The nurse depicted in this 2006 image was administering an intramuscular vaccination in the left shoulder muscle to a young girl. The nurse immobilized the girl’s arm by clutching it tightly, while the girl held up her sleeve in order to facilitate the procedure. CDC/ Judy Schmidt

Two deadly childhood illnesses are back in the news. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) raised all sorts of flags over the number of measles cases in the United States last year. The number of pertussis cases, also called whooping cough, is also rising rapidly across the nation.

The CDC publishes the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report every week. In that report is the data from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. The latest report is for week 16, ending April 21, 2012.
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The University of Rochester has this on its website:

The University of Rochester envisions itself as a community that welcomes, encourages, and supports individuals who desire to contribute to and benefit from the institution’s missions of teaching, research, patient care, performance, and community service. In a pluralistic culture, that community includes faculty, students, and staff who represent important differences. … The University not only welcomes such differences in the members of its community but, in fulfilling its own missions and in preparing the leaders of tomorrow’s world who will necessarily be operating in an equally wide-ranging environment, it actively seeks to recruit and include them in all aspects of the institution’s operations.

Steven E. Landsburg is a tenured Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester. he authors the blog The Big Questions. In several recent posts, he has defended Rush Limbaugh’s comments about Sandra Fluke and that is the issue that the University seems to have with him. Here is a sample:
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Congresswoman Gabby Giffords has announced that she will resign her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives this week. Her recovery from a gunshot a year ago has caused her to miss 98 percent of the 814 votes in the 112th Congress, according to the New York Times. Few members of the House or Senate make such a decision. In fact, history demonstrates that they will remain in Congress despite being physically incapable of attending or running for another office.

While Gabby Giffords tops the Times’s list of most frequent House absentees, two members running for President are second and third. Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul have each missed over 30 percent of the votes while campaigning.

Examining the Times’s House absenteeism list from October, eighteen members of Congress missed 10 percent or more of the votes. Six were due to the illness of the member. Congressman Bobby Rush of Illinois missed 10.7 percent of the votes for “Constituent work”. NY congresswoman Louise Slaughter missed 10.2 percent of the voters for “Family events”. A spokesman for Don Young of Alaska told the Times that Washington, D,C. is a ten thousand mile round trip. Young has missed 16.2 percent of the votes.

The law is very specific when it comes to absences from the House. Only the illness of a member or in the member’s family is an allowable excuse. Tile 2, chapter 3, section 39 of the U.S. Code permits the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House to deduct pay from members for having been absent other than for the two illness exceptions. The law is not enforced and no member of Congress in recent memory has had their pay reduced for being absent.

Congresswoman Giffords’s resignation will allow the people of her Arizona district to elect someone who can attend the sessions of the House and House committee meetings. Her action is laudatory. It is fair to her constituents who need a representative in Washington and fair to the American taxpayers who pay the salary of every member of Congress.

Newt Gingrich is correct. The Palestinians were invented as a nation.

So what? There are a great many invented nations in the world today. No one suggests that Timor is “invented” or that the bloody Congo is “invented”.

History will not change the present. Israel has to deal with the Palestinians in 2011, no matter who they were in 1948 or 1917 or 800 AD. The harsh reality that everyone resists is that you ALWAYS have to deal with things as they are, and not with things the way you wish they would be.

Obama has muddied the waters in the Middle East very badly. Rick Perry said it best in last night’s debate. “This president is the problem, not something Newt Gingrich said.”

Our priority as a nation should be the support of Israel. They may make mistakes and we can deal with those as allies do, not with public condemnation and petty wrist slapping. No other nation in the Middle East ought to be closer to the United States as Israel.

But, and it is a big but, only Israel and the people who call themselves Palestinians can solve their issues in the end. We can support a process but they are the ones who will have to live with each other. Only those two parties can agree upon a solution that both can support. Our meddling helps nothing.

On the morning of September 12, 1814, a British force of 9,000 men landed at North Point, Maryland, with the intention of marching inland and capturing Baltimore. Brig. Gen. John Stricker, commander of the 3d Brigade of the Maryland militia, was ordered to delay the British advance so that the defensive entrenchments around the city could be completed. The 5th Regiment was assigned the task of holding the American right flank. Despite two hours of artillery and rocket fire, the 5th Maryland stood their ground. After inflicting some 300 casualties, the 5th was ordered to fall back to a new position in front of the Baltimore trenches. The British army, exhausted by the fighting and surprised by the stubborn defense of the Maryland militia, withdrew, while the British navy failed to silence the guns of Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor. Thwarted on land and sea the British force sailed away

On land and at sea, the United States and Great Britain struggled for three years in a war that many historians see as the final chapter of the American Revolution. From 1812 to 1815, the U.S. Navy was on the front lines worldwide as it fought the Royal Navy. At home, Canada and the U.S. were both battlegrounds as capitals burned and the tides of war flowed back and forth. The War of 1812 settled the issue, once and for all, of America’s relationship with Great Britain and established the new nation as quite thoroughly independent.

The approaching bicentennial of the War of 1812 is being commemorated by the United States and Canada in a series of events to be held all along the East Coast, through the Great Lakes and down in New Orleans. The U.S. Navy sees these events as a way to highlight the events of the time and to also feature the modern Navy with its current missions and capabilities.

The first event on the 1812 calendar is a visit to the last battlefield of the war, New Orleans. From January 6-8, 2012, the National Parks Service will remember the 197th anniversary of the battle immortalized by singer Johnny Horton.

As events are developed, they will appear on the Official War of 1812 Bicentennial website. The Navy has assisted in the development of an online game titled A Sailor’s Life for Me! which allows the player to experience the life and times of a sailor in 1812.