Some reads.

[ocschwar]

Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas—on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese—in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and "mistakes" can end up in pauper's graves? The authors investigate the globalization of the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. Government’s failure to rein in a lethal profit machine.

This is an article that deserves to be disseminated. Particularly among your legislators. Not only are pharmaceutical companies conducting these studies in places without any meaningful ethical oversight, they are using those overseas locations to bury studies that don't go the way they want, making blatant use of locations where doctors gladly falsify the data in exchange for 100 times more money than they officially make, and outsourcing institutional review boards to for-profit companies, which in turn are doing little more than provide rubber stamps.

Securing the Washington Monument from terrorism has turned out to be a surprisingly difficult job. The concrete fence around the building protects it from attacking vehicles, but there's no visually appealing way to house the airport-level security mechanisms the National Park Service has decided are a must for visitors. It is considering several options, but I think we should close the monument entirely. Let it stand, empty and inaccessible, as a monument to our fears.

It's Bruce Schneier. Word.