The Cleaner the Air We Breath; the Longer We May Live

That next breath of air you take is just one of the many countless breaths we all take during our lifetimes. And now it seems that scientists and researchers have made the not so startling discovery that breathing cleaner air leads to a longer life. Why has it taken us so long to admit what would seem to be the most obvious of obvious parallels that science could proclaim?

News of this 'discovery' is found in today's edition of the Washington Post and reported by Juliet Eilperin, who says: "Reducing air pollution has extended average life expectancy by five months for urban residents in dozens of U.S. cities over the past two decades, researchers found.

Jay Bhatt, Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine writes for ABC News Medical Unit also adds that: "If the air in your city is clean, you can tack on about five months to your life. So suggests a new study by researchers at Brigham Young University and Harvard School of Public Health."

Dr. Bhatt adds that the "... study found that the average life expectancy in 51 cities in the United States increased by nearly three years in recent decades and that approximately five months of that increase came as a result of cleaner air."

Dr. Bhatt further explains by including a statement from Brigham Young University epidemiologist, C. Arden Pope III, who served as the lead author of the anlysis appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine's January 22nd issue.

Pope states that: "Life expectancy is a well-understood indicator for public health,... We find that we are getting a substantial return on our investments in improving our air quality." Dr. Bhatt includes: "Pope is no stranger to this issue. He and co-author Douglas Dockery, chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health, teamed up with other researchers on important studies in the 1990s that revealed the negative health effects of infinitesimally small particles of pollution."

In her article for the Post, Ms. Eilperin quotes Pope's optimistic perspective: "We are getting a return on our investment," said Pope, an epidemiologist and economics professor at Brigham Young University, adding that cutting air pollutants in major cities amounted to "a large, nationwide, natural experiment."

Ms. Eilperin points out: "Between 1980 and 2000, federal regulations on power plants, including the acid rain program, helped reduce smog ingredients such as sulfur dioxide significantly, while the installation of catalytic converters on vehicles cut nitrogen oxide pollution across the country."

Ms. Eilperin furhter explains: "Every five years the government evaluates whether it should tighten the standards for fine particulates. In September 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency decided to keep the limit unchanged at 15 micrograms per cubic meter averaged over an entire year, but it tightened the maximum permissible in any one 24-hour period from 65 to 35 micrograms. Both the EPA's scientific advisory panel and independent researchers urged the agency to impose a more stringent annual standard.

Ms. Eilperin adds another perspective, that of: "Janice Nolen, assistant vice president of policy and advocacy for the American Lung Association, (who) said she hoped the new findings would spur policymakers to tighten federal soot standards the next time they issue new regulations, scheduled for 2011."

Ms. Nolan adds: "Air pollution shortens life, and when we reduce air pollution, it actually adds months to our life," Ms. Nolan also said: "While it's hard for people to see the connection, we can document it, and we know that the connection exists."

Ms. Eilperin concludes by quoting Pope's dedication to further research and future action: "There is room to improve," Pope said, noting that even relatively clean cities can experience the benefits of cutting down more on airborne particulates. Furthermore, Ms. Eilperin reports that Dr. Pope added: "there's a lot of room to improve in Chinese cities, and Indian cities, and cities throughout the world."

We're all hopeful that someday pollution can be better controlled and eventually eradicated. Until that day comes, will are left to support the efforts of scientists such as Dr. Pope and his fellow researchers. Let's hope that the new Obama Administration carries out its promise and fully includes the findings of scientific research in it's policy development and implimentation.

Holder's Clear View: Waterboarding is Torture and Illegal

The New York Times Scott Shane's news analysis of attorney general-designate Eric H. Holder's congressional testimony that waterboarding constitutes torture and is illegal according to U.S. and international law and treaties, may have moved the incoming Obama administration ever so closer to becoming involved in an investigation of alleged U.S. involvement with waterboarding. With the use of waterboarding by the U.S. having already gained the status of public knowledge; numerous media and legal officials from around the world have been anxiously awaiting any form of information that might signal what Obama intends to do about the illegal acts. Concerned parties in the U.S. and abroad had to endure years of obfuscation by the Bush administration concerning waterboarding; had to listen to: "Just 14 months ago, (when) at his confirmation hearing, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey frustrated and angered some senators by refusing to state that waterboarding, the near-drowning technique used on three prisoners by the Central Intelligence Agency, is in fact torture." Those many interested parties may have received; "This week, at his confirmation hearing, Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general-designate;"... long awaited confirmation that waterboarding is defined by Holder as torture, who "did not hesitate to express a clear view. He noted that waterboarding had been used to torment prisoners during the Inquisition, by the Japanese in World War II and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Holder even added the caveat that: “We prosecuted our own soldiers for using it in Vietnam,” Mr. Holder clearly said. “Waterboarding is torture.”" Mr. Shane reiterated the widely accepted belief that: "In the view of many historians and legal authorities, Mr. Holder was merely admitting the obvious. He was agreeing with the clear position of his boss-to-be, President-elect Barack Obama, and he was giving an answer that almost certainly was necessary to win confirmation." Mr. Shane explains that the consequences of Holder's definition opens a Pandora's box that will require legal action because: "... his statement, amounting to an admission that the United States may have committed war crimes, opens the door to an unpredictable train of legal and political consequences. It could potentially require a full-scale legal investigation, complicate prosecutions of individuals suspected of committing terrorism and mire the new administration in just the kind of backward look that Mr. Obama has said he would like to avoid." Mr. Shane adds background information that: "Mr. Holder’s statement came just two days after the Defense Department official in charge of military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, said in an interview with The Washington Post that she had refused to permit a trial for one detainee there, Mohammed al-Qahtani, because she believed he had been tortured." Mr. Shane links these remarks to explain that: "Together the statements, from a current and an incoming legal official, cover both the Central Intelligence Agency, which has acknowledged waterboarding three captured operatives of Al Qaeda, and the military’s detention program." Mr. Shane then adds that: "Legal experts across the political spectrum said the statements would make it difficult for the incoming administration to avoid a criminal investigation of torture, even as most also say a successful prosecution might well be impossible." Mr. Shane's analysis points out that: "Two obvious obstacles stand in the way of a prosecution: legal opinions from the Justice Department that declared even the harshest interrogation methods to be legal, and a provision in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that grants strong legal protections to government employees who relied on such legal advice in counterterrorism programs." In reaction to the news: "... Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, said, “It would be contrary to the principles of the criminal justice system for the attorney general to say he believes a very serious crime has been committed and then to do nothing about it.” Mr.Shane adds another opinion, that of: "Charles D. Stimson, who served as the Defense Department’s top official on detainee affairs from 2004 to 2007 and is now a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, (who) said the statements “certainly will increase the pressure on Holder to mount some kind of investigation.”" Mr. Shane goes on to explain that: "In addition to domestic political pressures, the United States appears to have a legal obligation as a party to the international Convention against Torture to follow up on the torture statements. That treaty requires signatory states to conduct a “prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction.”" Mr. Shane reminds his readership that: "The Bush administration placed its interrogation operations offshore, at the American base in Cuba and at secret C.I.A. sites, and officials have sometimes argued that they were not on territory under American jurisdiction." But that assertion," Mr. Shane adds, "has been eroded by court decisions concerning the Guantánamo detention center, and it is unlikely that the Obama administration would use such a loophole to avoid the torture convention’s effect." With Bush's excuse that the torture facilities escaped U.S. jurisdiction because they did not occur on American soil now undermined by U.S. judicial proceedings, it becomes crystal clear that for the Obama administration: "There’s a moral, legal and practical obligation of the United States to follow this allegation in good faith wherever it leads,” said Juan E. Méndez, a veteran human rights lawyer who is president of the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York." Mr. Shane conjectures: "Where such an inquiry might lead is an unsettling question for departing Bush administration officials, who have long worried that aggressive policies could make them vulnerable to civil or criminal liability." And Mr. Shane asks us to consider that: "If rank-and-file interrogators are protected by the Justice Department’s assurance that their actions were legal, what about the lawyers who gave the assurances? What about the senior officials, including President Bush, who approved the use of waterboarding and other such tactics?" Mr. Shane presents his opinion of the legal conundrum that has forced Mr. Obama to tread carefully because: "Such questions are so legally daunting and politically complex that Mr. Obama has played down, while not ruling out, the possibility of a criminal investigation or a national commission to examine past policies. In an interview with ABC last Sunday, he said “my orientation’s going to be to move forward” rather than looking back." Mr. Shane remarks on the many legal obstacles put into place by the Bush administration that Mr. Obama must contend with by relating that: "In recent weeks, Mr. Bush, Vice President Cheney and other officials have strongly defended their counterterrorism methods and credited them with preventing attacks on the United States since 2001. Their implicit argument — that the Obama administration should not question policies that protected Americans — was made more explicit and personal by Michael V. Hayden, the departing C.I.A. director, in a session with reporters on Thursday." Make no mistake; the Bush administration, realizing it's precarious legal footing has initiated numerous tactical maneuvers to stop Obama's investigation in it's tracks. Bush has exhibited no compunction to freely use methods of self protection that come very close to allowing statements to be made that can be construed as threats such as Mr. Hayden's remark that was clearly intended for the incoming Obama administration: "“If I’m going to go to an officer and say, ‘I’ve got a truth commission, or I want to post all your e-mails, or, well, we’ve got this guy from the bureau who wants to talk to you,’ ” Mr. Hayden said, it would discourage such a C.I.A. officer from taking risks on behalf of the new president’s policies." Having made his point to Obama, Hayden softened his rhetoric and added: "We have no right to ask this guy (the CIA operative) to bet his kid’s college education on who’s going to win the off-year election,” Mr. Hayden said, alluding to legal fees that such a C.I.A. officer might face." Let there be no doubt, Mr. Bush and the rest of his administration who played a role in allowing torture and waterboarding are aware of the severity of the legal issues that they created by their actions. Mr. Shane concludes by asking his readers to consider the following conversation initiated by Utah Republican Orrin G. Hatch and directed at Mr. Holder in which Senator Hatch asked, as paraphrased by Mr. Shane: "whether he (Mr. Holder) would pursue a criminal investigation of the interrogation programs." To which "Mr. Holder hedged his response, saying, “Senator, no one’s above the law, and we will follow the evidence, the facts, the law, and let that take us where it should.” Mr. Shane completed Mr. Holder's direct response to the senator from Utah: "quoting Mr. Obama, that “we don’t want to criminalize policy differences” and finally pleaded for time to study the matter." Mr. Holder concluded his remarks to Mr. Hatch in the form of an unbiased response that nevertheless signals the Obama administrations' interest in the matter by leaving the question open and indicating that an answer would be coming at a later date: "One of the things I think I’m going to have to do,” Mr. Holder said, “is to become more familiar with what happened that led to the implementation of these policies.” Becoming aware of all the facts and circumstances of torture and waterboarding and how they relate to the treaties and laws of the United States now appears to be clearly on Mr. Holder's to-do list once he is confirmed and becomes Attorney General of the United States. Let us hope that Mr. Holder takes the necessary time he needs to take the appropriate measures that leads to a complete and intensive investigation that results in legally determined convictions against members of the bush administration.

Paul Krugman Supports an Inquest of Possible Crimes Committed by the Bush Administration

Paul Krugman of the New York Times, steps away from his usual remarks regarding economic issues and voices his opinion that the incoming Obama Administration is duty bound to fully investigate the outgoing Bush Administration for suspected criminal activities over the past eight years. Krugman displays his deep feelings of unease that such an investigation might not take place when he remarks: "Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration. “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law,” he responded, but “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” Krugman retorts: "I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power." Krugman seeks to add a sense of clarity in discussing his convictions: "Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. It’s not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation’s security. The fact is that the Bush administration’s abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies." Krugman notes: "At the Justice Department, for example, political appointees illegally reserved nonpolitical positions for “right-thinking Americans” — their term, not mine — and there’s strong evidence that officials used their positions both to undermine the protection of minority voting rights and to persecute Democratic politicians." Krugman contends: "The hiring process at Justice echoed the hiring process during the occupation of Iraq — an occupation whose success was supposedly essential to national security — in which applicants were judged by their politics, their personal loyalty to President Bush and, according to some reports, by their views on Roe v. Wade, rather than by their ability to do the job." Krugman continues his remarks: "Speaking of Iraq, let’s also not forget that country’s failed reconstruction: the Bush administration handed billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to politically connected companies, companies that then failed to deliver. And why should they have bothered to do their jobs? Any government official who tried to enforce accountability on, say, Halliburton quickly found his or her career derailed." Adding to his case for the investigation of the Bush Administration, Krugman reminds his readers that: "There’s much, much more. By my count, at least six important government agencies experienced major scandals over the past eight years — in most cases, scandals that were never properly investigated. And then there was the biggest scandal of all: Does anyone seriously doubt that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation into invading Iraq?" Krugman, having assembled his concise list of charges attempts to understand why an investigation of the Bush Administration only seems like a remote possibility. "One answer you hear is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldn’t there be some penalty for the Bush administration’s politicization of every aspect of government?" Continuing, Krugman gives another answer that is often used to promote inaction: "Alternatively, we’re told that we don’t have to dwell on past abuses, because we won’t repeat them. But no important figure in the Bush administration, or among that administration’s political allies, has expressed remorse for breaking the law. What makes anyone think that they or their political heirs won’t do it all over again, given the chance?" Krugman follows with a perceptive charge: "In fact, we’ve already seen this movie. During the Reagan years, the Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and when the White House finally changed hands the political and media establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice it’s giving Mr. Obama: let sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off — which isn’t too surprising when you bear in mind that Mr. Bush actually hired some of those conspirators." Krugman acknowledges that: "it’s true that a serious investigation of Bush-era abuses would make Washington an uncomfortable place, both for those who abused power and those who acted as their enablers or apologists. And these people have a lot of friends. But the price of protecting their comfort would be high: If we whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, we’ll guarantee that they will happen again." And Krugman makes an incontrovertible point that: "Meanwhile, about Mr. Obama: while it’s probably in his short-term political interests to forgive and forget, next week he’s going to swear to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That’s not a conditional oath to be honored only when it’s convenient." It's an oath that defines the constitutional duties of the President of the United States during every moment that he serves in office. In conclusion, Krugman expresses his conviction that: "... to protect and defend the Constitution, a president must do more than obey the Constitution himself; he must hold those who violate the Constitution accountable. So Mr. Obama should reconsider his apparent decision to let the previous administration get away with crime. Consequences aside, that’s not a decision he has the right to make." Yes, in the final analysis it is all about the Constitution and it's authority to ensure that our nation is governed by the supremacy of the rule of law and not by the whims of humans acting out their own interests; that is the whole point behind why the Constitution is such a magnificent document that holds a stature high above all other humanly created documents in the history of the human race. And that is why every effort; regardless if it brings shame, legal conviction and a legally determined conviction, must; not should; be made to fully carry out the legal investigation of the Bush Administration by the Obama Administration in order to determine whether crimes had been committed during Bush's term in office no matter how partisan or unseemly such an event might seem to us in the present. Because we, as a nation of free humans are required by our constitutionally bound system of government to do our duty and investigate all illegal and unconstitutional actions. Otherwise, the United States faces a bleak future ruled by the self interests and self determined beliefs of humans rather than by constitutionally sanctioned laws because we are honor bound to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Nothing less nor nothing more is required of us.
That, in its most rudimentary of explanations, is why we must conduct an official, legally dtermined inquiry into alleged illegal abuses of power carried out during the Bush years!