On This Date In History

Tuesday, February 09th
The 040th day of 2010.
There are 325 days left in the year.

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Today's Highlights in History:

On Feb. 9, 1943, the World War II battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an American victory over Japanese forces.

On Feb. 9, 1910, Jacques Monod, the French Nobel Prize-winning biologist, was born.

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On this date in:

1773 - William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States, was born in Charles City County, Va.


1825 - The House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.


1861 - The Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America elected Jefferson Davis president and Alexander H. Stephens vice president.


1870 - The U.S. Weather Bureau was established.


1942 - Daylight-saving "war time" went into effect in the United States, with clocks turned one hour forward.


1950 - Sen. Joseph McCarthy, during a speech in Wheeling, W.Va., charged that the State Department was riddled with Communists. (The Wisconsin Republican never provided any evidence to substantiate his claims.)


1964 - The Beatles made their first live American TV appearance, on "The Ed Sullivan Show."


1971 - Apollo 14 returned to Earth after man's third landing on the moon.


1984 - Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov died less than 15 months after succeeding Leonid Brezhnev.


1993 - NBC News announced it had settled a defamation lawsuit brought by General Motors over the network's demonstration of a fiery pickup truck crash on "Dateline NBC."


1999 - The Senate began closed-door deliberations in President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial.


2002 - Britain's Princess Margaret, the sister of Queen Elizabeth II, died at age 71.


2009 - Following media reports, New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez admitted he took banned substances from 2001 to 2003.

Cookie Fortune (from Sunday, Jan. 31st)

No man is without enemies.

Learn Chinese:

East - dong

Lucky Numbers:

19, 26, 6, 45, 42, 36

Update: Penn State climatologist cleared of misconduct

A Pennsylvania State University committee yesterday cleared climate researcher Michael Mann of professional-misconduct charges but said it would further investigate whether the scientist "deviated from accepted practices."

The inquiry was prompted by events in November, when hackers exposed more than 1,000 e-mail messages exchanged among climate scientists, many of which were sent to and from Mann.

No formal allegations were made against Mann, but the university decided to launch the inquiry after a flood of public complaints and accusations against the climatologist.

Mann is best known for using tree rings and other indirect measures to reconstruct Earth's climate over centuries past. Those reconstructions showed temperatures shooting upward in the 20th century in a graph that became known as the "hockey stick."

Yesterday's report, though welcomed by Mann, did not satisfy his critics, who immediately called the university's investigation a "whitewash."


Click Here for complete Philadelphia Inquirer article by Faye Flam

Good Government

City Hall. Sister Mary Scullion is going from one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" to an arbiter of ethics in city government.

Mayor Michael Nutter has submitted Sister Scullion, head of Project H.O.M.E., to City Council as one of two new members of the independent Ethics Board. He also submitted Nolan N. Atkinson Jr., the first chief of Duane Morris LLP, to Council for approval.

The pair would replace members Richard Negrin and Phoebe Haddon.

via MetroPhilly

Note:

Click Here for more at Young Philly Politics

Letter To The Editor

Dear Sir,

Since Philadelphia Media Holdings is currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, perhaps adding more value to your newspaper would be economically beneficial to you in the long run. For example, although The Philadelphia Daily News publishes six times a week, the Saturday edition itself is not worth the $0.75 cover price.

Have you considered publishing the daily comics in color like the vastly improved New York Daily News has recently begun to do?

Please pass along this information to your sister publication, The Philadelphia Inquirer, as this also concerns them. (*)

Sincerely,

Allan Smithee

(*) postscript: The Inquirer printing the horoscopes instead of deleting them on Sunday would also be an improvement and perhaps help improve long term revenue as well.

Excerpts - Which do you find more credible?

Re: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

[ ] Why Obama is wrong about the campaign finance ruling

"The history of campaign finance reform is the history of incumbent politicians seeking to muzzle speakers, any speakers, particularly those who might publicly criticize them and their legislation. It is a lot easier to legislate against unions, gun owners, “fat cat” bankers, health insurance companies and any other industry or “special interest” group when they can’t talk back."

-- Jan Witold Baran, author of the book “The Election Law Primer for Corporations,” filed a brief with the Supreme Court in support of Citizens United


[X] Reining in the high court

"Defenders of this vast expansion of corporate influence piously claim it's about free speech. But since when is a corporation, a creation of laws passed by governments, entitled to the same rights as an individual citizen? This ruling will give large business entities far more power than any individual, unless you happen to be Michael Bloomberg or Bill Gates.

"The only proper response to this distortion of our political system by ideologically driven justices is a popular revolt. It would be a revolt of a sort deeply rooted in the American political tradition. The most vibrant reform alliances in our history have involved coalitions between populists (who stand up for the interests and values of average citizens) and progressives (who fight against corruption in government and for institutional changes to improve the workings of our democracy). It's time for a new populist-progressive alliance.

"This court ruling should also challenge the fake populism on display of late, which disguises a defense of the interests of the powerful behind crowd-pleasing rhetoric against "Washington," "taxes," and, yes, "Obama."

-- E.J. Dionne is a Washington Post columnist.


[ ] Obama must compromise, Kennedy-style

"Finally, there would be tort reform. Standards of care, if followed, should protect providers from frivolous lawsuits. Malpractice suits and defensive medicine have a direct effect on health providers' operating costs, which has been estimated at $200 billion a year. Yet the 1,000-page reform proposals in the House and Senate are silent on the issue, as is the White House and the entire Democratic Party. This is not only a mistake of huge financial proportions, but also a strategic blunder. Aside from the savings tort reform could generate, it could also be among the missing links that bring Republican legislators on board.

"Unfortunately, Senator Edward Kennedy is not alive to help broker such a compromise. Given that and the result in Massachusetts, President Obama should honor Kennedy by doing what he would have done to realize his longtime dream of reforming health care."

-- Dr. Stuart H. Shapiro, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association.


[ ] Trickle Down Economics; The "Populist" Addiction -- David Brooks

5-4 Supreme Court ruling is welcome news to GOP

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Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

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Majority Vote:

Majority Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by Justices John G. Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Clarence Thomas

Minority Vote:

Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor

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What the Justices Had to Say

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority:

"When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves."


Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in concurrence:

"The text and purpose of the First Amendment point in the same direction: Congress may not prohibit political speech, even if the speaker is a corporation or union."


Justice Antonin Scalia, in concurrence:

"Surely the dissent does not believe that speech by the Republican Party or the Democratic Party can be censored because it is not the speech of 'an individual American.' It is the speech of many individual Americans, who have associated in a common cause, giving the leadership of the party the right to speak on their behalf. The association of individuals in a business corporation is no different."


Justice John Paul Stevens, in dissent:

"The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution.. . .

"Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of the 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

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New York Times Editorial:

The Court’s Blow to Democracy

With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding. Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.

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Good Overview of Opinions at Klimbalan

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More:

Supreme Court Memo - Justices Turn Minor Movie Case Into a Blockbuster

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Note: Editorial Cartoon by Mike Peters