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Editor's Note: Michael J. Breus is a clinical psychologist and a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. He writes about sleep issues on his website, TheSleepDoctor.com. Any opinions expressed here are solely his.
Story highlights
Expert: Electronics disrupt sleep and alter sleep-related hormone levels
Children sleep less, have lower quality of sleep with gadgets in the bedroom, studies say
Improve sleep by removing electronics from bedroom before going to bed
People love to use their electronic devices in the bedroom. With so many small gadgets providing news articles, e-books and games in one tiny package, who can blame them?
National Sleep Foundation polls show approximately 95% of Americans use an electronic device within an hour of going to sleep. In 2013, the foundation found that 89% of adults and 75% of children have at least one electronic device in their bedrooms. Televisions were the most common; MP3 players, tablets and smartphones were also popular.
And if you use your smartphone as an alarm clock, chances are you're literally going to bed with some form of electronic device.
Phones, tablets becoming more popular in the bedroom than TV
Technology can interfere with a good night's sleep in several ways. The biggest problem is these devices are often left on at night and emit light and noise that can disrupt sleep cycles and alter sleep-related hormone levels. The light from electronic screens can trick your body into thinking it's daytime and stop it from producing melatonin, the hormone that helps regulate sleep.
News articles and games can also keep your mind very active, making it difficult to relax and fall asleep. A 2013 study published in the Behavioral Sleep Medicine journal found that computer and mobile phone use before bed was positively correlated with insomnia.
As long as your phone is on and not in airplane mode, it's communicating intermittently with nearby cell towers, emitting low levels of radiation. While the effects of cell phone radiation aren't well understood, a 2008 study found people exposed to mobile radiation for three hours before going to sleep had more trouble falling into and staying in a deep sleep.
Trouble sleeping? Maybe it's your iPad
The result is later bedtimes and a higher incidence of waking during the night. It's not surprising, then, that research shows children with electronic devices in their bedrooms sleep less and experience lower-quality sleep than children without gadgets. Sleep quality suffers most dramatically when devices are regularly left on during the night. And the higher the number of gadgets, the lower the quality of sleep.
Are your kids getting enough sleep?
So what to do?
One solution is an electronic curfew. One hour before bed, remove all electronic devices from the bedroom.
Some sleep specialists suggest no TV right before bed, but some people feel they need the distraction of TV to fall asleep. Those people can try using a TV-timer – featured on most modern TVs – which will automatically turn off the television after a chosen period.
If you use your phone as an alarm clock, consider switching to an "old school" alarm clock with no digital lights. It will not be as disruptive to sleep.
And while it might be tempting to track your sleep using an app on your tablet or phone, it's probably best to leave these devices in the living room. You'll get a better night's sleep, even if you don't have the data to prove it.


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NOONER : Matte brownish pink shade.
LIAR : Satin pinkish mauve
FACTORY : Satin brown
MUGSHOT : Satin cool brown
DARKSIDE : Satin brownish taupe
BLACKHEART : Shimmery black shadow with reddish/coppery glitters
Cantik, warna2 cmni mmg fav. tak dapat nak beli la sis Sabby. xde sephora kt melaka ni. kena beli online je la. itupun xtau sephora murah ke atau kt online murah lg. huhuReplyDelete
Yeay, i love it too! Lepas dah swatch dkat sephora haritu, rasa macam tak boleh tunggu, terus beli! Hahaha :DReplyDelete
kannnn... ahahaha tidur malam pun lena. wakakakaDelete
u got the palette, lucky you ~ the swatches r so niceeeReplyDelete
thanks for reading dear! :)Delete
UD3 swatches are flying everywhere >.< Sarawak lagi la xde Sephora haha :vReplyDelete
tu la.. sephora semua kt kl yang banyak.. u can ask anyone to buy it for u then post it there pun ok.. ;)Delete
Would you buy it? My answer is ......... YES YES YES! Hahaha... Masa UD umumkan di IG, terus tertarik sebab warna cantik sangat. Bila tengok Sis Sabby swatches lagi la terpikat. Semua warna fav saya sebab saya jenis makeup natural. Hehe. Akan jadi wishlist 2014 nanti. Satu saja kecewa sikit iaitu primer dalam kadboard tu. Kalau packaging macam primer NAKED 1 lagi ok. Hanya pendapat saja. ;)ReplyDelete
the colours are really nice! but RM188 abit too pricey for me :(ReplyDelete
yeah i know, it is pricey. But cannot tahan!! >.<Delete
Sweet boyfie of yours! :D And I just can't wait to get it in my hand too!!!ReplyDelete
hahaha sweet sangat! :P yeahhhh go and get it babe, you will love it!Delete
how i wish nak beli! but Ipoh too takde sephora..ReplyDelete
huhu maybe turun kl nanti bole beli? ;)Delete
i like to get myself an Urban Decay palatteReplyDelete
yeah u should, best! ;)Delete
wishlist 2014...must get one for myself...hehehe :)ReplyDelete
hihi bagus2, palette ni mmg best. heeeee :DDelete
The colours they they've put together in this palette is perfection! I've been waiting until UD come up with a better version of the Naked series for while and this is amazing!ReplyDelete
I was never really into the original Naked and Naked 2 coz to me they look almost the same. And this Naked 3 is totally different and that's why I need to get it. they are so gorgeous!Delete
Hye Sabby... u rasa masa ni ada stok x UD naked 3 tu?ReplyDelete
Hmmm i rase takde lagi, i think mesti makan masa nak tunggu shipping semua. If I ade singgah sephora i will check it out and announce in my FB page ok? :)Delete
Tadi i pergi Sephora. Belek2 je dulu. Tapi warna dia mmg sgt cantik. Esok lepas kerja, definitely, i akn terpacak kt Sephora. Tak lena tidur dibuatnya. Hehehe..ReplyDelete
hihi mmg cantik sangat! totally worth your money! :)Delete
OMG!nak pengsan tgk harga kak sabb!heheReplyDelete
This palette is worth 48 euros in Sephora France. If it retails at RM188 I guess that's quite a good price since the money conversion would actually cost a minimum of RM200! Right? I've been wanting to buy this palette but resisted because I have better stuff to spend my money on. So right now, I'm just waiting for the summer sale and see if I can get good discount on that palette. Btw, do you have a tutorial using this palette? :)ReplyDelete
Yup I have 3 tutorials using the paletter, go to this link http://sabbyprue.blogspot.com/search/label/Makeup%20Tutorial
Thanks for reading! :)
The colour payoff is great! I wish i could have this but its wayy to expensive for a student like me T__T hht://azwaa.blogspot.comReplyDelete
It's okay, save up slowly and you can get one! :)Delete
Wahhh .. earth colour!! best lah. Kak ella dah lama dengar tapi tak pernah cari lagi. lepas ni nak gi carik.ReplyDelete
cari kak ella, mmg worth it if you like these types of shades. :)Delete
wow ! all of them is highly pigmented , contrast with the fake oneReplyDelete
yup, the original is definitely better than the fake one dear!Delete

subset: commoncrawl


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Have you ever drank one of those hard apple ciders? I hadn't but have seen the commercials for them. Over the 4th of July, someone had them in cooler, so I dug in and tried my first one. I must say it was only "OK", but I thought that I could figure something to make
You are here: Home / Archives for Independance pass


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I'd be pig-biting mad but I can't afford a hog – or a new set of dentures!
The Communist-in-Chief says his new plans have saved thousands of jobs, and he's telling the truth (for once!). But they're all government jobs!
Those idiots can't get fired anyhow. And government jobs aren't even real jobs. More like life long vacations in an ugly office full of stupid people.
As the great Ronald Reagan used to say, "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem." We pay government bureaucrats almost half our money to do stuff we're perfectly capable of doing ourselves for free, like losing important pieces of paper and not answering the phone.
That's why the real way to fix the economy is to cut our taxes, and we can cut our taxes by getting rid of all those crazy do-nothing government jobs.
First, let's shut down NASA. I call it NO-SAW. We're been at it forty years, and a jillion dollars later, NASA hasn't come up with one single solitary blue, bigheaded spaceman. All we've got for our money is Tang and a box of rocks.
After all those neat movies I watched as a kid, the real outer space turned out to be damn boring – just boulders in the sky with nothing on them. Not even Zsa-Zsa Gabor in a lime green mini skirt and pointy brassiere.
Some mice get a really pricey plane ride twice a year, assuming they don't get blown up. OK, OK – the Earth looks really pretty from far away and you can float up in space. We get that.
If I was Teleprompter Jesus, I'd tell NO-SAW they've got 24 hours to show us some little green men or every McDonald's in the country's gonna have rocket scientists asking, "You want fries with that?"


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Johnny Carson, King of Late Night, Dies
LOS ANGELES – Johnny Carson, the "Tonight Show" TV host who served America a smooth nightcap of celebrity banter, droll comedy and heartland charm for 30 years, has died. He was 79. Carson "passed away peacefully" early Sunday morning and was surrounded by his family, his nephew, Jeff Sotzing, told The Associated Press.
Sotzing would not give further details, including the time of death or the location.
The boyish-looking Nebraska native with the disarming grin, who survived every attempt to topple him from his late-night talk show throne, was a star who managed never to distance himself from his audience.
His wealth, the adoration of his guests ó particularly the many young comics whose careers he launched ó the wry tales of multiple divorces: Carson's air of modesty made it all serve to enhance his bedtime intimacy with viewers.
"Heeeeere's Johnny!" was the booming announcement from sidekick Ed McMahon that ushered Carson out to the stage. Then the formula: the topical monologue, the guests, the broadly played skits such as "Carnac the Magnificent."
But America never tired of him; Carson went out on top when he retired in May 1992. In his final show, he told his audience: "And so it has come to this. I am one of the lucky people in the world. I found something that I always wanted to do and I have enjoyed every single minute of it."
His personal life could not match the perfection of his career. Carson was married four times, divorced three. In 1991, one of his three sons, 39-year-old Ricky, was killed in a car accident.
Nearly all of Carson's professional life was spent in television, from his postwar start at Nebraska stations in the late 1940s to his three decades with NBC's "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson."
Carson choose to let "Tonight" stand as his career zenith and his finale, withdrawing into a quiet retirement that suited his private nature and refusing involvement in other show business projects.
In 1993, he explained his absence from the limelight.
"I have an ego like anybody else," Carson told The Washington Post, "but I don't need to be stoked by going before the public all the time."
He was open to finding the right follow-up to "Tonight," he told friends. But his longtime producer, Fred de Cordova, said Carson didn't feel pressured ó he could look back on his TV success and say "I did it."
"And that makes sense. He is one of a kind, was one of a kind," de Cordova said in 1995. "I don't think there's any reason for him to try something different."
Carson spent his retirement years sailing, traveling and socializing with a few close friends including media mogul Barry Diller and NBC executive Bob Wright. He simply refused to be wooed back on stage.
"The reason I really don't go back or do interviews is because I just let the work speak for itself," he told Esquire magazine in 2002 in a rare interview.
The former talk show host did find an outlet for his creativity: He wrote short humor pieces for The New Yorker magazine, including "Recently Discovered Childhood Letters to Santa," which purported to give the youthful wish lists of William Buckley, Don Rickles and others.
Carson made his debut as "Tonight" host in October 1962. Audiences quickly grew fond of his boyish grin and easy wit. He even made headlines with such clever ploys as the 1969 on-show marriage of eccentric singer Tiny Tim to Miss Vicki, which won the show its biggest-ever ratings.
The wedding and other noteworthy moments from the show were collected into a yearly "Tonight" anniversary special.
In 1972, "Tonight" moved from New York to Burbank. Growing respect for Carson's consistency and staying power, along with four consecutive Emmy Awards, came his way in the late 1970s.
His quickness and his ability to handle an audience were impressive. When his jokes missed their target, the smooth Carson won over a groaning studio audience with a clever look or sly, self-deprecating remark.
Politics provided monologue fodder for him as he skewered lawmakers of every stripe, mirroring the mood of voters. His Watergate jabs at President Nixon were seen as cementing Nixon's fall from office in 1974.
He made presidential history again in July 1988 when he had then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton on his show a few days after Clinton came under widespread ridicule for a boring speech at the Democratic National Convention. Clinton traded quips with Carson and played "Summertime" on the saxophone. Four years later, Clinton won the presidency.
Carson dispatched would-be late-night competitors with aplomb. Competing networks tried a variety of formats and hosts but never managed to best "Tonight" and Carson.
There was the occasional battle with NBC: In 1967, for instance, Carson walked out for several weeks until the network managed to lure him back with a contract that reportedly gave him $1 million-plus yearly.
In 1980, after more walkout threats, the show was scaled back from 90 minutes to an hour. Carson also eased his schedule by cutting back on his work days; a number of substitute hosts filled in, including Joan Rivers, David Brenner, Jerry Lewis and Jay Leno, Carson's eventual successor.
Rivers was one of the countless comedians whose careers took off after they were on Carson's show. After she rocked the audience with her jokes in that 1965 appearance, he remarked, "God, you're funny. You're going to be a star."
"If Johnny hadn't made the choice to put me on his show, I might still be in Greenwich Village as the oldest living undiscovered female comic," she recalled in an Associated Press interview 20 years later. She tried her own talk show in 1986, quickly becoming one of the many challengers who could not budge Carson.
In the '80s, Carson was reportedly the highest-paid performer in television history with a $5 million "Tonight" show salary alone.
His Carson Productions created and sold pilots to NBC, including "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes." Carson himself made occasional cameo appearances on other TV series.
He also performed in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, N.J., and was host of the Academy Awards five times in the '70s and '80s.
Carson's graceful exit from "Tonight" did not avoid a messy, bitter tug-of-war between Leno and fellow comedian David Letterman. Leno took over as "Tonight" host on May 25, 1992, becoming the fourth man to hold the job after founding host Steve Allen, Paar and Carson.
Carson was born in Corning, Iowa, and raised in nearby Norfolk, Neb. He started his show business career at age 14 as the magician "The Great Carsoni."
After World War II service in the Navy, he took a series of jobs in local radio and TV in Nebraska before starting at KNXT-TV in Los Angeles in 1950.
There he started a sketch comedy show, "Carson's Cellar," which ran from 1951-53 and attracted attention from Hollywood. A staff writing job for "The Red Skelton Show" followed.
The program provided Carson with a lucky break: When Skelton was injured backstage, Carson took the comedian's place in front of the cameras.
Producers tried to find the right program for the up-and-coming comic, trying him out as host of the quiz show "Earn Your Vacation" (1954) and in the variety show "The Johnny Carson Show" (1955-56).
From 1957-62 he was host of the daytime game show "Who Do You Trust?" and, in 1958, was joined for the first time by McMahon, his durable "Tonight" buddy.
A few acting roles came Carson's way, including one on "Playhouse 90" in 1957, and he did a pilot in 1960 for a prime-time series, "Johnny Come Lately," that never made it onto a network schedule.
In 1958, Carson sat in for "Tonight Show" host Jack Paar. When Paar left the show four years later, Carson was NBC's choice as his replacement.
After his retirement, Carson took on the role of Malibu-based retiree with apparent ease. An avid tennis fan, he was still playing a vigorous game in his 70s.
He and his wife, Alexis, traveled frequently. The pair met on the Malibu beach in the early 1980s; he was 61 when they married in June 1987, she was in her 30s.
Carson's first wife was his childhood sweetheart, Jody, the mother of his three sons. They married in 1949 and split in 1963.
He married Joanne Copeland Carson in 1963; divorce came in 1972. His third marriage, to Joanna Holland Carson, took place in 1972. They separated in 1982 and reached a divorce settlement in 1985.
On the occasion of Carson's 70th birthday in 1995, former "Tonight" bandleader Doc Severinsen, who toured with musicians from the show, said he was constantly reminded of Carson's enduring popularity.
"Every place we go people ask `How is he? Where is he? What is he doing? Tell him how much we miss him.' It doesn't surprise me," Severinsen said.
The brisk sale of the video collection "Johnny Carson: His Favorite Moments From The Tonight Show," released in 1994, offered further proof of his appeal.
He won a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1992, with the first President Bush saying, "With decency and style he's made America laugh and think." In 1993, he was celebrated by the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors for career achievement.
Rest In Peace, Johnny! Thanks for everything!!!!
Johnny Carson, King of Late Night, Dies


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In 2009, brainbox playwright Lucy Prebble took the byzantine world of global finance to the West End and Broadway with her ebullient satire 'Enron'. Now she follows it with a play about something even more complicated. 'The Effect' delves into the mysteries of the human brain: of love, depression, neuroscience and the limits of modern medicine. And Prebble pulls it off with assurance, ably abetted by 'Enron' director Rupert Goold, designer Miriam Buether and an excellent cast of four.
'The Effect' lacks 'Enron's demonic pizzazz, but it's just as smart and rather more moving. It tickles our cerebellums in the first half, before tugging expertly on whatever chunk of grey goo is responsible for emotions in the second.
Buether's immersive in-the-round round set is a mocked-up clinical testing centre in which we encounter cocky drifter Tristan (Jonjo O'Neill) and prim, troubled Connie (star turn Billie Piper in a head down, ego-free performance) as they prepare to be the subjects of a paid clinical trial of an antidepressant called RLU37. Confined for weeks on end, the two start to fall for each other, much to the consternation of Connie, who has a boyfriend. But is it real? Or is it just the drugs? And are they both actually taking the drugs?
Prebble poses these questions with puckish wit in a first half in which balances Piper and O'Neill's enjoyably feisty flirtation with Goold's intense evocation of the lab's feverish rigour.
But it's the second half where 'The Effect's brilliance becomes apparent, as the emotional focus of the story shifts over to the couple's supervising doctor Lorna (Anastasia Hille). Hille takes this clinical psychologist, who suffers from depression herself, on an extraordinary arc from faceless authority figure to an almost Cassandra-like tragic heroine, full of knowledge about her condition but unable to alter it. It is a tour de force performance from Hille, and gives 'The Effect' a heart as well as a brain.
But a brain it does have, and Prebble's play lucidly cuts through all the stats it throws up and questions it mischievously poses. To begin to understand the human mind, she suggests, it's crucial to realise that even neuroscientists know very little about it. As Lorna says to her amoral boss Toby (the reliably great Tom Goodman-Hill): 'If your brain was simple enough for you to be able to understand, you'd be too simple to understand it.'


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I mentioned in my last post that the Turn is the point in the act where the magician executes his illusion, leaving his audience captivated and in wonderment. Sometimes the magician will even make something disappear in to thin air. Funnily enough, this past week I had a little bit of everything I just mentioned!
Monday was the day of pre-con sessions and I was fortunate enough to be able to attend Brian Knight's (Blog | Twitter) session entitled ETL Bootcamp: End to End SSIS. What better way to kick off my BI career than to learn SSIS from the master himself (also doesn't hurt that he's my boss!). I, and everyone else in the audience, thought this was just going to be Brian presenting this session. He started off talking about doing the day's demoes using the standard AdventureWorks databases when all of a sudden Patrick LeBlanc (Blog | Twitter) stood up in the back of the room and very boisterously did not agree with going that route. He asked the audience if they wanted to see something else, something not so boring, as he approached the stage…
Surprise! This was going to be a joint session starring Brian AND Patrick using data collected from the NFL instead! Both guys donned their respective team jerseys, Brian in Jaguars garb and Patrick in Saints. They claimed one half of the room for themselves and this session was going to be a football game and the audience were the team! As they progressed through their demoes they would ask the audience questions that were worth certain amount of points as in American football (i.e. 3 points for a field goal, 2 for a safety and 7 for a touchdown). The whole session was REALLY entertaining and chock full of SSIS awesomesauce (and for what it's worth, my side won ;-P )
That night was the PASS first-timer's session (that's right folks, up until this year I was a Summit n00b) at which I got to meet some great folks such as business intelligence guru Stacia Misner (Blog | Twitter) and her lovely daughter Erika (Blog). Pretty cool fact I learned, they work together! The family that queries together stays together. I also got to finally meet Douglas McDowell (Blog | Twitter). It's an odd feeling meeting someone face to face for the first time that you've been working/volunteering with over the course of a few years and feel like you already know each other through your interaction.
The next few days were a blur of ridiculously, awesome, inexplicable, can't-put-into-words-but-I'll-do-my-hardest-to-try chain of networking, learning and just plain having fun! I'll use my last post in this series, the Prestige, to give a synopsis of everything but all I can say is that PASS Summit is worth every penny you can muster to get there!
So when I started this post series I did say this was going to be a magic –themed post series. What's a magic trick without a disappearing act? Well unfortunately we're at the part of the trick where an object disappears (aka "the Turn"). In this case what disappeared was my laptop as I had left it unattended briefly at a Starbucks in Seattle and "whoosh", it was gone like Keyser Soze. After coming to grips with the fact that I'd never see my stuff again, I went on attending the conference hoping to make the best of the rest of the week. For what it's worth, trying to live blog/tweet from an iPhone is an art form and apparently my ability to write messages at blazing speed on my phone took Michelle Ufford (Blog | Twitter) by surprise!
Anywho, so the laptop disappeared but fear not! After all, this is a magic show and strange and magical things will and do happen. In tomorrow's post you'll hear the exciting conclusion of how I actually managed to get it back! Stay tuned for the exciting finale, or Prestige if you will!


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David Zucker, Pat Proft, Priscilla Presley, and moderator Andy Richter appear on Saturday February 9, 2013 at 1:00 pm!
Press Release:
It's the 25th Anniversary of the funniest police procedural parody of all time! Based on the short-lived but beloved television series Police Squad!, the film was the first of a highly successful trilogy. Detective Lieutenant Frank Drebin, played by master deadpan comic actor Leslie Nielsen, tries to uncover a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II, all while falling in love with the alluring Jane Spencer, played by the talented and funny Priscilla Presley. Director and co-screenwriter David Zucker (Airplane!; Kentucky Fried Movie), co-screenwriter Pat Proft (Police Academy; Hot Shots!) and entertainment icon Priscilla Presley will sit down for an in-depth look behind the scenes of this comedy classic.
Click the link for tickets ($20)
Presented by SF Sketchfest
Castro Theatre
429 Castro Street San Francisco, CA 94114
(415) 621-6120


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Learn About the Law
Get help with your legal needs
FindLaw's Learn About the Law features thousands of informational articles to help you understand your options. And if you're ready to hire an attorney, find one in your area who can help.
The Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 (BHCA) requires a bank holding company to obtain the approval of the Federal Reserve Board (Board) before it may acquire a bank. Section 3(d) of the Act (known as the Douglas Amendment) prohibits the Board from approving an application of a bank holding company located in one State to acquire a bank located in another State unless the acquisition "is specifically authorized by the statute laws of the State in which such bank is located, by language to that effect and not merely by implication." Substantially similar Connecticut and Massachusetts statutes provide that an out-of-state bank holding company with its principal place of business in one of the other New England States may acquire an in-state bank, provided that the other State accords equivalent reciprocal privileges to the enacting State's banking organizations. Certain bank holding companies (respondents here) applied to the Board as out-of-state companies for purposes of either the Connecticut or Massachusetts statute, seeking approval for acquisitions of banks located in one or the other of those States. Petitioners, prospective competitors, opposed the proposed acquisitions in proceedings before the Board, contending that the acquisitions were not authorized by the Douglas Amendment and that, if they were, the applicable Connecticut of Massachusetts statute, by discriminating against non-New England out-of-state bank holding companies, violated the Commerce, Compact, and Equal Protection Clauses of the Federal Constitution. Rejecting petitioners' contentions, the Board approved the applications, and the Court of Appeals, in consolidated review proceedings, affirmed.
REHNQUIST, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which all other Members joined except POWELL, J., who took no part in the decision of the case. O'CONNOR, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 178.
Stephen M. Shapiro argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the brief for petitioner Citicorp were Ira M. Millstein, Robert L. Stern, James W. Quinn, and Jay N. Fastow. George D. Reycraft, John Boyer, Jeffrey Q. Smith, Gregory Scott Mertz, and Joseph Polizzotto filed a brief for petitioners Northeast Bancorp, Inc., et al. The named attorneys filed a joint reply brief and supplemental memorandum for all petitioners.
Solicitor General Lee argued the cause for the federal respondent. With him on the brief were Acting Assistant Attorney General Willard, Deputy Solicitor General Wallace, Anthony J. Steinmeyer, and Michael Kimmel. Laurence H. Tribe argued the cause for respondents Bank of New England Corp. et al. With him on the briefs were Bertram M. Kantor, Michael H. Byowitz, Mark A. Weiss, Stuart C. Stock, Wilmot T. Pope, and Douglas M. Kraus. Francis X. Bellotti, Attorney General, Jamie W. Katz, Assistant Attorney General, and Thomas R. Kiley, First Assistant Attorney General, filed a brief for respondent Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Joseph I. Lieberman, Attorney General, Elliot F. Gerson, Deputy Attorney General, and John G. Haines and Jane D. Comerford, Assistant Attorneys General, filed a brief for respondents State of Connecticut et al. *
[ Footnote * ] Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the State of New York by Robert Abrams, Attorney General, Robert Hermann, Solicitor General, R. Scott Greathead, First Assistant Attorney General, and Judith T. Kramer and Howard L. Zwickel, Assistant Attorneys General; for Chase Manhattan Corp. by Joseph A. Califano, Jr., and Kent T. Stauffer; for the David F. Bolger Revocable Trust by William A. Harvey and Edward S. Ellers; for the New York State Bankers Association by John [472 U.S. 159, 162] Leferovich, Jr.; for Senator Alphonse D'Amato et al. by J. Robert Lunney; and for Frank L. Morsani by Dewey R. Villareal, Jr.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the State of Georgia by Michael J. Bowers, Attorney General, James P. Googe, Jr., Executive Assistant Attorney General, H. Perry Michael, First Assistant Attorney General, Verley J. Spivey, Senior Assistant Attorney General, and Grace E. Evans, Assistant Attorney General; for Bank of New York Co., Inc., by John L. Warden; for the Conference of State Bank Supervisors by Erwin N. Griswold, James F. Bell, and Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr.; for the Council of State Governments et al. by Joyce Holmes Benjamin and Vicki C. Jackson; for Fleet Financial Group, Inc., by Allan B. Taylor, J. Bruce Boisture, Robert M. Taylor III, and Edward W. Dence, Jr.; and for Bob Graham, Governor of Florida, et al. by J. Thomas Cardwell, Sydney H. McKenzie III, S. Craig Kiser, and Carl B. Morstadt.
Robert F. Mullen filed a brief for the New York Clearing House Association as amicus curiae. [472 U.S. 159, 162]
JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.
Respondents Bank of New England Corporation (BNE), Hartford National Corporation (HNC), and Bank of Boston Corporation (BBC) are bank holding companies which applied to the Federal Reserve Board to obtain approval for the acquisition of banks or bank holding companies in New England States other than the ones in which they are principally located. Petitioners Northeast Bancorp, Inc., Union Trust Company, and Citicorp opposed these proposed acquisitions in proceedings before the Board. The Board approved the acquisitions, and the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the orders of the Board. Petitioners sought certiorari, contending that the acquisitions were not authorized by the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, 70 Stat. 133, as amended, 12 U.S.C. 1841 et seq., and that, if they were authorized by that Act, the state statutes which permitted the acquisitions in each case violated the Commerce Clause and the Compact Clause of the United States Constitution. We granted certiorari because of the importance of these issues, 469 U.S. 810 , and we now affirm.
The Bank Holding Company Act (BHCA) regulates the acquisition of state and national banks by bank holding companies. [472 U.S. 159, 163] The Act generally defines a bank as any institution organized under state or federal law which "(1) accepts deposits that the depositor has a legal right to withdraw on demand, and (2) engages in the business of making commercial loans." 12 U.S.C. 1841(c). The Act defines a bank holding company as any corporation, partnership, business trust, association, or similar organization that owns or has control over a bank or another bank holding company. 1841(a)(1), (b); see 1841(a)(5). Before a company may become a bank holding company, or a bank holding company may acquire a bank or substantially all of the assets of a bank, the Act requires it to obtain the approval of the Federal Reserve Board. 1842.
The Board will evaluate the proposed transaction for anticompetitive effects, financial and managerial resources, community needs, and the like. 1842(c). In addition, 3(d) of the Act, 12 U.S.C. 1842(d), known as "the Douglas Amendment," prohibits the Board from approving an application of a bank holding company or bank located in one State to acquire a bank located in another State, or substantially all of its assets, unless the acquisition "is specifically authorized by the statute laws of the State in which such bank is located, by language to that effect and not merely by implication." Pursuant to the Douglas Amendment, a number of States recently have enacted statutes which selectively authorize interstate bank acquisitions on a regional basis. This case requires us to consider the validity of these statutes.
From 1956 to 1972, the Douglas Amendment had the effect of completely barring interstate bank acquisitions because no State had enacted the requisite authorizing statute. Beginning in 1972, several States passed statutes permitting such acquisitions in limited circumstances or for specialized purposes. For example, Iowa passed a grandfathering statute which had the effect of permitting the only out-of-state bank holding company owning an Iowa bank to maintain and expand its in-state banking activities, Iowa Code 524.1805 (1983); see Iowa Independent Bankers v. Board of Governors, [472 U.S. 159, 164] 167 U.S. App. D.C. 286, 511 F.2d 1288, cert. denied, 423 U.S. 875 (1975); Washington authorized out-of-state purchasers to acquire failing local banks, Wash. Rev. Code 30.04.230(4)(a) (Supp. 1985); and Delaware allowed out-of-state bank holding companies to set up special purpose banks, such as credit card operations, in Delaware so long as they do not compete in other respects with locally controlled fullservice banks, Del. Code Ann., Tit. 5, 801 et seq. (Supp. 1984).
Beginning with Massachusetts in December 1982, several States have enacted statutes lifting the Douglas Amendment ban on interstate acquisitions on a reciprocal basis within their geographic regions. The Massachusetts Act specifically provides that an out-of-state bank holding company with its principal place of business in one of the other New England States (Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont), which is not directly or indirectly controlled by another corporation with its principal place of business located outside of New England, may establish or acquire a Massachusetts-based bank or bank holding company, provided that the other New England State accords equivalent reciprocal privileges to Massachusetts banking organizations. Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 167A, 2 (West 1984). In June 1983, Connecticut followed suit by adopting a substantially similar statute. 1983 Conn. Pub. Acts 83-411.
The other New England States have taken different courses or have not acted. Rhode Island, in May 1983, authorized acquisition of local banks by out-of-state bank holding companies on a reciprocal basis similarly limited to the New England region, but this geographic limitation will expire on June 30, 1986, after which the authorization will extend nationwide subject only to the reciprocity requirement. R. I. Gen. Laws 19-30-1 et seq. (Supp. 1984). Since February 1984, Maine has permitted banking organizations from all other States to acquire local banks without any [472 U.S. 159, 165] reciprocity requirement. Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 9-B, 1013 (Supp. 1984-1985). At the other extreme, New Hampshire and Vermont have not enacted any statute releasing the Douglas Amendment's ban on interstate bank acquisitions.
One predictable effect of the regionally restrictive statutes will apparently be to allow the growth of regional multistate bank holding companies which can compete with the established banking giants in New York, California, Illinois, and Texas. See 740 F.2d 203, 209, and n. 16 (1984). The Massachusetts and Connecticut statutes have prompted at least 15 other States to consider legislation which, according to the Federal Reserve Board, would establish interstate banking regions in all parts of the country. 70 Fed. Res. Bull. 374, 375-376 (1984). At least seven of these States have already enacted the necessary statutes.
Two months after Connecticut passed its statute, BNE applied to the Board for approval of its merger with respondent CBT Corporation (CBT), a Connecticut bank holding company, and thereby to acquire indirectly the Connecticut Bank and Trust Company, N. A., of Hartford, Connecticut. Soon thereafter HNC applied to the Board for approval of the acquisition of Arltru Bank Corporation (Arltru), a Massachusetts bank holding company which owns the Arlington Trust Company, a bank located in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Finally BBC applied to the Board for approval of the acquisition of the successor by merger to Colonial Bancorp, Inc., a Connecticut bank holding company, by which it would acquire Colonial Bank of Waterbury, Connecticut.
Citicorp offers financial services to consumers and businesses nationally through its bank and nonbank subsidiaries. In response to the Board's invitation for comments from interested persons on these three proposed acquisitions, Citicorp submitted comments opposing all three of them. Northeast owns petitioner Union Trust Company, a Connecticut bank that competes directly with banks owned by CBT, [472 U.S. 159, 166] HNC, and Colonial. In addition, Bank of New York Corporation has agreed to acquire Northeast if Connecticut or the United States enacts the necessary enabling legislation. Northeast and Union Trust submitted comments opposing BNE's application to acquire CBT.
The petitioners challenged the applications in part on the ground that the Douglas Amendment did not authorize them, and in part on the grounds that the Massachusetts and Connecticut statutes, by discriminating against non-New England bank holding companies, violated the Commerce, Compact, and Equal Protection Clauses of the Federal Constitution. They claimed, therefore, that the proposed interstate acquisitions were not authorized by valid state statutes as required by the Douglas Amendment. The Board rejected these arguments. It first determined that the BNE-CBT and BBC-Colonial acquisitions were specifically authorized by the Connecticut statute and the HNC-Arltru acquisition was specifically authorized by the Massachusetts statute, and therefore that the Douglas Amendment would not prevent the Board from approving any of the three proposed transactions.
The Board then rejected the constitutional challenge to the two state statutes. In doing so, it noted that it would hold a state statute unconstitutional only if there was "clear and unequivocal evidence" of its unconstitutionality. 70 Fed. Res. Bull. 353, 354 (1984); id., at 376; 70 Fed. Res. Bull. 524 525-526 (1984). While stating that "the issue is not free from doubt," it concluded that this standard had not been met. 70 Fed. Res. Bull, at 376-377. Interpreting the statutory language and the legislative history of the Douglas Amendment, it determined that "the Douglas Amendment should be read as a renunciation of federal interest in regulating the interstate acquisition of banks by bank holding companies." Id., at 380. This renunciation of federal interest eliminated any objection to the statutes under the Compact Clause or dormant Commerce Clause. [472 U.S. 159, 167]
The Board also found nothing in the history of the Amendment to suggest that "the states were to be permitted only to choose between not allowing out-of-state bank holding companies to enter, and allowing completely free entry." Id., at 386. The Board disposed of the equal protection challenge by reasoning that the regional restriction in the two statutes was "rationally related to an attempt to maintain a banking system responsive to local needs in New England." Id., at 381. The Board then analyzed the proposed transactions in light of the relevant statutory considerations set out in 12 U.S.C. 1842(c) and 1843(c)(8) and approved the applications.
Pursuant to 12 U.S.C. 1848, which provides that "[a]ny party aggrieved by an order of the Board" may seek review in a federal court of appeals, and 1850, which permits prospective competitors to be aggrieved parties under 1848, Citibank, Northeast, and Union Trust petitioned the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to review the Board's order approving the BNE-CBT acquisition. Citibank also petitioned for review of the HNC-Arltru acquisition, and Northeast and Union Trust were permitted to intervene. These petitions were consolidated and the acquisitions stayed pending expedited review. Meanwhile, the Board stayed its order approving the BBC-Colonial acquisition, and the Court of Appeals consolidated a petition filed by Citicorp for review of that transaction with the two other pending review petitions. The court also permitted BBC, BNE, CBT, HNC, the State of Connecticut, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to intervene. The Court of Appeals affirmed the Board's orders approving the three applications in all respects. 740 F.2d 203 (1984). It agreed with the Board's determination that the Connecticut and Massachusetts statutes satisfied the terms of the Douglas Amendment, and it then rejected challenges to the Board's orders under the Commerce Clause, the Compact Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause. The Court of Appeals stayed its mandate [472 U.S. 159, 168] and ordered that the status quo be maintained pending disposition by this Court.
The Douglas Amendment
The Douglas Amendment to the BHCA prohibits the Board from approving the application of a bank holding company or a bank located in one State to acquire a bank located in another State, or substantially all of its assets, unless the acquisition "is specifically authorized by the statute laws of the State in which such bank is located, by language to that effect and not merely by implication." 1842(d). Clearly the proposed acquisitions with which we deal in this case must be consistent with the Douglas Amendment, or they are invalid as a matter of federal statutory law. If the Massachusetts and Connecticut statutes allowing regional acquisitions are not the type of state statutes contemplated by the Douglas Amendment, they would not lift the ban imposed by the general prohibition of the Douglas Amendment. While petitioners blend together arguments about the meaning of the Douglas Amendment with arguments about the effect of the Commerce Clause, U.S. Const., Art. I, 8, cl. 3, we think the contentions are best treated separately.
The Board resolved the statutory issue in favor of the state statutes, concluding that they were the sort of laws contemplated by the Douglas Amendment. While the Board apparently does not consider itself expert on any constitutional issues raised, it is nonetheless an authoritative voice on the meaning of a federal banking statute. Securities Industry Assn. v. Board of Governors of Federal Reserve System, 468 U.S. 207 (1984). The Board may have applied a higher standard than was necessary when it analyzed the Douglas Amendment to see whether there was a "clear authorization" for selective lifting of the ban, such as the Massachusetts and Connecticut statutes undertake to do. Whether or not so stringent a standard was applicable, we think the Board was correct in concluding that it was in fact met in this case. [472 U.S. 159, 169]
The language of the Douglas Amendment plainly permits States to lift the federal ban entirely, as has been done by Maine. It does not specifically indicate that a State may partially lift the ban, for example in limited circumstances, for special types of acquisitions, or for purchasers from a certain geographic region. On the other hand, it also does not specifically indicate that a State is allowed only two alternatives: leave the federal ban in place or lift it completely. The Board concluded that the language "does not appear on its face to authorize discrimination" by region or "to meet the stringent test of explicitness laid down by" this Court in the dormant Commerce Clause cases. 70 Fed. Res. Bull., at 384. We need not resolve this issue because we agree with the Board that the legislative history of the Amendment supplies a sufficient indication of Congress' intent.
At the time of the BHCA, interstate branch banking was already prohibited by the McFadden Act. 12 U.S.C. 36(c). The bank holding company device, however, had been created to get around this restriction. A holding company would purchase banks in different localities both within and without a State, and thereby provide the equivalent of branch banking. One of the major purposes of the BHCA was to eliminate this loophole. H. R. Rep. No. 609, 84th Cong., 1st Sess., 2-6 (1955); 101 Cong. Rec. 4407 (1955) (remarks of Rep. Wier); id., at 8028-8029 (remarks of Rep. Patman); 102 Cong. Rec. 6858-6859 (1956) (remarks of Sen. Douglas). As enacted by the House in 1955, the BHCA contained a flat ban on interstate bank acquisitions. The legislative history from the House makes it clear that the policies of community control and local responsiveness of banks inspired this flat ban. See 101 Cong. Rec. A2454 (1955) (remarks of Rep. Wier); id., at 8030-8031 (remarks of Rep. Rains); H. R. Rep. No. 609, supra, at 2-6.
The Douglas Amendment was added on the floor of the Senate. Its entire legislative history is confined to the Senate debate. In such circumstances, the comments of individual [472 U.S. 159, 170] legislators carry substantial weight, especially when they reflect a consensus as to the meaning and objectives of the proposed legislation though not necessarily the wisdom of that legislation. The instant case is not a situation where the comments of an individual legislator, even a sponsor, is at odds with the language of the statute or other traditionally more authoritative indicators of legislative intent such as the conference or committee reports.
The bill reported out by the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency permitted interstate bank acquisitions conditioned only on approval by the Federal Reserve Board. This approach apparently was favored by many of the large bank holding companies which sought further expansion, see, e. g., Control of Bank Holding Companies, 1955; Hearings on S. 880 et al. before the Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, 84th Cong., 1st Sess., 132, 136 (1955) (testimony of Ellwood Jenkins, First Bank Stock Corp.), 298-299 (Baldwin Maull, Marine Midland Corp.), 320 (Cameron Thomson, Northwest Bancorporation), cf. 375, 385 (Frank N. Belgrano, Jr., Transamerica Corp.), and by some who thought the total ban in the House bill offensive to States' rights, see 102 Cong. Rec. 6752 (1956) (remarks of Sen. Robertson, floor manager of Committee bill, quoting Sen. Maybank).
The Douglas Amendment was a compromise between the two extremes that also accommodated the States' rights concern:
Of central concern to this litigation, the Douglas compromise did not simply leave to each State a choice one way or [472 U.S. 159, 171] the other - either to permit or bar interstate acquisitions of local banks - but to allow each State flexibility in its approach. Senator Douglas explained that under his amendment bank holding companies would be permitted to acquire banks in other States "only to the degree that State laws expressly permit them." Id., at 6858. Petitioners contend that by the phrase "to the degree" Senator Douglas intended merely a quantitative reference to the number of States which might lift the ban, and did not mean that a State could partially lift the ban. Petitioners' contention, however, is refuted by the close analogy drawn by Senator Douglas between his amendment and the McFadden Act, 12 U.S.C. 36(c):
In enacting the McFadden Act in 1927, Congress relaxed federal restrictions on branch banking by national banks, but at the same time subjected them to the same branching [472 U.S. 159, 172] restrictions imposed by the States on state banks. First National Bank v. Walker Bank & Trust Co., 385 U.S. 252, 258 (1966). Congress intended "to leave the question of the desirability of branch banking up to the States," ibid., and to permit branch banking by national banks "`in only those States the laws of which permit branch banking, and only to the extent that the State laws permit branch banking.'" Id., at 259 (quoting Sen. Glass, 76 Cong. Rec. 2511 (1933)). The McFadden Act did not offer the States an all-or-nothing choice with respect to branch banking. As Senator Douglas observed, some States had limited intrastate branching by state banks, and others like Illinois had prohibited it altogether.
This variative approach to intrastate branching was nicely illustrated at the time by the structure in New York, which Senator Douglas described as follows: "In New York the State is divided into 10 zones. Branch banking is permitted within each of the zones, but a bank cannot have branches in another zone." 102 Cong. Rec. 6858 (1956). At the same time, Pennsylvania permitted branching in contiguous counties. Upper Darby National Bank v. Myers, 386 Pa. 12, 124 A. 2d 116 (1956). In view of this analogy to the McFadden Act and Senator Douglas' explanation of that Act, there can be no other conclusion but that Congress contemplated that some States might partially lift the ban on interstate banking without opening themselves up to interstate banking from everywhere in the Nation.
Not only are the Massachusetts and Connecticut statutes consistent with the Douglas Amendment's anticipation of differing approaches to interstate banking, but they are also consistent with the broader purposes underlying the BHCA as a whole and the Douglas Amendment in particular to retain local, community-based control over banking. Faced with growing competition from nonbank financial services that are not confined within state lines, these States sought an alternative that allowed expansion and growth of local [472 U.S. 159, 173] banks without opening their borders to unimpeded interstate banking. The Connecticut General Assembly established a Commission in 1979 to study the problem. It concluded:
We hold that the Connecticut and Massachusetts statutes are of the kind contemplated by the Douglas Amendment to lift its bar against interstate acquisitions. [472 U.S. 159, 174]
Commerce Clause
Petitioners contend that the regional limitation in the Massachusetts and Connecticut statutes burdens commerce from without the region while permitting a free flow of commerce among the States within the region. They provide numerous citations to prove that one of the principal purposes of the Framers of the Constitution was to break up and forestall precisely this type of economic "Balkanization" into confederations of States to the detriment of the welfare of the Union as a whole. See, e. g., H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc. v. Du Mond, 336 U.S. 525, 533 (1949); Hughes v. Oklahoma, 441 U.S. 322, 325 -326 (1979); The Federalist Nos. 7 and 22, pp. 62-63, 143-145 (Rossiter ed. 1961). There can be little dispute that the dormant Commerce Clause would prohibit a group of States from establishing a system of regional banking by excluding bank holding companies from outside the region if Congress had remained completely silent on the subject. Lewis v. BT Investment Managers, Inc., 447 U.S. 27, 39 -44 (1980). Nor can there be serious question that an individual State acting entirely on its own authority would run afoul of the dormant Commerce Clause if it sought to comprehensively regulate acquisitions of local banks by out-of-state holding companies. Sporhase v. Nebraska ex rel. Douglas, 458 U.S. 941 (1982).
But that is not our case. Here the commerce power of Congress is not dormant, but has been exercised by that body when it enacted the Bank Holding Company Act and the Douglas amendment to the Act. Congress has authorized by the latter amendment the Massachusetts and Connecticut statutes which petitioners challenge as violative of the Commerce Clause. When Congress so chooses, state actions which it plainly authorizes are invulnerable to constitutional attack under the Commerce Clause. Western & Southern Life Insurance Co. v. State Board of Equalization, 451 U.S. 648, 653 -654 (1981); White v. Massachusetts Council of Construction Employers, Inc., 460 U.S. 204 (1983); cf. South-Central Timber Development, Inc. v. Wunnicke, [472 U.S. 159, 175] 467 U.S. 82 (1984). Petitioners' Commerce Clause attack on the challenged acquisitions therefore fails.
Compact Clause
Petitioners maintain that the Massachusetts and Connecticut statutes constitute a compact to exclude non-New England banking organizations which violates the Compact Clause, U.S. Const., Art. I, 10, cl. 3, because Congress has not specifically approved it. We have some doubt as to whether there is an agreement amounting to a compact. The two statutes are similar in that they both require reciprocity and impose a regional limitation, both legislatures favor the establishment of regional banking in New England, and there is evidence of cooperation among legislators, officials, bankers, and others in the two States in studying the idea and lobbying for the statutes. But several of the classic indicia of a compact are missing. No joint organization or body has been established to regulate regional banking or for any other purpose. Neither statute is conditioned on action by the other State, and each State is free to modify or repeal its law unilaterally. Most importantly, neither statute requires a reciprocation of the regional limitation. Bank holding companies based in Maine, which has no regional limitation, and Rhode Island, which will drop the regional limitation in 1986, are permitted by the two statutes to acquire Massachusetts and Connecticut banks. These two States are included in the ostensible compact under petitioners' theory, yet one does not impose the exclusion to which petitioners so strenuously object and the other plans to drop it after two years.
But even if we were to assume that these state actions constitute an agreement or compact, not every such agreement violates the Compact Clause. Virginia v. Tennessee, 148 U.S. 503 (1893).
In view of the Douglas Amendment to the BHCA, the challenged state statutes which comply with that Act cannot possibly infringe federal supremacy. To the extent that the state statutes might conflict in a particular situation with other federal statutes, such as the provision under which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will arrange for the acquisition of failing banks by out-of-state bank holding companies, 12 U.S.C. 1823(f), they would be pre-empted by those statutes, and therefore any Compact Clause argument would be academic. Petitioners also assert that the alleged regional compact impermissibly offends the sovereignty of sister States outside of New England. We do not see how the statutes in question either enhance the political power of the New England States at the expense of other States or have an "impact on our federal structure." United States Steel Corp. v. Multistate Tax Comm'n, supra, at 471, 473.
Equal Protection Clause
Petitioners argued before the Board and the Court of Appeals that the Massachusetts and Connecticut statutes violated the Equal Protection Clause, U.S. Const., Amdt. 14, 2, by excluding bank holding companies from some States while admitting those from others. This claim was abandoned in their petition for certiorari and their briefs on the merits, but after our decision in Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. v. Ward, 470 U.S. 869 (1985), petitioners filed a supplemental brief urging us to consider the equal protection issue. Because the issue was fully reviewed by the Board and the Court of Appeals and because it would undoubtedly [472 U.S. 159, 177] cloud other pending applications for acquisitions by bank holding companies, we elect to decide it.
In Metropolitan Life we held that encouraging the formation of new domestic insurance companies within a State and encouraging capital investment in the State's assets and governmental securities were not, standing alone, legitimate state purposes which could permissibly be furthered by discriminating against out-of-state corporations in favor of local corporations. There we said:
We think that the concerns which spurred Massachusetts and Connecticut to enact the statutes here challenged, different as they are from those which motivated the enactment of the Alabama statute in Metropolitan, meet the traditional rational basis for judging equal protection claims under the Fourteenth Amendment. Barry v. Barchi, 443 U.S. 55, 67 (1979); Vance v. Bradley, 440 U.S. 93, 97 (1979).
We hold that the state statutes here in question comply with the Douglas Amendment and that they do not violate the Commerce Clause, the Compact Clause, or the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore
JUSTICE O'CONNOR, concurring.
I agree that the state banking statutes at issue here do not violate the Commerce Clause, the Compact Clause, or the Equal Protection Clause. I write separately to note that I see no meaningful distinction for Equal Protection Clause purposes between the Massachusetts and Connecticut statutes we uphold today and the Alabama statute at issue in Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. v. Ward, 470 U.S. 869 (1985). [472 U.S. 159, 179]
The Court distinguishes this case from Metropolitan Life on the ground that Massachusetts and Connecticut favor neighboring out-of-state banks over all other out-of-state banks. It is not clear to me why completely barring the banks of 44 States from doing business is less discriminatory than Alabama's scheme of taxing the insurance companies from 49 States at a slightly higher rate. Nor is it clear why the Equal Protection Clause should tolerate a regional "home team" when it condemns a state "home team." See id., at 878.
The Court emphasizes that here we do not write on a clean slate as the business of banking is "of profound local concern." Ante, at 177. The business of insurance is also of uniquely local concern. Prudential Insurance Co. v. Benjamin, 328 U.S. 408, 415 -417 (1946). Both industries historically have been regulated by the States in recognition of the critical part they play in securing the financial well-being of local citizens and businesses. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. v. Ward, supra, at 888-893 (dissenting opinion). States have regulated insurance since 1851. Like the local nature of banking, the local nature of insurance is firmly ensconced in federal law. 470 U.S., at 888 -889. The McCarran-Ferguson Act, enacted in 1945, states:
Especially where Congress has sanctioned the barriers to commerce that fostering of local industries might engender, this Court has no authority under the Equal Protection Clause to invalidate classifications designed to encourage local businesses because of their special contributions. Today's opinion is consistent with the longstanding doctrine that the Equal Protection Clause permits economic regulation that distinguishes between groups that are legitimately different - as local institutions so often are - in ways relevant to the proper goals of the State. [472 U.S. 159, 181]
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So I'm writing a program for a puzzle for my University Lab, but I run into a problem when I try to input 2 integers when constructing. Here's my full code (not nearly completed but still, I work in a one step at a time fashion..rather frustrating at times)
simpleCanvas is simply a graphic interface for Java. There are no problems with it, I believe it was created by the BlueJ authors or something? Anyway, any help is greatly appreciated Thanks in advance!
Site for lab work is: Java Programming (CITS1200)
public class FifteenPuzzle { //Instance Variables public SimpleCanvas sc; //Constructor public FifteenPuzzle (int[][] intialGrid){ sc = new SimpleCanvas (); //Colour java.awt.Color tBlue = new java.awt.Color(0,0,255); sc.setForegroundColour(tBlue); for (int i=0; i < 400;i++) sc.drawLine(0,i,400,i); // Lines java.awt.Color black = new java.awt.Color(0,0,0); sc.setForegroundColour(black); sc.drawLine(100,0,100,400); sc.drawLine(200,0,200,400); sc.drawLine(300,0,300,400); sc.drawLine(0,100,400,100); sc.drawLine(0,200,400,200); sc.drawLine(0,300,400,300); //Lines //Input } //Methods public void moveTile (int x, int y){ } //public int [][] getCurrentGrid(){ //} }


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Architecture-Breaking Bugs – when a Dreamliner Becomes a Nightmare
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The history of computer systems is also the history of bugs, including epic, disastrous bugs that have caused millions of $ in damage and destruction and even death, as well as many other less spectacular but expensive system and project failures. Some of these appear to be small and stupid mistakes, like the infamous Ariane 5 rocket crash, caused by a one-line programming error. But a one-line programming error, or any other isolated mistake or failure, cannot cause serious damage to a large system, without fundamental failures in architecture and design, and failures in management.
Boeing's 787 Dreamliner Going Nowhere
The Economist, Feb 26 2013
These kinds of problems are what Barry Boehm calls "Architecture Breakers": where a system's design doesn't hold up in the real world, when you run face-first into a fundamental weakness or a hard limit on what is possible with the approach that you took or the technology platform that you selected.
Architecture Breakers happen at the edges – or beyond the edges – of the design, off of the normal, nominal, happy paths. The system works, except for a "one in a million" exceptional error, which nobody takes seriously until a "once in a million" problem starts happening every few days. Or the system crumples under an unexpected surge in demand, demand that isn't going to go away unless you can't find a way to quickly scale the system to keep up – and if you can't, you won't have a demand problem any more because those customers won't be coming back. Or what looks like a minor operational problem turns out to be the first sign of a fundamental reliability or safety problem in the system.
Dreamliner is Troubled by Questions about Safety
NY Times, Jan 10, 2013
Finding Architecture Breakers
It starts off with a nasty bug or an isolated operational issue or a security incident. As you investigate and start to look deeper you find more cases, gaping holes in the design, hard limits to what the system can do, or failures that can't be explained and can't be stopped. The design starts to unravel as each problem opens up to another problem. Fixing it right is going to take time and money, maybe even going back to the drawing board and revisiting foundational architectural decisions and technology choices. What looked like a random failure or an ugly bug just turned into something much uglier, and much much more expensive.
Deepening Crisis for the Boeing 787
NY Times, Jan 17 2013
What makes these problems especially bad is that they are found late, way past design and even past acceptance testing, usually when the system is already in production and you have a lot of real customers using it to get real work done. This is when you can least afford to encounter a serious problem. When something does go wrong, it can be difficult to recognize how serious it is right away. It can take two or three or more failures before you realize – and accept – how bad things really are and before you see enough of a pattern to understand where the problem might be.
Boeing Batteries Said to Fail 10 Times Before Incident
Bloomberg, Jan 30 2013
By then you may be losing customers and losing money and you're under extreme pressure to come up with a fix, and nobody wants to hear that you have to stop and go back and rewrite a piece of the system, or re-architect it and start again – or that you need more time to think and test and understand what's wrong and what your options are before you can even tell them how long it might take and how much it could cost to fix things.
Regulators Around the Globe Ground Boeing 787s
NY Times, Jan 18 2013
What can Break your Architecture?
Most Architecture Breakers are fundamental problems in important non-functional aspects of a system:
- Stability and data integrity: some piece of the system won't stay up under load or fails intermittently after the system has been running for hours or days or weeks, or you lost critical customer data or you can't recover and restore service fast enough after an operational failure.
- Scalability and throughput: the platform (language or container or communications fabric or database – or all of them) are beautiful to work with, but can't keep up as more customers come in, even if you throw more hardware at it. Ask Twitter about trying to scale-out Ruby or Facebook about scaling PHP or anyone who has ever tried to scale-out Oracle RAC.
- Latency – requirements for real-time response-time/deadline satisfaction escalate, or you run into unacceptable jitter and variability (you chose Java as your run-time platform, what happens when GC kicks in?).
- Security: you just got hacked and you find out that the one bug that an attacker exploited is only the first of hundreds or thousands of bugs that will need to be found and fixed, because your design or the language and the framework that you picked (or the way that you used it) is as full of security holes as Swiss cheese.
These aren't problems that you can code your way out of, at least not easily. Sometimes the problem isn't in your code any ways: it's in a third party platform technology that can't keep up or won't stay up. The language itself, or an important part of the stack like the container, database, or communications fabric, or whatever you are depending on for clustering and failover or to do some other magic. At high scale in the real world, almost any piece of software that somebody else wrote can and will fall short of what you really need, or what the vendor promised.
Boeing, 787 Battery Supplier at Odds over Fixes
Wall Street Journal, Feb 27 2013
You'll have to spend time working with a vendor (or sometimes with more than one vendor) and help them understand your problem, and get them to agree that it's really their problem, and that they have to fix it, and if they can't fix it, or can't fix it quickly enough, you'll need to come up with a Plan B quickly, and hope that your new choice won't run into other problems that may be just as bad or even worse.
How to Avoid Architecture Breakers
Architecture Breakers are caused by decisions that you made early and got wrong – or that you didn't make early enough, or didn't make at all. Boehm talks about Architecture Breakers as part of an argument against Simple Design – that many teams, especially Agile teams, spend too much time focused on the happy path, building new features to make the customer happy, and not enough time on upfront architecture and thinking about what could go wrong. But Architecture Breakers have been around a lot longer than Agile and simple design: in Making Software (Chapter 10 Architecting: How Much and When), Boehm goes back to the 1980s when he first recognized these kinds of problems, when Structured Programming and later Waterfall were the "right way" to do things.
Boehm's solution is more and better architecture definition and technical risk management through Spiral software development: a lifecycle with architecture upfront to identify risk areas, which are then explored through iterative, risk-driven design, prototyping and development in multiple stages. Spiral development is like today's iterative, incremental development methods on steroids, using risk-based architectural spikes, but with much longer iterative development and technical prototyping cycles, more formal risk management, more planning, more paperwork, and much higher costs.
Bugs like these can't all be solved by spending more time on architecture and technical risk management upfront – whether through Spiral development or a beefed up, disciplined Agile development approach. More time spent upfront won`t help if you make naïve assumptions about scalability, responsiveness or reliability or security; or if you don't understand these problems well enough to identify the risks. Architecture Breakers won't be found in design reviews – because you won't be looking for something that you don't know could a problem – unless maybe you are running through structured failure modelling exercises like FMEA (Failure mode and effect analysis) or FMECA (Failure mode, effects and criticality analysis), which force you to ask hard questions, but which few people outside of regulated industries have even heard about.
And Architecture Breakers can't all be caught in testing, even extended longevity/soak testing and extensive fuzzing and simulated failures and fault injection and destructive testing and stress testing – even if all the bugs that are found this way are taken seriously (because these kinds of extreme tests are often considered unrealistic).
You have to be prepared to deal with Architecture Breakers. Anticipating problems and partitioning your architecture using something like the Stability Patterns in Michael Nygard's excellent book Release It! will at least keep serious run-time errors from spreading and taking an entire system out (these strategies will also help with scaling and with containing security attacks). And if and when you do see a "once in a million" error in reviews or testing or production, understand how serious it can be, and act right away – before a Dreamliner turns into a nightmare.
Published at DZone with permission of Jim Bird, DZone MVB. See the original article here.
Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.


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Fifty years after it first launched an astronaut on a trip around the Earth, NASA finds itself in need of a new generation of spaceships.
On Feb. 20, 1962, John Glenn made the United States' first orbital spaceflight, zipping around our planet three times in his Friendship 7 capsule before splashing down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. The mission put the nation on even footing with the Soviet Union, which had first pulled off the feat in April 1961.
As it celebrates the 50th anniversary of Glenn's historic flight, which helped propel NASA toward unprecedented accomplishments in human spaceflight, the agency lacks the ability to replicate his achievement.
Since NASA's space shuttle fleet retired in July 2011, the U.S. now depends on Russia — its former space race rival — to transport American astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit. It's an irony that is not lost on Glenn.
"Now we have to contract with the Russians, unseemly though it may be for the world's greatest spacefaring nation," Glenn said Friday (Feb. 17) during a NASA event commemorating his flight. "I think it's too bad." [Photos: John Glenn's Historic Flight]
Glenn's flight and that of Scott Carpenter, who launched on his own orbital mission in May 1962, brought NASA key momentum after several years of Soviet space dominance.
The Soviets had launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957. Then came cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's successful orbital mission on April 12, 1961.
"They gave us a double whammy in those days," Carpenter said. "Not only did they get the honor of the first man in space, but they sent him not into ballistic flight but orbital flight."
The fact that NASA responded with manned orbital missions of its own in 1962 provided a vital boost to the U.S. space program and the national psyche, Carpenter said. The flights set NASA on a path toward meeting President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing an astronaut on the moon by the end of the decade.
"I think these flights gave the nation the knowledge that, although we were behind the Soviet Union in our progress, that we were able to overtake them and do exactly what Kennedy told us to do, and that in so doing we would beat the Russians to the moon," Carpenter said. "And that's what we did." [Gallery: 45 Apollo Moon Mission Photos]
Experts agree that Glenn's flight helped invigorate the U.S. space program.
"It was a time of head-on-head superpower rivalries for global leadership," space policy expert John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., told SPACE.com. "Everyone was recovering from World War II, and it was a very tense time in U.S.-Soviet relations. Having something positive happen, particularly in an area where the Soviet Union looked like it was ahead, was politically very important."
The current situation
NASA channeled that momentum into a series of successes in human spaceflight. Over the years, the space agency has executed six manned moon landings, launched 135 space shuttle missions and helped build the $100 billion International Space Station.
But now, a half-century after Glenn's flight, NASA lacks a way to get astronauts off the ground.
In 2004, President George W. Bush directed the agency to retire its space shuttle fleet by 2010; the iconic space plane hung around for one extra year, flying its last mission in July 2011. Now the U.S. depends on Russian Soyuz vehicles to take its astronauts to the station and back.
NASA is encouraging American private spaceflight firms to take over this taxi role eventually, through its Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program. The space agency had originally hoped the first commercial vehicles would come online by 2015, but recent congressional cuts to CCDev funding have helped push that estimate back to 2017.
Meanwhile, NASA is working to develop a transportation system for manned journeys to deep-space destinations, in accordance with President Barack Obama's directive to send an astronaut to an asteroid by 2025 and then on to Mars by the mid-2030s.
NASA hopes this new architecture — a heavy-lift rocket called the Space Launch System and a capsule known as the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle — is operational by late 2021.
Neither Glenn nor Carpenter is happy that the U.S. currently lacks a way to get astronauts to space. In his remarks Friday, Glenn blamed the Bush Administration for its decision to retire the shuttle without having a viable replacement lined up.
Carpenter cast a wider net, saying the nation as a whole has ceased to prioritize human spaceflight.
"I think that we're going to be able to take care of safely desiging and flying a spacecraft. The industry in this country is able to do that," Carpenter said. "What I deplore is the fact that we've lost our national resolve to do it, and that's reflected in the amount of money not given to NASA. It's reflected in depriving NASA of a mission."
"When John and I went to work for this country and NASA, the United States was recognized around the world as a can-do nation," Carpenter added. "And because of all of these various reasons, we have become viewed around the planet as a can't-do nation. And I deplore that."
You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.


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Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, pacifism and non-violence, and gay rights.
In the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Rustin practiced nonviolence. He was a leading activist of the early 1947–1955 civil-rights movement, helping to initiate a 1947 Freedom Ride to challenge with civil disobedience racial segregation on interstate busing. He recognized Martin Luther King, Jr.'s leadership, and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen King's leadership; Rustin promoted the philosophy of nonviolence and the practices of nonviolent resistance, which he had observed while working with Gandhi's movement in India. Rustin became a leading strategist of the civil rights movement from 1955–1968. He was the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which was headed by A. Philip Randolph, the leading African-American labor-union president and socialist. Rustin also influenced young activists, such as Tom Kahn and Stokely Carmichael, in organizations like the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
After the passage of the civil-rights legislation of 1964–1965, Rustin focused attention on the economic problems of working-class and unemployed African Americans, suggesting that the civil-rights movement had left its period of "protest" and had entered an era of "politics", in which the Black community had to ally with the labor movement. Rustin became the head of the AFL–CIO's A. Philip Randolph Institute, which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans. Rustin became an honorary chairperson of the Socialist Party of America in 1972, before it changed its name to Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA); Rustin acted as national chairman of SDUSA during the 1970s. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin served on many humanitarian missions, such as aiding refugees from Communist Vietnam and Cambodia. He was on a humanitarian mission in Haiti when he died in 1987.
Rustin was a gay man who had been arrested for a homosexual act in 1953. Homosexuality was criminalized in parts of the United States until 2003 and stigmatized through the 1990s. Rustin's sexuality, or at least his embarrassingly public criminal charge, was criticized by some fellow pacifists and civil-rights leaders. Rustin was attacked as a "pervert" or "immoral influence" by political opponents from segregationists to Black power militants, and from the 1950s through the 1970s. In addition, his pre-1941 Communist Party affiliation was controversial. To avoid such attacks, Rustin served only rarely as a public spokesperson. He usually acted as an influential adviser to civil-rights leaders. In the 1970s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay and lesbian causes.
In August 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.


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James Rucker of ColorOfChange.org today sent out an email promoting a bill in Congress that will give Katrina survivors a fair chance to rebuild their lives. But it won't become law if enough representatives don't stand up to support it.
Three years after Hurricane Katrina, there's finally legislation.
The Gulf Coast Civic Works Act would hire 100,000 Gulf Coast residents and evacuees, providing them with training and jobs to rebuild their homes and communities. It started as nothing more than a good idea, but after thousands of ColorOfChange.org members called on Congress to support the plan, and after years of persistent activism from students and Gulf Coast organizations, it now has a real chance of bringing some justice to the Gulf.
Even though it's come this far, it will take massive public pressure on each member of Congress to get the bill passed. If we want justice for Katrina survivors, we need to make our voices heard now as the media focuses its attention on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
I've signed on with ColorOfChange.org to tell my member of Congress to co-sponsor the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act, will you join us?
The Gulf Coast Civic Works Act represents a powerful shift from what's currently happening in the Gulf. It calls for hiring 100,000 Gulf Coast residents to rebuild New Orleans and the surrounding region. They'll be provided with temporary housing and job-training and will build and repair houses, schools, parks, and other civic buildings.
The idea behind the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project is not new. During the Great Depression, the federal government believed it had a responsibility to ensure that those hit hardest did not fall through the cracks. It also knew that those Americans wanted a hand up, not a handout. So, in 1935, Congress created a program to hire out-of-work Americans to get things done to benefit their communities.
It's a plan that makes sense–for displaced survivors, for the communities of the Gulf Coast, for the nation as a whole. It provides an opportunity to invest in Americans while reversing the most glaring problems that plague current rebuilding plans: gentrification, government waste, and massive corporate profiteering. It would revitalize the Gulf Coast's economy while rebuilding its infrastructure, and it's a model that could be applied to solve similar problems across the country.
Learn more and please join us by calling on your representative to co-sponsor the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act. It only takes a minute:


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- Home
- Departments
- Treasurer - Tax Collector
- Tax Collector
- Property Taxes
Property Taxes
Property taxes are collected by the County, although they are governed by California State law. The Tax Collector of Napa County collects taxes on behalf of the County; the five incorporated cities within the county; six school districts; and all other taxing agencies located within Napa County, including more than 25 special districts (e.g. flood control and sanitation districts). Once the taxes are collected, the County Auditor-Controller distributes the monies to the various taxing agencies.
Computing Your Taxes
The process of determining your property taxes involves the efforts of three County offices: the County Assessor, the County Auditor-Controller, and the County Treasurer-Tax Collector. The three work together to produce and account for your property taxes. In order for the amount of your taxes to be determined, the County Assessor must first assess the value of your property. Generally, the assessed value is the cash or market value at the time of purchase.
This value increases not more than 2% per year until the property is sold or any new construction takes place, at which time it must be reassessed. A separate supplemental tax bill is issued for these events and must be paid in addition to the annual tax bill. For more information on how the assessed value is determined, visit the Assessor's Office Web pages or call them at 707-253-4467.
Tax Rates
After the Assessor has determined the property value, the Auditor-Controller calculates the appropriate tax rates, which include the general tax levy, locally voted special taxes, and any city or district direct assessments. The general tax levy is determined in accordance with State law and is limited to $1 per $100 of assessed value of your property. Special taxes and district assessments are passed by a public vote.
After applying the tax rates, the Auditor-Controller calculates the total tax amount. Finally, the Tax Collector prepares the property tax bills based on the Auditor-Controller's calculations, distributes the bills and collects the taxes. Neither the County Board of Supervisors nor the Tax Collector determines the amount of taxes.


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Stopped by the construction area yesterday to check on the progress. As you can see, a pile of rubble is all that's left of one of the houses that used to be along Crawford Street. (Someone left that almost new recliner!)
There are only a couple more houses to come down and the site will be ready. Rumor is construction will start early in the week of Freshman Saturday!
These are exciting times for Wabash!


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Begin with Tom Brady's new contract, the applause it drew in New England, and the eyebrows it arched elsewhere around the NFL.
Most of those in the know don't expect the deal -- providing short-term cap relief to the Patriots and more money guaranteed (but less total) to the quarterback -- to have much, if any, lasting impact on other quarterbacks around the league.
Rapoport: Pats ready to spend?
Ian Rapoport says Tom
Brady's new contract extension frees up tons of cash for the Patriots. How will they use it? **More ...**
"It has no relevance to anyone else," one NFC executive said. "It's a completely different set of factors, a different player, different place, etc. None of these other guys will take that, so what difference does it make? You're gonna offer one of these guys $9 million now? Good luck with that."
But the motivation of the Patriots -- to renegotiate Brady's deal now -- does underscore a growing problem in the league.
Quarterback salaries keep rising and, as a result, their cap numbers do, too. The salary cap itself, though, has leveled off after experiencing meteoric growth over the decade previous.
While the dynamic exists at a number of positions, nowhere is it more prominent than at the most important one. (Another example? Ben Roethlisberger's renegotiated deal with Pittsburgh on Thursday.) And because so many of these deals, for quarterbacks and others, are built with cap numbers rising over the lives of the deals, the flat cap has created a bottlenecking of salaries, which has led to the continuing flurry of firings and restructurings across the league.
Consider that in 2007, the salary cap was $109 million. Since it hasn't been set yet for 2013, let's say it's $123 million, which would represent a 14 percent hike from 2012. Now, digest these numbers -- the top five quarterback cap numbers for 2007 and '13, as they went into franchise tag calculations, respectively:
Carson Palmer, Cincinnati Bengals: $13.48 million
Brett Favre, Green Bay Packers: $11.8 million
Eli Manning, New York Giants: $10.047 million
Matt Hasselbeck, Seattle Seahawks: $9.204 million
Marc Bulger, St. Louis Rams: $9.125 million
Average: $10.73 million
Matthew Stafford, Detroit Lions: $20.82 million
Eli Manning, New York Giants: $20.35 million
Peyton Manning, Denver Broncos: $20 million
Drew Brees, New Orleans Saints: $17.4 million
Philip Rivers, San Diego Chargers: $17.11 million
Average: $19.14 million
The average of the latter list is almost double the average of the former. The standard for the franchise quarterback used to be that he take up 10 to 13 percent of a team's cap; now both Stafford and Eli Manning (whose cap number is actually $20.85 million with workout bonuses worked in) account for between 17 and 18 percent.
"It's where you're allocating resources over a longer period of time, that might be three, four, five players that make up the core of your team," one NFC team president said. "The thesis holds. There is a squeeze. But it's not all about the quarterbacks. The cap was ($116.2 million) in 2008, and you had vastly different salary ranges, vastly different minimum salaries, so now you have additional cap space at the bottom and the top being chewed up.
"At the bottom, it's at least fixed. The top may flatten out, but it won't go down."
Debate: Alex Smith trade fallout
The Alex Smith trade has a domino effect that impacts many teams beyond just the Chiefs and 49ers. Our analysts weigh in. **More ...**
The NFC executive agreed with that assessment, and pointed to the model of the Indianapolis Colts of the 2000s as one reason for this phenomenon. The foundation of ex-team president Bill Polian's program was his belief in his ability to draft. Some of those players would become part of the core and get paid at the top of the market. Others would be allowed to walk, with Polian believing he could bring in cheap labor to replace young vets looking for a payday, and save that money to pay his stars.
In the process, the Colts restructured Peyton Manning several times, and drove his back-end cap numbers into the stratosphere, which gave the quarterback infinite leverage at the end of his deals. As a whole, the star system helped pushed the market at a number of positions upward.
When the cap was rising rapidly, it was workable. Now, that growth has flattened. Yet the stars keep getting paid, and the minimums are rising, which means something's gotta give.
"Salaries never level off for the elite," the NFC executive said. "With the flat cap, it's not the elite players, it's that it's gonna squeeze everyone else. That's been going on, even before the new CBA. In '08 and '09, the top players' salaries really started escalating and squeezing the middle class. With the rookie wage scale, you have some savings in there, but without the cap growing, it's kept going."
The next phase to watch here starts with Joe Flacco, whose negotiations likely will color what happens with Matt Ryan, Matthew Stafford and Aaron Rodgers. And the results will probably make things even trickier with guys like Cam Newton, Colin Kaepernick, Andy Dalton, Robert Griffin III, Andrew Luck and Russell Wilson, who came in under the new rookie pay system, and thus will have their teams scrambling to clear space they hadn't previously needed for the quarterback position.
Add up all of the above, and it's pushed Flacco's exclusive number into the neighborhood of $20 million. If the Ravens put the exclusive tag on him, his leverage point against them is well north of $20 million per. If they put the non-exclusive tag on him, they risk losing him.
And so that's why, if the Flacco deal gets done soon (as many around the league believe it will), the price tag probably will be around where Brees' is. As the NFC exec says, "No one thinks Flacco is Brees or Brady, but you can't lose that quarterback."
So the pricetags will keep going up, the decisions around these players won't get any easier. Whatever Flacco gets, Rodgers will be able to get more, and those waiting for their big paydays will reap the benefits.
Meanwhile in New England, at least for now, the Patriots get an elite quarterback in the new world at an old-world rate. It works great for 2013 and '14. But most around the NFL are taking a wait-and-see approach, rather than analyzing it fully.
Harrison: Five momentous games
More than 200 games were played in the 2012 season. Elliot Harrison finds five that shaped the course of history. **More ...**
"Tom's made out to be magnanimous on this, and I'm not saying he's not being that, but the fact is he got $3 million to restructure, and that's $3 million in cash that could be used elsewhere," the NFC club president said. "The way I see it, if he retires after two years, he got an extra $3 million, and all his money guaranteed. If he plays a third year, and they don't touch it, that's below market. But there's a long way to go, and he'll be 38 then."
Asking your quarterback to take less is not easy. From a short-term perspective, Brady gave the Patriots an advantage over a lot of their competitors in 2013 and '14. And in the process, he highlighted just how challenging this landscape has been for clubs to navigate.


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Our products have a two year warranty against manufacturing defects. Since receiving the shipment and during the 15 day period, you can return the purchased item if it was not to his liking and was not used. To do this, simply contact our customer service and return the product in its original packaging (with acknowledgment of receipt, warranty and manual). Once we have verified that the merchandise is in perfect condition, we will refund the money. The shipping costs when the return is not due to us, the customer.
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Mississippi loves its fetuses, y'all. Mississippi loves them so much that this fall, the state is allowing its voters to decide whether to add a so-called "Personhood Amendment" to its state constitution.
This measure, called Initiative 26, would add the following text to the constitution,
SECTION 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.
It would ban all abortions, regardless of rape, incest, or health of the mother (because women aren't people; that's silly!) and would also outlaw the morning after pill, many forms of hormonal contraceptives, and some IUDs. And the cherry on the shit sundae- it would make in vitro fertilization illegal. Between being America's most obese state and leading the nation in teen pregnancy, it's a miracle that the state has found time to propose something so strongly anti-woman. What a bunch of overachievers.
A group of Mississippi doctors has united in opposition of this amendment, and many have pointed out the goofy legal implications of declaring all fertilized embryos to be "persons." How would inheritance work? Would embryos be allowed to apply for passports? Is freezing an embryo akin to child abuse? Can they apply for credit cards? Will they get Social Security numbers? Can they own property? Do they have free speech rights, like corporations, who are also people? Do you have to buy an extra ticket for your embryo if you want to take it to the opera?
In spite of the sensible opposition to a completely nutty legal idea, the amendment stands a good chance of passing.
Rachel Maddow notes that the state's ultra conservative electorate's near-unanimous support of a statewide anti-gay marriage amendment is indicative of just how far to the right of the mainstream voters' ideology lies. And Katha Pollitt of The Nation suggests that pro-choicers shouldn't dismiss its threatened passage as a fluke, as actions on both the state and federal level indicate otherwise. The United States Congress, those anti-woman knuckleheads, attempted to defund Planned Parenthood earlier this year, and they would've gotten away with it, too, if not for that pesky Senate. Thwarted but undaunted, they're now going after Title X, the federal program that provides family planning services to low income individuals. States, meanwhile, have unleashed a barrage of anti-choice legislation that seems to be leading down the road to laws similar to Mississippi's proposed constitutional amendment. Pollitt notes,
GOP-led governments have voted to cut or eliminate PP funding in New Hampshire, North Carolina, Indiana, Kansas, Wisconsin, Texas and New Jersey. Yes, New Jersey, where Governor Chris Christie, hero of Republicans who also happen to be sane, eliminated the state's $7.5 million budget for family planning. And yes, Texas, where Governor Rick "N-wordhead" Perry slashed family planning funds from $111.5 million to $37.9 million. Meanwhile, since you can always find money for the things you really want, he boosted aid to antichoice crisis pregnancy centers to $8.3 million.
Here's where it gets even scarier: A group that calls itself "Personhood USA" plans to introduce similar measures in half of the states by next year. In an NPR interview quoted in Pollitt's piece, the (male, obviously) president of the organization was cagey when asked about the birth control implications of "personhood" amendments on woman like his wife, saying that she could switch to diaphragms if it came down to it. Or he could wear condoms. Because what America needs is a set of constitutional amendments that require marital sex to be lamer than comedians already say it is.
Anyway, start hoarding birth control now, ladies. Because soon you might have to buy it from a beponytailed guy named Simon who calls himself Si-money and lives above a smoke shop.
Ban Birth Control? They wouldn't dare... [The Nation]


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Distributor, Delco style for the 225 V6 Oddfire. Complete rebuilt assembly with exchange only. All distributors are disassembled, cleaned, rebuilt, vacuum advance rebuilt and re-assembled. Includes new points and new cap. Your core must be sent in, we will either rebuild your core or exchange if possible. Fits:
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decent enough looking shift boot but it will never, ever fit the willys trucks or wagons...ever
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It worked just fine.
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Perfect fit. Easy to install.
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Decals are bright and vivid. Thanks to JeepsterMan for making them available.
work better than the one it calls for they fall apart there junk
Fuel Tank, Steel, 1946-1956, Willys Jeep, CJ-2A, CJ-3A, early CJ-3B
i had to order a set of distributor wrenches, local parts stores no longer carry them, as it turns out. glad to be able to order parts for my old truck from your site, and thanks for the follow up jj
Fuel Hose, To Fuel Pump, 7 inch, 1946-1971 Jeep & Willys with 4-134 Engine
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