“At present the United States has the unenviable distinction of being the only great industrial nation without compulsory health insurance,” the Yale economist Irving Fisher said in a speech in December of 1916. Fisher delivered an address titled “The Need for Health Insurance,” at a joint session of the American Association for Labor Legislation, the American Economic Association (he was president of both), the American Sociological Society, and the American Statistical Association. “Germany showed the way in 1883,” Fisher told his audience. “Her wonderful industrial progress since that time, her comparative freedom from poverty . . . and the physical preparedness of her soldiery, are presumably due, in considerable measure, to health insurance.” You can probably already see where this is heading. The United States declared war with Germany in April, 1917. Health care was dead. Critics said that it was “made in Germany” and likely to result in the “Prussianization of America.” In California, where the legislature had passed a constitutional amendment providing for universal health insurance, it was put on the ballot for ratification: a federation of insurance companies took out an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle warning that it “would spell social ruin to the United States.” Every voter in the state received in the mail a pamphlet with a picture of the Kaiser and the words “Born in Germany. Do you want it in California?” http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/12/07/091207taco_talk_lepore

If some version of tort reform ultimately gets tucked into a passed health-care bill, it won't be because the trial lawyers didn't get out the message—at least in one of the more widely trafficked corridors in our nation's capital. The American Association for Justice, formerly known as the American Trial Lawyers Association, has bought up all the advertising space in Washington, D.C.'s Metro station at Union Station for the entire month of December. The point, according to this story in Politico: “to remind Senate staffers that 98,000 people die each year from preventable medical errors.”
WSJ Law Blog December 2, 2009

U.S. Debt Clock
"The Purpose of U.S.DebtClock.org is to inform the public of the financial condition of the United States of America. The numbers are laid out so as to give a complete real-time snap-shot of the country's balance sheet...All the debt clocks are updated continuously..." This is an independent site using government data.

The Trend to Alternate Law Firm Fee Arrangements Continues
"In September The American Lawyer and the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) jointly surveyed 587 ACC members who have the title "chief legal officer" or "general counsel." In that group, 149 head departments at companies with annual revenues of $1 billion or more. Here are the survey results (Note: Click on the images at the end of the posting for a larger view)."

Meet the 24 recipients of the MacArthur Fellows Awards
http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.5410503/k.11CB/Meet_the_2009_Fellows.htm The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. The Fellows Program does not accept applications or unsolicited nominations. There are no restrictions on becoming a Fellow, except that nominees must be either residents or citizens of the United States. Questions can be e-mailed to 4answers@macfound.org.
http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.4536879/k.9B87/About_the_Program.htm

Fort Miamis
British soldiers constructed Fort Miamis in 1794. British authorities feared that Anthony Wayne and his army planned to march against Fort Detroit, a major stronghold. Located fifty-five miles to the south of Detroit, Fort Miamis provided an additional obstacle to Wayne. Fort Miamis also afforded the British additional means to solidify Native American support against the white Americans moving into the Ohio Country. Following England's defeat in the American Revolution, the British promised in the Treaty of Paris (1783) to remove all of their soldiers from American soil. Although they had agreed to do this in the treaty, the British subsequently refused until the Americans honored their pledges in the treaty as well. Important among these was the promise to repay debts Americans owed to England.
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=713
The Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis National Historic Site Act of 1999 (Public Law 106-164, 113 Stat. 1792-1794) establishes as an affiliated National Park System (NPS) area, the Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis National Historic Site (Site) in the State of Ohio. See full text of act: http://www.glin.gov/view.action?glinID=70146
Fort Miamis was occupied by General Anthony Wayne’s legion from 1796 to 1798 and later was the site of a battle in the War of 1812. Toledo Metroparks completed buying the property with local, state and federal funds in the fall of 2001. http://www.fallentimbersbattlefield.com/today.asp
Over the years, Fort Miamis has been owned by the city of Maumee, the state of Ohio, and Metroparks. In spring of 2009, it became part of Metroparks again. Part of the fort remains privately owned today. Metroparks Magazine, Fall/Winter 2009-2010

Deer-resistant plants
There are a few things that might help when choosing plants that they tend to avoid. Deer never eat ornamental grasses. They also don’t usually eat herbs or plants that have a strong fragrance such as sage, lemon balm, monarda (bee balm), Russian sage (Perovskia), etc. They don’t generally like plants with thorns or “prickles” either, roses being the exception. Some of the prickly flowers and shrubs they avoid are cleome, barberry, and purple coneflower. One last thing, please do not feed the deer. You aren’t doing yourself, your neighbors or the deer a favor. I won’t belabor the point, but by feeding deer you are bringing many diseases and parasites into your yard, which can then transfer to your pets or your children. http://www.northerngardening.com/deerplants.htm
http://www.npsot.org/plant_lists/deer_resistant.html

In the mid-1990s, there were rumors of a lost bordeaux grape variety that had just been "discovered" in the foothills of the Chilean Andes. The tale of carmenère's journey from southwestern France to South America is worthy of a mystery novel. The story begins in the mid-19th century, by which time Bordeaux winemakers had more or less settled on six kinds of grapes that could be blended together to make red bordeaux: cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, malbec, petit verdot, and carmenère. The grape that gave them the most trouble was carmenère, which came to wine-ready ripeness weeks after the other bordeaux varieties. It was, for a time, considered worth the hassle for the depth of color and interesting herbal note carmenère brought to the bordeaux blend—that is, when the grapes were fully ripened. When they weren't, they were known to contribute an excess of a quality commonly identified as "green," meaning astringent and vegetal, reminiscent of green peppers. Then, the final straw: in the 1880s, after many of the vines in France were wiped out by a blight of phylloxera lice, French wineries began grafting vulnerable European vines onto phylloxera-resistant American rootstock—a process that the stressed-out carmenère vines didn't take to well. That was the coup de grâce for carmenère in Bordeaux. Look at any wine textbook today, and it will tell you that red bordeaux is a blend of five grape varieties, not six. http://www.saveur.com/article/Wine-and-Drink/Late-Bloomer
By coincidence, the same day I read this story we had a Chilean carmenère with dinner.

On December 3, 1931, the UK Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster, under which the British dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland gained complete legislative independence; the statute received royal assent and came into force on December 11.
On December 3, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt called for the dissolution of business trusts in his first State of the Union address. Roosevelt would go on to dissolve 44 trusts during his administration, earning the nickname "Trust Buster".
Learn more about the history of U.S. antitrust law. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/