Blog Heap of Links for the day 23 June 2009

In what appeared to be a coordinated exchange, President Obama called on the Huffington Post's Nico Pitney near the start of his press conference and requested a question directly about Iran.

The Obama administration plans to kill a controversial Bush administration spy satellite program at the Department of Homeland Security.... would have provided federal, state and local officials with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery — but no eavesdropping capabilities— to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism....

Nine fatalities have been confirmed in the worst accident in the history of Washington's Metro subway system, authorities said Tuesday morning... Among the dead was the operator of the train that crashed into the stopped train...

President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged Congress to pass "historic legislation" to fight global warming, prompting his fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives to aim for a vote on Friday on the bill to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide.... incentives to encourage utilities, manufacturers and other companies to switch from higher-polluting oil and coal to cleaner energy alternatives... [Better incentive for everyone: IMPEACH!]

Social problems like bullying and stereotyping involve thoughts, feelings and reactions that resist change. New research shows that when students play active roles in virtual dramas their attitudes and behavior can change.

In "Magnificent Desolation" Buzz Aldrin recounts his experience — from takeoff to splashdown — in breathtaking detail, and his harrowing return to normal life after the moon mission, when the astronaut battled depression and alcoholism.

On Jan. 23, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down state criminal abortion laws in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But privately, newly released tapes reveal, he expressed ambivalence.... Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster "permissiveness," and said that "it breaks the family." But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.... [If only we could kick the jerk out of office AGAIN!]

Materials released by the Nixon Presidential Library on Tuesday show aides trying to head off a constitutional crisis and save a presidency after Nixon fired the Watergate special prosecutor and forced out the two top Justice Department officials in October 1973.... The idea: Convince lawmakers that prosecutor Archibald Cox wanted an "unending crisis of the body politic" and needed to be removed. That didn't work....

It is Khamenei who has the ultimate responsibility for the apparent decision to skew Iran's presidential election in favor of his preferred candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and for unleashing the security forces that have killed at least 17 Iranians protesting the outcome in the past week, sending Iran into its greatest political crisis in 30 years. Khamenei is preserving his vision, say analysts, of what the Islamic Republic should look like in the short term by denying the popular will. But he has taken that step, they say, at a cost so great to his own image and to that of the office he occupies that the Islamic Republic is unlikely to be the same again. ...

Ed McMahon, best known for his role as Johnny Carson's No. 2 on the "Tonight Show," died at a hospital in Los Angeles this morning.... esponsible for bringing the infamous "Heeeere's Johnny!" line into the pop culture lexicon.....

Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists.

"I told her, 'Neda, don't go,'" the Times quotes Golshad. "She said, 'Don't worry. It's just one bullet and it's over.'" ... "We were stuck in traffic and we got out and stood to watch, and without her throwing a rock or anything they shot her," ...