ShareThisA high-stakes tug-of-war has begun, triggered by a White House order to consider putting the nation's nuclear weapons under military control for the first time.
The White House Office of Management and Budget wants the Pentagon and the Energy, State and Homeland Security departments, as well as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to evaluate the costs and benefits of taking the weapons out of civilian hands, where they've been since the dawn of the atomic age in 1946.
Then, a similar battle was waged, with the winners being those who felt the possibility of nuclear war would be lessened if civilians built and guarded the most deadly weapons in human history.
Civilian control won, and the Energy department is now in charge of the weapons complex -- which includes the Los Alamos, Sandia and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. The national labs and the lawmakers who represent them are promising a ferocious fight to keep things as they are.
The White House wants the review finished by September.
X ... X ... X
A new calculation of global-warming catastrophe -- the eventual melting of the ice covering West Antarctica -- by Canadian and U.S. scientists projects a sea level rise of nearly 21 feet in Washington.
A quick check of U.S. Geological Survey map elevations show that while a good bit of the capital near the Potomac and Anacostia rivers would be submerged, the White House, at about 60 feet above current sea level, and the Capitol, at 82 feet, would remain dry, as would, at 32 feet elevation, the Lincoln Memorial.
Sites sunk, however, would include the World War II, Korean and Vietnam War Memorials, the Jefferson Memorial, and memorials to naval icon John Paul Jones and the Titanic, itself a victim of submergence.
X ... X ... X
The peanuts/Salmonella crisis has become a social-media saturation op for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which has launched a veritable viral effort to inform us about the bacterial peril.
You can sign up at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site (http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia) to get the latest info on peanut-related recalls and consumer tips via: text messages, e-mail updates, blogs, online videos, Webinars, mobile browsers, podcasts, RSS feeds, widgets, Second Life and Twitter, among other avenues. You can also arrange to send CDC "health e-cards" to family and coworkers.
X ... X ... X
Stop the presses! Eating a lot at fast-food restaurants will make you fatter, especially if you are middle aged.
That's the stunning conclusion of a study released this week by the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. After analyzing the eating habits of more than 2,000 volunteers who filled out two "food intake questionnaires," the researchers found that those who ate more fast-food fare tended to have a higher Body Mass Index score, which is a ratio of weight to height used to gauge body fat in adults.
X ... X ... X
A new study finds that Hispanics continue to be underrepresented in the U.S. military for two main reasons: they have lower rates of graduating from high school and higher rates of obesity.
The RAND Corporation's study suggests the armed services concentrate more efforts on inspiring potential Latino recruits to graduate high school by emphasizing the benefits that go along with military service.
It also suggests the services enroll candidates in weight-reduction programs or relax fitness standards.
Those Hispanics who do make the grade do well in the military, serving longer and being promoted faster than their white counterparts, the study found.
X ... X ... X
More than 1 in 4 U.S. military voters overseas never received their official ballots for the 2008 election, which, while high, was less than the 36 percent who said they never got one in 2006.
A survey of 24,031 overseas and military voters by the Overseas Vote Foundation also found that 40 percent of military voters did not receive their ballots until mid-October or after -- way too late to ensure the votes would reach States-side ballot boxes in time to be counted.
SHNS correspondent Lee Bowman contributed to this column. E-mail Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
Washington Calling
Nuclear Weapons Complex Belongs in DOD
In my opinion the move on the US nuclear weapons complex - National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) - from within the Dept of Energy (DOE) to the Dep of Defense (DOD) would be a good decision and allow DOE to focus on its core mission of energy and basic science. Keep in mind that DOD is under civilian control not the military. The Sec of Defense is a civilian, and NNSA would still be headed by a civilian Under Secretary who would report to the civilian Sec of Defense. A case could be made for keeping the three NNSA national labs - Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia - in DOE since they do a lot more than just nuclear weapons work. However, NNSA program offices in DOE HQ and the other five NNSA sites (Pantex, Nevada Test Site, Y-12, Savannah River, and Kansas City Plant) that just do nuclear weapons production/dismantling and maintenance/testing work should be moved to DOD. Most employees working at all eight NNSA sites would tell you that NNSA is a complete failure and management mess. Both Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore labs have been in steep decline and employee morale non-exsitent since NNSA hired "for profit" companies to run these two labs in the last three years. NNSA's blunder has cost the taxpayers millions of dollars in fees to these companies and cost thousands of employees at these labs their jobs, with little improvement in lab operations to show for the change.