:: Culture in america and other mythologies ::

:: Thursday, October 23, 2003 ::

Rove, McClellan Interviewed in CIA Probe

10/23/03

White House - AP Cabinet & State - Yahoo!


By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The FBI (news - web sites) has interviewed more than three dozen Bush administration officials, including political adviser Karl Rove and press secretary Scott McClellan, in its investigation into the leak of an undercover CIA (news - web sites) officer's identity.

The interviews have extended beyond the White House to other government agencies. The Defense and State departments and the CIA itself also are part of the probe.

The focus, however, remains on the White House, two law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity. While the initial, informal interviews have yielded no major breaks, the FBI is satisfied that the dozen agents assigned to the probe are making progress and have not encountered any stalling tactics, the officials said Thursday.

So far, no grand jury subpoenas have been issued, they said.

Boxloads of documents have been forwarded to the FBI team, including White House phone logs and e-mails. More documents are being produced, as the contents of individual items sometimes lead agents to request additional materials, one official said.

Investigators want to know who leaked the name of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA officer, to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in July. Plame is married to former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who has said he believes his wife's identity was disclosed to discredit his assertions that the Bush administration exaggerated Iraq (news - web sites)'s nuclear capabilities to build the case for war.

Leaking of classified information, such as an undercover officer's name, is a criminal offense.

Democrats repeatedly have urged Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) to appoint a special counsel or recuse himself because of his close political ties to the White House. They also question why the Justice Department (news - web sites) waited several days after the investigation began to ask White House staffers to preserve documents.

"It demands a full, fair and fearless investigation that is above politics," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "But so far, the way this probe has been conducted falls quite short of that bar."

Ashcroft, who has strongly condemned the leak, has not ruled out stepping aside but has said he believes his agency can conduct a thorough, impartial investigation.

Ashcroft's public statements about the leak mirror those included in a review he sent to Congress almost exactly one year ago — long before the Plame case.

Leaks can compromise intelligence sources and methods and damage military operations, Ashcroft said in the review, requested by Congress as part of the 2002 intelligence authorization bill. Those responsible for them should be punished, he said.

"Until those who, without authority, reveal classified material are deterred by the real prospect of productive investigations and strict application of appropriate penalties, they will have no reason to stop their harmful actions," Ashcroft wrote.

Government agencies and departments should swiftly pursue investigations of suspected leaks and immediately request Justice Department involvement if a crime appears to have been committed, Ashcroft said.

Democrats have raised questions about the months that passed between publication of Plame's name by Novak in July and the initiation three weeks ago of a formal Justice Department investigation. Justice officials say it took the CIA that long to complete a questionnaire used to justify an investigation.

Despite the talk of progress in the probe, President Bush ( news -web sites ) himself has said the leaker's identity may never be found. In his review a year ago, Ashcroft noted that only one non-espionage leak case has been successfully prosecuted in the past half-century.

"In most cases, identifying the individual who disclosed classified information without authority has been difficult, at best," Ashcroft wrote.



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On the Net:

Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov

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Salon.com Life | Cholesterol gene linked to longevity
By Lindsey Tanner

Oct. 14, 2003  |  CHICAGO (AP) --

One reason some people live into their 90s and beyond may be a genetic variation that makes the cholesterol particles in their blood really big.


``Supersize it'' is not usually associated with good health, but evidence increasingly is showing that bigger is indeed better when it comes to the lipoprotein particles that carry cholesterol through the bloodstream.

Smaller particles, it is believed, can more easily embed themselves in the blood vessel walls, contributing to the fatty buildups that lead to heart attacks and strokes.

A study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that the tendency to have large cholesterol particles can be inborn.


The study, led by Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, found that people in their late 90s and beyond are more likely to have a gene variation that causes large particles of both HDL cholesterol _ the good variety _ and LDL cholesterol, the bad kind.

``We basically think the size is necessary for longevity,'' Barzilai said.

The results are intriguing and support the notion that ``exceptional longevity may depend, at least in part, on inheriting `good' genes,'' said Anna McCormick of the National Institute on Aging, which helped fund the study.

Nevertheless, while genes probably determine particle size, recent research has suggested that exercise can enlarge the particles.

Doctors do not routinely test for HDL and LDL particle size, but a few companies offer such tests commercially. If the findings are confirmed, they could lead to wider testing. Moreover, research is already under way on a cholesterol-lowering drug that also makes the particles bigger.

And Dr. Ronald M. Krauss, director of atherosclerosis research at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, said the findings suggest that large HDL and LDL particles may protect against all sorts of life-shortening ailments, not just heart disease.

The study involved 213 people of Ashkenazi, or Eastern European, Jewish descent, ages 95 to 107, along with 216 of their children. The researchers also used a comparison group made up of 258 of the children's spouses and neighbors.

The gene variation was found in nearly 25 percent of the old people but in just 8.6 percent of the younger comparison group, a threefold difference. The related children were twice as likely to have the mutation as the comparison group.

The Ashkenazi group and their children also had greater levels of HDL cholesterol in their blood and substantially larger HDL and LDL particles than the comparison subjects.


:: feliciAchamberlain@gmail.com 4:41 PM [+] ::
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Hotter Log Enters the Market
Fake logs made of sawdust and paraffin, invented in the 1950's, are a popular alternative to real firewood. But ersatz logs have also been fashioned out of cardboard, almond shells, corn cobs, peach pits - and now, recycled coffee grounds.

This month the Java Log will go on sale for the first time in the United States. The log is about 65 percent used coffee grounds, which, said Rod Sprules, who came up with the idea, burn brighter and hotter than sawdust logs while producing 88 percent less carbon monoxide than firewood.

Mr. Sprules, a Canadian engineer living in Ottawa, had the first inkling of the Java Log idea 10 years ago while he was designing a heated suit for search-and-rescue technicians."
:: feliciAchamberlain@gmail.com 11:39 AM [+] ::
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National Center For Policy Research For Women & Families
:: feliciAchamberlain@gmail.com 10:59 PM [+] ::
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National Center For Policy Research For Women & Families
:: feliciAchamberlain@gmail.com 10:59 PM [+] ::
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Developmental Sex Differences
Is sexual selection related to differences in the physical, social, and psychological development of boys and girls? The goal of this chapter is to address this question by examining the pattern of sex differences across a variety of domains and by relating these sex differences to adult sex differences in the nature of intrasexual competition, parental investment, and so on. Developmental sex differences in the pattern of physical development, infancy, play patterns, social development, and parenting influences are described in the respective sections below. The pattern that emerges across these sections is consistent with the view that many developmental sex differences are indeed related to sexual selection and involve a largely self-directed preparation for engaging in the reproductive activities described in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5. In keeping with the position presented in Chapter 6, this self-directed preparation is manifested in terms of differences in the types of activities in which girls and boys prefer to engage and results in an adaptation of functional systems to local conditions. "
:: feliciAchamberlain@gmail.com 2:43 PM [+] ::
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NY Times: Head of Group Backing Right to Abortion to Step Down

September 22, 2003
By ELIZABETH BECKER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 %u2014 Kate Michelman said today that she would step down as president of Naral Pro-Choice America, ending 18 years at the helm of the country's most vocal group advocating abortion as a legal right for women.

Ms. Michelman, 61, became one of the grandes dames of the reproductive rights debate by interpreting her mandate broadly. She campaigned for state and national politicians who supported abortion rights, testified at Congressional hearings, started national advertising campaigns, worked to expand access to clinics providing abortions, and protested and marched in the streets.

She said she would leave her post on April 30, 2004, to care for her ailing husband and their daughter. Ms. Michelman said she gave the group's board at least six months' notice, allowing her to lead a march in Washington on April 25 in favor of abortion rights.

For all of her efforts, Ms. Michelman said today in an interview that her opponents had been gaining ground and might win the debate.

'Women face today as grave a threat as ever to their Constitutional right to personal privacy and to a choice,' she said.

Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade granting the right to abortion, states have enacted more than 350 laws restricting it. As a result of these restrictions and growing fears of violent retaliation against doctors who perform abortions, Ms. Michelman said, as many as 90 percent of American counties do not have abortion facilities.

'Americans have become complacent in the belief that this right will never be taken away, and they are wrong,' she said.

Ms. Michelman was a frequent target of opponents of abortion. They argued that her compassion for the woman with an unwanted pregnancy did not extend to any moral concern about the terminated pregnancy.

Ms. Michelman regularly countered that accusation with the story of her own abortion in 1970. She was a recently abandoned mother of three young daughters on welfare when she found out she was pregnant.

'It was a very, very difficult decision to make to have an abortion,' she said.

Then she discovered it would be even more difficult to have the abortion. Her only recourse outside of an illegal abortion was to win permission from her estranged husband and from an all-male hospital board, she said.

'It was a humiliating process that changed my life,' she said. 'From then on I was personally and professionally dedicated to advancing the right of women to choose.'

Her activism also has roots in her teenage years in Defiance, Ohio, where she became involved in civil rights protests to help immigrants.

She earned her university degree in developmental psychology and did clinical work in early childhood development.

'My lifelong work on behalf of women's rights derives from my work with these disadvantaged mothers, many of whom had no choice over whether to have children and very little means for raising them,' she said.

Later she became executive director of Planned Parenthood in Harrisburg, Pa., concentrating on expanding reproductive health services.

But it was as the leader of what was then known as the National Abortion Rights Action League that Ms. Michelman became a familiar name and then a familiar face on television in the increasingly polarized and violent debate over abortion and women's reproductive rights.

She used that spotlight to promote national candidates, including Bill Clinton, whom she praised as the 'first fully pro-choice president.'

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
:: feliciAchamberlain@gmail.com 11:14 AM [+] ::
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MSNBC News: FDA approves new Seasonale birth-control pill: "  


"It's the convenience, not being bogged down, not having to plan vacations or just lifestyle around seven days of bleeding.
---SHANNON ZAICHENKO
Study volunteer

       THE PILLS aren't a new chemical. They contain the same combination of low-dose estrogen and progestin found in many oral contraceptives.
       Nor is the idea of menstrual suppression new. For decades, many doctors have told women how they can skip a period by continually taking the active birth-control pills in each month's supply and ignoring the week of dummy pills in each packet.
       But Seasonale promises to make the option a little more convenient, with packaging that gives women 12 straight weeks of active pills and then a week of dummy pills for their period. And the Food and Drug Administration's approval means menstrual suppression could become more common, as Seasonale's advertising alerts women to the option.
       
BREAKTHROUGH BLEEDING MORE COMMON
       Seasonale isn't perfect, the FDA cautioned.
       While women have fewer scheduled periods, studies show Seasonale users have about twice the risk of unexpected "breakthrough" bleeding between periods as woman taking conventional monthly cycle pills, especially in the first few cycles of use.

 Also, 7.7 percent of Seasonale users dropped out of studies of the drug citing unacceptable bleeding, compared with 1.8 percent of women taking conventional monthly pills. Some Seasonale users had so much breakthrough bleeding that their total days of bleeding over a year were no less with the new drug than with regular pills, FDA said.
       So the agency ordered that Seasonale's label state that women must weigh that inconvenience against fewer regular periods.
       "Each woman will respond to this product somewhat differently," said FDA's Dr. Scott Monroe. "Some will find they respond entirely as the product was designed to function, and others will have increased intermenstrual bleeding to the extent that they choose not to continue with the product."

read more by clicking on the link above.
:: feliciAchamberlain@gmail.com 11:58 AM [+] ::
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