The Orange County Register has conducted an investigation on candy sold in California which in many instances has contained dangerous levels of lead. Among the paper’s findings:

• 112 brands of candy – most coming from Mexico – registered dangerous levels of lead over the past decade. In 101 cases, no action was taken against the candy makers. The results were kept confidential, and the candy remained on store shelves.
• Repeated high tests aren’t enough to set off the state’s warning system. California health officials issued seven public-health advisories for candy but have done nothing about 37 brands that tested high multiple times. One, the Tama Roca lollipop, tested high 28 times with no action.
• Even when preliminary tests reveal candy samples with dangerous lead levels, regulators haven’t always followed up with more testing.
• The state makes no effort to notify candy companies in Mexico when their brands test high enough to harm a child. Candy maker after candy maker said they had no idea regulators had found lead in their products.

Reportedly, one in four tests of Mexican candy since 1993 has come up high for lead. Yet the California Department of Health Services claims it doesn’t have the resources or jurisdiction to tackle the problem.
Something isn’t right with this picture.

Literally:

People who wear low-slung pants that expose skin or “intimate clothing” would face a fine of up to $500 and possible jail time under a bill filed by a Jefferson Parish [Louisiana] lawmaker.
State Rep. Derrick Shepherd said he filed the bill because he was tired of catching glimpses of boxer shorts and G-strings over the lowered belt lines of young adults.
The bill would punish anyone caught wearing low-riding pants with a fine of as much as $500 or as many as six months in jail, or both.
“I’m sick of seeing it,” said Shepherd, a first-term legislator. “The community’s outraged. And if parents can’t do their job, if parents can’t regulate what their children wear, then there should be a law.”

Now if that’s not an efficient use of judicial and law enforcement resources, I don’t know what is. [/sarcasm]
Via Say Uncle.

One year ago today I made the first post on the Blogger predecessor to this weblog.
Thanks to everyone who has stopped by since then. And a special thanks to the Rocky Top Brigade for the community and exposure it has provided Resonance this year.

On the question of what will happen in Iraq after June 30, it appears the Bush administration is finally making an incremental movement beyond “We’ll find that out soon.”
Granted, we still don’t know who will be in charge. But in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing the administration has presented a vague outline of what the entity might look like.
At best, what the Iraqi entity will have is only limited sovereignty. Political rhetoric which suggess otherwise is simply misleading. And there’s no indication yet what will happen if there’s a conflict between the Iraqi entity and the occupying American force. That’s a big problem.
Still, it’s more than we’ve seen thus far. Ten weeks to go and counting.

The three Japanese civilians who were recently held hostage in Iraq have gotten quite a reception since they returned to Japan. No yellow ribbons here:

“You got what you deserve!” read one hand-written sign at the airport where they landed. “You are Japan’s shame,” another wrote on the Web site of one of the former hostages. They had “caused trouble” for everybody. The government, not to be outdone, announced it would bill the former hostages $6,000 for air fare.
Beneath the surface of Japan’s ultra-sophisticated cities lie the hierarchical ties that have governed this island nation for centuries and that, at moments of crises, invariably reassert themselves. The former hostages’ transgression was to ignore a government advisory against traveling to Iraq. But their sin, in a vertical society that likes to think of itself as classless, was to defy what people call here “okami,” or, literally, “what is higher.”
Treated like criminals, the three former hostages have gone into hiding, effectively becoming prisoners inside their own homes. The kidnapped woman, Nahoko Takato, was last seen arriving at her parents’ house, looking defeated and dazed from tranquilizers, flanked by relatives who helped her walk and bow deeply before reporters, as a final apology to the nation.
Dr. Satoru Saito, a psychiatrist who examined the three former hostages twice since their return, said the stress they were enduring now was “much heavier” than what they experienced during their captivity in Iraq. Asked to name their three most stressful moments, the former hostages told him, in ascending order: the moment when they were kidnapped on their way to Baghdad, the knife-wielding incident, and the moment they watched a television show the morning after their return here and realized Japan’s anger with them.

Wow. That’s quite a contrast from America culture, where we go the opposite direction and create “heroes” out of people who happen to get captured.