do you think ElBaradei sees stones the way he sees WMDs?:

RT @ElBaradei Went 2 vote w family attacked by organized thugs. Car smashed w rocks. Holding referendum in absence of law & order is an irresponsible act

For @ElBaradei the turnaround happened almost overnight. He was the Brotherhood's front man but...broke with them over the referendum. And now they want to break him.

So is the mass media going to start saying: Hey, we were wrong! These people are strong, organized, and radical? Or, rather, is the Obama Administration going to sink deeper into the al-Qaida bad; all other Islamists good mantra? To put it another way, are they willing to lose face for exaggerating the power of Facebook?

via rubinreports.blogspot.com

I guess there are some people in Egypt who don't like former IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei. On Saturday, he went to vote in a referendum and watch what happened....
 Hmmm.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous



At this point--to show how bad the situation is in practice--Amr Moussa, veteran radical Arab nationalist, Israel-baiter, and anti-American is quickly becoming the best one can hope for in terms of the new regime.

The only thing surprising to me is that the Islamists have been emboldened so fast. I thought they would be cautious a while longer in their pretense at being moderate and pro-democracy.  But revolutionary Islamists quickly become arrogant when people make concessions to them and they conclude that they are strong and victorious.  
via rubinreports.blogspot.com

Amr Moussa, the Arab League's secretary general, has announced he is planning to run in the Egyptian presidential election. via Arab League, Which Defended Bashir From Charges Of Genocide, Condemns Qaddafi?

Safe nuclear does exist, and China is leading the way with thorium

Thorium could be a much safer option for China which has been unsettled by the nuclear crisis in Japan where fears over radiation levels are rising

via telegraph.co.uk

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You have to die, bitch!

NORWAY: The more this female Muslim comedienne makes fun of her fellow Muslims, the more popular she gets, but the more death threats she also gets.

via barenakedislam.wordpress.com

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Muslim Student Association Pledge of Allegiance: Jihad is my spirit, I will die to establish Islam

The video is from January 2011 at UCLA., Muslim Student Association Pledge of Allegiance: Jihad is my spirit..I will die to establish Islam, who writes:

Dear useful idiots, this is your wake up call.

The last part of the video reads:

The Muslim Student Association’s pledge of allegiance is a restatement of the Muslim Brotherhood’s credo which states:

Allah is our objective
The Prophet is our leader
Qur’an is our law
Jihad is our way
Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope

The credo’s are nearly identical because the Muslim Student Association was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood:

Established (by members of the Muslim Brotherhood) in January 1963 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada, or MSA (also known as MSA National) currently has chapters on nearly 600 college campuses (including more than 150 chapters affiliated with the national organization) across North America.
In its earliest days, MSA was financed largely by Saudi Arabia. In return, says a February 2008 New York Times piece, the organization’s leaders “pushed the kingdom’s puritan, Wahhabi strain of Islam.” In the 1960s and 70s, adds the Times piece, MSA chapters “advocated theological and political positions derived from radical Islamist organizations and would brook no criticism of Saudi Arabia.” From its inception, MSA had close links with the extremist Muslim World League, whose chapters’ websites have featured not only Osama bin Laden’s propaganda, but also publicity-recruiting campaigns for Wahhabi subversion of the Chechen struggle in Russia. According to author and Islam expert Stephen Schwartz, MSA is a key lobbying organization for the Wahhabi sect of Islam.
MSA was named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document — titled “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America” – as one of the Brotherhood’s 29 likeminded “organizations of our friends” that shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation. These “friends” were identified by the Brotherhood as groups that could help teach Muslims “that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands … so that … God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions.”

The MSA has branches on hundreds of campuses in the U.S. and Canada and many of its campus leaders have engaged in and been arrested for waging jihad. The video above clearly indicates MSA members at UCLA, and elsewhere, are willing to die spreading Islam. The Koran is their law (sharia), and jihad is their way.
Get it?
Contact Your Elected Officials!via Blazing Cat Fur via creepingsharia.wordpress.com

Mideast Unrest Reawakens Concern Over Taint of Foreign Money

In the summer of 2008, Lewis N. Walker, president of Lawrence Technological University, flew to Bahrain to deliver an honorary doctorate to Sheik Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa. The country's prime minister and crown prince was being honored for his support of a free-market economy and for "creating the infrastructure for an innovative and socially and environmentally sustainable society," according to a Lawrence Tech press release. The crown prince honored the university at about the same time with a $3-million donation.
These days, Bahrain may not look so socially sustainable. Soon after the demonstrations in Egypt, thousands of people marched to Pearl Square in Bahrain's capital city to protest the country's absolute monarchy, and were met with a brutal government response that so far has left several dead and hundreds wounded.
Lawrence Tech sought to cultivate a relationship with an oil-rich Mideast state—one, Lawrence Tech officials point out, that seemed relatively progressive at the time. But recent protests and resulting crackdowns in the region have had a way of refocusing the Western public's attention on the regimes there—even on governments thought to be permissive—and on the colleges that have ties in the region.
Those ties—particularly with Libya—have been especially damaging to the London School of Economics and Political Science, where early this month the director resigned amid controversy over funds the school had received from Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The fallout there, and at other Western institutions, shows the risks colleges take to their reputations when they accept money from autocratic regimes, no matter how amicable the regimes' relations with the West are at the time.
Critics from conservative and pro-Israel camps have long argued that Muslim countries are buying influence in academe. Now objections to foreign money are also coming from the left, emphasizing the human-rights issues and the unseemly relationships colleges might have with despotic governments or money that flows through them.

read the whole thing By Scott Carlson via chronicle.com
Fabrice Coffrini, AFP, Getty Images

Bahrain's prime minister, Sheik Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa

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Apple Draws Fire for New 'Gay Cure' App

A new anti-gay app approved by Apple has raised eyebrows and drawn criticism
HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT THEN THE ANTI BIBLE APPS BEING PRODUCED FOR APPLE?
via librabunda.blogspot.com

image via your anus.com

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Valerie Plame Cashes In With Spy-Novel Book Deal, Times Sees Only Victory for Feminism

Ka-ching! The Times announced with fanfare on Saturday that "outed" CIA agent Valerie Plame is cashing in once again.

It keeps getting harder to claim that the whole Plame saga wasn't a bonanza of wealth and fame, but the Plame-loving Times is casting it as a blow for feminism. The female spy is always sexy, emerging from the surf in a bikini. Reporter Julie Bosman added: "Who better to roll her eyes at it all than Valerie Plame, the real-life glamorous former CIA operative?"
Air kiss, air kiss. Bosman declined to put a cash figure on Plame's latest book-publishing deal:

Fed up with those popular images of the female secret agent, Ms. Wilson decided to draft her own. Eight years after her cover was blown by the political columnist Robert Novak, she has signed a book deal with Penguin Group USA to write a series of international suspense novels, with a fictional operative, Vanessa Pearson, at the center. Ms. Wilson will write them with Sarah Lovett, a best-selling author of mysteries, who also lives in Santa Fe.
The idea for the books, Ms. Wilson said, “was born out of my frustration and continuing disappointment in how female C.I.A. officers are portrayed in popular culture.”
Of course, she is a sensational figure herself, memorably posing like Grace Kelly in Vanity Fair in 2004, perched in the passenger seat of a Jaguar convertible, wearing a headscarf and large black sunglasses. (Her husband, the former ambassador Joseph Wilson, has called her Jane Bond.)

If that was the case, then they wouldn't have much of a marriage, would they? At least Bosman listed the other Plame-Wilson cash deals in passing:

She came to this book project with some experience in the publishing industry. In 2006, Ms. Wilson landed a $2.5 million deal with Crown Publishing to publish “Fair Game,” her memoir of her days in the C.I.A. (Her book, along with her husband’s memoir, “The Politics of Truth,” was turned into a film starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn.) That deal eventually fell through, and Ms. Wilson moved to Simon & Schuster, whose flagship imprint was then led by David Rosenthal.
Mr. Rosenthal published the book, which was heavily vetted and redacted by the C.I.A. and eventually released with blackened-out passages.
“It was a complicated publication, as you recall,” Mr. Rosenthal said. “Valerie obviously knows the drill.”

via mrc.org

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The New York Times's 2011 proxy statement is out, and as usual it is good for some laughs.
Back in 2002, after Enron, the New York Times editorialized against auditors performing consulting work for companies they audit. Said one editorial:

reports that four of the five major accounting firms, including Arthur Andersen, may be moving away from offering certain consulting and internal audit services to the companies they audit is a welcome development. For too long the profession has failed to acknowledge the conflict of interest inherent in auditing a company's books while trying to sell it other services.

Another editorial said, "Firms have placed themselves in an untenable conflict of interest by providing the same companies they audit on behalf of the public with an array of consulting services. Congress ought to pass legislation to bar such conflicts."
Sure enough, page 70 of the New York Times Company's 2011 proxy statement includes a table of the fees that the New York Times paid to its auditor, Ernst & Young, in fiscal 2010. $3,072,000 was for "audit fees" and $95,000 were "all other fees," which the proxy statement says "were related to consulting services." Inherent and untenable conflict of interest? Only when someone else does it.
The other good one in the Times proxy statement is that the "say on pay" executive pay vote is going to be limited to Class B shareholders — in other words, the Ochs-Sulzberger-Golden-Dolnick family members, rather than all the shareholders who hold economic interests in the Times company. Here's the way the Times proxy statement explains it, on page 68:

On July 21, 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the "Act") was signed into law by President Obama. The Act provides for a number of corporate governance and executive compensation reforms, including the requirement that U.S. public companies provide stockholders a non-binding advisory vote on the compensation of the company's named executive officers (a "say-on-pay" vote). The say-on-pay vote must occur at least once every three years, and stockholders must also be given, at least once every six years, an advisory vote regarding whether future say-on-pay votes will occur every one, two or three years (a "frequency vote"). The initial say-on-pay and frequency votes must occur at a company's first annual stockholder meeting taking place on or after January 21, 2011. Accordingly, these matters will be vote on at our 2011 Annual Meeting.
Under our Certificate of Incorporation, an advisory vote on compensation or on the frequency of such votes is not among the expressly enumerated items as to which the Class A stock has a vote. As a result, for the Company, the say-on-pay vote and the frequency vote are items reserved for a vote of the Class B stockholders.

So Carlos Slim, who owns 16% of the Class A Shares, or around $250 million worth, gets no vote on the executive compensation.
The "say-on-pay" was in Section 951 of Dodd-Frank: "Not less frequently than once every 3 years, a proxy or consent or authorization for an annual or other meeting of the shareholders for which the proxy solicitation rules of the Commission require compensation disclosure shall include a separate resolution subject to shareholder vote to approve the compensation of executives."
I was against say on pay for reasons explained here, but it will be interesting to see whether other companies that have multiple classes of shares also allow only the class that is family-controlled to vote in the "say" on pay. If so, it looks like it may be not so much of a "say" at all, at least for those shareholders who purchased shares rather than inheriting them.
I'm not shedding any tears for those non-family shareholders; they should have known what they were getting into, and it's just a non-binding advisory vote anyway. Still, it looks like shareholder democracy has its limits, at least at the New York Times Company.

via futureofcapitalism.com

Cameron promises that Libya is 'not another Iraq'

it certainly indicates that the forces being assisted by the US in Libya are probably no more sympathetic to US interests than Gaddafi is. At a minimum, the data indicate the US has no compelling national interest in helping the rebels in overthrow Gaddafi.

via carolineglick.com

Discussion of military action brings a different atmosphere to the chamber of the House of Commons: quieter, less disputatious, more consensual. In opening the debate, the Prime Minister took a huge number of interventions including a large number from those MPs who are most sceptical of this intervention. All were heard respectfully and answered respectfully.
Cameron’s desire to find consensus was part of his broader message that this is ‘not another Iraq.’ He stressed that the action in Libya was necessary, legal and right and that any kind of occupying force is ruled out. He argued that the intervention had been ‘in the nick of time’ to prevent a massacre in Benghazi. In his peroration, Cameron argued that the country should be proud of this action because it is in line with Britain’s values as well as its interests and because now ‘the people of Libya have a much better chance of determining their own future.’
On the two questions of the day, whether the coalition is pursuing regime change and whether Gaddafi is a target, Cameron had little news. ‘I think Libya needs to get rid of Gaddafi,’ Cameron declared, but he emphasised that this remains a matter for the Libyan people. As for whether or not Gaddafi is a target, Cameron simply said that he was ‘not giving a running commentrary on targeting’, which is what the government’s line should have been from the beginning.

via spectator.co.uk

image via doppelganger

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Much Mass Media Coverage of Israel-Palestinian Issues Is Propaganda, Not Journalism

The father and brothers of Ruth Fogel comfort each other
during the joint funeral of their daughter and sister,
her husband Ehud and their children, 11-year-old Yoav, 4-year-old Elad, and 3-month-old Hadas,
in Jerusalem, on 13 March 2011.
The Jewish couple and three of their children were stabbed to death in bed
in the Israeli Jewish West Bank settlement of Itamar. (Credit: EPA)

So constant are the lies told in mass media coverage of Israel-Palestinian issues that it is hardly worthwhile to critique individual articles any more.

Following the horrendous murder of the Fogel family, a number of Internet — but not print — writers have pointed out that various mass media institutions have either not reported the killings at all, only minimally did so, didn’t gives the ages of the children killed, or buried the story amidst a much longer explanation that the settlements are terrible and the settlers are bad people (who deserve it?).
Equally dismaying is the disinterest in getting right even the most basic facts. Consider this AP story, remembering that AP now provides most international coverage for almost all American newspapers today.
When you read something like this the conclusion is inescapable that the reporters involved are pushing a specific political agenda, deliberately twisting or leaving out material. Part of the evidence for this is that every distortion, mistake, and example of slanting is always entirely against Israel.
The article claims:

“Palestinian opposition to settlement construction on lands they want for a future state has brought negotiations to a virtual standstill over the past two years, with Palestinians refusing to negotiate directly with Israel as long as it persists.”

In fact, the Palestinian Authority walked out of talks in January 2009 over the Israel-Hamas war that began after Hamas abandoned the ceasefire and attacked Israel with a barrage of rockets and mortars. Construction was not an issue until President Barack Obama made it his central theme. Then, Israel froze construction on settlements for nine months yet during that period — until conveniently a few days before the end — the PA still refused to talk.
So it is Palestinian opposition to negotiations that has brought negotiations to a virtual standstill.
The phrase “settlement construction” is also misleading. Many (most?) readers probably believe that Israel is still building new settlements — I know this because people keep claiming this to me — something not true since 1993, before today’s first-year college students were even born. The construction of apartments on existing settlements — which is the issue — is not the same thing as expanding the size of existing settlements or building completely new ones.
Finally, a minor point for some but one that made my blood boil, is this statement:

“The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a mostly defunct Palestinian militant group, took responsibility for the killings. But it was not clear if the group really was responsible because it frequently takes credit for attacks it didn’t commit in a bid to raise its profile.”

So, even if the Brigades did take responsibility, the AP goes out of its way to assure us that they are probably innocent. Moreover, by not mentioning that the Brigades are an integral part of Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority, is dishonest. Reading about some unknown or “independent” terrorist group is not the same for a reader as being informed that terrorists who proudly said they murdered three infants are members of the same party as Palestinian Authority “president” Mahmoud Abbas.
And, of course, the Brigades are in no way “mostly defunct.” That is something merely made up in this article.
One reason this makes me angry is that I was just involved in a court case as a consultant. The Palestinian Authority, which was the defendant, claimed that it had nothing to do with the Brigades and thus in no way responsible for its terrorism. I researched this and came up with much proof to the contrary.
But the item I thought most cogent is this: If you go to the Brigades’ official site it says in Arabic that the Brigades are part of Fatah.
Not too hard to find out the truth, is it?

Sun, March 20, 2011 | The Rubin Report | By Barry Rubin

via crethiplethi.com

"Gray Lady Down," a debate on the Times, and an AY mention

Atlantic Yards Report

Having read William McGowan's book Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of The New York Times Means for America, I knew it does not address such relatively local issues at Atlantic Yards (built by the Times Company's business partner on the Times Tower, Forest City Ratner), but instead more ideological issues such as gay marriage, immigration, the Duke "rape" case, and the war on terror. 
So McGowan didn't bring up Atlantic Yards during a debate last month with Michael Tomasky, American editor-at-large for the Guardian, at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights. (Tomasky's main point was that the allegedly halcyon days of the past featured flawed coverage, especially in scope, of a different stripe.)
...
I think the issue is somewhat murky. I have no doubt that the editorial page is committed, by virtue of the "spirit of the Times" (aka Sulzberger), to supporting Atlantic Yards, or, at least, keeping its mouth shut about dismaying details.
Is the Metro desk in the tank? I don't think so--and I can't let myself think so. But the Times has done, on the whole, a lousy job covering Atlantic Yards.
Editors make choices, and the Times has chosen to put far less energy into looking carefully at Atlantic Yards than at a number of other issues. Meanwhile, the Sports section laps up Nets publicity.

link

via nolandgrab.org

"Lifeforce" 1985 International one sheet image via doppelganger
and via thatsmyface.com

Four Justices on the Fourth Amendment

An interesting statement respecting the denial of certiorari today in Huber v. N.J. Dep’t of Environmental Protection:

Statement of Justice Alito, with whom the Chief Justice, Justice Scalia, and Justice Thomas join, respecting the denial of certiorari.
Our cases recognize a limited exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement for searches of businesses in “closely regulated industries.” See, e.g., New York v. Burger, 482 U. S. 691, 699–703 (1987) (internal quotation marks omitted). The thinking is that, other things being equal, the “expectation of privacy in commercial premises” is significantly less than the “expectation in an individual’s home.” Id., at 700. And where a business operates in an industry with a “long tradition of close government supervision” — liquor dealers and pawnbrokers are classic examples — the expectation of privacy becomes “particularly attenuated.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted).
In this case, a New Jersey appellate court applied this doctrine to uphold a warrantless search by a state environmental official of Robert and Michelle Huber’s backyard. No. A–5874–07T3, 2010 WL 173533, *9–*10 (Super. Ct. N. J., App. Div., Jan. 20, 2010) (per curiam). The Hubers’ residential property contains wetlands protected by a New Jersey environmental statute. See N. J. Stat. Ann. §13:9B–1 et seq. (West 2003 and Supp. 2010). According to the court below, the presence of these wetlands brought the Hubers’ yard “directly under the regulatory arm” of the State “just as much” as if the yard had been involved in a “regulated industry.” 2010 WL 173533, *10. This Court has not suggested that a State, by imposing heavy regulations on the use of privately owned residential property, may escape the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. But because this case comes to us on review of a decision by a state intermediate appellate court, I agree that today’s denial of certiorari is appropriate. See this Court’s Rule 10. It does bear mentioning, however, that “denial of certiorari does not constitute an expression of any opinion on the merits.” Boumediene v. Bush, 549 U. S. 1328, 1329 (2007) (Stevens and KENNEDY, JJ., statement respecting denial of certiorari).

The reason the four Justices did not vote to grant certiorari (it only takes four votes to grant) is likely that, as Rule 10 suggests, the Justices rarely grant simply because of an erroneous decision of a state intermediate court of appeals; they generally wait until there is a disagreement among federal circuit courts of appeals or state supreme courts. But they are trying to signal to lawyers that this is an issue worth litigating.

via volokh.com

image via e-discoveryissues.blogspot.com

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Israel to dispatch medical delegation to Japan

The Israeli medical delegation
will establish a medical clinic
geared to handle the casualties and refugees
concentrated in the Miyagi prefecture,
six hours north of Tokyo

The field hospital Israel is establishing in Japan is the first to be set up by any nation offering outside assistance, Israel’s Ambassador to Japan Nissim Ben Shitrit said Monday, and the Japanese are extremely appreciative. via mfa.gov.il

Ben Shitrit said the hospital was being established at Minamisanriko, a fishing city 290 miles north of Tokyo, that was utterly overwhelmed by the quake and tsunami and where some 10,000 people are dead or missing. A five-strong Israeli team “is setting up the surgery right now,” the ambassador said. “They are evaluating the needs today, so that a larger team can be dispatched.”

via jpost.com

Sammy Hagar says he was abducted by aliens

"It was real," Hagar told the reporter, according to the story on MTV's Hive website. "They were plugged into me. It was a download situation ... Or, they uploaded something from my brain, like an experiment."

via today.msnbc.msn.com

my grandma said she was too... but she was on Chemotherapy.

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Mexico's Drug War

The Mexican Drug War is an armed conflict taking place among rival drug cartels who fight for regional control, and between the drug cartels and the Mexican government, which seeks to reduce drug trafficking. Although Mexican drug cartels, or drug trafficking organizations, have existed for a few decades, they have become more powerful since the demise of Colombia's Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s. Mexican drug cartels now dominate the wholesale illicit drug market in the United States. Arrests of key cartel leaders, particularly in the Tijuana and Gulf cartels, have led to increasing drug violence as cartels fight for control of the trafficking routes into the United States.

Bibi is against Israeli Nuclear Civilian Energy

[The situation in Japan] certainly caused me to reconsider the projects of building civil nuclear power plants,” said Netanyahu. “I have to tell you I was a lot more enthusiastic about it than I am now. In fact, you'd have to give me a very good argument to do it. And fortunately we found natural gas… So, I think we'll go for the gas. I think we'll skip the nuclear.

When asked about whether he was sad to see former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak leave office, Netanyahu said that “Egypt under Sadat, and then under Mubarak, kept the peace and I think that is something extraordinary valuable. And I think the first order of the day is to make sure that any future government in Egypt maintains the peace. The fact that we had these 30 years with Egypt, 20 years with Jordan, of a real peace, is something that I can appreciate.”  via israelnationalnews.com
what a horrible thing for Israel to have to reject such wealth as nuclear energy, but the Israelis will do wonders with the gas they found

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Electric Car Conversions

The cost of such a conversion is still being determined, but Nourbakhsh said the project team expects to have estimates available at the open house. The cost won't be negligible, he acknowledged, but conversion is a means of recycling and extending the life of older vehicles, while eliminating harmful emissions and supporting local mechanics and garages. Because each vehicle is customized, the size of the battery pack — the most expensive part of an electric car — can be determined based on the commuting needs of the vehicle owner/driver, he noted.

via cmu.edu

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unfortunately you can only convert one kind of Honda... but they hope to expand models that are possible 

EPA’s New Mercury Controls

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new regulations governing emissions of mercury and other toxic air pollutants from power plants.  This rule has been a long time coming.  In the waning moments of the Clinton Administration, the EPA made a finding that would trigger mercury emission controls on power plants under the Clean Air Act.  The finding had been in the works for some time, but the Clinton EPA had been reluctant to pull the trigger until December 2000.   The Bush Administration did not appreciate the house-warming gift, and tried to undo the Clinton Administration’s handiwork with an alternative approach.  They first tried legislation, but when Congress wouldn’t bite they pushed through regulations.  The only problem was that the Bush EPA disregarded the Clean Air Act’s plain text in the process, earning a well-deserved rebuke from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  The new rules, once finalized, may well trigger litigation, but I doubt we’ll see the same result.  From what I’ve looked at so far, this is a fairly traditional regulatory approach.

This EPA fact sheet gives some background on the rule, stressing the anticipated reductions of mercury emissions.  What the fact sheet does not mention is that, the lack of meaningful federal mercury controls notwithstanding, mercury emissions have declined since 1990.  As the EPA’s Report on the Environment shows between 1990–93 and 2005, mercury emissions declined by 58 percent.  Coal-burning facilities — which are covered by the new rule — represent the lion’s share of the rest.
The emission trends are positive.  So, too, are trends in blood mercury levels.  As the same EPA report shows blood mercury levels in women have declined, particularly among those at the 90th and 95th percentiles. From the EPA report: “during the 1999–2000 survey, 10 percent (i.e., 90th percentile value) of surveyed women age 16 to 49 had blood mercury levels of 4.9 µg/L or higher. In the 2007–2008 survey, however, the 90th percentile value had decreased to 2.7 µg/L.”  That’s a significant drop for those with among the highest levels in the country.
These positive trends do not mean additional mercury controls are unnecessary, but it does put their urgency in perspective. It also suggests that the Bush Administration’s approach, which would have utilized a more flexible cap-and-trade approach instead of facility-specific limits, may have been good policy after all, even if it was horribly bad law.

via volokh.com

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