Month: May 2007

Jimmy Nada Is A Dead Man

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by von MICKEY KAUS, taking an unexpected turn: Bush’s Domestic Iraq, cont.: In today’s WSJ, Jeb Bush and Ken Mehlman defend the Senate immigration bill [$] in part on the grounds that it will enable Republicans to capture the Latino vote. This is largely a fantasy, as Heather Mac Donald argues. Anyway, if the GOP … Read more

Junk Science: DDT

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by hilzoy

Yesterday, John Quiggin had a post on Crooked Timber that was very interesting. It concerns an idea I had been rather vaguely aware of, but hadn’t really focussed in on: that Rachel Carson and the environmentalist movement were responsible for the deaths of thousands, maybe millions, even “tens of millions” from malaria. This is completely untrue (I’ll say why below the fold), not that that has stopped people from saying that it is in places like the WSJ, the National Review Online, and even the US Senate.

As Quiggin notes, there’s a mystery about this, namely: where did it come from? It has all the hallmarks of a coordinated campaign — editorials placed in prominent newspapers, all citing the same dubious examples, for instance, and its very own website — but it’s not clear why anyone would undertake such a campaign.

“One of the great puzzles of the DDT myth has been that it appeared to arise from pure ideological animus against Carson and the environmental movement – DDT is not patented so there were no profits to be obtained from pushing it.”

So what’s up?

Well: I had started to try to piece the story together when I discovered that Tim Lambert had done it for me. So I’ll just quote him (though you should read the whole thing):

“So how did the “Rachel killed millions” claim get from lunatic fringe to mainstream?

Well, in 1998, the new Director-General of the World Health Organization, Gro Harlem Brundtland established the Tobacco Free Initiative to reduce death and disease caused by tobacco use. Since it would also reduce tobacco company profits, they used one of their favourite tactics: When an agency plans to take actions against smoking, tobacco companies pay third parties to attack the agency for addressing tobacco instead of some other issue. For example, when the FDA proposed to regulate nicotine, Philip Morris organized and paid for an expensive anti-FDA campaign of radio, television and print ads from think tanks such as the CEI.

So Philip Morris hired Roger Bate to set up a new astroturf group Africa Fighting Malaria and criticize the WHO for not doing enough to fight malaria. The key elements of AFM’s strategy:

“Simplify our arguments.
Pick issues on which we can divide our opponents and win. Make our case on our terms, not on the terms of our opponents – malaria prevention is a good example. …
this will create tensions between LDCs and OECD countries and between public health and environment.”

The simple argument they used to drive a wedge between public health and environment was that we had to choose between birds and people. That by banning DDT to protect birds, environmentalists caused many people to die from malaria.”

So, in a nutshell: the WHO was about to undertake an initiative that would have harmed the tobacco companies. The tobacco companies, in turn, hired shills to attack the WHO. They presumably hired some to attack the WHO’s tobacco initiative, but they also hired people to attack other things the WHO was doing in order to discredit it more generally. Thus, the attack on Rachel Carson.

***

Malaria prevention is incredibly important. For that matter, so is the WHO and its anti-tobacco initiative. This story shows the tobacco industry funding people to spread misinformation, not because they themselves have any interest in malaria and DDT, but just to sow confusion and skepticism about the WHO at a time when it was a threat to their interests.

This is a story of intellectual corruption. And it has real public costs. People need to be able to trust experts: the alternative is everyone having to develop his or her own expertise in everything. When people who should know better allow themselves to be paid to shill for industry, they undermine that trust. And that makes us all worse off.

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What’s worse than shutting down a TV network?

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by Charles

Threatening another TV network that dares to confront a socialist dictator, which is exactly what Hugo Chavez has done.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday called opposition news channel Globovision an enemy of the state and said he would do what was needed to stop it from inciting violence, only days after he shut another opposition broadcaster.

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched in Caracas in a fourth consecutive day of protests over Chavez’s closure of the RCTV network – a move which has sparked international criticism that the leftist leader’s reforms are undermining democracy.

State television showed hundreds of government supporters marching in downtown Caracas celebrating Chavez’s decision.

"Enemies of the homeland, particularly those behind the scenes, I will give you a name: Globovision. Greetings gentlemen of Globovision, you should watch where you are going," Chavez said in a broadcast all channels had to show.

"I recommend you take a tranquilizer and get into gear, because if not, I am going to do what is necessary."

More below the fold.

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You Won’t Believe This

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by hilzoy UPDATE: I have substantially retracted this post here. END UPDATE Just when I think I’ve heard it all, this administration manages to surprise me again. From the AP (h/t Rick Perlstein): “The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease. The Agriculture … Read more

Summa-Assuma

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by von I’VE DISSENTED FROM Hilzoy’s post (and the Newsweek colum) declaring that Plame has been found to be a "covert agent" under the law:  Perhaps she was, but a Court gets to decide that — not the executive branch (here represented by Patrick Fitzgerald and the General Counsel of the CIA).  Moreover, we haven’t … Read more

Well, Knock Me Over With A Feather!

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by hilzoy Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent all along: “An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame’s employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was “covert” when her name became public in July 2003. (…) … Read more

Torture

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by hilzoy From the NYT: “As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable. The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that … Read more

Memorial Day, Again

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by hilzoy One of the things about being profoundly out of sympathy with our present administration is that it has made me much more vividly aware than I ever was before of how extraordinary civilian control of the military is. Think about it: so many people are willing to risk their lives for their country … Read more

A Quick Programming Note

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by publius I try to avoid blogging about my own personal biz, but I thought it would be appropriate to do so now in light of conflicts of interests, etc. But I will keep it short. I’ve hinted around, but in exactly 72 hours, I will no longer be employed by a DC law firm … Read more

This Week In WTF?

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by hilzoy For some reason, I’ve seen a lot of stories recently that I found just plain bizarre, mostly not in a good way. So I thought I’d round them up. First (h/t TalkLeft): I am against the death penalty myself, partly on principle, and partly because I think we cannot go on executing people … Read more

Nice And Cozy

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by hilzoy Last night, as I was writing one of my earlier posts, I read the President’s most recent press conference in its entirety, and I ran across one bit that, for sheer lunacy, rivals his earlier claim that “when I was going to college, I never dreamed that the United States of America could … Read more

Fort Irwin On The Tigris

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by hilzoy The New York Times is unusually depressing today. In addition to the story I wrote about in my last post, there’s an article about jihadis flowing from Iraq out into the rest of the world. I didn’t know, for instance, that in the recent battle in northern Lebanon, “as many as 50 veterans … Read more

‘Why Are We Still Here?’

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by hilzoy From the NYT: “Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents. “In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” he said. “There was no sectarian violence, … Read more

This Week In Hysteria

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by hilzoy

This week, the FDA approved Lybrel, a contraceptive that enables women to stop menstruating. Predictably, this produced a flood of concern about the cosmic implications of it all, even though, as I understand it, the decision to include a week of placebos so that women who are on the pill would have periods was made because several decades ago, women found it less disconcerting. (Similarly, when the first cake mixes were developed, they had powdered eggs in them, but tests showed that people preferred to add their own eggs, since it made them feel as though they were actually baking.) What’s truly perplexing is that a lot of the sillier things are written by women. For instance:

“It’s unclear whether women will embrace this new pill, which contains the same formulations of estrogen and progestin used for birth control pills for decades, but its arrival marks yet another step toward the blurring of the genders.

As 21st century women dominate the universities and continue to climb the executive ladder, and metro-sexual men explore their feminine side, it’s harder to define what it means to be a woman.”

Um: no, it’s not:

“Main Entry: wom·an
1 a : an adult female person”

See how easy? Even those of us who are contributing to the blurring of the genders by taking up university positions can manage that. We are not confused, even though, according to the author, “it is menstruation that has historically set women apart from men.” Luckily for women who are pregnant, nursing, or menopausal, there are certain other telltale signs: breasts, a vagina, a uterus, pregnancy, no Y chromosomes. So most of us manage to figure out that we are not men even when we aren’t having our period. Although Lybrel does seem to have led one woman to get confused about women’s separate identities:

“On matters concerning the female reproductive system, it’s important to remember J.S. Bach. Specifically, Anna Magdalena Bach, the second, highly fecund wife of history’s most potent composer.”

Honestly: you can’t make this stuff up.

But the strangest of all is this segment from Fox News. Watch the face of the woman from NARAL as she slowly realizes just how nutty her counterpart from the Abstinence Clearinghouse is. (“I want more babies! More babies! We want more babies!”)

Meanwhile…

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Memorial Day

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by hilzoy

The New York Times has a horribly sad article today, which is unfortunately all TimesSelect. Excerpt:

“The sniper fired. It was a clean shot, if there is such a thing. And down for good fell another American soldier.

His name was Sergeant James Dean, but everyone called him Jamie. He was the farm boy who fished, hunted and tossed a horseshoe like nobody else. He was the guy at the end of Toots Bar, nursing a Bud and talking Nascar. He was the driver of that blue Silverado at the red light, his hands on the wheel, his mind on combat horrors that made him moody, angry, withdrawn.

Now here he was, another American soldier, dead. Only Sergeant Dean was killed at the front door of his childhood home, the day after Christmas and three weeks before his redeployment, shot by a sniper representing the government for whom he had already risked his life in Afghanistan. His wife and parents received the news not by a knock on the door, but by gunfire in the neighborhood.

“If they had just left him alone,” says his wife, Muriel.”

More below the fold.

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Just. Shoot. Me. Now.

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by hilzoy Via TPM, here’s an article from Congressional Quarterly. It contains what the author describes as a “hilarious story” from Patrick Lang: “It was at the beginning of the first Bush term. Lang had been in charge of the Middle East, South Asia and terrorism for the Defense Intelligence Agency in the 1990s. Later … Read more

Artur Davis . . . Linguistic Badass

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by publius

I didn’t watch the entire Goodling hearing (about 60%), but I had two quick impressions. First, Monica Goodling pretty much handed the House Judiciary members their asses. She was impressive, frankly. Second, the preparation of the Democratic committee members was disgraceful. They were woefully unprepared, and apparently unaware of those strange little creatures sometimes called follow-up questions. With one exception – Artur Davis (D-AL) (Orin Kerr noticed him too).

I can’t take credit for catching this — a friend (commenter kovarsky) directed me to both Davis’s questioning and his resume. And it’s impressive stuff. Davis is a Democrat from Alabama – double Harvard, and a former Assistant US Attorney. And it shows. It wasn’t just that Davis efficiently obtained the most damaging testimony, it was the way in which he did so. Looking closely at the mechanics of his examination illustrates that he is a skilled, experienced questioner (and a master of linguistics). More below the flip.

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The Vote

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by hilzoy I am horribly, horribly disappointed by the Democrats’ capitulation. I think I agree with publius that this will be a long-run loser for the Republicans, but it’s the Republicans’ willingness to give Bush whatever he wants, not anything we did, that makes it so. And besides, I don’t think this should be about … Read more

Voter ID DATA!

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–by Sebastian I found an interesting dataset from the bipartisan Election Assistance Commision.  So far as I can tell from the murky backstory, this report was not adopted by the Commission because neither side liked parts of its conclusions (there are hints of the Administration not being thrilled either).  And I can see why, there … Read more

Monica Goodling

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by hilzoy I’ve been listening to Monica Goodling’s testimony while I do other things, and it has done very little so far to clarify any of the underlying questions the US Attorney scandal has raised. She has admitted asking political questions, like how people voted, during job interviews for career appointees, and while she scrupulously … Read more

Bush’s Pyrrhic Victory

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by publius The early narrative on the Iraq funding debate is that Democrats “lost” and Bush “won.” Sorry, but I don’t buy that. People need to view this particular skirmish – and its inevitable, entirely-predictable conclusion – through a longer-term lens. If Bush “won,” it’s the most Pyrrhic victory of all time. The Democrats, by … Read more

Awwwww…

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by hilzoy From the Daily Mail: “When a newly-hatched flamingo chick was abandoned by its mother and father, the search for surrogate parents did not take long. Carlos and Fernando, the only gays in the bird sanctuary, were the automatic choice. (…) WWT spokeswoman Jane Waghorn said: “Fernando and Carlos are a same sex couple … Read more

Plot By Walking Bundle Of Contradictions Foiled

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by hilzoy

ABC:

“Even in death, the Rev. Jerry Falwell rouses the most volatile of emotions.

A small group of protesters gathered near the funeral services to criticize the man who mobilized Christian evangelicals and made them a major force in American politics — often by playing on social prejudices.

A group of students from Falwell’s Liberty University staged a counterprotest.

And Campbell County authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having several homemade bombs in his car.

The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service. The devices were made of a combination of gasoline and detergent, a law enforcement official told ABC News’ Pierre Thomas. They were “slow burn,” according to the official, and would not have been very destructive.

“There were indications that there were others involved in the manufacturing of these devices and we are still investigating these individuals with the assistance of ATF [Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms], Virginia State Police and FBI. At this time it is not believed that these devices were going to be used to interrupt the funeral services at Liberty University,” the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office said in a release.

Three other suspects are being sought, one of whom is a soldier from Fort Benning, Ga., and another is a high school student. No information was available on the third suspect.”

As Space Cowboy at Shakesville notes, it’s a little odd to try to prevent disruption at a funeral by detonating bombs. It’s even odder to do this if you happen to be a Christian. Normally I wouldn’t assume that a student whose religious affiliation isn’t reported is a Christian, but since this is a student from Liberty University, originally Liberty Baptist Bible College, founded by Jerry Falwell, a school whose mission is “To develop Christ-centered men and women with the values, knowledge, and skills essential to impact tomorrow’s world”, it seems like a pretty safe bet.

I wouldn’t have thought that detonating bombs to stop a legal protest was a particularly Christian thing to do, but perhaps Mr. Uhl missed the part about turning the other cheek, along with the various parts about not killing, or the part where we are instructed to walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering, or the part where Christ, encountering people who were preparing to stone a sinner, said: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ He certainly couldn’t have been paying attention to this:

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;

Does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;

Does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;

Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Though perhaps, as we weak-minded liberals are wont to say, he was a just perfectly nice boy who was warped by his environment, and cannot possibly be held responsible for his actions.

— Nah.

[Note: update below fold.]

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And Now For Something Completely Different …

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by hilzoy David Ignatius says that the administration is coming up with a new plan for Iraq: “President Bush and his senior military and foreign policy advisers are beginning to discuss a “post-surge” strategy for Iraq that they hope could gain bipartisan political support. The new policy would focus on training and advising Iraqi troops … Read more

Very Very Tiny Republicans Vanish Altogether

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by hilzoy

Josh Marshall points to this article by Richard Hasen, and it’s really good. It’s about an organization called the American Center for Voting Rights, which came into existence in March of 2005, just days before it was invited to testify before Congress. (Curiously, the head of this non-partisan, tax exempt organization neglected to mention that he had been the National Counsel for Bush/Cheney ’04.) Then:

“The group identified Democratic cities as hot spots for voter fraud, then pushed the line that “election integrity” required making it harder for people to vote. The group issued reports (PDF) on areas in the country of special concern, areas that coincidentally tended to be presidential battleground states. In many of these places, it now appears the White House was pressuring U.S. attorneys to bring more voter-fraud prosecutions.”

And now, strange to say, it has disappeared!

“With no notice and little comment, ACVR—the only prominent nongovernmental organization claiming that voter fraud is a major problem, a problem warranting strict rules such as voter-ID laws—simply stopped appearing at government panels and conferences. Its Web domain name has suddenly expired, its reports are all gone (except where they have been preserved by its opponents), and its general counsel, Mark “Thor” Hearne, has cleansed his résumé of affiliation with the group. Hearne won’t speak to the press about ACVR’s demise.”

It won’t be too hard to clean out their offices, though. Here’s a picture (it’s from BradBlog, where it appeared in an article subtitled: “Photos suggest ACVR web developers most likely very very tiny Republicans!”):

Ac4vr_299

In the rest of the article, which I recommend, Hasen connects this to the US Attorneys’ scandal, and explains and rebuts the Center’s arguments about voter fraud. He also provides a lot of links to other work on the topic, e.g. here and here (pdfs). He concludes:

“So Hearne let the organization collapse, and in a bit of irony, a Washington lawyer who bought the ACVR domain name has set it to redirect to the Brennan Center’s Truth About Fraud Web site, which debunks ACVR’s claims of polling-place voter fraud. But despite the collapse of ACVR, the idea that there is massive polling-place voter fraud has, perhaps irrevocably, entered the public consciousness. It has infected even the Supreme Court’s thinking about voter-ID laws. And it has provided intellectual cover for the continued partisan pursuit of voter-ID laws that may suppress minority votes. Just this week, Republican members of the Texas state Senate are trying to push through a voter-ID law over a threatened Democratic filibuster. Their political machinations have already required a Democratic state senator recovering from a liver transplant to show up to vote—and they almost passed the bill when another Democratic senator came down with the stomach flu.

Texas legislators should be ashamed. All of this effort to enact a law that would stop a nonexistent problem. If only there were a way to ensure that spurious claims of polling-place voter fraud could have disappeared with ACVR.”

***

There are some jobs that really make me wonder: how can the person who takes them look him- or herself in the face? Lobbying for Robert Mugabe, for instance, or being one of the scientists paid to come up with studies proving that cigarettes don’t cause cancer. Spending your days trying to make voter fraud look like a serious problem* when it isn’t one, by telling lies, all in order to convince people to pass restrictive voter ID laws because you think that the people who will be prevented from voting as a result are likely to favor your opposition is one of them.

It’s one thing to fight for your convictions. It’s another to try to rig the game in your favor by keeping people from exercising their right to vote. It’s hard to express how furious this sort of thing makes me. I normally hate saying that things are un-American, but this surely is.

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Hell No

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by hilzoy

Via TPM, the AP:

“In grudging concessions to President Bush, Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and shorn of billions of dollars in spending on domestic programs, officials said Monday. (…)

While details remain subject to change, the measure is designed to close the books by Friday on a bruising veto fight between Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress over the war. It would provide funds for military operations in Iraq through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Democrats in both houses are expected to seek other opportunities later this year to challenge Bush’s handling of the unpopular conflict.

Democratic officials stressed the legislation was subject to change. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss provisions before a planned presentation to members of the party’s rank and file later in the day.

Democrats in Congress have insisted for months they would not give Bush a blank check for his war policies, and officials said the legislation is expected to include political and military goals for the Iraqi government to meet toward establishment of a more democratic society. [Ed. note: Why imposing benchmarks on the Iraqis constitutes not giving Bush a blank check eludes me. “Stop being mean to your little sister, or I’ll take away someone else’s allowance!”]

Failure to make progress toward the goals could cost the Iraqis some of the reconstruction aid the United States has promised, although it was not clear whether Democrats intended to give Bush power to order the aid to be spent regardless of progress. (…)

Either way, Democratic leaders have said they hope to clear a war spending bill through both houses of Congress and send it to Bush’s desk by week’s end. They added the intention was to avoid a veto.”

Greg Sargent reports that the leadership will not confirm this. One of the guys at AmericaBlog thinks it might be a trial balloon. So, on the off chance that they are interested in my opinion: No. No. No.

Hell no.

More below the fold.

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Say What?

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by hilzoy Via Matt Yglesias, Ha’Aretz: “The Bush administration has given Israel permission to discuss the future of the Golan Heights, security arrangements and Israeli-Syrian peace accords if it agrees to talks with Syria.” Permission? Permission? There are two things wrong with this. The first is the idea of us giving another sovereign nation “permission” … Read more

This Is Funny, Except That It’s Not

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by hilzoy Via Unfogged, I read that Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) is taking the Food Stamp Challenge: “For seven days, I’ll be living on three dollars of food per day, the same amount an average participant in the Food Stamp Program receives. The Challenge is an exercise aimed to raise awareness of the difficulties faced … Read more

The “Illegals Bill”

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by publius I know this is by now obvious, but the headline below ("illegals") illustrates perfectly why things like the Wash Times and Fox News are something less than legitimate news organizations.

Immigration Reform — Now Beats Never

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by publius

On the immigration front, the emerging dilemma for progressives is whether to support an imperfect bill or hold out for a better one. This question will obviously turn on the final details (Hilzoy has an excellent outline of the big picture issues), but my view is that progressives should err on the side of passing legislation, even if it means swallowing some bad provisions (note that this is a working presumption rather than an unyielding position).

First, I think people need to understand (1) how unique (and fleeting) the current political coalition is; and (2) why this uniqueness matters. One of the main arguments for waiting is that the 2008 election will create a more favorable environment for immigration reform if the Democrats win (both the White House and Congress). I think, though, that this view is fundamentally mistaken. In reality, immigration reform will be far more difficult (if not impossible) in a government controlled entirely by Democrats.

Immigration has soured me on Mickey Kaus, but he’s right about one thing – immigration reform is an electoral loser for the Democrats (at least in the short term). I’m not sure what the national polls say, but I don’t think they’re all that relevant. What is relevant is that immigration is a big loser in the marginal districts (and states) that will decide which party controls Congress. Without strong Republican “cover,” a large, veto-holding chunk of Democratic legislators (particularly the freshmen) would oppose comprehensive reform. In short, Democrats cannot (in the short term) hold political power if they are perceived as owning immigration reform.

At the same time, and for more obvious reasons, it’s risky for Republicans to support comprehensive reform as well. It’s true that the business community generally gets what it wants. But that maxim only holds true to the extent it doesn’t cause “political death” in primary elections. The conservative base is passionately, even hysterically, anti-reform. For that reason, it’s the type of issue of which primary challenges are made.

That’s why the White House’s strong support for comprehensive support is so important. On the one hand, it gives enormous political cover to the Democrats. Notice, for instance, how much of the conservative base’s relative wrath is being channeled toward the White House rather than Dems. In addition, White House support gives cover to nervous Republicans and frees them to do either what they think is right, or what their corporate patrons want them to do. Substitute Hillary Clinton for Bush, and you’d see a lot more GOP opposition.

The White House then is really the glue holding this compromise together. And the White House support is itself unique (and fleeting). It’s not just that it’s a Republican administration, it’s that this particular administration — for somewhat contingent reasons (roots in Texas; Rove’s demographic faith; etc.) — has made progressive immigration reform a top priority that it will spend capital on. None of the major Republican candidates in 2008 should be expected to do the same if they win. People like Romney are already running against “amnesty,” while McCain’s precarious relationship with the base would limit his freedom of movement.

Bottom line — the stars are truly aligned. The current Republican administration supports immigration reform, and this support provides the political cover necessary for both Congressional Democrats and Republicans to strike a deal. When Bush leaves (or perhaps ascends), immigration reform leaves with him.

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Open Thread: Now With Added Guessing Game

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by hilzoy

Match the following pets with the Presidential candidate who owns them (only major candidates included; I haven’t cheated by including, e.g., the pets of the Bonapartist Party candidate or anything):

(a) Jet the 9-year-old black Lab, Sonic the 1 1/2-year-old Shih Tzu

(b) Cats Jake and Squeaky

(c) Sam the English springer spaniel, Coco the mutt, turtles Cuff and Link, Oreo the black and white cat, a ferret, three parakeets and 13 saltwater fish

(d) Family recently lost Marley, a Weimaraner [“‘I wear the leash I forged in life,’ replied the Ghost. ‘I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?'” — ed.]

(e) Harry the beagle-basset, Lucie the beagle and George the cocker spaniel

(f) “No longer has a pet.”

Answers below the fold.

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