Mates on a mission

The headline of the week:

Great tits cope well with warming

[From BBC NEWS | Science/Nature]

Says it all, doesn’t it?

Queensland Health, in northern Australia, was forced to charter a Hercules aircraft from the Defence Force because it had no ambulances or planes big enough to transport a 240kg [530lb] patient.

Even though the woman was deemed well enough to travel by road from Mount Isa to Townsville the Queensland Ambulance Service had no vehicles capable of carrying her.

She was even too large to be safely carried in King Air light aircraft operated by the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

A Defence Force spokesman confirmed a C-130 Hercules was despatched from the RAAF base at Richmond, Sydney after a request from the Queensland government.

The cost to taxpayers was not disclosed but a Hercules aircraft costs about $13,000 an hour to operate, putting the total cost of the nine-hour operation at more than $100,000.

Cartoon by Ken Catalino

Dan Calabrese writes about a Watergate-era Judiciary Chief of Staff who fired Hillary Clinton in 1974 for lies and unethical behaviour.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee.

Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair.

When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

‘Because she was a liar,’ Zeifman said in an interview last week. ‘She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.’

Top stuff!

On Huffington Post today:

A mosaic in remembrance of the 4,000 men and women who died in the war in Iraq — and the two men who would continue this great tragedy.

Click here to see the full (very large) image.

Did Hillary get her lying skills from Bill?