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The biggest vulnerability of hospital patients is that their Social Security numbers often double as a medical identifier. For identity thieves, "Social Security numbers are the key to the golden kingdom," says Mari Frank, a California attorney specializing in identity theft.

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Often, the culprit in medical settings is a rogue employee. Identity-theft experts recommend that patients and loved ones protest any visible use of Social Security numbers, such as on wristbands or unguarded charts. At the very least, patients may be able to darken a couple of numbers. Patients should refuse to answer aloud any verbal request for those numbers when they might be overheard.

Patients should also resist the impulse to trust their fellow patients. "If you and the other guy were at the counter at Costco, you'd be careful in a way that you're not when you're wearing hospital gowns," says Mr. Cox, the Michigan attorney general. His office recently extracted a guilty plea from a cancer patient who stole the identities of nine other cancer patients. The best thing to do is, if at all possible, have the hospital assign you a non-Social Security number for identification purposes.

I got a postcard in the mail from a local real estate agent, and on it was a helpful list of flag-flying days. Some of these will already be on iCal's U.S. Holidays calendar, but I decided to make a separate calendar you can download for iCal or any other calendar app which supports a .ics file. The dates are: + New Year's Day (January 1) + Inauguration Day (January 20) + Martin Luther King's Birthday (3d Monday in January) + Lincoln's Birthday (February 12) + Washington's Birthday (February 22) + Washington's Birthday (Observed) (3d Monday in February) + Patriots Day (April 19) + National Day (2d Sunday in May) + Memorial Day (Last Monday in May, fly flag at half-staff until noon) + Flag Day (June 19) + Independence Day (July 4) + Labor Day (1st Monday in September) + Constitution Day (September 17) + Columbus Day (October 12) + Navy Day (October 27) + Veteran's Day (November 11) + Thanksgiving Day (4th Thursday in November) + Christmas Day (December 25th) I did not include Easter, since Easter Sunday varies from year to year. The flag can be flown on Easter. The flag should also be flown on election days, can be flown on state and local holidays, a State's Birthday, and any days as proclaimed by the President of the United States. I welcome any additions or corrections.

Today we celebrate Washington's Birthday. Yet on every calendar I own, today is noted as President's Day, where we supposedly honor both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the latter of whom's birthday was the 12th. (Another notable President, Ronald Reagan, would have been 94 on the 6th.) Per Matthew Spaulding, a Heritage Foundation scholar, in today's Federalist Brief (No. 05-08):

"Although it was celebrated as early as 1778, and by the early 19th Century was second only to the Fourth of July as a patriotic holiday, Congress did not officially recognize Washington's Birthday as a national holiday until 1870. The Monday Holiday Law in 1968--applied to executive branch departments and agencies by Richard Nixon's Executive Order 11582 in 1971--moved the holiday from February 22 to the third Monday in February. Section 6103 of Title 5, United States Code, currently designates that legal federal holiday as 'Washington's Birthday.' Contrary to popular opinion, no action by Congress or order by any President has changed 'Washington's Birthday' to 'President's Day'." So how did this come to be known popularly as "President's Day"?

It truly is quite amazing how prescient our Founding Fathers were:

"It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression...that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary;...working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped." --Thomas Jefferson

Today would have been President Ronald Reagan's 94th birthday. Jeff Harrell:

President Reagan meant a lot to me. I never met the man, nor did I ever vote for him; I was two weeks shy of my eighth birthday when he was first elected to the White House. But growing up in the Reagan era, I couldn't help but be influenced by his policies, his philosophies and most of all his presence. He was just there, like a permanent fixture, and I grew up around him. Likewise with me. I vividly remember President Reagan's first inauguration, watching the coverage on television the afternoon and evening after I got home from school. First, at the sitter who take care of several children after school while their parents were still working, and later, with my parents, over dinner. As with Jeff, President Reagan has influenced me even more as I got older, and took more of an interest in politics. Many consider FDR the greatest president of the 20th century, but I would have to disagree. FDR offered shorter-term solutions to short-term problems that have blossomed in to a monster federal bureaucracy. FDR may have done most of the work toward winning the Second World War, but he did so while allowing the evil influence of communism to spread throughout Asia, Eastern Europe, and even within the ranks of his own administration. He left us the Cold War. Which Reagan won. The left called Reagan crazy, a cowboy (sound familiar?), one who would get us in to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Instead, Reagan won victory after victory after victory against the Soviets, without a missile ever being launched. At the same time, he oversaw the greatest eight-year period of growth our nation has ever enjoyed. For me, and many others, it's Ronald Wilson Reagan who stands on the shoulders of giants in the 20th century.

Jeff Harrell sums up my feelings from the State of the Union. I cried, too, Jeff.

I realize that the above may seem like a misnomer in these days of the far Left hijacking of the Democratic Party, but such an animal does exist. In recent times they have been known as "Reagan Democrats," a title which should be worn as a badge of honor and not shame, as current DNC leadership would have things. The Toad points to Kim du Toit's essay today that responds to a letter from a reader, who is a conservative Democrat. Kim offers an extremely lucid argument on why the Democratic Party cannot be trusted in its current state to run the nation, and makes the case on why conservative Democrats have far more in common with Republicans and should think about switching parties. Of course, the latter doesn't really fix the Democratic Party, but rather gives more of a hold of it to the far Left, which has gotten the Democratic Party, and partly the nation, in to its current state of affairs. I don't care for some of Kim's language (not that Kim would care what I think), but he's spot on:

Handing Democrats access to the levers of power is like giving a teenage boy a bottle of wine and the keys to the Ferrari: a great old time is had by all, until a f***ing catastrophe ensues. Then, when the feckless irresponsibility of the Democrat Party is made plain for all to see, and Republicans have to clean up the mess, the Democrats scuttle across the border into New Mexico in a childish sulk and suck their thumbs until they get their own way again.

Every time a conservative tries to treat liberal Democrats with politeness and fair play, the f***ing bastards use that as a bargaining chip to further their own agenda. Parliamentary rules are fine, as long as they're invoked only by Democrats -- when Republicans even attempt to do likewise, they're "mean-spirited". Don't ask me for examples or this will be longer than a Bill Whittle essay.

"If we do not have human-intelligence assets in the field, then it's hard for us to get any kind of warning, unless the bad guys are really loose on how they use their cell phones. But the news media likes to tell people how we track the bad guys, and the bad guys learn from that. The White House staffers, too--they like to tell reporters how smart they are, and they leak data on signals intelligence. You sometimes wonder if they're stringers for the terrorists, the way they give away code-word-sensitive information." In reality, the staff pukes were just showing off to the reporters, of course, which was about the only thing they knew how to do. "So, the rest of the day the newsies will be screaming about 'another intelligence failure,' right?" "Bet on it. The same people who trash the intelligence community will now complain that it can't do the job--but without acknowledging their own role in crippling it every chance they get. Same thing from Congress, of course..." --The Teeth of the Tiger (emphasis added)

If you are a Texas resident seeking more information on the proposed constitutional amendments we will be voting on come 13 September, point your browser to the Free Market Foundation. They have made available a free PDF or Word document voter guide which gives a brief summary of each proposed amendment, as well as a pro and con for each. Don't forget to vote! Early vote if you can so you don't miss out!

Don't know why I didn't come across it sooner, but the official Navy web site for the USS Ronald Reagan is online. Very thorough, full of info, including the construction process of a vessel longer than the Empire State Building is tall. The christening and commissioning ceremonies are both covered, as are the latest sea and flight deck trials. Lots of pictures abound. The Reagan will go on active duty next year, and should see its first deployment some time in 2005.

Impeachable Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg was singing the praises of doing what the rest of the world thinks, rather than abiding by our nation's Constitution, at a liberal laywers convention on Saturday. The Klinton appointee was quoted as saying, "Our island or lone ranger mentality is beginning to change," and that justices "are becoming more open to comparative and international law perspectives." Um, how about just saying "Yes, that's permissable under the Constitution," or, "No, I'm afraid that's not permissable under the Constitution." The oath you took, Comrade Ginsburg, says nothing of "comparative and international law perspectives." It says nothing about you interpreting the Constitution as a "living document," or imposing your social agenda on the rest of the nation. Being a Supreme Court justice should be a fairly black and white kind of gig, since the Constitution is a fairly black and white document...