Eideard

US Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) is taking heat today for calling US Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia a homophobe during an interview with 365gay.com. When discussing gay marriage, Frank said he believed the issue would eventually make its way to the US Supreme Court, but said he wouldn’t want it to go there now because “that homophobe Antonin Scalia has got too many votes on this current court.”

Now, some of you may disagree and follow the reasoning that Scalia isn’t anti-gay, just anti-progressive. He’s a firm believer that the US Constitution is not a living document and it should be strictly construed as written in 1781 because, well, things just haven’t really changed that much since then, have they? And of course, everyone knows there were no gay people until the mid-20th century, around the same time those pesky blacks wanted their right to eat at the same table as whites.

If you really want proof that Scalia is a homophobe, all you have to do is read his scathing dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, the seminal 2003 case that struck down sodomy laws and affirmed gay citizens’ right to privacy denied to us by the hateful 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick. In Lawrence, Scalia compared homosexuality to bigamy, incest, prostitution, and bestiality. He also said homosexuality was contagious and that teachers could induce their students to become gay. He accused the Court of “signing on to the so-called homosexual agenda”. Scalia has said publicly that he considers being gay an “immoral lifestyle choice”.

I guess it’s a measure of progress that American bigots get upset nowadays if they’re identified as bigots. The United States has no more racism, no misogyny, no homophobes, no xenophobia.

In your dreams.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have begun testing a vaccine that might be able to prevent colon cancer in people at high risk for developing the disease. If shown to be effective, it might spare patients the risk and inconvenience of repeated invasive surveillance tests, such as colonoscopy, that are now necessary to spot and remove precancerous polyps…

In a novel approach for cancer prevention, the Pitt vaccine is directed against an abnormal variant of a self-made cell protein called MUC1, which is altered and produced in excess in advanced adenomas and cancer. Vaccines currently in use to prevent cancer work via a different mechanism, specifically by blocking infection with viruses that are linked with cancer. For example, Gardasil protects against human papilloma virus associated with cervical cancer and hepatitis B vaccine protects against liver cancer.

“By stimulating an immune response against the MUC1 protein in these precancerous growths, we may be able to draw the immune system’s fire to attack and destroy the abnormal cells,” Dr. Schoen said. “That might not only prevent progression to cancer, but even polyp recurrence.”

According to co-investigator Olivera Finn, Ph.D., MUC1 vaccines have been tested for safety and immunogenicity in patients with late-stage colon cancer and pancreatic cancer.

“Patients were able to generate an immune response despite their cancer-weakened immune systems,” she noted. “Patients with advanced adenomas are otherwise healthy and so they would be expected to generate a stronger immune response. That may be able to stop precancerous lesions from transforming into malignant tumors.”

About a dozen people have received the experimental vaccine so far, and the researchers intend to enroll another 50 or so into the study.

If it’s going to help some of us live longer and better, I’m all for it. Let the spookier ethicists talk to themselves over in the corner. I think if and when treatments like this become common, individuals can make up their own minds about opting in.

A former executive director and head of domestic securities lending for Morgan Stanley has been convicted of securities fraud conspiracy.

Darin Demizio, who also was convicted of wire fraud and making a false statement to the FBI after a weeklong trial, faces up to 25 years on the fraud counts and five years on the false statement count.

The conviction is the 29th stemming from an ongoing industry-wide investigation into allegations of bribery and kickbacks in the securities lending industry, also called the “stock-loan” industry, the U.S. Justice Department said.

The department said 28 defendants previously pleaded guilty in Brooklyn, including former lending traders at A.G. Edwards and Sons Inc.; Janney Montgomery Scott LLC; JP Morgan Chase; Kellner Dileo & Co. Inc.; Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.; Morgan Stanley; National Investors Services, also known as TD Waterhouse; Nomura Securities International Inc.; Pax Clearing Corp.; PFPC Worldwide; Schonfeld Securities and Van der Moolen Specialists.

What was that about “birds of a feather”?

Authorities say a Fairfield, Conn., teacher has been charged with making a 5-year-old eat a banana from a garbage can.

Anne O’Donnell, 67, is charged with risk of injury to a minor, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison, The (Bridgeport) Connecticut Post reported Tuesday.

O’Donnell, who appeared in court with her lawyer Monday, allegedly retrieved a unpeeled banana discarded by the boy, peeled it and told him to eat it, which he did, said a police report on the March 12 incident at the Park City Magnet School.

O’Donnell has been placed on medical leave pending the outcome of the case, said her lawyer, Robert Berke, noting his client had been “well respected in the classroom for years and is now being portrayed as a monster.”

The boy was so traumatized he now becomes physically ill when it is time to go to school, said his mother, Latoya McLean.

The boy is an idiot. His mother is an idiot. The coppers in Fairfield have always been idiots. The school system in Fairfield stopped trying to teach anything approximately in 1960.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

A world record in the length of a queue to a toilet was set on Sunday when 756 people lined up to a latrine in central Brussels to raise awareness for the need for clean water on World Water Day.

The event was organized by the United Nations’ children’s agency UNICEF which gave each participant a wristband with his or her number in the line and T-shirt certifying participation in the event.

“The latrine was of the same design as we use in third world countries — a dry latrine — and we formed the longest queue this morning,” UNICEF spokesman Benoit Melebeck said.

“The Guinness Book of Records told us we needed to get at least 500 people in the queue to get the record,” he said.

Melebeck said the event was to raise public awareness and eventually funds for the need for more pumps, wells, latrines hygiene education for children in third world countries.

Come to think of it, I did a post about this a while back. The toilet, that is.

Here’s the post about Bindeshwar Pathak, the advocate of toilets for all – in India.

The FBI says it has broken up one of the largest auto theft rings in U.S. history — a “car cloning” operation that went on for more than 20 years.

In such a theft, expensive cars are stolen and their vehicle identification numbers replaced by those belonging to legally obtained vehicles of similar makes from around the country, thus allowing the stolen cars to be sold, the FBI said in a release Tuesday.

The bureau’s “Operation Dual Identity” netted the arrests of 17 suspects in Tampa and Miami, Fla., Chicago, Mexico City and Guadalajara, Mexico. More than 1,000 vehicles worth a total of $25 million have allegedly been stolen by the ring in Florida, officials said.

Police say they hope to put an end to car cloning through the implementation of the National Motor Vehicle Information system database, which enables state motor vehicle departments to share vehicle registration information with each other.

This has been going on for decades before the FBI learned the word “cloning”. Cripes. I had a business associate back East who did the books for the regional Cosa Nostra. And for a major auto junkyard they owned.

These state and federal officers are just figuring out they should talk to each other.

Daylife/Getty Images

The Obama administration plans to send about 500 more agents and equipment to the nation’s southwestern border and Mexico to fight Mexican drug cartels and keep violence from spilling over into the United States.

Speaking at the White House Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said officials were still considering whether to deploy the National Guard to the Arizona and Texas borders with Mexico, which the governors had requested…

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton travels to Mexico Wednesday for the start of several weeks of high-level meetings between the two countries on the drug violence issue. Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder meet with Mexican officials in early April.

Authorities said they will increase the number of immigrations and customs agents, drug agents and anti-gun trafficking agents operating along the border. The government also will allow federal funds to be used to pay for local law enforcement involved in Southwest border operations, and send more U.S. officials to work inside Mexico.

Prosecutors say they will make a greater effort to go after those smuggling guns and drug profits from the U.S. into Mexico…

I won’t take more time, today, to insist upon the logic of decriminalization of marijuana – which still is the central pillar of the Mexican drug cartels. Read back through here and here. It’s decades overdue.

Someday, this nation will grow beyond Sunday School moralizing and face real-world conditions with real-world analysis. Until then, the need to crack down on gangsters is no less a priority today than it has been through all the years off Republican impotence along our southern border.

A new online video game distribution network hopes to free players from buying game discs or the console systems and high-priced computers needed to play them.

The OnLive Game Service, expected to launch later this year — was officially announced today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco — lets subscribers choose from a on-demand catalog of new video games that can be played on Windows and Apple Macintosh computers or television sets.

Bypassing current console systems such as the Microsoft Xbox that play only games made for that specific platform, OnLive lets computers play games stored on its network of super-powerful data servers. These servers bounce game data back and forth from the player’s computer using proprietary compression technology to make the games run as if they are loaded on the computer.

To play over big-screen HDTVs, a small microconsole unit (the size of a deck of cards) that connects to home broadband networks is used. Game controllers and headsets can connect to the microconsole using USB or wireless connections…

The price of the microconsole needed for TV-based connectivity and monthly subscriptions will be announced later.

“Were providing you with the latest high-end titles, the exact same ones you would see at Target or Best Buy, in the same release windows. But what is really cool is you don’t need any high-end hardware to play them,” says OnLive founder and chief operating officer Steve Perlman. “There’s no physical media. It’s an all-digital platform. You never need to upgrade your equipment at home.”

I went looking for the most trustworthy person I can think of writing about gaming – Garnett Lee. At least at time of posting, he’s probably too busy crawling the booths at the GDC to get something in print about this. So, I’m adding a link from MTV Multiplayer – who interviewed Pearlman at the conference.

UPDATE: Wagner James Au has a good article over at GigaOm.

Daylife/AP Photo

A fundamental trend that has emerged in the world economy is the rebalancing of the global economy toward Asia, says HSBC Group Chairman Stephen Green.

“While the global financial crisis is still ongoing, what is clear to me is a fundamental trend that has emerged in the world economy. And that is the rebalancing of the global economy towards Asia where China is a leading power,” Green said in an interview with Xinhua.

“In the long run, it is this shift that will affect the world’s financial markets most profoundly,” he added.

“As the Asian economies grow larger, we will see the continued development of regional and domestic capital markets, and more of the capital generated in the fast growing emerging markets will in the future stay closer to home,” he said.

“This will be a positive factor for both developed economies and developing ones,” Green said, “The financial system has in recent years, particularly since the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s, grown increasingly unbalanced. There is a recognition that countries running persistent deficits must encourage consumers to save more and spend less while those countries in persistent surplus must be given capital market tools to encourage spending.”

I’m prompted to Google around to get more than just the portions of Green’s statement making it into the press. The article notes his suggestions to China on international banking – which carries a lot of weight. HSBC really is a central voice of commerce and banking in the Far East – and globally.

I wonder how much this alteration might be affected by Obama’s goal of reviving the U.S. economy?

The politics of birth control can produce unusual allies. Take Monday’s ruling in federal district court in New York, overturning the Food and Drug Administration’s ban on selling the morning after Plan B contraceptive over the counter to women younger than 18.

The judge in that case, Edward Korman, scathingly criticized several Health and Human Services and FDA officials for bowing to “pressure” from President George W. Bush’s White House and its “constituents,” and for using “political considerations, delays, and implausible justifications” to hold up nonprescription sales of the birth control drug for years.

In a 52-page ruling, Korman sounded like a speechwriter for President Barack Obama, accusing the FDA and the Bush administration of tossing science under the bus to “appease” conservative supporters of Bush in Congress and the Republican Party.

But Judge Korman is no leftover liberal from Bill Clinton’s era—he’s an appointee of Ronald Reagan, and long before that, was in the Justice Department under President Richard Nixon…

Meantime, if the Obama White House does not appeal the ruling, it will mark the fourth significant departure from the Bush administration’s positions on controversial health-care issues since Obama’s inauguration. The other three decisions allow federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research and for international aid groups that offer abortion counseling, and a move to lift the rule that would let medical personnel shun abortion-related services on the basis of their conscience.

Only controversial to nutballs who think we should live under a theocracy.