Thoughts on the Phillies: As things stand tonight, the Phillies are 13-6. They are tied with the Colorado Rockies and Cleveland Indians for the best record in baseball.

They have one of the best rotations in the history of the game. A rotation that includes Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, and Roy Oswalt seems more like a child's dream or one of a fantasy team rather than reality.

And so why do I have so much unease about my team? Let's start with the corner outfielders.

The loss of Jason Werth is immeasurable. Two years ago, he hit .268, 39 HR, and 99 RBI. Last year, he hit .296, 27 HR, and 85 RBI-- while also leading the league with 47 2B. Besides his numbers, Werth ran the bases well, played superb defense, but most important of all, hit behind Ryan Howard the last few seasons-- making sure that Howard got some pitches to hit. This season, Howard has so such protection.

Werth is now gone, leaving via free agency to the Washington Nationals.

In the meantime, left fielder Raul Ibanez is a player in decline. In 2009, he hit .272, 34 HR, and 93 RBI. Last year he declined to .275 BA, 16 HR, and 83 RBI, although he also hit 37 doubles. Now at age 39, Ibanez is battling to hit .200, albeit although we are only 17 games into the season. His defense, never stellar, is suffering as well. But still, the team has made no contingency to replace him.

If the team's management is not looking at who can be potentially fill at least one of the team's corner outfielder positions, some fans and sportswriters are. This column on Bleacher Reports discusses who is available. Unfortunately, there is not a lot there.

There are a couple of interesting names bandied around there and elsewhere: Carlos Quentin and Ryan Ludwick. One of them could be a regular outfielder for the Phillies, and bat behind Howard-- giving Howard some protection although not as much as he had when Werth batting behind him. With Quentin or Ludwick filling one outfield position, Dominic Brown (when he comes back from injury), John Mayberry, or Ben Franciso-- we hope-- might fill the other.

The problem is that the team right now is not concerned. Halladay, Lee, Hamels, and Oswalt might yet prove to be the best pitching rotation in the history of the game. But the four aces are making the team complacent.

Ask the Phillies management why they are not more concerned that their two corner outfielder positions are not producing much offense, and their response is that it is less of an issue for them than for other teams because of the four aces. Similarly, ask the Phillies if they are concerned about the prospects of their relief pitching as the season progresses, and they say not to worry because of their aces.

The complacency of having perhaps one of baseball history's best rotation might just turn out to be the team's downfall.

Even Kevin Millwood won't consider signing with the Yankees.

The Life That Christina Taylor Green Would Have Lived

Christina Taylor Green was nine years old when she was killed. The gunman who murdered her and stole her from her family and friends and everyone else who loved her has foreclosed us from knowing what her future would have been otherwise. To contemplate who she should would have become only makes the crime that much more unspeakable, but it seems necessary to do so.

It is important now to consider what the life of Christina Taylor Green may have been, impossible as that may seem, because it is way to honor the life she already lived. It is important because her family has already begun to do so as part of their mourning process as has the community in which she was raised. But perhaps most importantly of all, to consider what her future might have been, and what she and we have lost, might provide some necessary motivation so that we do not let this happen to another child.

In defiance of her murderer, in defiance of those who tolerated the atmosphere that allowed her murder to occur, the murders of five others, and the attempted assassination of Gabby Giffords, we ask: What would Christina have become? Who would she have turned out to be? Would she have had children and grandchildren? Whose lives among us would she have impacted?

Christina was already serving and helping others. She already held elected office at age nine, serving on the student council of her elementary school. She worked for a charity that helped other children, Kids Helping Kids.

The last place her parents thought she would be harmed would be meeting her Congresswoman.

“I allowed her to go, thinking it would be an innocent thing,” Christina’s mother, Roxanna Green, told the New York Times.

At the age of 32, Gabby Giffords had once been the youngest woman elected to the Arizona State Senate, and now she was a Congresswoman. In a state that allowed for and even celebrated the fierce independence and strength of its women, it still was not too long ago that there were few women in elected politics. Gabby was to be a possible role model for Christina, one of the reasons that her parents were hoping that their daughter would be able to spend a few minutes with the Congresswoman.

Christina’s dad, John, told the Times, “I could have easily have seen her as a politician.”

Who is to say that if there has been no gunman in the strip mall, and had Christina had lived, that the events that day might have changed the direction of Christina’s life? Maybe it would have a seminal moment in the life of a child, laying the seeds for her to become involved in public service or public life.

Or perhaps it would have been just another and interesting and playful day in the life of a child that she would have enjoyed and meant little more. The answers are another thing stolen, irreplaceable, by the gunman.

I remember as young child listening to Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King on the radio and then watching them on television. I would listen on phonograph records to speeches made by John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. I was mesmerized. Words to a child (although hardly that much different to a grown up) were as commonplace and necessary as the air we breathe, but here these men were turning them into something else, the most powerful thing in the world. But it was as a child actually going to and watching Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey that changed a life’s course.

Perhaps Christina meeting Gabby Giffords would have changed her life—and who and what she would have become. Or perhaps that is my personal projection.

Her dad has said in various interviews that envisioned her in public life.

But Christina’s father is probably like most dads of young children that I know. On other days, or alternatively even on the same day, they imagine their children has been all grown up doing any number of things.

I have an acquaintance who adopted their three year old from Kazakhstan. His son has his own YouTube video doing a perfect rendition of a song from the Little Mermaid. His dad is convinced, in part because of that performance, that his son will be a politician. Or course the same YouTube performance leads his dad on other occasion to think that his son will be other days be a great actor. And that is only on days when he is not daydreaming his son will be a Olympic snowboard champion, representing, of course, his native Kazakhstan.

Christina was an athlete too. She was already an accomplished gymnast, a swimmer, and dancer. But most remarkably she played second base for the Canyon del Oro Pirates. She was the only girl on the little league team. This last fact makes more sense when learns that her grandfather is Dallas Green, who was the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980 when they won a World Series title, and later also managed the New York Yankees and New York Mets. Her father, John Green, is a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Her other brother, eleven years old, is also named Dallas, and apparently named after their grandfather.

Would Christina have gone on to be a student athlete? Of course she would. But would sports have also become her career as it had for her dad and granddad?

Christina loved animals. At home, she had as pets her very own Geckos, and she also cared for the dogs and cats of her neighbors. She had ambitions, she told her parents, to be a veterinarian. At nine, she even had some of the specifics worked out. She would study at New York University. She had been born back east, in a small Pennsylvania town, so she wanted to go back East. She was born on Sept. 11th 2001, even featured in a book of children born on that day. Even at nine, this was part of her identity, something she took pride in, a reason why sometimes she dressed in red, white, and blue. Would she have studies veterinary medicine at NYU? Is that what would have in part become of her life?

We will know nothing of what would have become of Christina Green had she been able to live her life to a natural expectancy. It is a void not dissimilar to the one now in her family’s heart.

But we know a couple of things for sure: “From the very beginning, she was an amazing child,” her mother told the New York Times. “She was very bright, very mature, off the charts. She was the brightest thing that happened that day.” In short, whatever she would have done with her life would have been amazing.

And whatever that was, her life would have been in some way a life of service.

We can never know for sure but this was a little girl who was going to give and do for others, whether that was her own family or in his community, or even something larger.

While posting about her the last couple of days on my Facebook page, comments like these were not uncommon:

Dawn Frantangelo, the NBC News correspondent, wrote: “Oh my lord in heaven. This is beyond sad and her life and death so emblematic of what the madness has come to. My heart goes out to her family and friends and all the glorious potential she had and symbolized.”

Mary Lou Butler, an administrative assistant to a fire chief in South Kingstown, Rhode Ilsand, wrote:
“I can't help but think that maybe she would have been a future politician to help heal the world. Born on 9/11, just elected to student council...”

We should have done more to protect Christina Taylor Green than we should. Not just because we as a society to be a moral people should do everything we can to protect the lives of our children, but also because we don’t know what she would have contributed to us.

Some people reading this post will argue that nothing could be done, that her murder was a unpreventable act of senseless violence, a tragedy beyond our control. Without arguing that point, but not conceding that assertion, every day we leave at risk the lives of our country’s children.

Take for example Christina’s state of Arizona.

As just one example, in Arizona today, there are more children at this moment of time than ever before who are homeless, many of whom simply thrown out by parents who no longer want to care for them in hard economic times, or did not care in the first place anyway. According to a recent story in the Arizona Republic, more than 24,500 Arizona students were homeless during the past school year. That number is double what it was in 2003, and also some 18% higher than what it was last year.

We know virtually nothing of a single one of these children, who remain largely nameless and invisible to us. If anyone is really outraged about the murder of Christina Taylor Green, there is absolutely nothing to stop them from helping these children. If they want to honor her or her memory, they should. And one way to do it is simply go down to one of the shelters where these kids hang out, say some kind words, ask what they might do for do them, and become involved in their lives in some small way that may even save their lives. Those with means should even consider taking one of them into their own homes.

As a writer, I have seen first hand how this country has allowed too many of its children and young people to be forgotten, unknown, unsafe, and left to die. A couple of years ago I wrote a story about a young Iraqi war veteran who came safely home from war only to be killed violently for wearing a Red Sox jersey in a Texas bar. When I went to watch a stick ball tournament held in a park named in his honor, I learned that several of his friends who he had played with in that same park as a child had died as a result of violence. Those kids died in part because they were marginalized by our society.

One of the first stories I ever covered as a reporter was about the deaths of dozens of mentally retarded children because of abuse and neglect while they were wards of the District of Columbia government. Dozens and dozens of these children died over two decades as the local government, the local news media, law enforcement agencies, medical agencies which were supposed to oversee their care, failed in their responsibilities and did nothing.

Those particular children died because they were marginalized. They were African-African, they were mostly from impoverished and poor families, and they were mentally retarded. They died because we value some human life, including that of some children, over others.

Christina Taylor Green came from a loving, devoted, well to do family; she had a famous grandfather; and she had advantages most children do not have and may never have in their lifetimes.

What do I take away from her killing? Every American child is now at the margins.

James Neal, 1929 to 2010.

From his NYT obit tonight:

In May 1973, Mr. Neal was in private practice in Nashville when he was asked by the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, to join his staff. He worked with Mr. Cox until October 1973, when John W. Dean III, President Richard M. Nixon’s former legal counsel, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and agreed to be a prosecution witness in the cover-up trial of five Watergate figures.

Mr. Cox was subsequently ordered dismissed by Nixon, and his successor, Leon Jaworski, asked Mr. Neal to return for the cover-up case.

Mr. Neal led the prosecution, handling the questioning of the government’s key witness, Mr. Dean, and on Jan. 1, 1975, a jury convicted four men — John N. Mitchell, the former attorney general; H. R. Haldeman, Nixon’s former chief of staff; John D. Ehrlichman, Nixon’s former chief domestic adviser; and Robert C. Mardian, a former assistant attorney general — of covering up the illegal activities of the committee to re-elect Nixon, which had come to light when a White House team of burglars was caught breaking into Democratic offices at the Watergate complex.

Oy Vey.

Sweet.

From the L.A. Times this morning:

The insurance industry is pouring money into Republican campaign coffers in hopes of scaling back wide-ranging regulations in the new healthcare law but preserving the mandate that Americans buy coverage.

Since January, the nation's five largest insurers and the industry's Washington-based lobbying arm have given three times more money to Republican lawmakers and political action committees than to Democratic politicians and organizations.

That is a marked change from 2009, when the industry largely split its political donations between the parties, according to federal election filings.

The largest insurers are also paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobbyists with close ties to Republican lawmakers who could shape health policy in January, records show.

Read the entire story here.

I have a new story up at Reuters this morning, with Nick Carey, about veterans of the Iraqi and Afghan wars with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries:

More than one in four U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars in the state of Virginia say they have suffered a service-related head injury and two thirds reported depression, according to a report by Virginia Tech to be released on Tuesday.

The real numbers may be much higher, according to Mary Beth Dunkenberger, senior program director at the Institute for Policy and Governance at Virginia Tech and author of the report.

In focus groups many veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan said they were afraid to admit to suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during demobilization because it would keep them from their families and hurt their careers, she told Reuters.

"During demobilization troops are kind of on a high and just want to see their families," she said. "If they admit to having PTSD, they know it could be weeks until they see their families so there is a tendency to minimize their symptoms."

"Also career soldiers are reluctant to speak up because they're afraid it could hurt their future prospects in the military," she added, "while those returning to civilian life are afraid that no one will employ them if they're known to suffer from PTSD."

The report was compiled for the Virginia Wounded Warrior Program, which is operated by the Virginia Department of Veterans Services, and was provided in advance to Reuters. It found that 66 percent of veterans of these two wars reported suffering from some form of depression, second only to Vietnam veterans. Ten percent cited a high level of depression. Thirteen percent said they had suffered from post traumatic stress disorder and 26 percent said they had sustained a service-related head injury...

Read the whole story here. Other Reuters stories by Murray Waas: Murray Waas(Editor: Ed Tobin), "Obama, Politicians Decline to Return Obama Money," Reuters, Feb. 13, 2002. Murray Waas(Editor: Martin Howell), "How Allen Stanford Kept the SEC at Bay," Reuters, January 26, 2012. Murray Waas, "How Allen Stanford Kept the SEC at Bay," Reuters, January 26, 2012. Murray Waas(Editor: Jim Impoco),"Tea Party Candidates Only a Democrat Could Love," Reuters, Dec, 27, 2010. Nick Carey and Murray Waas, "Virginia Veteran Report Shows High Depression Rate", Reuters, September 27, 2010.

McClatchy's Washington bureau has this must-read this morning:

WASHINGTON — In June, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case of a Canadian man who contends that U.S. authorities mistook him for an al Qaida operative in 2002 and shipped him to a secret prison in Syria, where he was beaten with electrical cables and held in a grave-like cell for 10 months.

Four years earlier, however, the Canadian government had concluded an exhaustive inquiry and found that the former prisoner, Maher Arar, was telling the truth. Canada cleared Arar of all ties to terrorism and paid him $10 million in damages, and his lawyers say he's cooperating with an investigation into the role of U.S. and Syrian officials in his imprisonment and reported torture.

Arar's case illustrates what lawyers and human rights groups call a shameful trend: While U.S. courts and the Obama administration have been reluctant or unwilling to pursue the cases, countries that once backed former President George W. Bush's war on terrorism are carrying out their own investigations of the alleged U.S. torture program and the role that their governments played in it.

Judges in Great Britain, Spain, Australia, Poland and Lithuania are preparing to hear allegations that their governments helped the CIA run secret prisons on their soil or cooperated in illegal U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects. Spanish prosecutors also have filed criminal charges against six senior Bush administration officials who approved the harsh interrogation methods that detainees say were employed at U.S. military prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and other sites.

Read the entire story here.

The Center for Investigative Reporting and California Watch has a nice story out this weekend:

The water supply of more than two million Californians has been exposed to harmful levels of nitrates over the past 15 years – a time marked by lax regulatory efforts to contain the colorless and odorless contaminant, a California Watch investigation has found.

Nitrates are now the most common groundwater contaminant in California and across the country. A byproduct of nitrogen-based farm fertilizer, animal manure, wastewater treatment plants and leaky septic tanks, nitrates leach into the ground and can be expensive to extract.

The problem affects both rural Californians and wealthier big-city water systems. State law requires public water systems to remove nitrates. Many rural communities, however, don’t have access to the type of treatment systems available in metropolitan areas.

Nitrates have been linked to “blue baby syndrome,” which cuts off an infant’s oxygen supply. Some studies have found connections to certain cancers in lab animals.

The State Water Resources Control Board acknowledges that nitrates are a problem affecting vast regions of California. And the situation is worsening, especially in the Central Valley, Central Coast, and the Los Angeles and Imperial Valley regions. High nitrate levels have already impacted public water system wells in many areas, and the contaminants continue to migrate toward groundwater supplies that could ultimately impact the water supply for millions of additional Californians.

Statewide, the number of wells that exceeded the health limit for nitrates jumped from nine in 1980 to 648 in 2007. Scientists anticipate a growing wave of nitrate problems in some parts of the state if remedial steps aren’t taken.

Read more here. Also, interesting piece on new investigative reporting non-profits at CJR.

Tim Noah in Slate:

No corporation can claim a more vital role in passing and starting to implement the health care reform law than WellPoint, which has a larger customer base (34 million) than any other health insurer in the United States. This is not to say that WellPoint supported health reform; quite the opposite. But as President Obama's May 8 radio address demonstrated not for the first time (text, audio), WellPoint is a uniquely maladroit corporate heavy. If it didn't exist, Obama might have had to invent it.

"[W]hen we found out that an insurance company was systematically dropping the coverage of women diagnosed with breast cancer," Obama said in the address, "my administration called on them to end this practice immediately." The company went unnamed, but it was WellPoint, and news of the practice was broken by Reuters in an April 22 news story by Murray Waas, an investigative reporter who also happens to be a cancer survivor. Waas reported that WellPoint

was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted … every … policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.

This prompted Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to write WellPoint chief executive Angela Braly and pronounce herself "surprised and disappointed." This practice, Sebelius wrote, was "deplorable." Braly replied that it was she who was "disappointed" that both Sebelius and Waas would "grossly misrepresent" the policies of a corporate citizen in whose Indianapolis headquarters hung "a three-story pink ribbon." Braly referred Sebelius to a fact sheet stating that the computer software in question "is used to look at a series of diagnostic codes meant to capture conditions that applicants would likely have known about at the time they applied for coverage. We do not single out breast cancer or pregnancy."

In other words, WellPoint had a computer program able to identify multiple diseases it found especially conducive to rescission (the routine and disgraceful practice by which health insurers comb through the paperwork of seriously ill policyholders in search of some chicken-shit reason to nullify the policy). Why Braly thought this assertion might improve her company's image is hard to guess. When the smoke cleared, WellPoint had been maneuvered into volunteering to end such rescissions as of May 1, nearly five months ahead of the deadline imposed by the new health law (which prohibits rescissions except when the patient commits fraud or "makes an intentional misrepresentation of material fact"). United Healthcare quickly followed suit.

Read his entire column here.

Iceland to be haven for out-of-work investigative reporters and whistleblowers?

I'm not sure what to make of this. From Neiman Labs, Iceland's parliament is attempting to make their country for investigative reporting and publishing. Sounds great in theory, and hard to argue with their grandeur of their goal, but am skeptical-- and not sure what "libel-tourism prevention laws" are.

In any case, below is a good portion of the article.

On Tuesday, the Icelandic parliament is expected to introduce a measure aimed at making the country an international center for investigative journalism publishing, by passing the strongest combination of source protection, freedom of speech, and libel-tourism prevention laws in the world.

Supporters of the proposal say the move would make Iceland an “offshore publishing center” for free speech, analogous to the offshore financial havens that allow corporations to hide capital from authorities. Could global news organizations with a home office in Reykjavík soon be as common as Delaware corporations or Cayman Islands assets?

“This is a legislative package to create a haven for freedom of expression,” Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir confirmed to me, saying that a proposal for comprehensive media law reform will be filed in parliament on Tuesday, and that whistle-blowing specialists Wikileaks has been involved in drafting it. There have been persistent hints of an Icelandic media move in recent weeks, including tweets from Wikileaks and a cryptic message from the newly created @icelandmedia Twitter account.

The text of the proposal, called the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, is not yet public, but the most detailed evidence comes from a video of a talk by Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt of Wikileaks, given at the Chaos Communications Congress hacker conference in Berlin on Dec. 27:

We could just say we’re taking the source protection laws from Sweden, for example…we could take the First Amendment from the United States, we could take Belgian protection laws for journalists, and we could all pack these together in one bundle, and make it fit for the first jurisdiction that offers the necessities of an information society.

Schmitt termed the idea “a Switzerland of bits.” He also mentions that “lawyers in Iceland are working on a bill that will be introduced on the 26th of January,” although it appears the date of introduction has been pushed back to next week. And he cites Iceland as a path to eventually spreading similar laws throughout the EU

A safe haven for leakers and investigators

Jónsdóttir explained that the proposal does not contain final legislation, but would instruct the government to create a package of laws that enhance journalistic freedoms in specific ways. According to an email from Assange (which was then leaked, ironically enough) the amendments would cover source protection, whistleblower protection, immunity for ISPs and other carriers, freedom of information requests, and strong limits on prior restraint. They would also provide protection against libel judgements from other jurisdictions, much as the United States may soon do with the Free Speech Protection Act of 2009.

This package was designed by a working group including representatives from government, civil society, and Wikileaks, which has considerable experience in international media law and censorship issues. The site accepts anonymous submissions of material of public interest, and publishes them without question. Since its its inception in Jan. 2007, Wikileaks has released thousands of sensitive documents, including an investigation of extra-judicial killings in Kenya and more than 500,000 intercepted pager messages from New York on the morning of September 11, 2001. When The Guardian obtained documents alleging the dumping of 400 tons of toxic waste on behalf of global commodities trader Trafigura, they were slapped with a “super-injunction” which prevented them from disclosing not only the contents of the documents, but the existence of the gag order. Wikileaks published the material three days later. Wikileaks is currently down for a fundraising drive but says it will resume operation shortly.

Read the rest of the article here.