Midday Open Thread

• Mitchell Wade, former defense contractor who pled guilty to giving former Congressman Duke Cunningham $1.8 million in bribes, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison, 3 years probation after release, 100 hours of community service, and a $250,400 fine.
• Governor David Paterson is upset at the way he was portrayed on SNL over the weekend.
• Are you up-to-date on the mayoral melodrama in Kansas City? Mayor Mark Funkhouser continues to be the one of the biggest embarrassments in city history. Like many urban areas, Kansas City has far too many urgent needs and priorities for this circus to be allowed to continue. The time has come to get the Funk out and get back to work.
• Chrysler announced plans to introduce a full line of electric vehicles, including mini-vans, coups, and Jeeps, beginning in 2010.
• Another midnight rule change from the Bush administration:
  

  The Bush administration has finalized a controversial regulation that will allow railroads to continue to ship dangerous chemicals through major cities.

  That has infuriated some city officials, security experts, and environmentalists because it preempts all local efforts to control if, when, and how those railroad tank cars move through their communities.

  Federal security officials have long considered railroad tankers full of such chemicals as chlorine or anhydrous ammonia to be potential weapons of mass destruction. If attacked by a terrorist or disturbed individual in the middle of a city they could cause thousands of deaths.

  – Plutonium Page

• Gee, what a surprise:
  

  The inspector general of the Interior Department has found that agency officials often interfered with scientific work in order to limit protections for species at risk of becoming extinct, reviving attention to years of disputes over the Bush administration’s science policies.

  In a report delivered to Congress on Monday, the inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found serious flaws in the process that led to 15 decisions related to policies on endangered species.

  – Plutonium Page

• A post on Daily Kos this past Sunday has led to some broader discussion in the science blogosphere about the role of Public Health.

  – DemFromCT

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