Wednesday, May 30, 2007

in the news

"Why is he at large? 'Cause we haven't got him, yet, Jim. That's why. And he's hiding. And we're looking. And we will continue to look until we bring him to justice. We've brought a lot of his buddies to justice, but not him. That's why he's still at large."

-our President, in response to a reporter's question about why we have not yet apprehended Osama bin Laden, courtesy of Salon's War Room

Tuberculosis scare (and you thought that TB was so 19th century): A man was diagnosed with TB here in the states, and was asked by the Center for Disease Control to not leave the country. He then proceeded to fly from his home in Atlanta, Georgia to Paris, France for his wedding. From there he traveled throughout Europe for his honeymoon, ultimately landing in Italy, where he was instructed by the CDC to turn himself in to the Italian medical authorities because not only did he have TB, but he had specifically what is know as XDR TB, which is a particularly virulent strain of TB that is resistant to drugs and often lethal, not to mention contagious. When informed of this, the man fled to the Prague, in the Czech Republic in order to catch a flight back to Canada, since he was worried that he had been added to a no-fly list for entering the United States. From Canada, he then drove south to the United States through the Champlain, NY border crossing, down to New York City, where he eventually turned himself in to a hospital for treatment. Apparently it never occurred to him that there might be a valid reason for the CDC to put him on a no-fly list, although the CDC actually was maneuvering to send a plane to retrieve him so that he would not be stuck in Italy. Impatience knows no bounds, it seems. Nor, apparently, does stupidity. His response to all this? "I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person. This is insane to me, that I have an armed guard outside my door, when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing." Umh, that whole solitary confinement thing is kind of crucial with a contagious disease that is highly resistant to antibiotics and can be spread through coughing, sneezing, or breathing on someone. So maybe you shouldn't go on not one airplane flight, or two airplane flights, but seven airplane flights (one trans-Atlantic flight to Europe, five within Europe, and one trans-Atlantic flight back to Canada), and then drive across the US/Canadian border into Manhattan, because you're worried you would not be allowed to fly directly into the US because of your contagious disease. Duh.

Also noteworthy:
Torture is bad!
Scandal at Yale Law School!
Let's pretend there's no more oil!

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