Weekly Review

By Claire Gutierrez

An American cattleman.

The Congressional Budget Office announced that a proposed plan to control health-care spending would save only $2 billion over ten years, compared to a proposed $1 trillion in spending, although the agency also pointed out that the legislation could increase the proportion of people receiving insurance through their employers, despite Republican claims to the contrary. Democrats, with control of both the House and Senate, fought among themselves. House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman threatened to move the bill to the floor without a committee vote if the Blue Dogs, seven conservative Democrats, refused to cooperate; Nancy Pelosi vowed that the bill would pass without them. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid simply caved to Republican pressure and announced that there would be no vote on a new health-care bill until after the August recess.^{1 2 3 4 5} G.O.P. Chairman Michael Steele gave a speech at the National Press Club, reciting a Republican memo verbatim. “Slow down, Mr. President,” said the memo and Steele, even though health-care reform has been a national issue since 1912. “We can't afford to get health care wrong.” ^{6 7} A two-year federal corruption investigation resulted in the arrest of 44 New Jerseyites including three mayors, two state assemblymen, and five rabbis. “This is so massive,” said political scientist Joseph Marbach, “It's going to just reinforce the stereotype of New Jersey politics and corruption.”^{8 9 10} Three Ohio adults were charged with child endangerment for allowing rats in their mobile home to chew off the toes of a six-week-old baby girl. ¹¹

It was National Poker Week.¹² Henry Louis Gates Jr., an African-American professor at Harvard, was arrested by Jim Crowley, a white police sergeant, in his Cambridge, Massachusetts home after a passerby saw Gates forcing open his own front door. President Barack Obama said the police had “acted stupidly,” and Sergeant Crowley announced that he had once tried to save the life of (black) Celtics star Reggie Lewis. Neither Obama nor Crowley would apologize, though Obama said that he, Gates, and Crowley may get together at the White House for a beer. Obama did apologize for wearing “dad jeans.” “For people who want a president to look great in tight jeans,” he said, “I'm sorry.”^{13 14} Choreographer Merce Cunningham died. “It gives you nothing back,” Cunningham said of dancing. “No manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold. Nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.”¹⁵ Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys announced that he has cancer. “It's a pain in the ass,” he said.¹⁶ Boise's ombudsman issued a report concluding that the city officer who tasered a man's buttocks used excessive force,¹⁷ and an Albany, New York, man who received an unwanted colonoscopy was awarded $125,000 in compensation for an incident in which doctors, at the request of police, forcibly sedated him, searched his rectum for drugs, then sent him a bill for $6,792 and a diagnosis of hemorrhoids.¹⁸ NASA said that something had probably smashed into Jupiter and left an Earth-sized hole, confirming the discovery that an Australian amateur made with a telescope in his backyard. ¹⁹ An earthquake shifted New Zealand one foot closer to Australia.²⁰

Large areas of India and China were plunged into darkness for nearly 7 minutes during the century's longest total eclipse of the sun. Pregnant women were advised to stay home for fear that the eclipse would harm their unborn babies; tens of thousands waded into the Ganges, because it is auspicious to watch an eclipse while immersed in sacred waters.^{21 22 23 24} John Berry, the businessman who popularized WD-40, died,²⁵ and more than seven 55-gallon drums of gooey oil blobs were removed from Texas beaches.²⁶ The Taco Bell chihuahua died of a stroke.²⁷ Rescuers searching a Michigan home found 110 live dogs (and 150 in freezers),²⁸ and officials in South Korea deployed the world's first cloned sniffer labrador retrievers.²⁹ A five-legged puppy was rescued from a Coney Island freak show after a woman paid $4,000 to outbid sideshow owner John Strong, who had intended to include the puppy in his “Freaks of Nature” show. “Sometimes,” said a rueful Strong, “you just gotta say, 'OK, I still have nine live two-headed animals', and move on.”³⁰ A Chinese couple got married wearing a coat of 1,000 living honeybees. ³¹