Author: Personal Liberty News Desk

According to a new study, the act of meditation can relax the mind and enhance the body’s ability to react to moderate amounts of pain.

In the study, researchers from the University of North Carolina measured pain ratings in students who were trained in meditation for three consecutive days and were given experimental pain stimuli.

The research team found that subjects who participated in brief meditation sessions reported reduced pain of both low and high intensities. Moreover, they concluded that meditation significantly reduced anxiety and increased the ability to sustain personal focus—two factors related to the body’s ability to tolerate moderate amounts of pain.

The study’s authors noted that the analgesic benefits of meditation can be noticed after only a short period of utilizing the technique.

Meanwhile, in a separate study, Canadian researchers have reportedly found evidence that Zen meditation can reinforce a central brain region that regulates pain.

“Through training, Zen meditators appear to thicken certain areas of their cortex and this appears to underlie their lower sensitivity to pain,” says lead author Joshua Grant, a doctoral student in the University of Montreal’s Department of Physiology.

Feared by some and long-awaited by others, a plan to reform and regulate the United States financial industry has been unveiled today by top Senate Democrats.

In response to the most severe recession since the Great Depression, which was precipitated by Wall Street banks and investment firms trading in risky financial products, Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd presented the proposed legislation that would give the government new powers to break up firms that threaten the economy, according to the Associated Press (AP).

Specifically, the bill creates a nine-member Financial Stability Oversight Council that could place large financial institutions under the supervision of the Federal Reserve, and approve the break-up of large complex companies if they pose a “grave threat” to the financial system, the news provider further reported.

Moreover, the legislation includes language giving shareholders a nonbinding “say on pay” for company executives, according to NASDAQ.

However, commentators point out that the proposal falls short of the restructuring of federal financial regulations promised by President Obama or contained in legislation already passed in the House.

The Banking Committee is expected to formally debate and vote on it before a spring break.

Senior officials with the Obama administration are confident that the House of Representatives will pass the Senate’s version of the healthcare bill within the next week and warned Republicans who are fighting for reelection in November to think carefully before voting against the measure.

“Make my day,” said senior White House political advisor David Axelrod defiantly. “Let’s have that fight. I’m ready to have that—and every member of Congress ought to be willing to have that debate as well.”

However, despite the bravado of some of Obama’s key aides, the chief vote counter on the healthcare issue, Democratic House Whip James Clyburn, admitted later that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does not yet have the 216 votes necessary to pass the measure. Most commentators believe the Democrats are approximately six votes shy of adopting the Senate’s version of the legislation, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader John Boehner said that he strongly doubts Pelosi has the support to pass the bill, and he and fellow Republican leaders will do “everything [they] can to prevent this bill from becoming law—plain and simple.”

While Washington continues to debate the merits of a comprehensive immigration reform, a pair of recent studies has shown that while legalizing the status of those working in the United States illegally could help the economy, the road is paved with institutional dangers.

A joint study released by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Immigration Policy Center—entitled Raising the Floor for American Workers: The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform—found that bringing the approximately 12 million unauthorized immigrants into the “official” economy would add some $1.5 trillion to the GDP over 10 years.

In the short term (three years) it would generate $4.5 billion to $5.4 billion in additional tax revenue and consumer spending sufficient to support 750,000 to 900,000 jobs, the research also found.

Angela M. Kelley, vice president for immigration policy and advocacy at CAP, said lawmakers should keep these numbers in mind. “It would be to their peril to be short-sighted and not pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation that will reverberate across the economy and help all Americans.”

However, a report published by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) highlighted the problems with the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act legalization program, which it says provides a cautionary tale.

According to CIS, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) did not act as a law-enforcement agency but a “typical” governmental agency and usually approved applicants’ petitions.

The organization also stressed that the INS failed to establish a credible decision-making process that severely hampered the detection of fraud.

The Senate has overwhelmingly rejected a conservative Republican measure that would have temporarily banned lawmakers from earmarking spending bills with provisions for state-sponsored projects, such as roads or grants for local governments, the Associated Press (AP) reports. The final vote was 68-29 in favor of disallowing the moratorium on earmarks.

The Senate’s dismissal of prohibiting earmarks comes only a few days after the House implemented two separate, partisan bans on excess spending. Last week, Democratic House leaders announced an indefinite restriction on budget earmarks to for-profit entities.

One day later, House Republicans trumped the Democrats’ pledge by vowing to eliminate all earmarking for at least one full year.

"Republicans took an important step toward showing the American people we’re serious about reform by adopting an immediate, unilateral ban on all earmarks," said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

"But the more difficult battle lies ahead, and that’s stopping the spending spree in Washington that is saddling our children and grandchildren with trillions of dollars in debt," he added.

Meanwhile, some Democrats have criticized the decision to temporarily prohibit earmarking, including Representative Mark Schauer (D-Mich.), who referred to the move a simple attempt to score "cheap political points," according to WHMI.com.

Virginia’s new Republican Governor Bob McDonnell has spoken out against his attorney general’s claim that the state’s schools have no right to ban anti-gay discrimination, as the firestorm surrounding the governor’s first executive order continues.

The controversy first emerged when McDonnell, who was sworn in in January, signed his first executive order that, unlike those issued by two previous governors, did not include specific protections for gay state workers.

Soon thereafter, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, also a Republican, sent a letter to public colleges in which he stated that they had no right to impose their own bans as only state legislature can extend such protections, according to The Christian Science Monitor.

The ensuing uproar has led McDonnell to backtrack on his own order and on Cuccinelli’s interpretation by announcing an extension of protections to homosexuals, citing their constitutional rights.

“The Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits discrimination without a rational basis against any class of persons [including] based on factors such as one’s sexual orientation,” he wrote, quoted by Falls Church News-Press.

Therefore, “discrimination against any class of persons without a rational basis is prohibited,” he added.

In the meantime, there have been individual acts of defiance across the state, including the City of Falls Church School Board, that voted to add language to its anti-discrimination policy to protect lesbians and gays at its most recent meeting on Tuesday night, the news provider further reported.

As the deadline approaches for the Senate vote on healthcare reform, Democratic leaders have confirmed their plan to move forward on the bill using a fast-track legislative tactic known as budget reconciliation.

They have also said they will stop trying to work out a deal with Representative Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) regarding federal funding for abortions.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), made the reconciliation announcement—which will allow Democrats to pass the bill with 51 votes, instead of the usual threshold of 60—in his letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday.

“We will finish the job,” Reid said in the letter, adding that “we will do so by revising individual elements of the bills both houses of Congress passed last year, and we plan to use the regular budget reconciliation process that the Republican caucus has used many times.”

As federal funding for abortions remains a sticking point, and as the latest round of negotiations with the proponent of an amendment that would ban it have come to a naught, Democratic leaders have said they will no longer try to negotiate with Stupak.

Commentators have said this suggests the Democratic leadership believes there aren’t enough pro-life Democrats that will follow Stupak in voting against the bill, something the latter disputes.

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, has announced it has received a top secret memorandum from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that appears to detail the extent of congressional knowledge about alleged torture of foreign terrorist suspects in United States custody.

The memo is said to include a report of a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence closed hearing, conducted in July 2004, regarding the subject of enhanced interrogation techniques.

The organization has released several excerpts from the hearing, including a summary of testimony by a Department of Defense official who reportedly asserted that “interrogation is a critically valuable tool, and … the most [important] factor in the capture of Saddam Hussein.”

Another top official was quoted as saying that methods such as diet and sleep “management,” as well as “segregation,” are among the most important techniques that were—or were planned to be—employed at that time.

After the memo was made public last week, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said it proved what the group had long suspected, namely that intelligence officials repeatedly informed members of Congress that enhanced interrogation techniques were effective.

“We are now beginning to get a very clear picture of what members of Congress knew and when they knew it,” he added.

Results of a new study suggest that the majority of people taking vitamins may want to store them in a different place. Researchers from Purdue University have found that the high humidity present in bathrooms and kitchens may seriously degrade vitamins and other dietary supplements.

Lead study author Lisa Mauer, an associate professor of food science at the university, and her colleagues found that crystalline substances—which include vitamin C, vitamin B and other natural supplements—are susceptible to deliquescence, a process by which humidity forces water-soluble solids to dissolve.

“You might see salt or sugar start to cake in the summer, start to form clumps, and that’s a sign of deliquescence,” said Mauer.

“You can also get chemical instabilities, which are a little more problematic if you’re consuming a dietary supplement with vitamin C,” she added.

The researchers found that even a minimal amount of moisture can significantly decrease the nutrient delivery and shelf life of vitamins.

Specifically, they discovered that vitamin C can degrade within one week when high amounts of moisture are added to a bottle that is regularly opened and closed.

Nutrient degradation is commonly marked by brown spots on vitamins or small amounts of liquid in the container.

As the debate continues on legalizing and taxing marijuana in the climate of growing budget deficits, a Vanderbilt University Law School professor has said that although the proposal sounds simple, there are too many legal hurdles for it to work.

In a new paper, professor Robert Mikos wrote that the federal ban on marijuana would cripple a state’s ability to collect taxes because it encourages marijuana distributors to remain small and continue to operate underground. Moreover, it prevents states from being able to monitor or tax the distributors.

Mikos also pointed out that even if states could successfully monitor marijuana distributors, any information they collected could be used by federal law enforcement to prosecute dealers.

"Federal law enforcement officials could use any information the states gather to track down and sanction marijuana distributors," he said, adding that "the federal ban would thus encourage distributors to evade state tax collectors."

According to Vanderbilt University, activists in states such as California who advocate legalizing marijuana claim the move could generate more than a billion dollars and save millions more by reducing law enforcement costs on prohibition enforcement.

Joe Racalto, the chief of staff for former Representative Eric Massa (D-N.Y.), informed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office of his boss’s inappropriate behavior toward several unmarried male staffers in October of 2009, an unnamed source told The Washington Post last week.

Earlier in the month, Pelosi indicated that her staff had only learned in February of the concerns regarding Massa, who recently resigned from the House amid an Ethics Committee investigation into his conduct, Fox News reports.

According to the Post, Racalto called Pelosi’s director of member services because he was troubled that Massa, 50, was living in a townhouse with numerous young male staffers and had been using explicit language in front of them. Moreover, Racalto was concerned about a lunch date that the congressman—who is married with two kids—had set up with an aide in his 20s who worked in the office of Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

Although the Ethics Committee has concluded its investigation into Massa’s conduct—as his resignation put him outside the reach of any punishment it could impose—House Republicans are calling for an inquiry into the manner in which Pelosi’s office handled the accusations.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that the committee should continue to investigate, as there are "an awful lot of questions" that have been left unanswered.

After the recent round of primary elections in Texas some commentators have suggested that victories of fiscal conservatives are an indication of the growing strength of the Tea Party movement. However, others have cautioned that the claims may be overblown.

They point out that although Governor Rick Perry resoundingly won the Republican gubernatorial primary by advocating small government, opposing the federal deficit as well as tax increases, there was also a Tea Party candidate in that race who finished a distant third.

In fact, despite Tea Party challengers, all 11 of the incumbent House Republicans facing challengers in the state won their primary battle in the end, according to CNN.

"[These] candidates complicated things at the lower level of the tickets, but they didn’t quite overwhelm the better-established dynamics in a lot of these districts," said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, quoted by the news provider.

As far as the Tea Party impact, he added, "there was a lot more flash than bang."

The grassroots movement was launched last year in response to the massive stimulus package passed by Congress and signed by President Obama. Its website specifies that Tea Party Nation is a group of people who want to preserve God-given individual freedoms introduced by the Founding Fathers and who believe in limited government, free speech, the Second Amendment, the military and secure borders.

Seaweed extract may one day have the potential to treat the immune system cancer known as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a new report has suggested.

In the study, lead researcher Mohammad Irhimeh, an assistant professor of oncology and stem cells at the Hashemite University in Jordan, and his colleagues experimented with a seaweed compound called fucoidan, which has been reported to fight tumors in mice and in some cell lines, according to the researchers.

"Some forms of B-cell lymphoma are especially resistant to standard treatment and thus new therapies are needed," said Irhimeh, quoted by Health Day News.

After testing human lymphoma cells with fucoidan, which is sold commercially, the researchers found that it inhibited growth of cancerous cells while not affecting healthy tissue. Furthermore, they discovered a positive level of activity in the genes associated with cell death in lymphoma.

The next step for the research team is to analyze the physiological mechanism responsible for the biological effects seen in the study.

Additionally, there are a variety of nutritional supplements on the market that may slow cancer progression, including vitamin D.

Representative Eric Massa (D-NY) announced last week that he will resign from his post amid an Ethics Committee inquiry into inappropriate remarks that he made to a male staffer during a wedding reception at the end of December.

Massa had previously announced that he would not run for reelection in November due to a recurrence of cancer, but will now leave Washington this week due to the ongoing investigation.

Meanwhile, the New York representative said over the weekend that the Democratic "forces that be" have pushed him out of the House of Representatives to prevent him from voting against healthcare reform.

"Mine is now the deciding vote…and this administration has said they will stop at nothing to pass this healthcare bill, and now they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass," said Massa, who was one of the 39 Democrats to vote against the House version of the healthcare bill in November. "You connect the dots."

Massa did acknowledge that he made an "inappropriate" remark to a male staffer at a New Years Eve wedding ceremony, but that the employee "never said to me that he felt uncomfortable," and that the harassment charges were filed by another staffer, according to CBS News.

In the face of immense pressure to resign his post, embattled New York Governor David Paterson has told reporters that he has no plans to quit, as he doesn’t think that he has "been accused of anything."

Paterson has remained defiantly mum regarding growing questions concerning his alleged intervention in a domestic abuse complaint involving his close aid, David Johnson. According to a New York Times report, the Governor’s office improperly contacted Johnson’s girlfriend, Sherr-una Booker, to try to get the domestic violence case to "go away."

Late last year, Booker called the police and said she had been beaten by Johnson, but later decided not to press charges, creating speculation that she had been coerced into the decision, according to ABC News.

"I have trouble with even calling the police because the state troopers kept calling and harassing me to drop the charges," she told a judge in court transcripts obtained by the news source. Various media reports have indicated that Paterson had spoken to Booker personally.

The fallout from the scandal has been widespread. Three members of the Paterson administration have resigned, including Johnson, and the governor recently announced that he would not run for reelection in November. Still, Paterson claims his innocence.

"I give you my personal oath I have never abused my office, not now, not ever," he declared. "I believe that when the facts are reviewed, the truth will prevail."

Former top George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove’s defense of his boss’ presidency has been facing criticism not only from Democrats, but also from Rove’s own party members.

Last week, the former aid’s new book Courage and Consequences hit the bookshelves, and in it the man who was dubbed "Bush’s brain" set out to defend the administration’s key decisions, including the war in Iraq.

Speaking with NBC’s Matt Lauer, Rove emphasized that 110 Democrats voted for the war, and that there was a "worldwide consensus" on the existence of weapons of mass destruction with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair being listed among the believers.

He added that given the subsequent "attacks" on Bush by major Democratic figures, and their accusations of lying to the American people, Rove’s only regret is that the administration did not "[respond] stronger than we did."

However, The Dallas Morning News reports that as Rove continues his publicity tour, former Texas GOP chairman Tom Pauken offered a different assessment of Bush’s eight years at the helm.

Pulken said that the Bush-Rove team "hijacked" conservatism and nearly destroyed it. "[As a result] Republican politics is barely recognizable to many of us who were grassroots activists in the early days of the conservative movement," he told the news provider.

He specified that Bush spent too much, increased the national debt and conducted a "reckless" foreign policy.

Local Tea Party movement leaders travelled to the nation’s capital last week to kick off the Take the Town Halls to Washington project at a press conference on Capitol Hill on March 9.

The event is designed to bring activists to Washington, D.C., during the month of March to meet, question and review the positions of approximately 50 Democratic members of the House of Representatives whose vote on the proposed healthcare legislation has not yet been publicly announced.

Mark Skoda, chairman of the Memphis Tea Party, is among the assembled leaders, and he said that their first goal is to stop this bill from passing by March 18, the deadline reportedly set by the White House.

"We encourage tea party activists from around the country to come to Washington today, tomorrow, this week,and next week," he said. "We have a ‘war room’ set up on Capitol Hill, and every tea party activist in the country is welcome to use that location as a base of operations."

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said last week that President Obama’s actions during his first State of the Union address were "very troubling," noting that the atmosphere surrounding the annual event has "degenerated to a political pep rally," according to media reports.

During his speech, Obama openly criticized the high court for its decision regarding campaign finance regulations, an act that visibly seemed to bother Roberts and other Supreme Court justices attending the address.

While speaking to a crowd of law students from the University of Alabama, Roberts questioned whether justices should even attend the increasingly political televised speech.

"The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court—according the requirements of protocol—has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling," he said. "I’m not sure why we are there."

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs quickly responded, stating that the only thing troubling the administration was the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that will allow corporations to spend unlimited resources while advocating on behalf of candidates in elections, according to Fox News.

Results of a newly released study suggest that the antioxidant pycnogenol, a plant extract from the bark of the French maritime pine tree, is capable of counteracting kidney damage caused by high blood pressure, decreasing urinary problems and improving blood flow to the kidneys.

In the study, researchers from the Gabriele D’Annunzio University in Italy divided 55 hypertensive patients who showed early signs of impaired kidney function into two groups. Each faction was treated with the anti-hypertensive medication Ramipril, with one of the groups also receiving pycnogenol. All patients included in the study had an average urinary protein level of 89 mg per 24-hour period, considerably surpassing the 30 mg measure that is associated with healthy kidney function.

After six months of follow-up, the researchers found that the average protein level decreased to 64 mg per day, while the pycnogenol group had a mean of only 39 mg per 24-hour period.

"While Ramipril represents an effective treatment for hypertension and its interrelated effects on kidney function, pycnogenol as an adjunct to the medication produced significantly greater results, particularly for kidney function restoration," concluded lead researcher Gianni Belcaro.

An earlier study by the same research team found that pycnogenol also improves circulation, reduces swelling and boosts visual acuity in diabetic patients.

Results of a recent study have suggested that non-traditional therapies are capable of significantly relieving pain among a range of hospitalized patients.

"Roughly 80 percent of patients report moderate to severe pain levels after surgery," said study author Gregory Plotnikoff, medical director of the Penny George Institute for Health and Healing at Abbott Northwestern Hospital.

"We struggle to provide effective pain control while trying to avoid the adverse effects of opiate medications, such as respiratory depression, nausea, constipation, dizziness and falls," he added.

In the study, the researchers evaluated more than 1,800 cardiovascular, surgical, oncology and orthopedics patients and had them score their pain on a verbal scale of zero to 10 both before and after treatment.

The treatments included natural therapy services, such as acupuncture, acupressure, massage therapy, healing touch, music therapy, aromatherapy and reflexology. The research team found the therapies effectively reduced pain levels by more than 50 percent across numerous patient groups.

Moreover, the study’s authors concluded that non-traditional pain therapy options can be clinically implemented under the operational and financial constraints of a hospital setting.