US lawmaker wields budget ax over China
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A Republican lawmaker is looking to make the Obama administration pay a price for what he sees as its defiance of Congress in pursuing cooperation with China in science and space technology.

A proposal by Rep. Frank Wolf, a fierce critic of Beijing, would slash by 55 percent the $6.6 million budget of the White House's science policy office. The measure was endorsed by a congressional committee this week, but faces more legislative hurdles, and its prospects are unclear.

President Barack Obama has sought to deepen ties with China, which underwrites a major chunk of the vast U.S. national debt and is emerging a challenge to American military dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. Among the seemingly benign forms of cooperation he has supported is in science and technology. Last year NASA's administrator visited China, and during a high-profile state visit to Washington by China's President Hu Jintao in January, the U.S. and China resolved to "deepen dialogue and exchanges in the field of space."

Wolf, R-Va., argues that cooperation in space would give technological assistance to a country that steals U.S. industrial secrets and launches cyberattacks against the United States.

He says Obama's chief science adviser, John Holdren, violated a clause tucked into budget legislation passed this year that bars the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and NASA from technological cooperation with China. He says Holdren did so by meeting twice with China's science minister in Washington during May.

"I believe the Office of Science and Technology Policy is in violation of the law," Wolf told The Associated Press, adding that cutting its budget is the only response available to him. Wolf chairs a House subcommittee that oversees the office's budget.

The punishment he proposes reflects his deep antipathy toward China, which he accuses of persecuting religious minorities, plundering Tibet and supporting genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan by backing Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. He described the Obama administration's policy toward the Asian power as a failure and railed against the president for hosting Hu at the White House.

Caught at the sharp end is Holdren's office, whose mandate is to develop sound science and technology policies by the U.S. government and pursue them with the public and private sectors and other nations.

Holdren told a Congressional hearing chaired by Wolf days before his May meetings with Chinese Science Minister Wan Gang that he would abide by the prohibition on such cooperation with China, but then spelled out a rather large loophole: that it did not apply in instances where it affected the president's ability to conduct foreign policy.

At another Congressional hearing shortly afterward, Wolf's annoyance was clear. He threatened to "zero out" Holdren's office.

Space cooperation between the two world powers like the U.S. and the Soviet Union pursued in the Cold War still seems a long way off. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr. visited China in a little-publicized trip in October and discussed "underlying principles of any future interaction between our two nations in the area of human space flight," but no specific proposals.

China sent an astronaut into space in 2003, and plans to send the first building block of a space station into orbit this year, but it still has comparatively limited experience. Another constraint on cooperation is that its manned space program is dominated by its military, whose other capabilities — most clearly demonstrated by a 2007 test that destroyed an orbiting satellite — have alarmed American officials.

But one benefit of basic forms of cooperation, such as sharing data and basic design criteria, could be to learn a little more about China's opaque space program. Since 1999, the U.S. effectively banned use of its space technology by China. That also has a commercial downside for American producers in an increasingly globalized marketplace.

"Renewing civil and commercial space cooperation with China ... is not a blank check and need not provide China with sensitive technologies," wrote James Clay Moltz of the Naval Postgraduate School in testimony at a congressional hearing on China's civilian and military space programs in May.

Wolf has included the prohibition on cooperation with China by NASA and the White House science policy office in the bill approved Wednesday by the House Appropriations Committee. The bill budgets $50.2 billion for a raft of federal agencies involved in law enforcement, trade promotion, space and science for the fiscal year starting in October. The 55 percent reduction faced by the science policy's office far exceeds the overall 6 percent cut in spending across all government agencies covered by the bill.

Holdren's office could not be reached for comment Friday. The bill now goes to the Republican-led House of Representatives for approval. A version also must pass the Democrat-led Senate, and the two bills would have to be reconciled before legislation can be sent to Obama to be signed into law.

___

July 15, 2011 08:46 PM EDT

Copyright 2011, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Inside AJC.COM

Theodore Roszak, defined 1960s counterculture; 77

By Douglas Martin
New York Times / July 14, 2011

NEW YORK - Theodore Roszak, who three weeks after the Woodstock Festival in 1969 not only published a pivotal book about a young generation’s drug-fueled revolt against authority but also gave it a name - “counterculture’’ - died July 5 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 77.

His wife, Betty, said he had been treated for liver cancer and other illnesses.

Dr. Roszak’s book “The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society’’ had gone to press months before the music festival was held in August that year, displaying the exuberance and excesses of a generation rebelling against war and seeking new ways to be and think. But in serendipitously timely fashion, the book provided what many regarded as a profound analysis of the youth movement, finding its roots in a sterile Western culture that had prompted young people to seek spiritual meaning in LSD, exotic religions, and even comic books.

“This is a sophisticated Roman candle of a book,’’ the Christian Science Monitor said.

The book contended that science-dominated modern society was ugly, repressive, and soulless; that youthful dissent was coherent enough to be termed a culture; and that this antirationalist “counterculture’’ - a term Dr. Roszak popularized and may have invented - might offer the foundation of a new visionary civilization.

He saw the seeds of a new future in campus rebellions, the civil rights movement, and even a popular button that said, “I am a human being; do not mutilate, spindle, or tear.’’ As he phrased the generation’s quest, “We are outward bound from the old corruptions of the world.’’ Its destination, he said, was “the Holy City.’’

These were themes Dr. Roszak expanded on in a succession of books, most influentially in “Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society,’’ published in 1972. It, like the counterculture book, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

In the New York Times, Anatole Broyard devoted two book review columns to “Wasteland.’’ He called it “nothing less than a State of the Union Message on the condition of the human soul.’’

As Dr. Roszak continued to extol what he saw as new human possibilities, some reviewers questioned his distaste for reason and others his optimism. In reviewing “Unfinished Animal: The Aquarian Frontier and the Evolution of Consciousness’’ in 1975, Pete Hamill said that the luster of the counterculture had by then been extinguished by the shooting of students at Kent State University, Charles Manson’s murderous band, and other traumatic events. The counterculture, Hamill said, had become “just another media fraud.’’

But Dr. Roszak continued to be the generation’s cheerleader, writing a book when the first of the baby boomers reached 50 and several more as they approached old age. He wrote that the idealistic values of the 1960s would inspire millions of baby boomers in their last years.

“The future belongs to age, not youth,’’ Dr. Roszak said in an interview on NBC’s “Today’’ show in 1998.

Dr. Roszak was born in Chicago. His father was a carpenter.

He earned a degree in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a doctorate from Princeton. He taught for 35 years at what is now California State University, East Bay, retiring in 1998.

He leaves his wife, the former Betty Greenwald; a daughter, Kathryn Roszak; and a granddaughter.

Dr. Roszak wrote and edited about 20 books, many of which, he said, furthered his reputation as “a leading spokesman for antiscience and as a neo-Luddite crusader.’’

But he preferred to write fiction, which he used to make broad points. In one of his half dozen novels, partly as a comment on sexism, he reimagined Mary Shelley’s classic, Frankenstein, making the narrator not Victor Frankenstein but his half-sister and fiancee. Another tells the tale of a San Francisco-based gay Jewish writer who becomes trapped in a fundamentalist Bible college in Minnesota during a snowstorm.

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

Debt talks grind on, clock ticks toward default
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press – 2 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Budget talks between President Barack Obama and his GOP rivals are at a frustrating standstill, leading a top Republican to launch a long-shot proposal to give Obama sweeping new powers to muscle through an increase in the government's debt limit without the approval of a bitterly divided Congress.
Lawmakers return to the White House for another negotiating session Wednesday. A two-hour session Tuesday produced no progress after a day of poisonous exchanges between Democrats and Republicans.
Saying he didn't see a path to an agreement so long as Democrats insist on revenue increases, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky offered a backup plan that would, in effect, guarantee Obama requests for new government borrowing authority unless Congress musters veto-proof majorities to deny him.
McConnell's plan immediately ran into stiff opposition among tea party conservatives and seemed unlikely to pass the House, but neither the White House nor House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, dismissed it out of hand.
"I think everybody agrees there needs to be a backup plan if we can't come to an agreement," Boehner said in a Fox News Channel interview Tuesday afternoon. "And frankly, I think Mitch has done good work."
Under McConnell's proposal, Obama could request — and likely secure — increases of up to $2.5 trillion in the government's borrowing authority in three separate installments over the coming year as long as he simultaneously proposed spending cuts of greater size.
The debt limit increases would take effect unless blocked by Congress under special rules that would require speedy action — and even then Obama could exercise his authority to veto such legislation. But the president's spending would have no guarantee of receiving a vote.
"The American people elected (McConnell) to serve as a check on Obama's appetite for out-of-control spending, not to write him a blank check to continue the binge," said conservative activist Brett Bozell. "It's these sort of shenanigans that got Republicans thrown out of power in 2006."
McConnell made his proposal public a few hours before Obama presided over his third meeting in as many days with congressional leaders searching for a way to avoid a default and possible financial crisis.
Democratic officials who participated in the session said Obama did not reject McConnell's idea, but said it's not his preferred approach. A statement issued later by press secretary Jay Carney said the president "continues to believe that our focus must remain on seizing this unique opportunity to come to agreement on significant, balanced deficit reduction."
McConnell's plan was hatched out of frustration that Congress and Obama are deadlocked as the clock ticks toward an Aug. 2 deadline for a market-rattling default on U.S. obligations.
"I had hoped all year long that the opportunity presented by his request of us to raise the debt ceiling would generate a bipartisan agreement that would begin to get our house in order," McConnell said. "I still hope it will. But we're certainly not going to send a signal to the markets and the American people that default is an option."
Republicans are demanding $2 trillion-plus in budget cuts as the price for a commensurate increase in the government's ability to continue to borrow more than 40 cents of every dollar it spends. Both Republicans and Obama see the politically toxic debt limit vote as a way to seize an opportunity to cut future deficits — a move that would seem to be to the political benefit of both sides.
But GOP refusals to consider devoting any new revenue from closing tax loopholes — like those enjoyed by oil and gas companies — to cutting the deficit has led Democrats to withhold further spending cuts beyond a handful tentatively agreed to during several weeks of talks led by Vice President Joe Biden in May and June. For their part, Republicans say the White House is offering minuscule spending cuts in the near term and is pulling back from some tentative agreements on topics like requiring federal workers to contribute more to their pensions.
Obama himself upped the stakes Tuesday, telling CBS News anchor Scott Pelley that more than $20 billion in Social Security checks could be held up.
"I can't guarantee that the checks will go out Aug. 3 if we haven't resolved this," Obama said. "There may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it."
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Casey Anthony Found NOT GUILTY
By Lizette Alvarez NY TIMES

ORLANDO - Casey Anthony, the young mother whose seeming heartlessness at the disappearance of her daughter transfixed America for three years, was found not guilty yesterday of killing 2-year-old Caylee Marie.

After nearly six weeks of testimony, a jury of seven women and five men decided that Anthony did not murder Caylee by dosing her with chloroform, suffocating her with duct tape, and dumping her in a wooded area, as prosecutors claimed. They did, however, find her guilty of lesser charges, including providing false information to law enforcement officers. The jury did not ask to review any evidence.When the verdict was read, Anthony, 25, who faced a possible death sentence, cried.

The verdict vindicates the defense, which argued from the start that Caylee drowned accidentally in the family swimming pool and that the death was concealed by her panicked grandfather, George Anthony, and his daughter.
It also drove home just how circumstantial the prosecution’s case proved to be. Forensic evidence was tenuous, and no witnesses tied Anthony to her daughter’s death. Investigators found no trace of DNA or solid signs of chloroform or decomposition inside the trunk of Anthony’s car, where prosecutors said Anthony stashed Caylee before disposing of her body.

The prosecution was also hurt because nobody knew how Caylee died; her body was too decomposed to pinpoint a cause of death.All of this allowed Jose Baez, Anthony’s lawyer, to infuse enough reasonable doubt in jurors’ minds to get Anthony acquitted of murder.


“They throw enough against the wall and see what sticks,’’ Baez told the jury, “right down to the cause of death.’’

Caylee was last seen June 16, 2008. Her remains were found six months later in a wooded area near the Anthony home. Despite her daughter’s disappearance, Anthony failed to report Caylee missing for 31 days and created a tangle of lies, including that a baby sitter kidnapped Caylee, to cover up the absence.

The defense conceded Anthony’s lies but said they happened for one reason: She had been sexually abused by her father and had been coached to lie her entire life.
“I told you she was a liar the first day,’’ Baez told the jury.

Despite a vivid portrait of Anthony’s seemingly callous and deceitful behavior after Caylee’s disappearance, jurors decided that the leap from uncaring mother to killer proved too much.
Prosecutors argued that Anthony killed her child so she could carouse with her boyfriend, go clubbing, and live the “bella vita’’ - beautiful life - as her tattoo, done after Caylee’s disappearance, proclaimed.

“Whose life was better without Caylee?’’ Linda Drane Burdick, one of the prosecutors, asked jurors. “That’s the only question you need to answer in considering why Caylee Marie Anthony was left on the side of the road dead.’’With that, Drane Burdick ended her closing statement with a dramatic flourish, leaving behind a split screen image: One side was a photograph of the tattoo, the other was of a smiling Anthony partying with friends after Caylee’s death.
One prosecutor, Jeff Ashton, called it absurd that Anthony’s father, a former homicide detective, would find Caylee dead in the swimming pool and, rather than call 911, cover up the drowning, wrap dead Caylee’s face with duct tape, and dump her body.
“It is a trip down a rabbit hole into a bizarre world where men who love their granddaughters find them drowned and do nothing,’’ Ashton said. “Where men who love their granddaughters take an accident, a completely innocent act, and make it look like a murder for no reason.’’

With Caylee’s grandparents in the back of the courtroom, prosecutors spoke forcefully about the pain the grandparents felt when they realized Caylee was missing and their daughter was the chief suspect. Anthony’s father grew so despondent after the death that he attempted suicide in 2009, leaving behind an eight-page suicide note.
George Anthony, who had testified tearfully during the trial, denied abusing his daughter Casey and denied finding Caylee floating in the pool.
As for motive, prosecutors said Caylee’s murder was hastened by the fact she was beginning to string together words and would soon be able to reveal her mother’s lies.Prosecutors also used jailhouse recordings of Anthony and photographs of her reveling with friends to show she was clearly not grieving for a daughter who had supposedly drowned.

Baez did little to bolster his initial defense during the trial, but he successfully hammered away at the relatively weak forensic evidence.

Tenderloin gets trendy, apparently on the way up

C.W. Nevius

The Tenderloin and environs have been called many things, including dangerous, dirty and unmanageable. But lately locals are rolling out an unlikely new term - trendy.

The anecdotal evidence is the number of young hipster types roaming the streets with snap brim fedoras, Chrome-brand messenger bags and fixie bikes. But the real barometer of change can be found in the storefronts.

Cult coffee shops, quirky eating places and designer cocktail bars have not only set up shop, they're thriving. Kinani Ahmed opened Jebena, his coffee and tea place on Polk, a year ago. Doubters looked at his menu - featuring more than 60 types of loose-leaf tea - and asked him if he knew what neighborhood he was in.

"People actually thought I was crazy," he said. "But we are seeing more of a young crowd now, a coffee-savvy crowd."

Ahmed has a prediction. The area around the Tenderloin, he says, "is becoming the next Mission."

That's not as far-fetched as it sounds. The young crowd moved to the Mission for the cheap rent, gritty vibe and innovative restaurants. Check, check and check in the new Tenderloin area.

"The Mission is too expensive," said Alex Kladitler, who moved to the Tenderloin three months ago. "This is one of the few places where you can afford a studio apartment. I like it here. It's entertaining, and it's safe enough."

If anything, the newcomers celebrate the grit. Brenda Buenviaje opened Brenda's, her Cajun Creole restaurant on Polk above the Civic Center in 1997. There was such demand for crawfish beignets and watermelon iced tea that she expanded and opened a new dining room.

"I got a little flak that the room was too neat," said the New Orleans native. "I feel like the expectation here is that they expect a little funky."

Let's be clear, this is no theme park. This month David Williams will celebrate his first anniversary at Hooker's Sweet Treats. Who knew you'd need to go to lower Hyde to score some awesome hand-dipped, sea-salted caramel candies? But there have been a few Tenderloin moments, like the woman who hit Williams in the face with her purse. That began when he asked her to move along.

"You're just hassling me because I'm black," the woman said.

"No, it's because you're smoking crack in my front door," Williams replied.

Certainly the Turk and Golden Gate corridors near Market are no-go zones. A good rule of thumb is to stay above Ellis, an area known as the "Tendernob," because it creeps up toward Nob Hill.

"People try to say it is kind of Nob Hill. But no, actually it is the Tenderloin," said Jordan Langer, a partner and general manager of Jones, a dinner and custom cocktail spot with a huge rooftop deck on Jones Street, just off Geary.

Jones, which opened in February, is almost too cool for the Tenderloin. Mixed drinks are $10, there's an extensive list of wines - none of them Thunderbird - and the place has such an insider vibe that there's only a small sign next to the entrance. But last Saturday, Langer says, they had more than 1,000 customers, including the dinner and drinks crowd, with 800 for cocktails after 10 p.m.

So there is a market for a high-end foodie experience. If you go to Brenda's, which doesn't take reservations, expect to wait 20 minutes to an hour. But having that much traffic in the area has improved the street - even if crack dealers use her storefront lights to sort product. It is all part of the urban adventure.

"There's a certain charm to parking your car and wondering if it will be broken into," Langer says.

If that sounds charming, head down to the 'Loin. If not, just wait.

It seems, after all the attempts to improve the neighborhood, we may have finally hit on some effective agents of change. The surprise is they turned out to be hand-poured coffee, praline shortbread cookies and Cajun gumbo.

C.W. Nevius' column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.

Romney under fire

Conservative groups launch campaigns to derail Romney's prominence in GOP primary

MARK VISER BOSTON GLOBE

WASHINGTON - Joe Miller, a former US Senate candidate from Alaska, has been spending his days in his law offices in Fairbanks with an almost singular focus: making sure fellow Republican Mitt Romney does not win his party’s presidential nomination.

Miller, through a little-known group called the Western Representation PAC, is planning a $500,000 ad campaign with a chief goal of dirtying up the national front-runner - in terms that are far more personal and aggressive than Romney’s rivals for the nomination have used.

“Right now [our focus] is making sure that Romney, who’s very clearly a RINO, doesn’t walk away with the nomination,’’ said Miller, using the acronym for Republican In Name Only. “We’re trying to save the country. And with Romney at the helm, it’s not going to get saved. Romney is just going to be a disaster for this country.’’

Three conservative groups within the Republican Party and a conservative radio talk-show host are raising alarms about the former Massachusetts governor, trying to knock him off a pedestal he has built through a campaign network, fund-raising base, and name recognition that exceeds any of his current rivals.

The strongly divergent views of Romney illustrate some of the fissures within the GOP - between the party establishment and the newer Tea Party movement - and they threaten to divide the party in a way that could have larger ramifications. Some are already worried that there would be a third-party candidacy if Romney wins the nomination. The developments demonstrate both why Romney is such a shaky front-runner and why there is still a yearning within some Republican quarters for candidates who might have a better shot at uniting the party to enter the race.

It is not unusual to have bitter primary fights - something Democrats are known for more than Republicans - but in the past the infighting was largely driven by a candidate who embodied the angst within a party. Ronald Reagan, for example, challenged President Gerald Ford in 1976. But what is happening now is that these groups, not any one candidate, are becoming the vessels for dissatisfaction with Romney.

“Since there isn’t anybody taking the fight to Romney for them, they’re doing it themselves,’’ said Linda L. Fowler, a professor of government at Dartmouth College. “In that sense, what you’re seeing is different from other intraparty factional fights that we’ve seen in the GOP.’’

The Romney critics do not pull their punches. “On some of the key issues that are so fundamentally important, Mitt Romney’s not only wrong but consistently wrong and unwilling to reconsider his position,’’ said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, a conservative group that helped launch the Tea Party movement. “He’s got the establishment, he’s got name ID, he’s got money. But he doesn’t have the hearts and minds of the grassroots activists that are going to win campaigns.’’

Romney’s campaign declined to respond directly to the attacks, but a spokeswoman said he would attempt to connect with various segments within the Republican Party.

“Governor Romney, over the course of the primary, is going to go out and talk to voters, and hopes that they like his message of creating jobs and fixing the economy,’’ said Gail Gitcho, the campaign’s communications director.

In several polls, Romney has received support from those who say they identify with the Tea Party movement, perhaps an indication that while Romney is not trusted by the more visible Tea Party activists, he is more widely accepted by those who self-identify with the movement.

Romney’s fellow contenders have largely avoided direct attacks on him so far. In the debate last month in New Hampshire, for example, several candidates passed on chances to directly critique Romney’s record on issues such as abortion and health care.

But as Romney has continued to quietly build his campaign network - and as polls show him in the lead - some in the party fear that Romney will become so formidable that the primaries will not be competitive.

Some have problems with Romney’s past positions and his political flexibility. Others worry about his belief that humans contribute to global warming. Much of the opposition is coming from those who are active in the Tea Party movement.

“The engine of the Tea Party is really about authenticity - that is what the Tea Party smells, almost at a genetic level,’’ said Michael Graham, a conservative talk radio personality at Boston-based 96.9-FM who several months ago started a website called AnyoneButMitt.com. “The only thing that is authentic about Mitt Romney is his inauthenticity.’’

Graham said that if Romney were the nominee, a third-party candidate would emerge, which could split the conservative vote and make an easier path for President Obama’s reelection.

Others who have had it out with Romney include the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, which is highly influential in Republican politics and has written that Romney might as well be Obama’s running mate, given his position on health care.

The antitax Club for Growth has written a blistering summary of Romney’s fiscal positions, saying “he has developed an unshakeable reputation as a flip-flopper’’ and that he “supports big government solutions to health care and opposes progrowth tax code reform - positions that are simply opposite to those supported by true economic conservatives.’’

FreedomWorks does not yet have plans to target Romney, but the group is putting together a report card of how candidates fare on 10 issues. Romney will fail on at least three of those issues, Kibbe said.

So far, the Western Representation PAC appears to be the only GOP group that is committing money to target Romney.

The political action committee was started in 2008 by Roger Stockton, a firefighter from Carson City, Nev., and his son, Dustin, a sporting-goods-store manager. They formed the group to try to defeat Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

In March, the Western Representation PAC hired Miller to be its chairman. Miller, who ran with both Tea Party support and the backing of the state’s former governor Sarah Palin, made national news last year when he defeated incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary.

Murkowski then ran a write-in campaign, narrowly defeating Miller in the general election.

Miller said his group’s focus in the GOP presidential contest right now is taking down Romney, not in recruiting someone else into the field.

“Right now we’re taking on the frontrunner, the person with the largest war chest and the highest likelihood of winning the nomination because he’s not the answer for the country,’’ Miller said. “We certainly are not going to comment on the quality of the other candidates.’’

Miller said the PAC opposes Romney for several reasons, but he never focused on health care during a 30-minute conversation. Instead, he emphasized Romney’s changed positions on several issues and the fees that he raised in Massachusetts.

Some activists feel the time is now to start pointing out some of the problems with Romney.

“It’s important to point out some of these fundamental problems with Romney now and try and shake up the field a little bit so there can be a more competitive process,’’ Kibbe said. “There should be a real concern among Republicans that Mitt Romney simply can’t win because he can’t hold the coalition together.’’

“It’s going to make for a really interesting battle,’’ he added. “It’s going to be more competitive than we’re used to, and that enfranchises a lot of voters that have been left out in the past.’’

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.

The Right’s Blogger Provocateur

By JEREMY W. PETERS NEW YORK TIMES

MINNEAPOLIS — Andrew Breitbart wasn’t supposed to be sitting here in a television studio makeup chair. But when he heard that Anthony Weiner was about to announce his resignation, he dropped everything.

Mr. Breitbart, the conservative author and blogger who first published Mr. Weiner’s suggestive self-portraits, had ditched his book-signing in central Illinois and hopped on a flight earlier than planned to the Twin Cities, where he was booked as a marquee attraction at RightOnline, a conservative bloggers conference.

“To put myself in Decatur, Ill., without a satellite connection would have put me in a bad situation,” he explained as a woman applied a layer of foundation to his jowly face in preparation for his appearance on CNN. (He had just finished a phone interview with Fox News; Sean Hannity’s radio show would follow; then a quick break before sitting down with a documentary film crew.)

Part performance artist, part polemicist, Mr. Breitbart, 42, has used his network of Web sites and their legions of followers to bring conservative media red meat. Some of his reader-generated scoops have reverberated all the way to the halls of the United States Capitol, like the Weiner photos and undercover video he released of Acorn workers offering advice on how to evade taxes and conceal child prostitution. After the videos went viral Congress ended grants to Acorn, and federal agencies severed ties with the group.

The stories and videos Mr. Breitbart plays up on his Web sites — which include Big Government, Big Journalism and Big Hollywood — tend to act as political Rorschach tests. If you agree with him, you think what he does is citizen journalism. If you don’t, his work is little more than crowd-sourced political sabotage that freely distorts the facts.

“On the right, he is seen as an investigative journalist along the lines of Woodward and Bernstein,” said James B. McPherson, author of “The Conservative Resurgence and the Press.”

The damage Mr. Breitbart suffered to his credibility after he posted a tipster’s edited video that showed an Agriculture Department official, Shirley Sherrod, making what appeared to be prejudiced remarks seems not to matter as far as his fans are concerned. Also, the Acorn videos appeared to show a man walking into Acorn offices dressed as a pimp, when in fact he was not.

“I think his actions show that if he’s not willing to distort, he is at least careless with the facts,” Mr. McPherson added. “But there are no standards of fact anymore for a lot of people. We have gone from selecting sources of opinion that we agree with to selecting facts we agree with.”

In person, Mr. Breitbart attracts a similar split between blistering condemnation or fawning adulation.

A sampling from his in-box recently: “You are nothing but a malicious moron and a filthy looking bum.”

“I hope you rot in hell.”

“I’d like to have 15 minutes alone with you.”

But as Mr. Breitbart barreled his husky, 6-foot-1 frame through the halls of the Hilton here for the RightOnline conference, he could barely move 10 feet without being stopped and exalted.

“You’re an inspiration to me,” gushed one young woman.

“You’re my hero,” a middle-aged female admirer declared.

“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” said one man, grinning spectacularly as Mr. Breitbart posed for a picture with him.

Conservative media does not lack for big personalities (see: Limbaugh, Rush; Beck, Glenn; or Coulter, Ann). But where Mr. Breitbart stands out is through his accessibility. He gives out his cellphone number in speeches and passes along his personal e-mail address to almost anyone who asks. If you write him, chances are you will hear back.

“If you’re a citizen journalist,” said James O’Keefe, the conservative activist who filmed the Acorn sting videos and passed them along to Mr. Breitbart, “you have to be responsive to people, you have to listen to the people around you. And you can’t do that if you’re sitting behind a golden microphone making $40 million a year.”

When Mr. Breitbart is not checking his BlackBerry, which pings continually with the hundreds of e-mails and text messages he receives each day, he is talking on the phone. When he was exiting the lobby of his hotel one night, a woman approached him to pitch a story. He listened patiently for a minute and then said, “I’ll forget all this. So e-mail me at andrew@breitbart.com.”

He grew up in West Los Angeles among many of the liberal types he now pillories. That gives him a certain credibility among fans who see his as a redemption case. “I admit it, I’m from L.A. I still am shallow. Don’t anyone think otherwise. It’s part of the experience out there,” he said in a speech at RightOnline, bringing the audience to its feet.

After graduating from Tulane University in New Orleans, he drifted around Los Angeles looking for a career. Arianna Huffington gave him his first big break in media when she hired him as her researcher in 1997. Matt Drudge, a mutual friend who ran an online newsletter and Web site about politics and Hollywood gossip, had introduced them.

He would later go to work for Mr. Drudge, helping him manage The Drudge Report. He gained a Web following of his own by routing articles featured on The Drudge Report through his own Web site, Breitbart.com. Then in 2004, Ms. Huffington called. “Do you have any ideas for a Web site?” he recalls her asking. He helped her introduce the site but left after a few months.

He may not have liked the politics, but he embraced the model of assembling a nationwide network of mostly unpaid contributors. “I was going to have to develop a public persona that caused people to be willing to write for me often and in most cases for free,” he said.

In the summer of 2009, Mr. O’Keefe approached him with videos he had secretly recorded in Acorn offices on the East Coast. Mr. Breitbart borrowed $25,000 from his father and started a site, Big Government, where the videos would be posted. They quickly went viral, consuming official Washington.

The most notorious video he put up — one that almost ruined his career — was a two-minute clip of Ms. Sherrod, a black Agriculture Department official, telling an N.A.A.C.P. gathering that she did not help a white man as much as she could have with his failing farm. The headline said “NAACP Awards Racism.”

But when the N.A.A.C.P. released a longer version of the video, it showed clearly that Ms. Sherrod’s story was about overcoming racial prejudice, and that she did indeed go to great lengths to help the farmer. Defending himself, Mr. Breitbart said that the video came to him already edited, and that the crowd applauded when Ms. Sherrod said she did not help the man.

Critics seized on it as evidence that Mr. Breitbart selectively chooses content that reflects poorly on political opponents. But the episode only seemed to help bolster his status as a rising star on the political right.

“I just like the work he’s done,” said Andrew Madsen, a 21-year-old college student from Watertown, Minn., who waited in line at the Hilton to have Mr. Breitbart autograph a copy of his new book, “Righteous Indignation.” “Everybody has their biases. But there’s a big bias toward liberalism and big government. At least he’s attempting to provide an outlet that provides an alternative perspective.”

Mr. Breitbart is always looking for new ways to channel his seemingly bottomless well of playful outrage. In Minneapolis, he decided to crash the mostly liberal Netroots Nation blogger conference that was taking place just down the street. His plans to rent a dunk tank and charge people $50 each to throw a baseball didn’t pan out.

He bounded in uninvited, accompanied by a 12-person entourage that included a documentary film crew, a security guard, several reporters and some fans.

A crowd of bloggers quickly gathered around him, Flip cameras in hand. One of them repeatedly shrieked questions about whether Mr. Breitbart had ever patronized a prostitute, used cocaine or looked at gay pornography. Mr. Brietbart said little in response and mostly grinned.

Another onlooker called him a racist and condemned him to hell. The growing crowd — chanting “Coward! Coward!” — became so hostile that the guard protecting Mr. Breitbart eventually had to whisk him out a back door.

“Tee-hee, tee-hee! Bedlam ensued!” he laughed, reading coverage of his stunt later. “Isn’t it funny that wherever I go, crazy stuff happens?”

When a reporter pointed out that the pandemonium was probably not coincidental, he paused for a moment.

“Are you saying it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy?” he asked, seemingly sincere. “I’ll have to think about that.”

The incredible journey of NASA spacecraft Dawn

NASA spacecraft Dawn, the largest probe ever launched by the agency, is slowly approaching protoplanet Vesta, where it will spend a year in exploratory orbit before moving on to Ceres.

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times

June 24, 2011

NASA's pioneering Dawn spacecraft, a year late in being launched and 20% over budget, is slowly creeping up on the protoplanet Vesta and is expected to enter orbit around it about July 16, the first stop on a remarkable journey that will later take the craft to the larger dwarf planet Ceres.

The craft, the largest probe ever launched by NASA, is about half-way through its three-month approach phase to Vesta, 96,000 miles away and closing in at the sedate speed of about 260 mph.

The whole procedure is happening so slowly, in terms of normal asteroid flybys and planetary encounters, that scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge will not be able to calculate precisely when the craft entered orbit until after the fact.

The craft's visit to Vesta will be the first prolonged encounter with an object in the main asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter and the first trip to a protoplanet, a large body that almost became a planet.

Both Vesta and Ceres are thought to have been formed when the solar system itself was being assembled from the dust that condensed into the sun and planets. Researchers once thought that both were remnants of a planet that formed and then was destroyed by a massive collision with a moon or some other object.

They now believe, however, that the asteroid belt contains the remnants of a planet whose formation was disrupted by the gravitational effects of nearby Jupiter. As such, its composition should mirror that of the earliest objects orbiting the sun.

"This tiny world … is a window into the early origin of the solar system and the terrestrial planets," said Carol Raymond of JPL, deputy principal investigator for Dawn. Learning about it "will give us better tools to understand the thousands of fragments that are out there in the asteroid belt."

Dawn was originally scheduled to launch in the summer of 2006, but testing problems with the engines delayed the launch until September 2007. Those problems also raised the cost of the mission from a planned $373 million to $446 million at launch.

Dawn is a unique craft and mission on a variety of accounts. For one, it is not powered by a conventional rocket engine but by three ion engines. Electrical fields produced by two 27-foot solar panels accelerate xenon ions to high speed, expelling them out the three engines and providing a thrust about the same as "a single piece of paper pressing down on your hand," according to JPL's Robert Mase, the Dawn project manager.

That may not seem like much, but by the time the craft has used up its load of 937 pounds of xenon, the engines will have provided 24,000 mph of velocity change.

NASA's Deep Space 1 used similar technology in its 1999 mission to sweep by the asteroid Braille, where it produced disappointingly fuzzy images of the object — which some believe to have been ejected from Vesta.

Dawn, however, will go into orbit around Vesta and stay there for a year before climbing out of orbit and proceeding on to Ceres, which it is expected to reach in 2015. No spacecraft has accomplished such a feat before.

Its initial orbit around Vesta will be a little under 10,000 miles high, but it will spiral in, eventually getting as close as 120 miles above the surface, where it should produce breathtaking pictures of the craters. Spectrometers on the craft will also map minerals on the surface and in the craters, which should lead to a clearer picture of how Vesta formed.

Researchers are particularly interested in learning if Vesta has an iron core.

Actual science will begin in the second week of August, Mase said.

Vesta is a great big rock, about 359 miles by 348 miles by 285 miles. The only feature on it that can be discerned from Earth is a massive crater 285 miles across and eight miles deep.

Scientists think they already know a lot about the composition of Vesta. Over the years, repeated collisions with other asteroids have knocked off a lot of material that is floating between the Earth and Vesta. Gravitational interactions with Jupiter propel it toward Earth. An estimated one in every 20 meteorites that strike Earth originated on Vesta, according to UCLA's Christopher Russell, Dawn principal investigator.

Researchers are perhaps even more eager to learn about Ceres. Recent research suggests that the 606-mile-wide dwarf planet may hold a buried ocean under a thick layer of ice. Some estimates suggest that Ceres might even have more water than Earth itself.

thomas.maugh@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Candidates Running for Profit

Michael Medved Daily Beast

They have no shot at winning the White House and they know it. But Michael Medved says also-ran presidential candidates, from Herman Cain to Rick Santorum, have become adept at finding silver—and gold—linings.

As a fateful presidential race gradually takes shape, political junkies will feel both bemused and mystified by the persistence of marginal candidates who have no chance whatsoever of caucus or primary victories. In 2012, as in previous years, it ought to be obvious that some of these purported White House aspirants are actually running for profit, not for president.

This point came home to me during a startling 2007 conversation with a friend and colleague who hosts a successful radio talk show. He asked me, in confidence, what I thought about the idea of his declaring his candidacy for president of the United States. Without hesitation, I told him it sounded like a disastrous idea. He’d need to give up his well-established show once he became an official candidate and would never receive serious consideration by pundits and commentators, as he’d never run for office before. Moreover, he’d hate the process of begging friends and strangers for campaign cash, with no realistic prospect of victory against rivals with fatter wallets and bigger names.

My friend laughed and acknowledged that he’d never advance to the White House but said he believed the campaign process could boost his media career. After the publicity surrounding even the feeblest presidential non-juggernaut, he could command larger radio audiences, bigger book advances, higher speaking fees, and the generally enhanced notoriety that attaches to anyone who travels the country running for the world’s most powerful office.

As for the likelihood that journalists and opponents would scour his past to publicize some embarrassing scandal or shortcoming—another of my objections—he argued that even this humiliation would help publicize his name and enhance his reputation, particularly if they found something juicy to dominate a news cycle or two.

In the end, common sense, and a reluctant spouse, prevailed and my pal declined to make the race, though we both recognized, ruefully, that his lively mind and formidable rhetorical skills could have enlivened some of the preternaturally boring 2008 debates. Our conversation also persuaded me that under the right circumstances, a presidential campaign that made no sense politically might earn dollars and cents in career enhancements.

Consider, for example, the obnoxious career of the appalling Alan Keyes. In 1996, Keyes launched the first of three utterly quixotic campaigns for the GOP presidential nomination, following a brief tenure at the State Department (where his most conspicuous title made him assistant secretary of state for international organizations); a few jobs with think tanks (American Enterprise Institute and Citizens Against Government Waste); and two disastrous senatorial campaigns in Maryland (in 1992, he drew only 29 percent of the general-election vote as the Republican nominee).

“

Even candidates with pathetic primary showings, negligible delegate totals, lousy poll ratings, and modest political war chests can register positive results on the scoreboard of personal progress.

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With few financial resources and no organized campaign apparatus, he nonetheless made strong impressions in televised appearances thanks to his impassioned eloquence and novelty status as the only black candidate in the Republican field. Subsequent bids for the presidency made no practical headway—in 2008, he memorably compared his candidacy to an aborted fetus—but turned the invariably angry Keyes into an oddball celebrity. He hosted a short-lived radio show and even got a brief place on the MSNBC cable schedule, under the puzzling title Alan Keyes Is Making Sense. He now conducts ceaseless fundraising efforts to keep alive his multiple challenges to President Obama’s citizenship status.

In short, even Keyes’ laughable presidential campaigns, including conducting a hunger strike and getting himself arrested when excluded from one televised debate in 1996, helped him emerge from anonymity, after a previous spate of failures and false starts.

Ron Paul’s three campaigns—as a libertarian in 1988, and as a Republican in 2008 and 2012—have served a similar purpose. He’s drawn few votes, with his libertarian candidacy earning less than one-half of 1 percent of the general-election ballots, but the once-obscure Texas congressman has become a bestselling author and prominent media commentator. His cult-like following produced a lavishly funded if startlingly ineffective organization, raising $25 million that resulted in 0.63 percent of GOP delegates at the convention, while providing jobs for numerous members of his extended family.

Other perennial candidates—Dennis Kucinich, Pat Buchanan, Jesse Jackson—became famous for their energetic and colorful campaigns, building their media profiles and, in Kucinich’s case, winning a beautiful young wife, regardless of the invariably disappointing results in primaries and caucuses.

These for-profit presidential ventures differed profoundly from earlier candidates who became notorious for their frequent but hopeless White House drives. Harold Stassen ran for president eight times between 1948 and 1992, but in his first two races, and as a youthful, popular Minnesota governor, he had been considered a serious candidate. Later, he ran increasingly forlorn campaigns to keep his name before the public and to hold on to just a bit of the national spotlight. Today’s careerist-campaigners run not to preserve the public’s attention, but to win significant coverage for the first time; to seize rather than retain that coveted spotlight.

In the 2012 race, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum have already succeeded in this strategy. I know and respect both candidates as sincere, deeply committed patriots and conservative activists who care passionately about the issues they discuss in their interviews, sparsely attended campaign events, and, most important, televised debates. Though they and their supporters will tell you that they are running to advance their ideas, they must also acknowledge, at least in private rumination, that other GOP contenders fight for virtually identical positions and that the chief result of their hopeless candidacies will be career enhancement.

Cain lost a Georgia Senate primary in his only prior run for public office and hosts a nighttime radio show in Atlanta, but his presidential drive exposed a much wider audience to his folksy charm and persuasive oratory. After the election, he’ll almost certainly get a far more prominent media gig, perhaps joining Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee on Fox News, write a bestselling book, and win five-figure speaking engagements.

Santorum has wandered the political wilderness since a crushing reelection defeat in Pennsylvania in 2006, but his presidential bid, highlighted by a smart, polished, forceful performance in the New Hampshire CNN debate, has already rejuvenated his career, making him a far more plausible possibility for future high office (either appointive or elected), major think tank positions, or as an enhanced voice in conservative media.

There’s something about standing on stage at candidate forums, in front of high-tech TV sets and eagerly cheering crowds, side by side with front-running, big-time contenders who could actually win the White House, that inescapably enhances personal prestige, regardless of thin electoral support or nonexistent prospects of victory.

In the media-driven circus atmosphere of modern nomination campaigns, even candidates with pathetic primary showings, negligible delegate totals, lousy poll ratings, and modest political war chests can register positive results on the scoreboard of personal progress. Winning isn’t everything in politics, but it’s never beside the point, and some contemporary presidential candidates have learned how to transcend mundane matters like vote totals in discovering new ways of winning.

‘Barefoot Bandit’ Pleads Guilty to 2-Year Theft Spree

By WILLIAM YARDLEY NY TIMES                                                          

SEATTLE — Colton Harris-Moore, the teenage fugitive who became known as the Barefoot Bandit during his two-year crime spree, pleaded guilty here on Friday to seven federal charges, including stealing airplanes, a boat and firearms and transporting them across state and sometimes national boundaries. He faces up to six and a half years in prison.

Mr. Harris-Moore, who inspired Facebook tribute pages and supportive T-shirts (“Momma Tried,” one said) for his remarkable ability to elude law enforcement over the years, smiled occasionally in court but said little beyond “Yes, sir” to Judge Richard A. Jones of United States District Court, and “guilty” seven times.

For all of the spectacle surrounding his case, Mr. Harris-Moore reached a plea deal with the government in part by pledging that he would not profit from publicizing it in the future. A Seattle entertainment lawyer, Lance Rosen, said Friday that he was negotiating the sale of rights to Mr. Harris-Moore’s story but that any proceeds would go toward the more than $1.4 million in restitution Mr. Harris-Moore owes for the planes, boat and other items he stole.

After Mr. Harris-Moore entered his plea in federal court, Jenny Durkan, the United States attorney for Western Washington, told reporters, “Should one dime cross palms, it comes to the government.”

Mr. Harris-Moore grew up poor and a victim of abuse on Camano Island, north of Seattle in Puget Sound. He was charged with his first crime at 12 and began his spree after escaping from a juvenile halfway house in April 2008. Over the next two years, Mr. Harris-Moore broke into banks, stole Cessna airplanes, a 34-foot powerboat, semiautomatic pistols and a stream of Ford trucks and Cadillacs before finally being caught after crash-landing a plane on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas on July 4, 2010. He had no formal flight training.

He is scheduled to be sentenced in October. But before then, state prosecutors in four Washington counties are expected to pursue as many as 40 charges, included first-degree burglary in which a handgun was involved, a charge that could keep him in prison longer than the federal charges do.

Asked in court how many years of school he completed, Mr. Harris-Moore, now 20 and a high school dropout, replied, “10 years.” His lawyer, John Henry Brown, told reporters after the hearing that Mr. Harris-Moore hoped eventually to attend college to study aviation and engineering.

Snake handler who mesmerized generations of tourists is dead By CAROL ROSENBERG MIAMI HERALDcrosenberg@miamiherald.com    Bill Haast delighted tourists five times a day at The Serpentarium on Dixie Highway in Miami. If snake venom holds the secret to a long life, then Bill Haast had the magic. The man who mesmerized generations of paying customers from 1947 to 1984 by extracting venom at his Miami Serpentarium as a spine-tingling South Florida attraction is dead. He died of natural causes on Wednesday in Punta Gorda, on Florida’s west coast, where he had made his home. He was 100 years old. Born William E. Haast on Dec. 30, 1910 in Paterson, N.J., he was a South Florida celebrity for surviving successive venomous snakebites. Friday, his wife Nancy put his lifetime tally at 172. The legacy left him immunized, enabling him to donate life-saving blood to 21 victims across the years. All survived, she said. Grainy black-and-white television footage from 1962, now part of the Wolfson Archive, shows a fit, toothy 51-year-old Haast in a hospital recovering from his 79th snake bite -- his first ever by a King Cobra. A rare survivor, he declared himself doing “very well, anxious to get back to work.” Why? “I must.” Haast’s passing reminded South Floridians of a certain age of the bygone era when entrepreneurs could set up quirky roadside attractions along Dixie Highway, US 1, to thrill both local school kids and wintering vacationers who fled the cold. “He was a really nice man with a big heart,” said his grand-niece Michelle Haast of Miami. “Not to mention pretty damn smart. And a bit crazy.” Twitter accolades came in from across the globe. The Reptile Centre in Northampton, England, declared him “an inspirational man within the world of reptiles.” In North Carolina, a chemist offered this salute: “Resssssssst in Peace Bill Haast.” Part scientist, part entertainer, Haast spent his early years in Miami as a mechanic for Pan Am, while he built the snake farm he called The Serpentarium along a portion of U.S. 1 that is today called Pinecrest. By the mid 1960s he was putting on five shows a day, dressed in a white lab coat, extracting venom to sell for scientific experimentation. “He was into it for the science on how snake venom affected the body,” said the grand-niece who worked at The Serpentarium as a teen in the 1980s. He had done research for a polio vaccine, sought a cure for multiple sclerosis. “He’d put on a show just to supplement the research for the while,” she said. “And in the end the research could take care of itself.” The attraction had a gift shop, 400-pound turtles, a 20-foot-long python. It also had a pit with a 12-foot-long crocodile called “Cookie” that weighed, literally, a ton. Tragically, a 6-year-old boy fell in and died in 1977. Haast went to the pit with a pistol the very next day and shot the croc. He closed up the business in 1984, moved to Utah for a few years but returned to Florida in 1990, and settled in a Punta Gorda ranch with Nancy, his third wife, and some 400 snakes that supplied his Miami Serpentarium Laboratories. “Miami was in Bill’s heart to the end,” his widow said. “It was his adopted city. No matter where we went, Miami was Bill’s real home.” By his 95th birthday, he was a bit of a recluse. He agreed to chat only by telephone with a Miami Herald reporter. “I know a lot of people in Miami still remember the Serpentarium and wonder what became of me,” he said, “that’s why I’m talking to you.’’ It was 2006 and he was still extolling the virtues of venom, saying he injected himself weekly with a cocktail from five snakes -- cobras, cottonmouths, kraits, mambas and rattlers -- homeopathy the Food and Drug Admnistration would never endorse. “I could become a poster boy for the benefits of venom,’’ Haast boasted. “If I live to be 100, I’ll really make the point.’’ And so he did. On Friday, the Roberson Funeral Home of Port Charlotte said arrangements were incomplete. Besides his wife, he left two daughters, Naia Hanna and Shantih, living in California. A son, William Haast Jr. predeceased him. He also left three grandchildren, two great grandchildren and two great great grandchildren.