Point 2: The point of the first part of the passage quoted in the Atlantic was that Jesus came to save all mankind.  However, we can choose whether or not to follow in that salvation — and that includes atheists.  Free will, after all, makes that our own choice.  That is basic Christian doctrine, which isn’t limited to the Catholic Church.

Point 3: The part about doing good speaks to meeting each other in this life, not the next.  Pope Francis is actually gently rebuking those who would argue that people without faith at all or the “wrong” faith must therefore be bad. The part that starts, “And we all have a duty to do good,” is a separate thought and would be better expressed in its own paragraph.  With that in mind, Francis’ meaning is clear enough for me:

And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

The final there refers to the conjunction of doing good works in this life to reach communion with each other in the present, not in Heaven.  It’s an instruction on how to live life with all of God’s children here now, and as such is hardly controversial … but we frequently need reminders, as our fallen nature dictates.

This doesn’t sound like Pope Francis’ view of eschatology, but of genuine ecumenical outreach.

Point 4: You’re going to get more comments than my Holder piece, AP, and yes doggone it, I’m jealous.

Actually, I’ve always had reservations about this concept.  People drive bad enough on the ground for us to daydream in traffic jams about flying above it all.  What happens when that becomes a widely-available option?  The same bad drivers on the ground will be up in the air at the same time, a prospect that doesn’t sound safe in the air or on the ground below. What do we do with power and phone lines?  What happens when people fly straight to destinations rather than along roads, where cross-traffic isn’t just perpendicular but every angle on the compass as well as above and below?

I’m glad I work from home, that’s all I have to say.

Detective David Holmes said the department has had the tapes for a couple of weeks and the Robbery-Homicide Division and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office are analyzing them.

A federal judge in Texas ruled in March that Charles “Tex” Watson waived his right to attorney-client privilege when he allowed his lawyer to sell the eight cassette tapes to an author nearly 40 years ago for a book on his life.

The tapes, which were converted to electronic audio files, are being reviewed to determine whether there’s evidence that could resolve unsolved murders.

The cache only came to light after the law firm to which Watson’s attorney belonged went into Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2009 and a trustee tried to sell off its assets.  The LAPD and the local DA have always suspected that the Manson Family committed several other murders, but didn’t have much more than hearsay and foggy memories to pursue.  There may be other chapters left to write in this saga, and that may have Manson and his long-imprisoned followers open to trials on new charges — assuming that the LAPD can corroborate anything they find from the tapes.

Be sure to catch up with both Kerry and Steven yourselves, though.  Kerry’s got a couple of good stories up this week, one pointing to CIA chief John Brennan as the prime mover behind the administration’s snooping on journalists.  Steven has a new video out, the “Qu’ran Challenge 2,” and it’s already received quite a bit of the kind of attention you’d pretty much predict.

The White House admitted Wednesday that its handling of information about three big simultaneous scandals has produced justifiable press frustration and suspicion.

After tense and combative press briefings on Monday and Tuesday, press secretary Jay Carney took a different tack Wednesday, acknowledging there were “legitimate criticisms about how we’re handling this.”

Will that convince the press corps to lighten up? Don’t bet on it:

Carney has been skewered over the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups; the Department of Justice’s subpoenaing of phone records and labeling of Fox News reporter James Rosen as a criminal co-conspirator; and the administration’s handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

“They’re two steps away from causing harm to themselves,” said Tobe Berkovitz, a professor of communications at Boston University. “They’re digging themselves a pretty big hole, and the real question is, ‘Is Obama going to fall into it?’ ”

I think they’ve already fallen into it.  They just haven’t learned the First Rule of Holes.

The hometown hamburger homages began with an 8-ounce Angus beef patty with a secret sauce devised by Chris Hodgson, chef at the downtown restaurant where Ramsey works as a dishwasher.

“He’s calm in the face of crazy and hectic things going on,” Hodgson told the Cleveland Plain Dealer after police rescued Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight from the house where they were allegedly held captive and raped for a decade. “He always steps up to do anything you ask.”

The “Ramsey Burger” started out as a temporary menu item, but has since become permanent and the idea has spread to other restaurants, according to the Plain Dealer.

He can eat for free on the boss’ dime, but he can also try some variety:

More than a dozen Northeast Ohio restaurants have pledged an offer of a burger anytime Ramsey wants to stop by and dig in. AMP 150 at the Marriott Cleveland Airport; Washington Place Bistro and Inn in Little Italy;Fahrenheit restaurant in Tremont; Market Garden Brewery, Bier Markt, Bar Cento and Nano Brew in Ohio City; Welshfield Inn in Troy Township; Hodgesand Pura Vida in downtown Cleveland; 87 West at Crocker Park in Westlake;Orchard House restaurant in Brunswick; Flour restaurant in Moreland Hills, and the Allegheny Grille in Foxburg, Pennsylvania, have joined in the offer.

The burger tribute was inspired by Ramsey, who stopped eating his meal of a Big Mac to intervene and aid the escape of Amanda Berry and her daughter, along with Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight.

Bon appetit, Mr. Ramsey.

NASA has doled out a research grant to develop a prototype 3D printer for food, so astronauts may one day enjoy 3D-printed pizza on Mars.

Anjan Contractor, a senior mechanical engineer at Systems and Materials Research Corporation (SMRC), based in Austin, Texas, received a $125,000 grant from the space agency to build a prototype of his food synthesizer, as was first reported by Quartz.

NASA hopes the technology may one day be used to feed astronauts on longer space missions, such as the roughly 520 days required for a manned flight to Mars. Manned missions to destinations deeper in the solar system would require food that can last an even longer amount of time.

I wonder how well it will work on Romulan ale …

Is Pope Francis an exorcist? The question has bubbled up ever since Francis laid his hands on the head of a young man in a wheelchair after celebrating Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square. The young man heaved deeply a half-dozen times, shook, then slumped in his wheelchair as Francis prayed over him. …

Fueling the speculation is Francis’ obsession with Satan, a frequent subject of his homilies, and an apparent surge in demand for exorcisms among the faithful despite the irreverent treatment the rite often receives from Hollywood.

Who can forget the green vomit and the spinning head of the possessed girl in the 1973 cult classic The Exorcist?

In his very first homily as pope on March 14, Francis warned cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel the day after he was elected that “he who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.”

He has since mentioned the devil on a handful of occasions, most recently in a May 4 homily when in his morning Mass in the Vatican hotel chapel he spoke of the need for dialogue — except with Satan.

“With the prince of this world you can’t have dialogue: Let this be clear!” he warned.

I’m pretty sure that priests of any kind, bishops and Popes included, don’t walk around offering ad hoc exorcisms.  Knowing what goes into the preparation for the rare practice (and what exorcists believe to be at stake) would warn anyone off from a casual attempt at it.  The Catholic Church in fact warns that this should be undertaken after determining that there isn’t something else at work, such as psychological illness.

The laying on of hands has a much broader application in Christian tradition for healings as well as blessings.  It’s at least as likely that Pope Francis prayed for healing  or gave a blessing than performing an exorcism; in fact, it seems a lot more obvious a choice.

Finally, USA Today’s surprise that Catholics (and Christians in general) believe the devil to be an active agent speaks more to its own ignorance of faith than “a reflection of a Catholic Church weakened by secularization.”  Kirsten Powers reached the same conclusion:

The @ap should just change the title to this story to BREAKING:Pope Francis believes the Bible usatoday.com/story/news/wor…

— Kirsten Powers (@kirstenpowers10) May 22, 2013

Apparently. RT @wyattbearp: @kirstenpowers10 So it’s no longer okay for a Catholic leader to talk about the devil theses days?

— Kirsten Powers (@kirstenpowers10) May 22, 2013

Nope…just a Pope Francis fan RT @gwparr03: @kirstenpowers10 Kirsten, you a closet Catholic?

— Kirsten Powers (@kirstenpowers10) May 22, 2013

Update: AFP got the Vatican on record with a denial about the purported exorcism:

The Vatican on Tuesday denied that Pope Francis had performed an exorcism after an Italian religious television channel said footage of the pontiff blessing a boy in a wheelchair showed he had.

“The Holy Father did not intend to perform any exorcism,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement, after the claims by TV 2000, which is owned by the Italian bishops’ conference.

The break-in at the Watergate occurred in June 1972, five months before Nixon rode to a landslide reelection, but the scandal did not damage his approval ratings until after two aides were convicted of conspiracy in January 1973. Between January and August, his approval rating dropped from 67 percent to 31 percent after the resignation of his top staffers, attorney general and deputy attorney general. Over that time, his approval rating dropped by an average of 3 points a month, according to Gallup. Nixon’s approval rating never recovered, culminating in his resignation on Aug. 9, 1974, when he left office with an approval rating of just 24 percent.

Ronald Reagan’s approval rating dipped from 63 percent in October of 1986 to 47 percent in December 1986, a month after Reagan organized the special commission to investigate whether arms were traded for hostages as part of the Iran-Contra affair. His ratings rebounded slightly as Vice President George H.W. Bush began campaigning for the presidency in the summer of 1988, reaching 53 percent, according to Gallup.

The Drudge Report and Newsweek reported on Bill Clinton’s affair in January 1998. Clinton’s job approval actually jumped to 69 percent in a Jan. 30 Gallup survey, up from 59 percent in a poll from earlier in the month. Clinton’s approval rating never dropped below 60 percent throughout 1998, and jumped 10 points from 63 percent to 73 percent in December, the highest approval of his presidency.

But while Clinton’s job approval remained high throughout 1998, his personal favorability took a dive in the wake of the scandal. Gallup found his favorability dropped by five points in August, after he gave a nationally televised speech admitting he had an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky. Clinton’s favorability dropped from 60 percent a week before the speech to 55 percent a week after the address. A month later, it had fallen to 51 percent but later rebounded.

Barack Obama faces three major scandals all at once, so perhaps we might expect an amplified impact.  Still, I think it will take a while for those to show up consistently in job-approval ratings, assuming any or all of the scandals will maintain their own impact.  Don’t be fooled by a lack of immediate movement.

Update: Breitbart’s John Nolte notes that some polls already show some erosion:

But Monday was a lifetime and countless revelations ago, and today,four newer polls all show Obama’s approval rating sinking below 50%.

Fox News has Obama upside down with 45% approving of the president and 51% disapproving. Rasmussen shows a similar trend with 46% – 53%; as does The Economist, 45% – 51%.  Gallup sits at 49% – 44%.

Be sure to read it all.

If they think that sending out the ideologues to bypass the WH briefing room will make it easier for them to sell their message, the communications team is either desperate, delusional, or a little bit of both.

Guatemala’s top court overturned the genocide conviction of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt and ordered on Monday that his trial restart.

Constitutional Court secretary Martin Guzman said the trial needs to go back to where it stood on April 19 to solve several appeal issues.

The ruling came 10 days after a three-judge panel convicted the 86-year-old Rios Montt of genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in massacres of Mayans during Guatemala’s civil war. It found he knew about the slaughter of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayans in the western highlands and didn’t stop it.

Rios Montt only served one whole day in prison; he’s now in a hospital awaiting the replay of his trial.  On the bright side, it doesn’t sound like Rios Montt’s chances are improving with the do-over:

The trial had been nearing closing arguments when that judge, Carol Patricia Flores, intervened. Flores had been in charge of the first phase of the trial, in which evidence was gathered and determined to justify a trial, but she was removed from the case in February 2012 after defense lawyers charged her with bias.

Flores was reinstated to the case in early April by the Constitutional Court. She tried to halt the trial, but the tribunal hearing the case went ahead with testimony and convicted Rios Montt.

Hopefully, Guatemala will get the opportunity to be the first Latin American country to succeed in twice convicting a former despot of genocide.

“I don’t largely because it’s sort of largely the same column for the last, like, eight years.”

Counterpunch:

”I don’t normally listen to Robert,” she wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. “I don’t largely because it’s sort of largely the same tired defense of President Obama for the last, like, six years.”

On that, at least, Dowd and I are in agreement, as I noted earlier today. Who wins in this exchange? We do.

QUESTION: Jen, can I change the subject? It would seem that in Iran the Guardians Council, which is vetting the candidates for the upcoming elections next month, have decided and have ruled that women cannot contest, they cannot stand as candidates. I wondered what the United States reaction is to that, considering that 50 person of the population in Iran is women – are women.

MS. PSAKI: Well, we don’t take positions on any candidates, as you know, and we hope that the upcoming elections will be free, fair, and transparent and will represent the will of the Iranian people. So we wouldn’t weight into decisions made by the government. Of course, broadly, we hope that women around the world participate in politics and elected office, but beyond that I don’t think I have anything specific for you.

QUESTION: Taking the word “fair” – if you’re being fair, it would seem to exclude 50 percent of the population from an election, would already mean that it is not a fair election.

MS. PSAKI: Well, we don’t weigh in on to the candidates and the candidates that are chosen through the process in Iran. Of course, of course, broadly speaking we do want women to participate in elections around the world and rise up in elected office.

QUESTION: Just not in Iran?

MS. PSAKI: I’m not suggesting that, Arshad. I’m just suggesting that we leave it to the process that happens in Iran for them to pick their candidates.

QUESTION: But I mean why – it seems astounding that this Department – I mean, what if they decided to exclude, as this country once did, not merely women but black people? Would that be acceptable to you? That’s just their choice; they do it any way they want and you’re not going to stand up for democratic rights?

MS. PSAKI: I think we pretty broadly stand up for democratic rights from this building.

QUESTION: Just not for Iranian women, apparently.

MS. PSAKI: That’s not at all what I was conveying. I think there are two separate issues here. Of course, we want women to participate in processes around the world, whether that is participating in voting or being elected to office. Of course. More specifically, in terms of how candidates are selected, we don’t weigh in on specific candidates, of course, as the Government of Iran is picking them. But broadly, yes, we would like women to be participating at every level.

QUESTION: Including in Iran?

MS. PSAKI: Including around the world.

QUESTION: But – no but –

QUESTION: This is not a process. This is a clear case of gender discrimination, no? Isn’t that a difference between a vetting procedure and just saying, “All women no”? I mean, you’ve got to take a stand on something like that.

MS. PSAKI: Again, Brad, I think I made pretty clear – I don’t know that I have much more to add – that of course we have long supported women being elected to office in the United States and around the world and participating in the process. We want this to be free and fair. There’s a lot of ways to, of course, define that. But again, we don’t select or play a role in selecting who the candidates are. We can take a look through the process, and happy to comment once it’s completed.

Is it too much to ask for a White House that’s at least as tough on America’s enemies abroad as it is on their political opponents at home?

Update: Originally, the headline said “no comment,” but strictly speaking, Psaki commented on it.  It’s more accurate to say that the State Department took no position on the issue.

Three months after hackers working for a cyberunit of China’s People’s Liberation Army went silent amid evidence that they had stolen data from scores of American companies and government agencies, they appear to have resumed their attacks  using different techniques, according to computer industry security experts and American officials.

The Obama administration had bet that “naming and shaming” the groups, first in industry reports and then in the Pentagon’s own detailed survey of Chinese military capabilities, might prompt China’s new leadership to crack down on the military’s highly organized team of hackers — or at least urge them to become more subtle.

But Unit 61398, whose well-guarded 12-story white headquarters on the edges of Shanghai became the symbol of Chinese cyberpower, is back in business, according to American officials and security companies.

Who thought that the Chinese military could be “shamed” in the first place?  Isn’t this the same nation that forcibly aborts children in support of the one-child policy that Joe Biden “fully understand[s]“?  Shame isn’t exactly high up on their response list. It looks like they only stopped long enough to try less-detectable strategies, and that’ll be their strategy the next time, too.

Celia Roady, a lobbyist in the firm of Morgan Lewis, said she was called personally by Lois Lerner, the IRS head of the tax exempt division, on May 9.

“I received a call from Lois Lerner, who told me that she wanted to address an issue after her prepared remarks at the [American Bar Association] Tax Section’s Exempt Organizations Committee Meeting, and asked if I would pose a question to her after her remarks,” Roady said in a statement to U.S. News and World Report. “I agreed to do so, and she then gave me the question that I asked at the meeting the next day. We had no discussion thereafter on the topic of the question, nor had we spoken about any of this before I received her call. She did not tell me, and I did not know, how she would answer the question.”

Remember when Barack Obama pledged to reduce the influence of lobbyists in his administration? Less than five years later, his administration’s using them to set up alibis. Hopenchange!

No wonder two House Democrats want Lerner’s resignation tout suite:

Reps. Joe Crowley (D-Queens) and Sander Levin (D-Mich), top Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee, on Friday demanded the resignation of Lois Lerner, head of the IRS division overseeing tax-exempt organizations.

Lerner, who heads the IRS division that includes the Cincinnati office responsible for singling out conservative groups seeking tax exempt status for scrutiny, worked to put a stop to the practice.

But she faces fire for failing to tell Congress about the problem, including at a hearing held just two days before she apparently used a planted question at a American Bar Association event to try to control news of the scandal.

The New York Daily News offers this uncharacteristic bit of understatement:

The apparent flubbed effort to soften the impact of the IG’s report irked lawmakers in both parties.

You think?

After the week Obama’s had, this picture says so much …

Update: A good one from Yahoo’s Chris Moody:

marine poppins topherchris.com/post/505876347…

— Chris Moody (@Chris_Moody) May 16, 2013

Rival sci-fi clubs had to be separated by ‘the force’ when police were called to break up feuding fans at a Norwich Star Wars convention.

The family event threatened to turn to the dark side and escalate into a fight between costumed characters when visiting Doctor Who fans clashed with Star Wars enthusiasts.

Officers were called at around 2.30pm on Sunday when members of the Norwich Sci Fi Club were refused entry at a fair co-hosted by Norwich Star Wars Club at the University of East Anglia.

More than a dozen sci-fi fans from both groups – including several in fancy dress – were involved in a bitter exchange outside the venue, sparked by the arrival at the event of Jim Poole, treasurer of Norwich Sci Fi Club.

Did Wookie blood flow?  Did the Slitheens and Daleks mix it up with all the Boba Fetts?  Police went to the video to review the carnage and discovered that, er … nothing happened:

Police confirmed that they had been called to reports of a man being assaulted at the convention, and arrived to find a dispute between two groups.

But a spokesman added: “After lengthy investigation, talking to witnesses and reviewing good CCTV footage, it was confirmed that there was no assault. The two rival groups were spoken to and advised to keep out of each other’s way.”

The new Star Trek movie opens this week.  I guess these folks needed to do something to attract attention.

This may not be the worst of the scandals presently facing the Obama administration … but it’s the one that will finally get the media engaged on the others.

I’d have been there, but I don’t think my feet have recovered yet from the papal conclave. I’m kidding, of course, but it’s great to see Lila and Fr. Marcel on the front lines — and the Pope greeting and encouraging them.

Bill and Hillary Clinton will not support Anthony Weiner in his dream of becoming mayor even though they love his wife, Huma Abedin, sources say. “The Clintons wish Weiner would just disappear. Every time he pops up, it’s a reminder of Bill’s scandal withMonica Lewinsky, and it isn’t helpful to Hillary’s hopes for 2016,” one Democrat told Page Six. Abedin has worked for the former US senator and secretary of state for many years, and traveled with her as her “body woman,” her closest aide. It is believed that Abedin is still on the Clintons’ payroll although she isn’t working at the Clinton Foundation. Abedin will no doubt be one of Hillary’s first hires for her presidential campaign team. “The Clintons love Huma. She has a job for life, no matter how much of an embarrassment her husband is,” said our source.

The Star Tribune has dramatic photos as well. WCCO offered this report on the “ice tsunami”:

Around 9:30 a.m., people watched in disbelief as ice crawled into doors and windows at Izatys Resort. Winds as strong as 40 miles per hour pushed the wall of ice onto the southeastern shorelines. …

The Department of Natural Resources says about ten miles of shoreline are covered in ice, with some mountains of ice as tall as 30 feet.

They’re using heavy equipment to move the ice, which has caused damage to several doors and windows.

Ice was still pushed up against homes Saturday night, and in some cases giant rocks and dirt from the lake were also pushed onto shore. Neighbors told WCCO that it was frightening to watch the ice advance.

Just to remind everyone … this took place on May 11th, not March 11th or February 11th.

Most mothers should expect a visit or a phone call today, even though Mother’s Day has slipped in importance in recent years.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 64% of American Adults whose mothers are still alive will visit them for Mother’s Day. Another 31% plan on calling their mothers in honor of the day. Just four percent (4%) with living mothers plan on doing neither of those things.

Maybe it’s a little churlish to point this out, though:

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans believe being a mother is the most important job for a woman in today’s world, showing no change from last year but down from previous years. Twenty-four percent (24%) say being a mother is not a woman’s most important job, while another 17% are undecided. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of women say being a mother is not the most important role for a woman in today’s world, a view shared by 20% of men.

By comparison, 71% of all adults believe being a father is the most important role for a man to fill in today’s world.

It’s good to see a renewed focus on the need for fathers who take the job seriously.  Today, though, their job is to wait on wives hand and foot, find brunch lines that aren’t too long, and quit griping about honey-do lists for a day.

Just don’t send this post to my wife, please.

Happy Mothers Day to all our Hot Air moms!

Be sure to watch, and follow Tom and his producer John Karcher on Twitter!

But what about the surveillance issue and privacy? That’s going to be a big question, but not as big as the price tag:

$1500 to look like the Borg? Pass, at least for now. I wear prescription specs and have no desire to wear contact lenses (my astigmatism doesn’t make me a great candidate for them anyway), so I won’t be trying out Google Glasses any time soon.  I don’t think it will take too long, though, before these become as ubiquitous on the street as people with Bluetooth earpieces holding phone conversations.

Speaking of which, I recently joked that twenty years ago, we assumed anyone walking around talking to no one in particular was crazy; now we just assume they’re on a cell phone call.  How about people who stare at you for no discernible reason in the age of Google Glasses?  Do we assume they’re lost in thought, as we do now, or videotaping us?

Did some officials hope never to reveal this wrongdoing? Did others hope it could quickly get lost in the weekend news cycle? Misguided, if so. We hope to hear Democratic leaders as well as Republican ones loudly saying so.

Actually, one would have to be nuts to think this will disappear over a weekend news cycle.  Rather than getting lost in other news, it actually reinforces an emerging pattern of executive-branch intimidation that exists in the Benghazi scandal and the Inspectors General corps, most recently regarding Afghanistan reconstruction funds, and more.

That doesn’t mean some organizations won’t try to downplay it in the hopes it will go away:

Not front page material in the Grey Lady’s news judgment.  But good enough for page A-11.  With the third paragraph reassuring readers that an agency spokesperson had insisted

… that the move was not driven by politics, but she added, “We made some mistakes; some people didn’t use good judgment.”

Compare that to the WaPo’s much more skeptical tone in the editorial:

The agency said that it now has rules in place to make sure this sort of thing never happens again. How could such basic safeguards not have existed in the first place? And what are the new rules? In response to our questions, officials did not say.

So what did the Times’ editorial have to say?  Er …. nothing.  The persecution of conservative groups by the IRS wasn’t enough to get the Gray Lady’s editors interested, apparently.

Italy has a massive unemployment problem. So why do they need immigrants to flood into the country in order to meet the pizza demand? Is this “a job Italians won’t do,” or is it a sign of perverse incentives that make being unemployed more attractive than working in a pizzeria? Is it because it costs too much to hire, for tax and regulatory reasons? I’m genuinely puzzled, and not just because my first job was working in a pizza shop.  It’s not that awful to make pizzas.

By the way, I agree with the American tourists interviewed in the spot.  With only a couple of exceptions, the pizza in Italy (or Rome, at least) is superior to most of what one finds in the US.

“It’s an interesting angle, to talk about people who really only have jobs for the health insurance as being one angle to that. I had a friend who got married to the wrong person just so she could have heath insurance. So, we’ll also have a lot of less bad marriages as a result of this,” Rep. Janice Hahn (D-CA) said at a Small Business subcommittee hearing on Health and Technology on Thursday.

So, ObamaCare cures stupidity.  Is there no end to its brilliance?

By the way, Jason and I had a lot of fun during the show in recalling our bachelor days, when we used to impress women at nightclubs by talking about the size of our health insurance plans. Unfortunately, that ended up with us arguing about who had the biggest pharmacy coverage, and that just never ends well.

Texas authorities are launching a criminal investigation into last month’s deadly fertilizer distribution facility explosion in West, Texas, the Texas Department of Public Safety said Friday.

The announcement was made on the same day authorities arrested Bryce Reed, a West emergency volunteer who was a first-responder to the disaster.

Authorities have not tied the arrest to the deadly blast.

McLennan County sheriff’s records clerk Betty Duncan told CNN that Reed was arrested for possession of a destructive device, booked early Friday, and is in the custody of U.S. Marshals.

One thing might not have anything to do with the other; it could just be a coincidence.  On the other hand ….

On Monday, the state fire marshal’s office said it ruled out four potential causes: weather, natural causes, anhydrous ammonium, and ammonium nitrate in a rail car.

The fire began in the fertilizer and seed building, but authorities still were trying to figure out the exact spot, the fire marshal’s office said Monday.

The blast happened about 20 minutes after the first report of a fire at the fertilizer facility. It registered on seismographs as a magnitude-2.1 earthquake and could be felt 50 miles away.

Keep an eye on this story, perhaps especially on the federal involvement.  Until now, no one had intimated that this might be a deliberate act.

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been buried in an undisclosed location outside the city of Worcester, police said Thursday after a frustrating weeklong search for a community willing to take the body.

“As a result of our public appeal for help, a courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance needed to properly bury the deceased,” Worcester police said in a statement.

Sgt. Kerry Hazelhurst said the body was no longer in Worcester and is now entombed. Police did not specify where the body was taken.

Nor should they.  Better in this case to let sleeping dogs lie … in almost every sense of those terms.

No, really:

The company said Wednesday that it has stopped new sales and marketing of Alert Energy Caffeine Gum “out of respect” for the agency.

The FDA said it would investigate added caffeine in foods just as Wrigley rolled out Alert late last month. A stick of the gum is equivalent to half a cup of coffee.

Well, I’m not sure I see the need for caffeinated chewing gum, but I’m also not sure why the FDA is getting tweaked over it, either.  If Wrigley wasn’t disclosing it, that’s one thing — but it was the selling point for Alert.  Consumers would have been purchasing it for its caffeine content; presumably they’d buy existing brands if they only wanted a specific taste or a sugar hit.

If Washington is getting perturbed by products that mix sugar and caffeine and are offered in an unregulated manner to all customers over the counter, why wouldn’t they take a greater interest in, oh, Starbucks?  I’m pretty sure that a triple-shot venti peppermint mocha latte would be the equivalent of a whole pack of Alert.

counterterror expert mark thompson says he wanted special emegency FEST team to respond to Benghazi but was told that option had been taken

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) May 8, 2013

off the table at a meeting earlier in the night. White House previously told CBS News that’s not FEST’s purpose.

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) May 8, 2013

However, Thompson today testified that’s precisely, in his view, the purpose of FEST.

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) May 8, 2013

After that … nothing.  Not a word through the rest of the hearing, even though there were a number of explosive revelations provided by Gregory Hicks, Mark Thompson, and Eric Nordstrom.

Allahpundit wrote about CBS’ apparent unhappiness with Attkisson for her tireless journalism on Benghazi.  Did they pull her off the story?  I’ve submitted a question about her status through the CBS News website, and I’ll update this if any more information comes through.

Update, 5:57 pm: No activity so far on Sharyl’s Twitter feed, and no word back from CBS on my inquiry, although that might end up lost in the website’s response bureaucracy.  I’d note that the Dylan Byers piece at Politico that discussed the alleged mutual antagonism between CBS and Attkisson was posted at 11:52 am ET, just 16 minutes before Sharyl’s most recent tweet.  That could be a coincidence, but a look through the tweets before 12:08 looks like Attkisson was planning to live-tweet the entire hearing.

Update, 9:12 pm: Attkisson filed a report on tonight’s CBS News:

Good to see her on the story.

Vatican City, 8 May 2013 (VIS) – “The men and women of the Church who are careerists and social climbers, who ‘use’ people, the Church, their brothers and sisters—whom they should be serving—as a springboard for their own personal interests and ambitions … are doing great harm to the Church.” This is what Pope Francis asserted in his address to the participants in the plenary assembly of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) whom he received in audience this morning.

The pontiff spoke to the sisters of obedience, poverty, and chastity: “Obedience as listening to God’s will, in the interior motion of the Holy Spirit authenticated by the Church, accepting that obedience also passes through human mediations. … Poverty, which teaches solidarity, sharing, and charity and which is also expressed in a soberness and joy of the essential, to put us on guard against the material idols that obscure the true meaning of life. Poverty, which is learned with the humble, the poor, the sick, and all those who are at the existential margins of life. Theoretical poverty doesn’t do anything. Poverty is learned by touching the flesh of the poor Christ in the humble, the poor, the sick, and in children.”

“And then chastity, as a precious charism, that enlarges the freedom of your gift to God and others with Christ’s tenderness, mercy, and closeness. Chastity for the Kingdom of Heaven shows how affection has its place in mature freedom and becomes a sign of the future world, to make God’s primacy shine forever. But, please, [make it] a ‘fertile’ chastity, which generates spiritual children in the Church. The consecrated are mothers: they must be mothers and not ‘spinsters’! Forgive me if I talk like this but this maternity of consecrated life, this fruitfulness is important! May this joy of spiritual fruitfulness animate your existence. Be mothers, like the images of the Mother Mary and the Mother Church. You cannot understand Mary without her motherhood; you cannot understand the Church without her motherhood, and you are icons of Mary and of the Church.”

Continuing, Pope Francis spoke to the superiors about service. “We must never forget that true power, at whatever level, is service, which has its bright summit upon the Cross. … ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them … But it shall not be so among you.’—This is precisely the motto of your assembly, isn’t it? It shall not be so among you.—’Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave’.”

“Your vocation is a fundamental charism for the Church’s journey and it isn’t possible that a consecrated woman or man might ‘feel’ themselves not to be with the Church. A ‘feeling’ with the Church that has generated us in Baptism; a ‘feeling’ with the Church that finds its filial expression in fidelity to the Magisterium, in communion with the Bishops and the Successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, a visible sign of that unity,” the pontiff added, citing Paul VI: “It is an absurd dichotomy to think of living with Jesus but without the Church, of following Jesus outside of the Church, of loving Jesus without loving the Church. Feel the responsibility that you have of caring for the formation of your Institutes in sound Church doctrine, in love of the Church, and in an ecclesial spirit.”

“The centrality of Christ and his Gospel, authority as a service of love, and ‘feeling’ in and with the Mother Church: [these are] three suggestions that I wish to leave you, to which I again add my gratitude for your work, which is not always easy. What would the Church be without you? She would be missing maternity, affection, tenderness! A Mother’s intuition.”

This comes shortly after Pope Francis’ decision to continue the discipline of Benedict XVI for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, who stand accused of straying from Catholic doctrine in their work in the US.

Side note: Most of the media has translated “spinsters” to “old maids.” I don’t know how Pope Francis put it in Italian, and my Italian is poor enough that I wouldn’t get the nuance of either expression anyway.  VIS has it as “spinsters,” but I don’t think there’s a lot of difference in either definition or tone to make this more than just an interesting and amusing distinction.

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Residents of a Houston neighborhood are being warned to stay away from giant African land snails after a woman found one in her garden and snapped a photo of it.

The snails, researchers warn, are potentially dangerous to touch, in part because they can carry meningitis. Scientists have warned anyone who comes in contact with them to wash their hands thoroughly.

“They also carry a parasitic disease that can cause a lot of harm to humans and sometimes even death,” Autumn Smith-Herron, director of the Institute for the Study of Invasive Species at Sam Houston State University, told NBC Houston affiliate KPRC.

A woman gardening in the Briar Forest neighborhood of Houston found the snail and notified workers at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center who deal with invasive plants. It is the first reported sighting of the mollusk in Texas, and no one seems to know how it got there.

In other words, don’t pick them up and take pictures with them … like the people seen in the video. Call animal control instead, and perhaps zombie control just to be safe.

It’s too bad that legendary stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen passed away yesterday at 92 years of age. He would have made an awesome Giant Zombie Snail flick.

We salute the courage of Ohio kidnap victims & respect their privacy. Way to go Charles Ramsey- we’ll be in touch.

— McDonald’s Corp. (@McDonaldsCorp) May 7, 2013

Meanwhile, the Cleveland PD has released mug shots of the three suspects:

Real charmers, huh?

For the first time, the U.S. government’s trade arm is stepping in to help the music business, funding trade missions to Brazil and Asia in recent months for the heads of a dozen independent music labels, which make up one-third of the U.S. music market.

It is a departure for the International Trade Administration, which has been spending $2 million annually to boost exports for the past two decades under its Market Development Cooperator Program but has never before given one of its $300,000 grants to the music industry, instead favoring sectors like machinery, technology and engineering services.

Until last year the agency hadn’t received a music-industry application worthy of the award, an ITA spokesman said. Indeed, it hadn’t received an application at all.

“We need to find new revenue streams,” said Rich Bengloff, president of the American Association of Independent Music, whose idea it was to apply for the grant. He led the trips and arranged meetings with local distributors, mobile-phone carriers, booking agents and ad agencies. “We now need to adjust to a smaller monetization at home.”

Indie labels see big opportunities in Latin America and Asia—and visiting in person pays off, especially in markets such as Japan, where fans favor foreign artists that spend time in their country engaging with locals and making TV appearances.

Many of the independent label heads that visited Seoul, Shanghai and Hong Kong this fall as part of the ITA grant program have since signed foreign distribution and licensing deals that will generate hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, Mr. Bengloff said. The deals could represent as much as a quarter of a small independent label’s revenue, he said.

Nick is gobsmacked at the contradiction:

You know what was one of the things that made rock and roll (and pop music, broadly defined) so freaking great? Precisely the fact that it not only developed without the sorts elite, class-based subsidies lavished on opera, ballet, later jazz, etc., but in spite of them. And to the not-inconsiderable role rock and pop played in defeating international communism, it’s worth noting that pop music was constantly under attack in both the “free” world and behind the Iron Curtain.

For god’s sake, even the major record labels hated rock (prefering the phony folk music parlayed during the ’50s and early ’60s) for the longest time. And now, indie rockers are the new cronies.

In the Age of Obama, I guess there’s nothing hipper than Government Rock. Nothing says “rebellion” like taking handouts from The Man, it seems.

There may be a reason why this version has disappeared:

But the first film version — in black and white with no dialogue — debuted in 1926, soon after a stage production of the novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald was reportedly so disgusted by the film version that he walked out of the movie theater before it was over.

The silent version of “The Great Gatsby” no longer exists in any archives, and the sole footage is the one-minute trailer for the film that the National Archives was able to salvage.

Two North Korean Musudan missiles have been withdrawn from a launch site in the eastern part of the country and sent to a storage facility, a U.S. official confirmed Monday.

The United States had been worried about the prospects of the regime firing the missiles.

Has Pyongyang suddenly tired of its sabre-rattling game?  Perhaps.  They offered a list of demands to reopen the joint industrial facility at Kaesong, but Seoul called the conditions “incomprehensible“:

South Korea yesterday dismissed an “incomprehensible” list of North Korean demands for reviving suspended operations at a jointly-run industrial park.

The Kaesong Industrial Complex, opened north of the border in 2004 as a rare symbol of co-operation, has been shut indefinitely with the withdrawal of all North and South Korean workers amid soaring military tensions.

On Sunday, the North’s National Defence Commission led by leader Kim Jong-Un said re-starting the complex would require the South to cease all “hostile acts and military provocations.”

It cited preparations for a joint South Korea-US military drill scheduled for August, as well as activists and defectors who use balloons to send anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.

“The North’s demand, as you probably know, is completely incomprehensible and unfair,” said Kim Hyung-Seok, spokesman for Seoul’s Unification Ministry which handles inter-Korean affairs.

“We urge the North again… to come forward for dialogue instead of making such unfair demands,” Kim told reporters.

Maybe the missile retreat was an attempt to offer a good-faith sign to get Seoul to engage. After all, the main benefit of Kaesong is the hard currency it generates for Pyongyang. We’ll see if the Kim regime has any other concessions to offer.

ABBA wants to be remembered for more than just catchy hits.

A museum opens in Stockholm on Tuesday to show off band paraphernalia, including the helicopter featured on the cover of their “Arrival” album, a star-shaped guitar and dozens of glitzy costumes the Swedish band wore at the height of its 1970s fame.

I think it’s the catchy hits that will still be the band’s real legacy, and that’s how it should be.

I wrap myself even more tightly in my wrinkled camel-hair coat. Just then, I feel a vague stirring in my stomach. Seconds later, another soft flutter. I reach down and cover my belly with my hands. Here, in this room that smells of vomit and floor cleaner, my baby decides to announce itself for the first time.

Surrounded by strangers engulfed in grief, I feel a surge of joy. I’d steadfastly refused the abortion my mother had done everything in her power to get for me. Now I know for sure my baby is alive.

In 1963, abortions were illegal. Threats to the mother’s physical or mental health were the only grounds on which one could be performed. And when my mother informed me I was pregnant—something the family gynecologist had revealed to her, not me—she also told me that he had, conveniently, diagnosed me as severely depressed. In our circles of Philadelphia society, you were considered charmingly eccentric if you were given to extreme mood swings, romantic depressions, even the odd suicide attempt. Giving birth to a bastard child, however, was unforgivable. Although my mother was a staunch Catholic, she had so convinced herself that an abortion would save my future that she was able to justify an act she normally would have abhorred. I was committed to a private psychiatric facility, where an abortion could be performed legally. Except, much to everyone’s dismay, I wouldn’t sign the papers to authorize the procedure. I held out even after they moved me to the state hospital. I didn’t object to abortion on moral grounds; I just desperately wanted my child—a baby conceived in love, with a man I loved—to live. I had no idea what would happen to my baby, or to me, as a result of my decision. But I’d never felt such conviction before.

This is a story that has to be read in full.  It’s told not just from the perspective of the young unwed mother, but also from the daughter she gave up for adoption, and indirectly from the father who married young Julie and inscribed their wedding rings with the birth date of the daughter they didn’t know for decades.  It is, in short, an example of how love triumphed over fear, and how self-sacrifice and determination enriched the lives of countless others.

⁴ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷ It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹ For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰ but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror, dimly,^[b] but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³ And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

And kudos to Redbook for publishing this.  It’s undated, so I’m not certain when this first appeared, but it’s a wonderful testimony regardless of its publication date.

The People’s Daily is the main state-owned newspaper of China’s communist party, and everyone was pretty psyched about the paper’s new Beijing headquarters. The building is massive, imposing, and, uh, currently shaped like a colossal penis. Now, as construction workers try to finish the engineering, the country’s censors are working overtime to stop Chinese people on social media from laughing at the expense of the very paper in charge of controlling the country’s message.According to The International Business Times, the nearly 500-foot tower won’t be finished until this time next year, but the war on mocking it has already begun. …

And then you have papers like The Times of India, with (unintentionally funny?) introductions to their architecture stories: “The new 150-meter tall headquarters of the People’s Daily, the main organ of the Communist Party….” And then you have this: As the blog HugChina reported last month, a rather unfortunate nickname for the paper emerged right after the first photos of the construction site surfaced, before the censors stepped in:

People’s Daily (人民日报) has long been called Raping People Daily (日人民报) by Chinese netizens for chronically misleading the people with false reports. It was understood that the propagandists in Beijing do not like this nickname, but that they chose the bizarre design of the new headquarters reveals that it may not necessarily be so.

Shouldn’t we be celebrating this uncommonly honest expression of art in China? Let’s hope that Beijing doesn’t go limp on us and pull out of this building, but instead stay firm and handle this erection with as much dignity as possible. And let’s hope they don’t get too pissed off about all the kidding, either.