ThinkFast: October 16, 2006

“The Justice Department is investigating whether Republican Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania traded his political influence for lucrative lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter.”

A new poll on the health care system in the U.S. finds it is “becoming more precarious to most Americans, who are rattled by rising costs, questions about quality and fears about the future.” Most survey respondents, 56%, said they prefer a universal coverage system.

The Iraq Study Group is considering two options: “withdrawing American troops in phases, and bringing neighboring Iran and Syria into a joint effort to stop the fighting.” “It’s not going to be ‘stay the course,’ ” one participant said. “The bottom line is, [current U.S. policy] isn’t working… There’s got to be another way.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said “his government will not force militias to disarm until later this year or early next year, despite escalating violence in Baghdad fueled by death squads and religious warfare.” He also criticized the U.S.-military led coalition’s overreliance on force in Iraq, calling it the “wrong approach.”

Former President Bill Clinton said this weekend that voters “know something is wrong” about the politics in Washington. “I have never seen the American people so serious,” said Clinton. “I think I know why. People know things are out of whack.” Meanwhile, Bush and Rove are “inexplicably upbeat.”

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia yesterday debated American Civil Liberties president Nadine Strossen, arguing that nothing in the Constitution supports abortion rights or affirmative action. “Someday, you’re going to get a very conservative Supreme Court and regret that approach,” Scalia ominously warned.

The U.S. Coast Guard is proposing to use areas of the Great Lakes to as “permanent, live fire shooting zones for training on their new 7.62 mm weapons, which can blast as many as 650 rounds a minute and send fire more than 4,000 yards.”

“Growing populations and booming economies are threatening fragile coastal areas in East Asia, and the region’s coral reefs could face total collapse within 20 years, according to a new United Nations study.”

And finally: Faced with a “10-foot-tall marijuana forest,” Canadian soldiers were “forced to eliminate the weedy threat” to see Taliban fighters. “But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action.” “Sir,,” one soldier said, “three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I’d say ‘That damn marijuana.’”