Blog Heap of Links for the day 17 May 2011

Former President Jimmy Carter and former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari were hoping to visit the State Department this week to brief officials on their recent trip to North Korea, but nobody at the State Department was available to meet with them. Carter and Ahtisaari, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates, had been eager to give their readout of their meetings in North Korea April 26 and 27 to U.S. officials and press their case for a resumption of food aid to the Hermit Kingdom. The two are members of the Elders, a group of senior figures who have been informally engaging with regimes that official governments won't deal with, in the hopes of finding pathways to peace. They traveled to North Korea last month with former Irish President Mary Robinson and former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Bruntland. Other members of the Elders include Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Aung San Suu Kyi.

Eight years as president is enough, thank you. At least that's what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says President Barack Obama told her the other day. Clinton said Tuesday that she and Obama often marvel over foreign despots who want to stay in power for decades. [AAAHHHHHH! EIGHT YEARS TOO MANY!]

After Osama bin Laden was killed, 13-year-old Vito LaPinta posted an update to his Facebook status that got the Feds attention. "I was saying how Osama was dead and for Obama to be careful because there could be suicide bombers," says LaPinta. A week later, while Vito was in his fourth period class, he was called in to the principal's office. "A man walked in with a suit and glasses and he said he was part of the Secret Service," LaPinta said. "He told me it was because of a post I made that indicated I was a threat toward the President."

Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama's administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's Northern California district. That's in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama's Department of Health and Human Services approved.

Addressing the graduates of Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis yesterday, Obama said he met the daughter of the principal and found out that she attends a different school. "She was worried that the boys would be afraid to talk to her if her mom (the principal) was lurking in the hallways," Obama said. He quickly added: "Which is why my next job will be principal at Sasha and Malia's high school -- and then I'll be president of their college."

Terry Lakin... was just released from prison.... after serving five months of a six-month sentence for refusing to go to Afghanistan.... [Thanks to the President's recalcitrance to provide ordinary personal documents]

A Saudi mother said Sunday she defied a ban on women drivers in the ultra-conservative kingdom by getting behind the wheel for four days without being stopped. Najla al-Hariri, a housewife in her mid-30s, said she drove non-stop for four days in the streets of the Red Sea city of Jeddah "to defend her belief that Saudi women should be allowed to drive." "I don't fear being arrested because I am setting an example that my daughter and her friends are proud of,"

LOUISVILLE, Ky - One child is dead and more than 20 hurt after a school bus crash... bus swerved to miss a deer in the road, then overturned in a ditch... the 29 children aboard were returning from a field trip to Paducah...

France's BEA air crash investigation agency said yesterday it had managed to transfer all the information stored in the devices hauled from the seabed two weeks ago, almost two years after the Airbus A330 vanished.

A man who won $2 million on a Michigan lottery show has told a TV station that he still uses food stamps. ... told WNEM: "If you're going to ... try to make me feel bad, you aren't going to do it."

McDonald's is to change the way customers order its meals in Europe, partly replacing cashiers and the use of banknotes at its 7,000 fast-food restaurants in the region with touchscreen terminals and swipe cards. [Eeew. I have to touch that screen after other people? Eeew!]

The film starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain drew a scattering of harsh, prolonged boos, answered by enthusiastic applause from others at the press screening. Debuting in U.S. theaters May 27, "The Tree of Life" is only Malick's fifth film in a nearly 40-year career, and his first at Cannes since 1979's "Days of Heaven," which earned him the festival's directing prize.

British scientist Stephen Hawking has branded heaven a "fairy story" for people afraid of the dark [Scientist flounders in theological ignorance, people for some reason pay attention to the odd little man far out of his league]

Timothy Ray Brown tested positive for HIV back in 1995, but has now entered scientific journals as the first man in world history to have that HIV virus completely eliminated from his body in what doctors call a "functional cure." Brown was living in Berlin, Germany back in 2007, dealing with HIV and leukemia, when scientists there gave him a bone marrow stem cell transplant that had astounding results. "I quit taking my HIV medication the day that I got the transplant and haven't had to take any since," said Brown, who has been dubbed "The Berlin Patient" by the medical community.

Thirty-four-year-old Reynel Alcaide of Burbank, Illinois, faces federal charges, including interfering with a flight crew, for the incident on May 8. Alcaide was on a Continental Airlines flight from Houston to Chicago when he allegedly tried to open the jet door. The flight was diverted to St. Louis.

SINGAPORE — Terrified passengers aboard a blazing jetliner prayed together before the plane made an emergency landing on Monday... landed back in Singapore "without incident" just before 2 a.m. It said the crew shut down the engine after receiving a "stall warning."..

Schools are helping teenage girls keep abortions secret from their parents. Imogen Neale reports. A mother is angry her 16-year-old daughter had a secret abortion arranged by a school counsellor. Helen, not her real name, found out about the termination four days after it had happened. "I was horrified. Horrified that she'd had to go through that on her own, and horrified her friends and counsellors had felt that she shouldn't talk to us," she said. She had suspected something was wrong, but her daughter insisted her tears were over everyday teenage dramas.

An Ohio woman says a charter school is punishing her daughter for not immediately reporting that she saw two classmates having sex on a school bus and for changing her seat during the bus trip.... told her Friday that her daughter cannot attend the eighth-grade prom or picnic. The mother thinks that's unfair.... the two other students were suspended....

some scientists with expertise in imaging and cancer... question why the TSA won't make the scanners available for independent testing by outside scientists....

"People don't realize the risk we're taking by taking care of these patients," the newspaper quoted Dr. Albert Triana of South Miami as saying. "There's more risk of something going wrong and more risk of getting sued. Everything is more complicated with an obese patient in GYN surgeries and in [pregnancies]," he told the newspaper. It is not illegal for doctors to refuse overweight patients, but it has medical ethicists worried.

Mitt Romney, usually cautious and measured in describing his nascent campaign, allowed himself a minor indulgence in describing to reporters the fundraising call-a-thon that netted his presidential bid $10.25 million here Monday. "That's a terrific start," Romney began, in typical expectation-setting mode, before catching himself: "Actually it's more than just a start — it really gives us the boost that we need at this early stage in my effort."

Bachmann's penchant for earmarks dates back to her days in the Minnesota state Senate. Despite her reputation as a fiscal conservative, from 2001-2006, then-state Senator Bachmann proposed more than $60 million in earmarks... when Republicans sought an earmark moratorium, Bachmann pushed to exclude transportation projects from the ban.... Bachmann may also be plagued by her involvement in a controversial pardon. In 2007, Bachmann wrote a letter requesting a presidential pardon for a convicted drug-smuggler and money-launderer named Frank Vennes. ...

"with allies like that, who needs the left?"

On his radio program Monday morning, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, who knows Gingrich well but is also close to Ryan, reacted angrily to Gingrich's remarks. Referring to Ryan's Medicare plan as "right-wing social engineering" is, Bennett said, "an unforgivable mistake, in my judgment." Bennett went on to say that Gingrich "has taken himself out of serious consideration for the [2012] race." [Full disclosure: I appear on, and sometimes serve as guest host of, the Bennett program.] Gingrich's remarks rankled for three reasons. One, they hurt the Republican plan. Two, they were particularly disdainful; Gingrich didn't just said that he disagreed with Ryan, he referred to Ryan's plan as "right-wing social engineering." And three, they contradicted what Gingrich himself has said about Ryan's budget. To make that last point, Bennett played a clip of an interview he conducted with Gingrich on April 5, barely more than a month ago. At that time, Gingrich was full of praise for the Ryan budget. "Paul Ryan has stepped up to the plate," Gingrich said. "This is a very, very serious budget and I think rivals with [what] John Kasich did as budget chairman in getting to a balanced budget in the 1990s, just for the scale and courage involved…" "Paul Ryan is going to define modern conservatism at a serious level," Gingrich continued on April 5. "You can quibble over details but the general shape of what he's doing will define 2012 for Republicans."

White House hopeful Newt Gingrich called the House Republican plan for Medicare "right-wing social engineering," injecting a discordant GOP voice into the party's efforts to reshape both entitlements and the broader budget debate. [NEWT is SO out]

Police on Tuesday detained 513 undocumented migrants from Latin America and Asia who were crammed into two trucks bound for the United States