Follow up on yesterday's story

There was something in the paper today about the man being charged for the rape in my neighborhood I blogged about yesterday. He was nineteen. I was mistaken; he didn't take her to the laundromat, but to a laundry room in a nearby apartment building.

It also said that he knocked out seven of her teeth.

Bastard. I'm glad they caught him.

Graeme Frost

I've been following the story of Graeme Frost with great interest. For those of you a little behind on the news cycle, Graeme is a twelve-year old boy who gave the Democratic response to the president's Saturday radio address on Sept. 28, talking about the then-threatened veto of the $35 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

[Aside: Michele Bachman, Minnesota's new gay-baiting Congresswoman, had an editorial the other day explaining why she opposes expansion of the SCHIP program. As a letter to the Star Tribune pointed out today,

Rep. Michele Bachmann misquoted and misconstrued Congressional Budget Office (CBO) statistics in her fanatical support of President Bush's veto of the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

The real dispute between Congress and Bush is that Bush wants to increase funding of SCHIP by only $5 billion, while Congress wants to increase funding by $35 billion from 2007 to 2012. The key point made by the CBO on page 14 of its report is that if funding remains at $5 billion enrollment will fall from 7.4 to 3.5 million children. The CBO estimated that increased funding of $39 billion would maintain the current program and, due to population growth, result in an increased enrollment of about 800,000.

Bachmann wrote, "According to the CBO, the bill will lead to only 800,000 eligible but unenrolled children being enrolled in SCHIP by 2012." She neglects to mention that most of the funding is just to maintain enrollment, and that 3.9 million kids will lose coverage if funding is not increased.]

[See also the New York Times' editorial supporting expansion of SCHIP in refutation of the Bush administration's claims here.]

Anyway, back to Graeme Frost. Graeme was uniquely qualified to offer his opinion about the SCHIP program. He, along with his sister, was critically injured in a 2004 car crash. He was in a coma for a week and was hospitalized for nearly six months. He still has to undergo physical therapy. His sister, Genna, has severe brain damage.

His family was uninsured -- his father is a self-employed woodworker; his mother works part time. In short, he was the perfect example of why SCHIP works and why expanding it makes perfect sense.

"If it weren't for CHIP, I might not be here today," Graeme said. "... We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program. But there are millions of kids out there who don't have CHIP, and they wouldn't get the care that my sister and I did if they got hurt. ... I just hope the president will listen to my story and help other kids to be as lucky as me."

To Democratic lawmakers, he was making a good argument. To the right-wing smear machine, he was a target that needed to be attacked.

Icwhatudo at Free Republic (1) did a little research on the Frost family. He discovered that Graeme attended a $20,000-a-year private school and that the Frosts recently remodeled their kitchen, installing "granite counter tops and glass-front cabinets." A house down the block sold for nearly $500,000, and Graeme's father's business paid $160,000 for a commercial property in 1999. And the New York Times ran the couple's wedding announcement in 1992. "One has to wonder that if time and money can be found to remodel a home, send kids to exclusive private schools, purchase commercial property and run your own business, maybe money can be found for other things," the blogger wrote.

Michelle Malkin (2) did icwhatudo one better: She actually performed reconnaissance. "I just returned from a visit to Frost's commercial property near Patterson Park in Baltimore. It's a modest place. ... I also passed by the Frosts' rowhouse. There was an "01-20-09" bumper sticker plastered on the door and a newer model GMC Suburban parked directly in front of the house."

The bumper stick was the smoking gun. The family was liberal.

Diarist mbecker908 at RedState (3) summed it up pretty well. "If federal funds were required [the Frost children] could die for all I care. Let the parents get second jobs, let their state foot the bill or let them seek help from private charities. ... I would hire a team of PIs and find out exactly how much their parents made and where they spent every nickel. Then I'd do everything possible to destroy their lives with that info."

Mark Steyn at the Corner was a little more ... compassionate. "The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a Seventh Grader. If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man's job, then the boy is fair game."

All of these blogger revelations would be pretty damning -- if any of this story being pushed by the bloggers was true.

Think Progress (5) laid out the facts:

• The private school that Graeme attends costs $15,000 a year, but, thanks to a scholarship, his family pays only $500. Because of the brain injuries she received in the car accident, his sister attends a different private school. The state picks up the entire $23,000-a-year tab.

• The family bought their home for $55,000 in 1990, at a time when the neighborhood had a bad reputation.

• The Frosts made $45,000 last year. Over the past few years they have made no more than $50,000. To be eligible for the Maryland CHIP program, a family must earn $55,220 or less. Halsey Frost, Graeme's father, is a self-employed woodworker and welder. The woodworking company he started folded in 1999 -- in part because of the high costs of health insurance. Bonnie Frost, Graeme's mother, works part-time providing services to publishers of medical journals, in addition to raising the family's three children.

Followup in New York Times here and column by Paul Krugman here, noting further attacks by right wing columnists and bloggers.

Compassionate conservatism.

Right.

Tips on packing lunches

From the site Lunch in a Box [lunch_in_abox2], here's a nice list of links with tips on packing speedy and effective bento box lunches.

The Nobel Prize in Literature from an Alternative Universe

Ted Gioia indulges in a lovely daydream:

"I had a hunch a woman writer living in England would win the Nobel Prize in Literature this year. But I still wasn't prepared for the thrill I experienced when I learned that J.K. Rowling had won the coveted prize. After all, who has done more for the cause of reading in recent decades? The last time a British woman had received this honor was back in 1966 when Dame Agatha Christie shared the award with Jorge Luis Borges. I expect Rowling's acceptance speech will rank among the most memorable. (Although it's hard to imagine anything topping that moment in 1997, when Dr. Hunter S. Thompson mounted the podium in Stockholm to share his surprising sentiments with the audience.) . . ."

No, this is not the real Nobel Prize in Literature, but the way the award might exist in an alternative universe -- a world in which such honors are exempt from pettiness, politics and tokenism. Imagine a Nobel Prize in which the contributions of Proust, Kafka, Nabokov and Joyce are not forgotten. Imagine a Nobel Prize in Literature in which genre writers have a chance. Imagine a Nobel Prize in Literature that doesn't bend over backward to exclude native born U.S. writers (only three honored during the last 52 years!). Ah, don't just imagine . . . read about it here.

For my part, I'm just happy the committee from the alternative universe honored Philip K. Dick three years before his passing.

Well? What do you think of his proposed list of winners? (J.K. Rowling wins it for the year 2007.)

Social networking

Interesting article on social networking.