Republicans in Michigan, Oklahoma move to adopt Arizona-like anti-immigration lawsBY Stephanie Gaskell
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Arizona's immigration law draws protests around the state Capitol. Fed up with the lack of federal leadership on illegal immigration, Republican state legislators from across the country are proposing their own crackdowns.Michigan State Rep. Kim Meltzer proposed a law modeled after Arizona granted cops the authority to determine immigration status when investigating a crime."We have borders in place for a reason," she said.In Oklahoma, state Rep. Randy Terrill said he wants to enact legislation similar to Arizona's and "go beyond it" - by making penalties tougher for illegal immigrants caught with firearms."The states have to act because the federal government has refused to enforce our nation's borders and turned every state into a border state," he told the Washington Times.South Carolina state Rep. Eric Bedingfield is pushing to make it illegal to hire and pick up workers on the side of the road.Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe said the Obama administration has given states no other choice."With the federal government currently AWOL in fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities to protect American lives, property and jobs against the clear and present dangers of illegal-alien invaders, state lawmakers ... are left with no choice but to take individual action to address this critical economic and national security epidemic," he said.Similar legislation is being considered in Minnesota, Maryland, North Carolina, Texas, Missouri, Nebraska, Utah and Idaho.Scott McInnis, a GOP gubernatorial…

  Aspirin does more harm than good in healthy people: research Healthy people who take aspirin to prevent a heart attack are doing themselves more harm than good, researchers have said.   By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor in Barcelona
 
Millions of people - including a substantial number of the "worried well" - take a daily dose of the drug in the belief it will keep them healthy. But at a conference for leading doctors, British scientists said they have found that for healthy people taking aspirin does not significantly reduce the risk of a heart attack.   Related Articles Blood thinning drug 'can trigger strokes in dialysis patients'
Aspirin 'reduces chances of dying from colon cancer' Taking aspirin to ward off heart attack 'risks stomach bleeding' Aspirin 'can cut cancer risk'Aspirin may cause bleeding in the brain Five-in-one pill 'halves' heart attack risk At the same time they found it almost doubles the risk of being admitted to hospital due to internal bleeding. The findings show that for otherwise healthy people the risks of taking aspirin outweigh the benefits. The doctors stressed that patients who had already suffered a heart attack should continue to take the drug. It has been suggested that aspirin could be included in a so-called 'polypill' with an anti-cholesterol statin and a blood pressure drug which could be taken by everyone aged over 50. Experts said substantial numbers of 'worried well' take aspirin as a 'just in case' measure believing that because it has been around for such a long time it is completely safe. The results of a study carried out in Scotland and presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona has added to the growing…

 Obama's Haiti is not Bush's KatrinaThe idea that Haiti's earthquake equals 'Obama's Katrina' is a pernicious nonsense. Haiti is not the 51st state of AmericaDan Kennedy guardian.co.ukArticle historyHaiti earthquake: destroyed housing in Port-au-Prince. Photograph: Logan Abassi/Getty ImagesWriting about how media coverage of Haiti's earthquake catastrophe will affect Barack Obama's political fortunes makes me feel sufficiently unclean that I may have to take a shower as soon as I file this. So first allow me to suggest that you contribute to one of the relief agencies responding to this terrible human tragedy.Now let us begin. Not surprisingly, the earthquake brought out the worst in our worst, both present (talk-radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh) and past (televangelist Pat Robertson). Michael Tomasky deconstructs Limbaugh's obsession with race and Robertson's obsession with Satan. But reprehensible though their rhetoric may be, they are not going to shape the larger political conversation.In fact, the truly pernicious commentary has centred around a matter of false equivalence that, if taken seriously, puts Barack Obama in a no-win situation: the idea that just as George Bush failed the test of Hurricane Katrina, so must Obama pass the challenge of Haiti.It sounds almost too ludicrous to believe anyone would advance such a notion, yet it's all over the intertubes today. Most explicit is Newsweek and MSNBC pundit Howard Fineman, who posts a blog entitled: "Why Hurricane Katrina Looms Over Obama's Relief Efforts in Haiti".Fineman prattles on as though Haiti – the second-poorest country in the Western hemisphere – were simply the 51st state, enmeshed in the same brew of race and politics as Louisiana. "Obama and his aides understand all of this," Fineman writes, secure in his belief…

Abid Katib/Getty Images  Weighing Crimes and Ethics in the Fog of Urban Warfare By STEVEN ERLANGER JERUSALEM — Your unit, on the edges of the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya, has taken mortar fire from the crowded refugee camp nearby. You prepare to return fire, and perhaps you notice — or perhaps you don’t, even though it’s on your map — that there is a United Nations school just there, full of displaced Gazans. You know that international law allows you to protect your soldiers and return fire, but also demands that you ensure that there is no excessive harm to civilians. Do you remember all that in the chaos? You pick GPS-guided mortars, which are supposed to be accurate and of a specific explosive force, and fire back. In the end, you kill some Hamas fighters but also, the United Nations says, more than 40 civilians, some of them children. Have you committed a war crime? Whatever the military and political results of Israel’s 21-day war against Hamas in Gaza, Israel is again facing serious accusations and anguished questioning over the legality of its military conduct. As in Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the popular perception abroad of how Israel fights, and hence of Israelis, may prove to be more lasting than any strategic gains or losses. The televised images of devastation in the crowded Gaza Strip and the large asymmetry in deaths, especially of civilians, have created an uproar in the Arab world and the West reminiscent of 2006. A plethora of Western foreign ministers,…

 Has Obama failed the Invictus leadership test?Invictus has a message, according to Clint Eastwood – and it's that Barack Obama is no Nelson MandelaMorgan Freeman and Matt Damon in Invictus (2009)What a deceptively slippery customer Clint Eastwood can be at times. There we were thinking his latest film, the Oscar-nominated Invictus, was simply a burnished monument to the magnificence of Nelson Mandela when it turns out to be something more besides. Invictus, it transpires, is also a handy yardstick against which to measure the current US president. And sad to say he comes up wanting."You can win an election, but does that mean you can govern a country?," mused Eastwood in a recent interview, comparing the achievements of Barack Obama to that of his movie hero. "Up until now [Obama] hasn't shown much strength of leadership."One might have thought Obama's year could not get any worse, what with the election of that guy with the truck, the resurgence of Sarah Palin and that song about how the people have finally got wise to his trick of slaughtering their grandparents in the name of universal health care. Yet here comes the former Dirty Harry, shaking his head in solemn disapproval and channelling the spirit of the late Lloyd Bentsen to argue that he knows Nelson Mandela and that the president is no Nelson Mandela. Fortunately he also extends an olive branch. "I hope he sees my film and understands the message," Eastwood added.Assuming that Obama is too busy right now, the message in a nutshell runs something like this. Fresh out of Robben Island, Mandela inherits a divided country and proceeds to knit it together through the medium of rugby. South Africa lifts the 1995 World Cup, white cops dance with black kids in the street…