Richard Nixon. Butterfield was highly regarded for his dedication to the job which led him to work very long hours. He was a deputy to Haldeman and aside from routine matters such as visitor tours of the White House, Butterfield provided briefing papers for the President. Among his responsibilities was the setting of Nixon's schedule and the maintenance of his historical records, which included the operations of the secret taping system which Nixon had installed in the White House.

When Nixon was re-elected, Butterfield was appointed Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration.  As the Senate Committee chaired by Sam Ervin was investigating Watergate, they were routinely interviewing all White House employees.  Butterfield was asked to appear before the United States Senate committee, and was interviewed by staff of the committee on July 13, 1973, prior to going before the Senators.

The Senate Watergate committee had at least two reasons to suspect that such tapes might exist. For one, transcripts supplied to the committee by Nixon's lawyer Fred Buzhardt contained extensive and seemingly verbatim quoting of conversations between Nixon and then-White House counsel John Dean, and someone on the committee realized that such precise detail would probably not be possible without having an audio recording as its source. Also, the committee's curiosity had been piqued by Dean's Senate testimony that, in a meeting, Nixon "began asking me a number of leading questions, which made them think that the conversation was being taped and a record was being made to protect himself."

Butterfield knew that all White House employees were being asked whether there was a taping system.  He did not want to tell the committee of the system but had decided before the hearing that he would have to if asked a direct question.

Butterfield was asked the direct question by the minority (Republican) counsel, Donald Sanders. He told the staff members that "everything was taped ... as long as the President was in attendance. There was not so much as a hint that something should not be taped."  All present recognized the significance of this disclosure and Butterfield was hastily put before the full Committee on July 16 to put the taping system on the record. Chief Minority Counsel, Fred Thompson, catapulted himself into history by asking "Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?"

Butterfield told the committee that Nixon had ordered a taping system installed in the White House to automatically record all conversations; it was possible to concretely verify what the president said, and when he said it. Only a few White House employees had ever been aware that this system existed. Special Counsel Archibald Cox, a Harvard Law School professor, immediately subpoenaed eight relevant tapes to confirm the testimony of White House Counsel John Dean.

The tapes were ultimately the downfall of President Nixon.

The Alien and Sedition Acts die hard.

A prosecutor in New York wanted to investigate folks who were blogging anonymously on "Room 8" -- a blog that was basically a gossip-about-New-York-government site -- and so he issued a subpoena, and there was a kicker:The subpoena carried a warning in capital letters that disclosing its very existence "could impede the investigation being conducted and thereby interfere with law enforcement" - implying that if the bloggers blabbed, they could be prosecuted.  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

It took some wrangling, but eventually the subpoena was withdrawn.  

The subpoena sought specifically to learn the identity of the person blogging under the pseudonym "Republican Dissident."  The DA's office wanted details - specifically, the IP address - of a Room 8 blogger who goes by the name "Republican Dissident" and has been highly critical of the Bronx GOP and its chairman, Jay Savino.

Republican Dissident also urged the Republicans to run a candidate against Johnson, a Democrat, and called for him to be removed from an investigation into the party. S/he has since taken down the post in question plus all other writings.  http://www.nydailynews.com/blo...

The scary thing is, no one will say what was being investigated, or why.  You can look at the e-mails that they wanted information on, and you'd wonder, "What could they possibly be investigating?"  I can't figure it out -- look at http://www.citizen.org/documen... and see if you can see what crime they think was committed.  

Pat Tilman coverup story slowly emerging -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Electorate evenly split over Iraq, and over candidates' handling of Iraq -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Obama takes call for personal responsibility to NAACP -- http://blog.washingtonpost.com...
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes...

Napolitano planning open platform process -- http://blog.washingtonpost.com...

Outrage and The New Yorker -- http://blog.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Proposals for government action on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might make things worse, says conservative -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
and the Washington Post isn't so sure either -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
but the NYT seems cool with the proposals -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Aid package worked out over the weekend -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Dionne thinks Virginia could be the bellwether -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Virginia's slightly higher pay for some court-appointed lawyers isn't worth the hassle -- http://www.dailyprogress.com/c...

Bush's Monticello visit cost $23,000 to Albemarle County government -- http://www.dailyprogress.com/c...

On July 15, 1979, Jimmy Carter gave a speech to the nation that came to be known as his "malaise speech," even though he never used the word "malaise."

President Carter's administration was marked by economic forces that were put into place before he took office, and that he was basically powerless to stop.  After the Vietnam War was over, the nation was left with an exploding deficit, a dollar that was less valuable around the world, and stagflation -- both inflation and rising unemployment.  In October, 1973, OPEC had placed an embargo on shipments of its oil to the U.S. and Western Europe, punishment for their support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War.  The price of a barrel of oil rose from $3 a barrel in 1973 to about $15 a barrel by January, 1979.  Then, in June, the price of oil soared again, to about $20 a barrel.

On June 30, Carter was looking forward to a few days' vacation in Hawaii, as Air Force One sped him away from a grueling economic summit in Tokyo.  He had earned a break; two weeks earlier, Carter had successfully concluded the SALT II arms control negotiations with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev in Vienna, the latest in a series of foreign policy achievements since the dramatic Camp David summit the previous September.

Aboard the plane, the phone rang. It was Carter's pollster, Patrick Caddell. "I remember getting on the phone and saying, 'You people have got to come home now,'" Caddell recalls. "We were all saying the same thing: 'You have no idea how bad it is here.'"

That week, the energy crisis that Carter had been trying to avoid since taking office had finally erupted. The OPEC oil producers' cartel had recently announced another in a series of oil price increases that sent gasoline prices skyrocketing and led to severe shortages. Long gas-pump lines and short tempers started in California and spread eastward, focusing Americans' outrage over a seemingly endless economic decline. Much of that anger was directed at the White House: Carter's approval rating had dropped to 25%, lower than Richard Nixon's during the Watergate scandal.

The president did come home, canceling his vacation and retreating to Camp David, where he started working on what would be his fifth major speech on energy. But Carter soon realized that Americans had stopped listening to him. "Jimmy had made several speeches on energy... and it just seemed to be going nowhere with the public," recalls Rosalynn Carter. "So he just said, 'I'm not going to make the speech,' and instead went to Camp David and brought in lots of people to talk about what could be done."

Carter went to Camp David for ten days to meet with governors, mayors, religious leaders, scientists, economists and citizens. He sat on the floor and took notes of their comments and especially wanted to hear criticism. His pollster told him that the American people simply faced a crisis of confidence because of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and Watergate.  The country was suffering from the weak economy that was dominated by OPEC-influenced double-digit inflation.  Americans, directly affected by the economy, were concerned about the federal government's response to the economic situation.

On July 15, 1979, Carter gave a nationally-televised address in which he identified what he believed to be a "crisis of confidence" among the American people:I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.... I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might. ...

   The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation....

   I'm asking you for your good and for your nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel.

...Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science. But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources -- America's people, America's values, and America's confidence.

I have seen the strength of America in the inexhaustible resources of our people. In the days to come, let us renew that strength in the struggle for an energy secure nation.

In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country. With God's help and for the sake of our nation, it is time for us to join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.

Thank you and good night.The entire transcript can be found at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/c...

Carter's speech was authored primarily by Hendrik Hertzberg and Gordon Stewart, though now-MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews, then a speechwriter in the White House, has also been identified as one of the writers behind it.  

Perhaps appreciating the president's astonishing frankness, the public rewarded him with higher approval ratings in the days that followed. But then, as historian Douglas Brinkley notes, "it boomeranged on him. The op-ed pieces started spinning out, 'Why don't you fix something? There's nothing wrong with the American people. We're a great people. Maybe the problem's in the White House, maybe we need new leadership to guide us.'" Historian Roger Wilkins concurs: "When your leadership is demonstrably weaker than it should be, you don't then point at the people and say, 'It's your problem.' If you want the people to move, you move them the way Roosevelt moved them, or you exhort them the way Kennedy or Johnson exhorted them. You don't say, 'It's your fault.'"

Carter didn't help himself by clumsily conducting a shakeup of his government in the week following the speech. On July 17, he asked his entire cabinet for their resignations, ultimately accepting those of five who had clashed with the White House the most, including Energy Secretary James Schlesinger and Health, Education and Welfare chief Joseph Califano.  Many others in the administration chafed when newly-named White House chief of staff Hamilton Jordan circulated a "questionnaire" that read more like a loyalty oath. "I think the idea was that they were going to firm up the administration, show that there was real change by these personnel changes, and move on," remembers Vice President Walter Mondale. "But the message the American people got was that we were falling apart."

A little more than a year later, Ronald Reagan defeated Carter by offering Americans a vision that was as optimistic as Carter's was pessimistic. Every four years thereafter, the Republicans' traditional refrain equated Democratic leadership with the notion that America was in decline and needed to reign in its famous appetites. The fact that Carter may have been right, in some sense, was almost beside the point. "If you are president and you're going to diagnose a problem, you better have a solution to it," Hertzberg notes. "While he turned out to be a true prophet, he turned out not to be a savior."

Colorado Senator Ken Salazar is warning people who want to find more oil domestically to go slow on their enthusiasm for oil shale.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

There is apparently a vast quantity of oil trapped inside shale beds across Colorado and Utah, but many fortunes have been lost as efforts to tap the oil in the shale have failed.  In that part of the country, they know that the enthusiasm waxes, then the technical problems come back up, enthusiasm then wanes, and everyone who had started to get excited gets kicked in the teeth instead.

In 1982, the oil shale bubble burst on May 2, a day now known as "Black Sunday."  http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hc...  On that date, 2,200 Exxon workers were told that Exxon was pulling the plug on its efforts to develop oil shale; they lost their jobs and their houses almost all went into foreclosure.  The Colorado towns of Rifle and Glenwood Springs were devastated.

The basic problem with drawing oil out of oil shale is that it requires a lot of water in an area that has very little, and it requires a lot of electric power in an area that would have to build new power plants just for that purpose -- a multi-billion dollar expenditure that is hard to justify given the other practical difficulties.  And that's not to mention the pollution that results...

But every ten or twenty years, someone in Washington reacts to a rise in oil prices and says, "Gee!  Let's take another look at oil shale!"  Proposals for energy independence are floated, hopes are raised, and then the idea goes back in the bottle for another ten or twenty years.

Salazar thinks that there may be some greater maturity at work at the moment, but he is still not predicting that oil shale will become productive anytime soon.  The Bureau of Land Management has released a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) that claims that the oil shale fields of the American Rockies contains 50 times more oil than our proven conventional oil reserves.  http://www.postindependent.com...

Maybe, by 2015 we'll have an idea of whether it can work.  Maybe.

Two years ago, when commercial banks were still jostling for fatter slices of the housing market, the share of outstanding mortgages owned and guaranteed by Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association, or FNMA) and Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, or FHLMC) owned and guaranteed dipped below 40 percent, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by Moody's Economy.com. By the first three months of this year, Fannie and Freddie were buying more than two-thirds of all new residential mortgages.  Insiders in the real estate market realized the implication -- that private industry was not willing to risk its own money on a lot of these mortgages, but political forces needed to try to keep the housing market afloat -- but until the last week or two, few others realized it.  

A similar trend is playing out in the realm of student loans. As commercial banks concluded that the business of lending to college students was no longer quite so profitable, the Bush administration promised in May to buy their federally guaranteed student loans, giving the banks capital to continue lending.

In short, in a doctrinaire Republican administration running a country that holds itself up as a citadel of free enterprise, the government has transformed from being simply a guarantor of private loans into effectively the only lender for millions of Americans engaged in the largest transactions of their lives.

Before, the federal government's more modest mission was to make more loans available at lower rates. Now it is to make sure loans are made at all. The government is setting the terms and the standards of Americans' biggest loans.  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

In February, as the housing market was slowing down, there was political pressure to use whatever tools were available to keep housing money flowing.  Both Republicans and Democrats were guilty -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02... -- and in fact, if Chuck Schumer and others had had their way, the mess of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might be worse right now.  

The real problem has been that since 9/11, when President Bush told us that the patriotic thing to do was to go shopping, America's economic health has been fueled with money made available by two activities:

1.  Consumers refinancing existing mortgages with cash-out mortgages at lower interest rates, and

2.  First-time homebuyers buying newly-built houses, leading to income for contractors and their employees, and to all of the entities that collect fees from mortgages (ranging from the termite inspectors to the state and local governments that depend on transfer taxes).

Certainly, manufacturing has been in decline for years; high-tech calmed down in 2000 and 2001 as an engine of economic growth.  So the housing market became the biggest economic game in town.  It had to be fed and cultivated.  Through the go-go years of 2003-2006, Fannie and Freddie were actually behaving rationally; the banks were doing subprime loans, which, by definition, are loans that don't comply with Fannie or Freddie's rules (so we can't blame them for the subprime meltdown).  But when the subprime market began to collapse last year, suddenly a lot of borrowers were looking for loans that could be insured by Fannie or Freddie.  Suddenly Fannie and Freddie were the only game in town, it was politically important to keep it going, and federal agencies that could act without Congressional action were encouraged to do so.

There was a problem, though -- neither Fannie Mae nor Freddie Mac had been filing correct financial reports since 2006; inspectors had found accounting errors totalling $11.3 billion.  Many of the errors dealt with matters like trying to account properly for new financial products like reverse mortgages, negative equity mortgages, etc.  

So when the market began to sour in 2007, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac asked for authority to buy and hold more loans, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight -- the group that was supposed to be monitoring Fannie and Freddie -- insisted that those agencies complete their accounting reforms before the rules would be changed.  This decision -- in August, 2007 -- was greeted by howls from, among others, Schumer, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, who asked the Bush Administration to tell OFHEO to lighten up so that the money could continue to flow.   http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08...

Fortunately, the Democratic bill did not pass last year, and regulation worked -- it kept Fannie and Freddie from getting in even deeper into trouble.

So what happened to cause them to be in such trouble?  Really, the problem was that when the housing bubble burst in places like Miami and California, housing values dropped so that even loans that met the Fannie/Freddie regulations turned into bad loans.  If you have a purchase for $300,000, and a $240,000 loan (a loan-to-value ratio of 80%, usually a pretty safe loan), and real estate values drop by 25% (as they have in Miami, for example), now the loan has a higher value than the house (you are "under water", as the saying goes).  If you then default on your loan, the bank, and Fannie or Freddie, take a loss.  Add enough of those together, and the bank, and Fannie or Freddie, have troubles.

So where does this leave us?

The federal government, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has not merely become the backstop, insuring lenders against problem loans; they have become the parties with primary risk.  So when this weekend the discussion was about what the federal government should do about the lousy condition of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the discussion became whether they were "too big to fail" -- whether the government had to assume responsibility for their financial obligations (they insure mortgages with face amounts of $9.2 trillion, compared to the national debt of about $5 trillion).

The political danger here is that we can't go so far in not letting Fannie and Freddie fail that we put the government even more directly into the middle of the residential mortgage market.  We do not have a socialist system; we have a system of regulated capitalism.  Let's remember that.  Regulation is necessary, and it is sometimes necessary that a regulator say "no".  I hope that we remember that, and that politicians don't seem so anxious to do something -- anything -- that they make the long-range picture worse.

Barack Obama does op-ed for NYT on how he's going to end the war -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

The Post looks at the Chicago network of friends backing Obama -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Pete Peterson to spend $1 billion of his own money to bring key issues (like the deficit) front and center -- http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes...
and Ralph Nader comes to Charlottesville, hoping to do the same for less money -- http://www.dailyprogress.com/c...

The New Yorker's cover addresses the rumors about Obama, and folks don't like it -- http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes...

Obama borrows a Clinton idea for promoting health insurance among small companies -- http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes...
in what is seen as an effort to cultivate Latino voters -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

All this attention on an interview with Obama's daughters -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Should Teddy Kennedy have opted for expensive but essentially hopeless treatment? -- http://freakonomics.blogs.nyti...

Joe Lieberman having trouble with his middle ground -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Lobbyist Steve Farber raising the $40 million for the Democratic Convention -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07...

Phil Gramm out as McCain economic adviser -- http://blog.washingtonpost.com...

McCain says he's for equal pay, but voted against the Lily Ledbetter Act that would have made it easier to get it -- http://blog.washingtonpost.com...

Legal definition of when life begins is on Colorado ballot this fall -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Charlottesville should get help from outside on efficiency study --http://www.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/opinion/op_ed/article/study_requires_outside_help/24714/

Train seats hard to find on Lynchburg-to-DC run --  http://www.newsadvance.com/lna...

Architect Bill Morrish on rebricking the Charlottesville Mall -- http://www.c-ville.com/index.p...

Gangs in Charlottesville -- http://www.c-ville.com/index.p...

Incredulity that Virginia could be a battleground state -- http://www.c-ville.com/index.p...

Suspending driver's licenses hurts the poor -- http://www.readthehook.com/sto...