WSJ | Democratic and Republican congressional leaders struck an optimistic tone that they would avert a government shutdown this weekend
after a White House meeting in which lawmakers also stepped up pressure
on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) to allow a long-stalled vote on
Ukraine aid to go forward.
Johnson
is expected to put forward legislation in coming days that would keep
the government fully open, but the details remained uncertain. The
Congress has until Saturday at 12:01 a.m. to fund the departments of
Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Agriculture, Energy and several other
agencies that have been operating on temporary extensions since Sept.
30. The funding for the rest of the federal government expires after
March 8.
The
main holdup has been in the Republican-led House, where Johnson is
managing a rowdy GOP conference that has taken a hard line on spending
and is increasingly skeptical of foreign aid, even as the
Democratic-controlled Senate has been ready for months to move forward.
Emerging
from the meeting, Johnson said he was “very optimistic” about
government- funding talks. Leaders think “we can get to agreement on
these issues and prevent a government shutdown,” he said. He didn’t take
questions.
The
other congressional leaders at the sit-down—Senate Majority Leader
Chuck Schumer, (D., N.Y.), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.)—also sounded upbeat
about avoiding a shutdown.
“We
are making good progress,” said Schumer, adding there was some “back
and forth on some issues that different people want.” But he said, “I
don’t think those are insurmountable.” He indicated that the most likely
path was a short-term spending patch to give negotiators more time to
complete the full fiscal-year bills.
McConnell
said everyone was on the same page regarding the need to keep the
government funded. “I think we can stop that drama right now before it
emerges,” he said.
The
leaders sat down in the Oval Office, with Biden and Vice President
Kamala Harris positioned in armchairs near a crackling fire.
Congressional leaders sat on sofas arranged around a coffee table.
Those gathered for the meeting, including McConnell, pressed Johnson to allow a House vote on a Ukraine aid package.
Central Intelligence Agency Director William J. Burns gave a
presentation laying out the difficult conditions for Ukrainian soldiers
on the battlefield, with troops running out of munitions.
The
Senate passed a $95.3 billion package this month that contained a fresh
round of aid for Ukraine and funds for Israel and Taiwan. Johnson has
declined to put it on the House floor. House Republicans are divided on
Ukraine aid, with a little more than half on the record opposing it in
the past, including Johnson before he became speaker. The Senate bill
would need significant Democratic support to pass.
Schumer
said the discussion on Ukraine was “the most intense I have ever
encountered in my many meetings in the Oval Office.” He said he told
Johnson he would “regret it for the rest of his life” if he blocked assistance for Kyiv.
Johnson “said he wanted to get Ukraine done, and he had to figure out the best way to do it,” Schumer recalled.
In
the meeting, McConnell, a strong advocate for Kyiv, told Johnson the
House’s best path forward on Ukraine is to pass the Senate bill, because
making any changes would further delay the aid. “We have a time problem
here,” he told reporters.
Johnson
said he continued to insist on steps to secure the southern U.S. border
before passing any foreign-aid package. The House “is actively pursuing
and investigating all the various options” on the Ukraine package, he
said, but “the first priority of the country is our border.” Earlier
this year, Republicans blocked a bipartisan Senate deal linking aid to
Ukraine with changes at the border, saying it wasn’t tough enough.
House
Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), speaking with reporters after meeting
with President Biden and other congressional leaders, said he thought a
government shutdown could be averted. Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press
The
White House meeting started shortly before noon and lasted about an
hour. Johnson briefly spoke one-on-one with the president after the
meeting ended. White House officials declined to say what the two men
discussed, other than explaining that the conversation wasn’t scheduled
in advance.
Afterward,
Biden told reporters a “bipartisan solution” was needed to fund the
government. Regarding Ukraine, he said “the need is urgent” for
additional funds. “I think the consequences of inaction in Ukraine are
dire,” Biden said.
Such
White House summits are high-profile opportunities for both sides to
show they are fighting for their parties’ priorities, rather than
nitty-gritty policy negotiations. But the moment was particularly
challenging for Johnson, a formerly little-known conservative who
leapfrogged from the lower ranks of House Republican leadership to
assume the speakership in October, after a group of GOP dissidents ousted his predecessor, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.).
Unlike other senior leaders on Capitol Hill, Johnson has almost no pre-existing relationship with Biden.
For
months, the Republican House and Democratic Senate have deferred on
Congress’s responsibility to set new spending levels and priorities for
the federal government for fiscal year 2024, instead passing a series of
stopgap measures by repeatedly extending spending levels set back in
December 2022.
Johnson has a number of options.
none of which will satisfy all House Republicans. He could seal a deal
with congressional Democrats and try to pass fresh full-year spending
legislation at a two-thirds threshold, bypassing Republican holdouts.
Johnson could put it off a few days or weeks with a short-term
patch—again with Democrats’ help. Or he could try to rely on his narrow
Republican majority to pass another stopgap bill through September,
triggering automatic across-the-board spending cuts; such a move would
be almost certain to lead to a shutdown because any such measure would
be dead on arrival in the Senate.
Beneath the surface of the spending fight,
a tug of war is playing out inside the House Republican conference
between military hawks and conservatives opposed to further spending,
with Johnson caught in the middle. The military hawks want to avoid the
defense cuts that would be triggered if Congress fails to enact new
full-year spending measures by April 30. The critics of more spending
benefit from congressional inaction, because it brings them closer to
the date when across-the-board cuts would be activated under a provision
in last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act.
Some
GOP lawmakers have said in recent days they wouldn’t mind a shutdown,
while other figures including McConnell have warned that shutdowns are
bad policy—and bad politics.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Is Congress doing enough to avoid a partial government shutdown? Join the conversation below.
People
familiar with the negotiations between Johnson and Democrats said that a
key sticking point is how much money to appropriate for the Special
Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.
Democrats are asking for $7.03 billion, more than the $6.3 billion
previously sought by the Senate and requested in Biden’s budget. But the
GOP-led House passed a measure including $6 billion for the program,
which provides food and health assistance.
Another
obstacle, these people said, is a provision to block the VA from
reporting the names of veterans who need help managing their benefits to
a national background-check system used to screen gun purchases.
Democrats want the language to be stripped out.
Even
if those issues get resolved, Johnson must sell the deal to his
factious conference after House lawmakers return Wednesday to
Washington. A House Republican meeting is scheduled for Thursday.
A
Friday conference call for GOP lawmakers did little to assuage raw
feelings as Johnson sought for an hour to manage the expectations of his
conference, fielding more than a dozen questions. The speaker told
lawmakers not to expect a home run or grand slams in the spending bills,
but instead singles or doubles, according to people on the call.
Johnson said such expectations reflected the reality of divided
government, and that some Republicans’ willingness to block routine
procedural votes—essentially paralyzing the floor—had hurt Republicans’
leverage in talks with Democrats.
Some
Republicans complained that he had offered little information about the
substance of any of the spending bills, raising fears that Johnson was
setting the stage for another episode in which he would rely on
Democratic votes to clear must-pass legislation through the House.
So
far, Johnson has passed five major bills at a two-thirds threshold with
the help of Democrats: two previous stopgap spending bills; the annual defense-policy bill; a temporary reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration; and a bipartisan tax bill.
McCarthy’s
willingness to pass a stopgap bill with Democratic votes in September
triggered the rebellion that led to his removal. The same fate could
await Johnson if at least three House Republicans were willing to vote
with all Democrats to fire him from the speakership, given the narrow
majority in the House.
#Israel official states: "I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did."
— May Golan, Israeli Minister of Social Equality & Women's Advancement
AA | Israeli Minister of Social Equality May Golan said she is "proud" of the destruction caused by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.
Speaking during a session held by the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) Wednesday evening, Golan threatened Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, with decapitation or arrest.
"We are not ashamed by saying that we want to see the soldiers of the IDF (Israeli army) catching Sinwar and his terrorists by their eyes and dragging them across the Gaza Strip on their way to the dungeons of the Prison Authority," she said in a widely circulated video of her speech.
"I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did," she said. "No dove and no olive branch, only a sword to cut off Sinwar's head, that's what he will receive from us.”
Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 Hamas attack that Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.
The ensuing Israeli bombardment has killed at least 29,410 victims and caused mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Nearly 70,000 people have been injured.
The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
For the first time since its creation in 1948, Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, the highest judicial body of the United Nations.
An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
nader | Among the puzzling questions that the media chooses to ignore is
asking high government officials why they are exercising the illegal use
of power that violates the rule of law which they are required to obey.
This week, the Veterans for Peace (VFP) made it very easy for reporters to pose questions by sending an open letter (See veteransforpeace.org)
to the Inspector General of the U.S. State Department and Antony
Blinken, Secretary of State, invoking several U.S. statutes that require
the “termination of provision of military weapons and munitions to
Israel.”
Josh Paul, a former senior official in the State
Department’s office charged with reviewing weapon transfers to foreign
countries, said: “The Secretary and all relevant officials under his
purview should take this letter from Veterans for Peace with the utmost
seriousness. It is a stark reminder of the importance of abiding by the
laws and policies that relate to arms transfers.”
What laws are
being violated by the State Department daily as it approves ships and
cargo planes full of weapons of mass destruction to be used in Israel’s
war crimes and genocide against hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s
civilians, mostly children and women?
These are the laws highlighted in the VFP letter:
The Foreign Assistance Act,
which forbids the provision of assistance to a government which
“engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally
recognized human rights.”
Arms Export Control Act,
which says countries that receive US military aid can only use weapons
for legitimate self-defense and internal security. Israel’s genocidal
campaign in Gaza goes way beyond self-defense and internal security.
The U.S. War Crimes Act,
which forbids grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including
wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, wilfully causing great
suffering or serious injury to body or health, and unlawful deportation
or transfer, perpetrated by the Israeli Occupying Forces.
The Leahy Law,
which prohibits the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to
units of foreign security forces where there is credible information
implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human
rights.
The Genocide Convention Implementation Act,
which was enacted to implement U.S. obligations under the Genocide
Convention, provides for criminal penalties for individuals who commit
or incite others to commit genocide
Under these laws, the
State Department has a “Conventional Arms Transfer Policy” which, the
letter notes, “prohibit [U.S. weapons transfers when it’s likely they]
will be used by Israel to commit … genocide, crimes against humanity,
grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, [including attacks
intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians protected]
or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human
rights laws.”
The VFP letter continues, “Dozens of authoritative
complaints and referrals made by hospital administrators in Gaza, as
well as by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Palestine
Authority, South Africa, Turkey, Medicins san Frontieres, UNRWA, UNICEF,
the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Norwegian Refugee
Council and the World Food Programme have confirmed that there is an
ongoing human rights and humanitarian disaster due to Israel’s cutoff of
water and electricity, deliberate destruction of sewage infrastructure
and delaying of aid shipments by Israeli forces.”
If you are
wondering why these laws are not being enforced – the answer is that
individual citizens or groups of citizens do not have any “legal
standing” to sue Secretary Blinken, according to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Only a Committee of Congress, backed by a Senate or House Resolution,
can take the State Department to federal court. That action to enforce
Congressionally passed and enacted laws is not likely to happen in this
lawless, Israeli government-indentured Congress which refuses even to
demand a ceasefire.
Mike Ferner, VFP National Director, observed
“Just as any good soldiers can recognize when they are given an unlawful
order, we believe some State Department staff are horrified at the
orders they’re given and will decide to uphold the law, find the courage
to speak out and demand an end to the carnage.”
There is a
related serious matter, pointed out by international law practitioner,
Bruce Fein who said “The United States has clearly become a
co-belligerent with Israel in its war against Hamas-Gaza Palestinians by
systematically supplying the IDF with weapons and intelligence without
conditions. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, nationals of a co-belligerent state are not regarded as protected persons if their state has customary diplomatic relations with an allied nation [in this case, Israel].”
For
decades, the State Department has had an independent Office of the
Legal Adviser. The present occupant of that post, acting legal adviser
Richard C. Visek has been publicly silent. I am sending the Veterans for
Peace letter to him and asking him to respond to this letter and to the
American people who pay his salary.
caityjohnstone | If
I wanted to increase antisemitism, I imagine I’d do a lot of really
evil stuff under a Star of David flag while adamantly insisting that my
actions are inseparable from the Jewish people and the Jewish faith. I’d
kill children by the thousands and commit genocidal atrocities.
To
really help antisemitism spread I’d do everything I can to make people
less vigilant against it. I’d try very hard to make the warning label of
antisemitism look ridiculous and meaningless — circulate narratives
that people who oppose genocide and ethnic cleansing hate Jews, frame
peace marches as hate crimes, brand calls for justice as calls for the
genocide of Jewish people. I’d falsely cry wolf as many times as
possible in the most self-evidently absurd ways I could think of in
order to desensitize everyone to alarm bells about the real spread of
anti-Jewish hate.
I’d
try to make sure the Jewish soldiers carrying out the atrocities under
the Star of David flag make themselves look as inhuman as possible,
thereby dehumanizing ordinary Jews in the eyes of the public. They
should film themselves doing the most evil things imaginable while
laughing and celebrating their deeds, and then share those videos on
social media. The more viral content they can create with their horrific
acts, the better.
I
suppose I’d also want to research longstanding antisemitic conspiracy
theories and make sure everyone’s helping to feed into them. “Jews
control the media”? I’ll make sure the media are wildly biased in favor
of the Star of David flag. “Jews control the government”? Make sure
governments are bending over backwards to facilitate the crimes of the
Star of David nation. “Child blood sacrifices”? Make sure the war crimes
perpetrated under the Star of David flag are killing as many kids as
possible.
These
steps would create the perfect environment for very real acts of hatred
toward members of the Jewish faith, which I suppose could then be used
to drum up support for further atrocities, thereby making the very real
antisemitism even worse. This would create a self-reinforcing feedback
loop of violence and hatred, causing steadily escalating antisemitism
throughout our society that one day could potentially lead to something
as terrible as history has ever seen.
Of
course I would never do such a thing, because it would be a terrible
evil to inflict upon the Jews of the world. If such a thing happened it
wouldn’t be the fault of the Jews — many of whom are among the most kind
hearted and upstanding people on earth — it would be the fault of the
governments and media outlets who paved the way to such an outcome. Any
power structure which created or fed into such a dynamic would be
unforgivably depraved, and would need to be stopped for the good of
humanity.
thenewyorker | Although the
prospect seems scarcely imaginable now, there was a time, not very long
ago, when American Jews were free to have no particular thoughts or
feelings about Israel. This was true not only of run-of-the-mill Jews
but of intellectuals and writers as well. And it wasn’t merely that
assimilation—an act at once idealistic, pragmatic, and mortifying—was
more pressing to a Philip Roth or a Saul Bellow than one’s relationship,
one way or another, to the nascent Jewish state. It’s that Israel, and
Zionism, didn’t seem like relevant objects of concern. This is no longer
a tenable position. Joshua Cohen’s novel “The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family,”
which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2022, is a revisionist
history that needed little more than a year to lie in wait for its time.
The book is premised on a counterfactual: What if the American Jewish
intellectuals of the interwar period—that is, between the end of the
Second World War and the Six-Day War—had been forced to wrestle with
Zionism? And what if their Zionist challenger hadn’t represented the
ostensibly liberal, humanist, kibbutznik wing of the movement that was
then in ascendance, but the expansionist, chauvinistic, Messianic
contingent then in retreat? These aren’t idle questions.
Cohen’s novel is narrated from the present but takes place in 1959, to coincide with the publication of Roth’s “Goodbye, Columbus,”
a book with only a single glance over its shoulder at Israel—a
reference to the fact that the American Jew, when he thought about
Israel at all, then considered it a place that didn’t have enough trees.
Very loosely based on a personal anecdote relayed to Cohen (who, I
should probably note, is a friend of mine) by the late Harold Bloom,
“The Netanyahus” tells the story of an encounter between Ruben Blum, a
first-generation scholar of taxation—“I am a Jewish historian, but I am not
an historian of the Jews,” he warns, defensively—and Benzion Netanyahu.
At the time, Benzion was a largely unknown and quasi-mystical
interpreter of the Iberian Inquisition—which, for him, represented the
perennial efflorescence of antisemitism as a racialized (and hence
ineradicable) phenomenon. Much later, he became known as the (spiritual
and, incidentally, actual) father of Bibi, the current Israeli Prime Minister,
and as, in Bibi’s retelling, the patriarch of American-Israeli
relations. Blum, as the lone Jew on a rural campus that stands in for
Cornell, is asked by his Waspy, alcoholic department head to host
Benzion for a job talk. Benzion, who believes that the Jewish people can
only be safeguarded in perpetuity by Jewish state power, has become
persona non grata in Israel in part for the extremity of his views—the
territorialist belief, for example, that Jewish sovereignty ought to
extend over “Greater Israel.” He has been invited to interview for a
joint appointment in the college’s history department and its seminary.
The rationale is budgetary, but Benzion, despite his secularism,
exploits the irony of the occasion to try out the kind of end-times
ethnonationalism that will soon drive Religious Zionism and the settler
movement.
globalresearch |The following document pertaining
to the formation of “Greater Israel” constitutes the cornerstone of
powerful Zionist factions within the current Netanyahu government, the
Likud party, as well as within the Israeli military and intelligence
establishment.
President Donald Trump had confirmed in January 2017 his support of Israel’s illegal settlements (including his opposition to UN Security Council Resolution 2334,
pertaining to the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied
West Bank). The Trump administration expressed its recognition of
Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. And now the entire West Bank
is being annexed to Israel.
Under the Biden administration, despite rhetorical shifts in the political narrative, Washington remains supportive of Israel plans to annex the entire Jordan River valley as well the illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Bear in mind: The
Greater Israel design is not strictly a Zionist Project for the Middle
East, it is an integral part of US foreign policy, its strategic
objective is to extend US hegemony as well as fracture and balkanize the
Middle East.
In
this regard, Washington’s strategy consists in destabilizing and
weakening regional economic powers in the Middle East including Turkey
and Iran. This policy –which is consistent with the Greater Israel– is
accompanied by a process of political fragmentation.
Since the Gulf war (1991), the Pentagon has contemplated the creation of a “Free Kurdistan” which would include the annexation of parts of Iraq, Syria and Iran as well as Turkey
According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl,
“the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to
the Euphrates.” According to Rabbi Fischmann, “The Promised Land
extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts
of Syria and Lebanon.”
When
viewed in the current context, including the siege on Gaza, the Zionist
Plan for the Middle East bears an intimate relationship to the 2003
invasion of Iraq, the 2006 war on Lebanon, the 2011 war on Libya, the
ongoing wars on Syria, Iraq and Yemen, not to mention the political
crisis in Saudi Arabia.
The
“Greater Israel” project consists in weakening and eventually
fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of a US-Israeli expansionist
project, with the support of NATO and Saudi Arabia. In this
regard, the Saudi-Israeli rapprochement is from Netanyahu’s viewpoint a
means to expanding Israel’s spheres of influence in the Middle East as
well as confronting Iran. Needless to day, the “Greater Israel” project
is consistent with America’s imperial design.
“Greater Israel” consists in an area extending from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates. According to Stephen Lendman,
“A near-century ago, the World Zionist Organization’s plan for a Jewish state included:
• historic Palestine;
• South Lebanon up to Sidon and the Litani River;
• Syria’s Golan Heights, Hauran Plain and Deraa; and
• control of the Hijaz Railway from Deraa to Amman, Jordan as well as the Gulf of Aqaba.
Some
Zionists wanted more – land from the Nile in the West to the Euphrates
in the East, comprising Palestine, Lebanon, Western Syria and Southern
Turkey.”
The Zionist project has supported the Jewish settlement movement. More
broadly it involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine
leading to the annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the State of
Israel.
The
Project of “Greater Israel” is to create a number of proxy States,
which could include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well
as parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (See map).
“[The
Yinon plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional
superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its
geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding
Arab states into smaller and weaker states.
Israeli
strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an
Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the
balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the
basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called
for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one
for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step
towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the
Yinon Plan discusses.
The
Atlantic, in 2008, and the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal, in
2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the
outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden
Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt,
and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also
all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for
dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and
then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.
“Greater Israel” would require the breaking up of the existing Arab states into small states.
“The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must
1) become an imperial regional power, and
2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states.
Small
here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state.
Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become
Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation…
This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in
Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into
smaller units has been a recurrent theme.” (Yinon Plan, see below)
Viewed in this context, the US-NATO led wars on Syria and Iraq are part of the process of Israeli territorial expansion.
In
this regard, the defeat of US sponsored terrorists (ISIS, Al Nusra) by
Syrian Forces with the support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah constitute a
significant setback for Israel.
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...