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Showing an abundance of caution, the United States Supreme Court has ruled to protect the proceedings of the Proposition 8 discrimination trial in San Francisco, blocking efforts by the trial judge, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn to allow cameras into a

Federal Judge Vaughn Walker

California federal courtroom for the first time.

Less than four weeks ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that it was time to begin a pilot project exploring the benefits of broadcasting federal civil trials.   It is somewhat remarkable that the long-protected privacy of California federal courtrooms would become negotiable just weeks before the start of the Proposition 8 discrimination trial.   The Ninth Circuit’s “pilot project” immediately opened the door for Federal Judge Vaughn Walker to take extraordinary legal steps, on New Year’s Eve no less,  to extend the project to include the discrimination suit against Protect Marriage.  With every day, the prosecution of Protect Marriage seems to be led, not just by formidable constitutional attorneys David Boies and Ted Olson, but by Judge Walker as well.  An outraged National Review Online columnist, Ed Whelan, notes that by waiting until New Year’s Eve to make procedural moves to broadcast the Proposition 8 discrimination trial, Judge Walker essentially precluded the public from having any opportunity to oppose it.  In a letter written directly to the Judge, Whelan publicly challenges the motives behind the move:

Before Google Maps or navigation systems, there were shepherds and there were stars.

In the Old World, shepherds knew the sky and the terrain like a well-worn map.   They were quite different from farmers of the time, who had the means to at least own land or to buy livestock.  Shepherds survived on meager wages earned by watching the flocks of others.  Even so, they were well-travelled and moved from pasture to pasture, hillside to hillside.  If there ever was a change in the sky, or a happening on the horizon, shepherds often would have been the first to see it, and likely the first to tell of it.

There has always been great poetry in the way Heavenly Father sent word of the Savior’s birth, dispatching a beautiful chorus of angels to proclaim it to lowly shepherds.  There was also a message in this method.  By breaking the news on the hillsides above Bethlehem where only shepherds dwelt, those shepherds would be the ones to have the privilege of announcing to many that the greatest shepherd of all had been born into the world.

Every now and then I see news stories that remind me of what was once called “Yankee ingenuity.”  Yankees are pretty rare these days outside that baseball stadium in the Bronx, but I do think humankind’s technological capacities are something we’re not thinking enough about.

For example, amid all the discussion about how to reduce our dependency on carbon-based fuels, stories like this one come out and remind me that we really could solve the problem if we made it more of a priority to do so.

Chemotherpay at Duke Cancer Clinic

This article in today’s Salt Lake City Deseret News is so vital and informational to those who have or who are or who will confront Cancer in their families, that True North takes the opportunity to excerpt it here and thanks writer Lois M. Collins for her great piece and for spreading the news of the work of Massachusetts firm,  Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, for their innovatoins in Cancer research.

FIRM TAKES ENGINEERING APPROACH TO TREATING CANCER

A Massachusetts company with strong Utah ties is approaching the finding and fixing of cancerous tumors as an engineering challenge. It believes most solid tumors are triggered by one or more of six distinct systemic signaling-mechanism breakdowns and it’s developing treatments to repair them.

Merrimack Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, Mass., on Thursday announced a $530 million exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with French pharmaceutical giant sanofi-aventis for the development and co-commercialization of a drug targeting the first of those

signaling breakdowns.

While on business in Washington, D.C. today, I walked down Pennsylvania Avenue and peered into the White House.  How is President Obama going to posture his sure defeat of his health care agenda?     As a health care attorney I spend a lot of time with hospital leaders and health care policy makers.   In private conversations I am not hearing any of them say they see any real solutions to America’s  health care crisis in Obamacare.  (Of course, no one knows exactly what Obamacare really is – apparently it’s whatever Congress passes on health care insurance reform that the president will sign.)

My friend Hugh Hewitt writes today about Obama’s desperate attempt to rally the nation by rallying his loyalists in the media.  (Note in particular Hugh’s photo montage of the interviews – not something you’ll ever see in the New York or Los Angeles Times.)  An excerpt:

The reason behind President Obama’s frantic retail television yesterday has to be that every debate over Obamacare everywhere in the country has to be going just as mine did.  Proponents of Obamacare from the president down to Obamacare advocate in a two person discussion on a park bench are not just losing the argument.  They have lost it.  Decisively.  And no series of interviews, no matter how gentle the questions or advantageous the setting, are going to persuade anything close to a majority of Americans that it makes sense to trade in their health care for whatever it is that the president, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have behind Door Number 3.

Syndicated Radio Commentator Hugh Hewitt

Never before has a President of the United States so obviously tried to “work the media” as President Obama has on health care.  He began with an “Evening at the White House,” when Charlie Gibson was allowed to actually broadcast the ABC Evening News live from within the White House in exchange for an exclusive ABC “town hall” on health care that same evening.   This weekend, each major Sunday news program gladly welcomed the President — simultaneously!   His message was the same to each:  He was stumping to raise the deficit another trillion dollars to fund his vision of health care in America.

Hugh also sees through this broadcast blitz, and focuses on the growing urgency of Afghanistan in today’s post.  Take a look.

From Krauthammer’s column in today’s Washington Post:

“This is not about politics? Then why is it, to take but the most egregious example, that in this grand health-care debate we hear not a word about one of the worst sources of waste in American medicine: the insane cost and arbitrary rewards of our malpractice system?

“When a neurosurgeon pays $200,000 a year for malpractice insurance before he even turns on the light in his office or hires his first nurse, who do you think pays? Patients, in higher doctor fees to cover the insurance.

“And with jackpot justice that awards one claimant zillions while others get nothing — and one-third of everything goes to the lawyers — where do you think that money comes from? The insurance companies, which then pass it on to you in higher premiums.

“But the greatest waste is the hidden cost of defensive medicine: tests and procedures that doctors order for no good reason other than to protect themselves from lawsuits. Every doctor knows, as I did when I practiced years ago, how much unnecessary medical cost is incurred with an eye not on medicine but on the law.

“Tort reform would yield tens of billions in savings. Yet you cannot find it in the Democratic bills. And Obama breathed not a word about it in the full hour of his health-care news conference. Why? No mystery. The Democrats are parasitically dependent on huge donations from trial lawyers.”

Unlike too many conservatives, I recognize that the health care system’s financial problems are multi-faceted, and that tort reform will not be a cure-all by any means. But it is inexcusable that the subject of tort reform is not even on the table.  Heck, it’s not even in the same building as the table.