Ducklings Die in Pool Drain At American Indian Museum.
The money graph:
"The children were standing there oohing and aahing" at the site of the ducks paddling along placidly, Crane said in a telephone interview. "And that's when they were sucked into the filtration system."
The House passed a bill on Tuesday authorizing the Justice Department to sue member countries of the OPEC cartel under U.S. anti-trust laws. Any judgment won in such a suit could only be enforced, as a practical matter, against assets held by those nations in the U.S., meaning that the only effect of the legislation would be to discourage foreign investment by those nations in the U.S.
Meanwhile on Wednesday the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee engaged in some more pointless grandstanding about oil company profits.
The House of Representatives voted this evening to override President Bush's veto of the $307 billion 2008 farm bill. Despite pleas from fiscal conservatives, 100 Republicans joined 216 Democrats in voting to override the veto and enact the payoff-laden boondoggle (interestingly, a few urban liberals sided with opponents of the bill).
However, it seems that the override vote may actually be for nought. Why? Because when the original bill passed the House a passage related to international agricultural aid and trade was accidentally omitted from the version that was sent to and vetoed by the president. It looks like the Democrats will have to pass the bill and send it to Bush all over again. Of course, unless a large number of congressmen and senators suddenly decide to put the interests of their country ahead of placating their own political supporters the end outcome won't be different, but I guess when it comes to Congress we should be grateful for whatever small favors we can get.
The office House roll call is here; it's valuable info for getting a better sense of how corrupt your representative has become. For the gratification of fellow West Virginians in my readership, Capito (R), Mollohan (D), and Rahall (D) all voted in favor. (Incidentally, that's the end of my respect for our state's lone non-judicial major Republican officeholder.)
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has violated the Rehabilitation Act (a predecessor to the Americans with Disabilities Act that prohibits disability discrimination in federal programs) by discriminating against the blind in designing and printing the current generation of U.S. bills because bills of one denomination cannot be distinguished from another denomination by touch (try it). The 2-to-1 panel majority concluded that the failure to make U.S. notes distinguishable by touch denies the blind "meaningful access" to U.S. currency and implementing measures to remedy that would not constitute an "undue burden" on the government. The opinion is here.
The result seems quite salutary to me. The plaintiffs in the case are apparently not seeking an immediate resign of U.S. currency, but instead are trying to get the Bureau to incorporate new touch features in the next wave of note redesigns. That seems pretty feasible, as the vast majority of other currency systems in the world use such features -- a fact that did not go unnoticed by the panel. It seems implausible that adding a tactilely-distinguishable feature, such as raised printing or braille-like dots, will vastly increase the cost of the next redesign or cause great problems for optical readers (like those found in vending machines). Indeed, the Bureau has studied such options over the last few years. It seems that the only true reason one hasn't been added yet is that the Bureau hasn't made it much of a priority.
If anyone ever gives out an award for the most shockingly unfunny and inappropriate joke of the 2008 election cycle, Mike Huckabee offered a very strong entry in a speech to the NRA on Friday. If you haven't seen the video yet, you really have to:
As one commenter joked, sometimes you vet VP candidates, and sometimes VP candidates vet themselves.
David Broder writes that Obama might have been able to pull off the upset in West Virginia if only he had campaigned hard here.
Uh, no he couldn't have.
So the California Supreme Court has ruled that California must offer homosexuals the right to marry, not just the right to enter into "civil unions." Maybe it's the fact that the Court based it's decision on the California Constitution instead of the U.S. Constitution, or the fact that I don't really have strong feelings against gay marriage as a policy matter (actually, I'd like to see governments gradually get out of the marriage business altogether), or the fact that California voters will probably pass a constitutional amendment overturning the ruling this fall, but I'm having trouble mustering up a lot of outrage over the case. Don't get me wrong, though I haven't read the opinion yet I'll bet the majority's legal arguments are probably quite weak, but it's a bit hard for me to get terrifically exercised about a state court decision on state law that likely won't be stand for long.
Though, maybe I'm just outraged out for the time being.
So indeed Hillary did win the West Virginia primary by 40-plus points, and although the margin of that victory has stirred up arguments about Obama's problems with less-educated white voters his drubbing hasn't led to any large scale shift in allegiances among the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party. In other words, things have played out pretty much as expected this week. The last really important day of the Democratic race will likely be next Tuesday, when voters in Kentucky and Oregon go to the polls. There's little doubt that Hillary will win decisively in Kentucky (though almost certainly not by the kind of margin she got in West Virginia) but unless she somehow pulls the upset over Obama in Oregon the last of her momentum, and therefore the last of her hopes, will be extinguished. She'll probably stay in the race through the last of the nomination contests --Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and Montana-- but it will be clear to her supporters that things are over.
As for the actual West Virginia results, a look at the county-by-county presidential numbers provided vivid evidence of something which is appreciated by West Virginians but apparently by few outside pundits: how strikingly different the various parts of the state can be politically. Here are the four counties in which Barack Obama did best in the state and his respective margins of defeat (rounded to the nearest half-percentage point):
| Jefferson County | Clinton +3.5 |
| Berkeley County | Clinton +14.5 |
| Monongalia County | Clinton +17 |
| Morgan County | Clinton +22.5 |
For you non-West Virginians, Jefferson, Berkeley, and Morgan are the three counties that make up the easternmost portion of the Eastern Panhandle and are culturally part of the D.C. metro area. Monongalia County, home to West Virginia University and culturally influenced by Pittsburgh, is (of course) the state's center of learning. All four counties are in the vanguard of West Virginia counties in prosperity, population growth, and diversity.
Here are the four counties in which Obama did worst:
| Lincoln County | Clinton +67 |
| Wyoming County | Clinton +69 |
| Logan County | Clinton +74.5 |
| Mingo County | Clinton +79.5 |
All four, with high rates of poverty and low levels of education, are in the heart of the southern part of the state.
Obama didn't win a single county on Tuesday, but the differences in how he performed between counties are strong proof against any notion that West Virginia is a politically and culturally homogenous state.
(County-by-county results obtained from this Politico interactive map.)
A Washington Post story today covers the results of a major new study on the assimilation of the modern wave of immigrants into American life, as measured by the political, economic, and social similarities of immigrants to native-born Americans. The good news is that the pace of assimilation seems to be running quite fast:
In general, the longer an immigrant lives in the United States, the more characteristics of native citizens he or she tends to take on, said Jacob L. Vigdor, a professor at Duke University and author of the study. During periods of intense immigration, such as from 1870 to 1920, or during the immigration wave that began in the 1970s, new arrivals tend to drag down the average assimilation index of the foreign-born population as a whole.
The report found, however, that the speed with which new arrivals take on native-born traits has increased since the 1990s. As a result, even though the foreign population doubled during that period, the newcomers did not drive down the overall assimilation index of the foreign-born population. Instead, it held relatively steady from 1990 to 2006.
"This is something unprecedented in U.S. history," Vigdor said. "It shows that the nation's capacity to assimilate new immigrants is strong."
The not-so-good news is that immigrants in the modern wave of newcomers have less in common with native-born citizens than immigrants in previous waves did, largely because so many do not know English:
Although new arrivals at the turn of the 20th century were most likely to be eastern and southern Europeans, [Vigdor] said, "one of the top five origin countries was England, and close to 100 percent of them spoke English." By contrast, the majority of immigrants today are Mexicans and other Latin Americans, with the next largest share coming from a range of developing nations with languages other than English.
While there's a bit of something for everyone to be gleaned from the results, I'm sure advocates for immigration restriction will not take the study author's conclusion about the fast rate of immigrant assimilation lying down. Should be interesting to see how the impending controversy on that point plays out.
