Eideard

There were no burning effigies, no chanted slogans, and not even a single shoe was thrown.

George W. Bush’s typical welcome wagon was missing in action when the controversial former U.S. president quietly visited Toronto Monday for an unpublicized and private speaking event.

“We had no protests,” confirmed Michael Miller, a spokesman for Northbridge Financial Corp., which jointly presented the event with its parent company, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd.

Fairfax CEO and Toronto billionaire Prem Watsa sponsored the lunchtime talk and question-and-answer session for more than 200 invited guests at the downtown Hilton…

Watsa had also planned to host a private speaking event with Bush on Tuesday for Tyndale University, a local evangelical Christian college and seminary, but the event was abruptly cancelled last week when opposition within the school’s community quickly mounted and a petition was launched by former students.

Alumni, faculty and students who found Bush’s hawkish legacy out of sync with Tyndale’s Christian teachings celebrated the school’s decision…

Monday’s lunch and talk lasted two hours, during which the folksy former president told jokes, talked about his memoir and the U.S.’s current economic woes. Guests then had the opportunity to have their photo taken with Bush.

I presume the Harper flunkeys in attendance had a decent meal. Otherwise, they paid to spend a few hours listening to a walking example of just how useless and backwards a politician can be elected to head the United States. Perhaps a portent of what people like Watsa hope continues to be the custom in Canada, eh?

A proposed constitutional amendment to lift the ban on public funding of religious groups should be ripped from the 2012 ballot because it is “misleading and insufficiently specific,” according to a lawsuit filed by Florida’s largest teachers union…

“This is designed to open the state treasury to voucher schools, but this is not what the ballot summary says,” said Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association…

By attacking the ballot summary as “misleading,” the teachers union takes aim at a sensitive issue for the Republican lawmakers, who have watched in recent years as the Florida Supreme Court used that very reason to block a series of constitutional changes from the ballot.

In response to the legal challenges, the GOP-controlled Legislature passed a new law this year requiring the attorney general to fix any ballot titles or summaries a court deems problematic and return it to the ballot within 10 days.

The teachers union is also trying to reverse that law in their suit, saying it violates the separation powers provision in the state Constitution…

The ban on public funding of religious institutions, known as the Blaine Amendment, was cited by the 1st District Court of Appeal in an earlier ruling against the program…

Instead of giving religious institutions the right to public funding in the U.S. Constitution, plaintiffs argue the Florida change would mandate it. Union attorneys, led by Ron Meyer, also argue the ballot summary falsely implies the change is required by the U.S. Constitution.

Meyer also said the ballot title of “religious freedom” is deceptive.

Not that deception is new to political practices either side of the aisle. Historically Democrats have pulled the wool over voters eyes in many cities and states – the usual reason being good old-fashioned graft and corruption.

The New Wave of Republican lies is a lot more ideological. They’d love to return the nation to 19th Century standards of citizenship and practices – including forcing religion down the throats of everyone, official kowtowing to the wants of corporate crowned heads, dismantling any additions to civil rights in the past century – all paid for by taxes destined solely for the backs of ordinary working people.

His assassination was a popular topic

A team of scientists say they have positively identified an embalmed head, presumed lost in the chaos of the French Revolution, as that of King Henri IV of France who was assassinated in 1610.

The head was apparently lost after revolutionaries desecrated the graves of French kings in the royal basilica of Saint-Denis near Paris in 1793.

Few remains of those bodies have ever been found and positively identified since.

But a team of experts using advanced scientific techniques say they have conclusively identified the head, passed down over the centuries by private collectors, as that of the monarch.

Ah, the 19th Century. There’s an epoch that truly could have used eBay and Craigslist, eh?

Found in Colorado

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is missing key information on who owns one-third of the 357,000 private and commercial aircraft in the US, a gap the agency says could be exploited by terrorists and drug traffickers.

The records are in such disarray that the FAA says it is worried that criminals could buy planes without the government’s knowledge, or use the registration numbers of other aircraft to evade new computer systems designed to track suspicious flights.

Next year the FAA will begin canceling the registration certificates of all 357,000 aircraft and require owners to register anew, the Associated Press news agency cited them as saying on Friday.

About 119,000 of the aircraft on the US registry have “questionable registration” because of missing forms, invalid addresses, unreported sales or other paperwork problems, according to the FAA.

In many cases, the FAA cannot say who owns a plane or even whether it is still flying or is no longer functional…

The amount of missing or invalid paperwork has been building for decades, the FAA says. Up to now, owners had to register their planes only once, at the time of purchase.

The FAA sent out notices every three years asking owners to update their contact information if needed, but there was no punishment for not doing so.

RTFA. It’s worth a chuckle over a truly incompetent bureaucracy.

It doesn’t require a great deal of smarts to be a criminal, anyway. But, it surely aids the heavy hitters when the context of day-by-day operations of a federal regulatory agency are about as thorough as Mexican border controls.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

World’s first commercial spaceport. Check. Solo flight of a rocket ship for tourists. Check. A runway in the southern New Mexico desert to help them climb to the heavens. Check…

“Today is very personal, as our dream becomes more real,” said Sir Richard Branson, whose company, Virgin Galactic, will operate the flights. “People are beginning to believe now.”

All that is left for the company is more rocket testing on SpaceShipTwo and sending it into space. The British billionaire said he expects flights for space tourists to begin in nine to 18 months, and he will be among the first passengers.

Stretching across a flat dusty plain 45 miles north of Las Cruces, the nearly two-mile-long runway is designed to support almost every aircraft in the world, day-to-day space tourism and payload launch operations.

Virgin Galactic is the anchor tenant of the taxpayer-funded $198 million spaceport and plans to use the facility to take tourists on what will first be short hops into space…

Branson was joined at Friday’s ceremonies by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, tourists who have already paid their deposits for a seat into suborbital space and Buzz Aldrin, who walked on the moon in 1969 as part of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission.

Virgin Galactic’s White Knight Two – the special jet-powered mothership that will carry SpaceShipTwo to launch altitude – also made an appearance Friday, passing over the spaceport several times before landing on the new runway.

Bravo! Gives me an excuse eventually to drive downstate and watch takeoffs and landings.

Can’t afford the flight.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The chief executive of Abercrombie & Fitch is being paid $4 million to curb his personal use of the company plane. Michael Jeffries previously had unlimited use of the firm’s aircraft.

In 2008, his personal use incurred costs of $1.1 million. Now, if he exceeds $200,000 a year he must reimburse the teen retailer.

Mr Jeffries would also have to pay some of the $4 million back if he were to leave the company without “good reason” before his contract runs out in February 2014.

Mr Jeffries’ personal use of the plane averaged about $850,000 a year between 2006 and 2008, according to previous company regulatory filings.

The “let ‘em eat cake” mentality of our corporate overseers seems boundless.

I admit, sometimes, I’m in a quandary over who deserves the most contempt. Corporate leeches, political lackeys – or the ignorant fools who re-elect the political crud running our nation on the basis of 18th-Century religious slogans.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein says she wants answers about a Central Intelligence Agency policy that allows the agency’s employees to moonlight for private companies.

The CIA policy — first reported by POLITICO’s Eamon Javers in a story drawn from a forthcoming book — is also being reviewed by staff members of the House Intelligence Committee, spokeswoman Courtney Littig said.

CIA spokesman George Little on Monday defended the policy, saying that employees’ requests to work for private companies are considered on a case-by-case basis. “The agency reviews requests for outside employment using yardsticks of legality, propriety and, of course, security,” Little said. “There’s a rigorous process to all this — one that’s been in place for decades…”

But longtime agency watchers said they were shocked to learn that agents are allowed to work for private firms — and that the practice raises a number of serious concerns, including the possibility that moonlighting agents will have conflicts of interests.

“I’m surprised, and I think it looks bad,” said law professor John Radsan, a former CIA employee who has written extensively about internal checks on the intelligence community. “Ideally, [agents] should be fully employed, their loyalty should be fully to the government, and they should be looking to make their careers there.”

An FBI official said Monday that the bureau has strict limits on outside work by its employees. “Our agents are prohibited from outside employment, period,” said the official, who asked not to be named…

Feinstein, a California Democrat, has focused on the CIA’s use of contractors before and hammered CIA Director Leon Panetta on the issue during his confirmation hearings last year. The number of CIA contractors doubled between 2001 and 2006, Feinstein said then. Panetta said the situation was bad for morale and that the agency had a “responsibility” to do more intelligence work in-house.

That’s what he said. It appears he’s done nothing about it.

After years of government ethics standards being worth less than the paper they’re printed on, I don’t feel reassured by claims of a “rigorous process”. There’s another process that’s been in place much longer. It’s corruption and cronyism.

“We’re going to show young people how cool science can be.”

Those were some of the inspiring words by President Barack Obama at the launching of the new “Educate to Innovate” campaign…this week. This initiative aims to increase science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) literacy amongst students to improve our national standing from average (or in some cases, below average) to the top. $4.35 billion in Federal grants will be offered to schools who can innovate in STEM education and the private sector is stepping up with an additional $260 million in related funding and programs.

And this all couldn’t come at a better time. A recent survey by Intel showed that parents would rather talk to their kids about drugs than math and science. And while public and private sector funding is nice to have, one key to this initiative are the innovative new programs that reach out to inspire both kids and parents looking to get more involved. At the start of this campaign, five public private partnerships were announced which vary in terms of content and outreach in an effort to reach the broadest spectrum of young people possible…

It’s also great to see that the White House will continue to be a platform for increasing visibility on STEM education through hosting events that involve and challenge students to excel. A couple of months ago the White House held an Astronomy Night that not only focused on stargazing but focused on young students who had made important astronomical discoveries. And going forward there are plans to begin hosting a science fair that showcase national winners. Events like these that focus on and involve students and the important contributions they can make even at an early level can be an inspiration to young people everywhere…

The consensus is that this is a step in the right direction. Additional funding – especially funding tied to merits of new ideas and not just performance – will help foster innovation in how we teach the next generation of kids about math, science, engineering and technology. And these partnerships with the private sector will hopefully succeed in offering additional exposure to students both in the classroom and after school.

Read additional information about “Educate to Innovate” at whitehouse.gov.

Overdue – is hardly the word. It’s been 40 years or more since American students stopped learning to read. Encouraging science and math – praiseworthy – will likely affect less than 5% of the potential base.

A California man was arrested on suspicion of stalking after he allegedly used his airplane to violate a restraining order by buzzing a neighborhood.

In recent weeks, Concord, California, police were investigating an incident in which leaflets were dropped over a residential neighborhood, possibly by a low-flying airplane, police said in a statement.

“The leaflets referenced a specific person and contained defamatory language and racial slurs. As the investigation has progressed, it appears that the motivation behind this situation is a failed domestic relationship,” the statement read…

On Wednesday evening, police received several calls from residents of the neighborhood reporting a low-flying private airplane in the area. “The plane was reported to have made eight passes over the neighborhood.”

He was arrested on suspicion of stalking and violating a restraining order.

The man was booked into the county jail in Martinez, California, in lieu of $155,000 bail, police said.

Ingenious – but, dumb.

As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we’ve overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they’ve found ways to cover everybody — and still spend far less than we do…

First we have to dispel a few myths about health care abroad:

1. It’s all socialized medicine out there.

Not so. Some countries, such as Britain, New Zealand and Cuba, do provide health care in government hospitals, with the government paying the bills. Others — for instance, Canada and Taiwan — rely on private-sector providers, paid for by government-run insurance. But many wealthy countries — including Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland — provide universal coverage using private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance plans.

In some ways, health care is less “socialized” overseas than in the United States. Almost all Americans sign up for government insurance (Medicare) at age 65. In Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, seniors stick with private insurance plans for life. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is one of the planet’s purest examples of government-run health care.

2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.

Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation’s 200 private health insurance plans — a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn’t like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium. The Swiss, too, can choose any insurance plan in the country.

In France and Japan, you don’t get a choice of insurance provider; you have to use the one designated for your company or your industry. But patients can go to any doctor, any hospital, any traditional healer…You pick any doctor, you get treatment — and insurance has to pay…

In Japan, waiting times are so short that most patients don’t bother to make an appointment. One Thursday morning in Tokyo, I called the prestigious orthopedic clinic at Keio University Hospital to schedule a consultation about my aching shoulder. “Why don’t you just drop by?” the receptionist said. That same afternoon, I was in the surgeon’s office. Dr. Nakamichi recommended an operation. “When could we do it?” I asked. The doctor checked his computer and said, “Tomorrow would be pretty difficult. Perhaps some day next week?”

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