Pentagon expands military benefits for same-sex couples

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has agreed to expand benefits for gay and lesbian couples serving in the military, but officials continued to withhold equal access to base housing, healthcare and educational services.

Leon E. Panetta, the outgoing secretary of Defense, signed an order Monday that permits same-sex partners and their dependents to use numerous family-oriented facilities and services on U.S. military bases, including recreation areas, counseling programs, school buses, child care and shopping exchanges.

The order grants same-sex couples the right for the first time to request assignment to the same post or duty station if both serve in the military. It also allows partners to receive pay and other benefits if one is taken prisoner or is missing in action.

The move comes less than a month after President Obama used his second inaugural address to embrace equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans. Three days later, Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, announced they were lifting the ban on female soldiers and Marines serving in most ground combat units.

The changes stop far short of full equalization of benefits for same-sex couples in the military.

The Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress in 1996, effectively barred same-sex couples in the military from the most generous federal benefits, including free or reduced-cost medical services, and tuition assistance. The law defines marriage as the legal union between a man and a woman.

The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments next month in a case that challenges the law as unconstitutional.

But Pentagon officials cited additional obstacles to guaranteeing same-sex couples equal access to base housing as other married couples. They said the issue remained under review.

Speaking at a news briefing, Defense officials said they worried that heterosexual couples and their families might be denied housing on some bases if same-sex couples were allowed to apply.

"One of the concerns was, 'I'm married and now I'm going to be bumped by this person who is not married,'" said one official, citing a military housing shortage. The officials spoke to reporters on condition they not be identified.

Panetta's order also does not allow a same-sex partner to request his or her partner's burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

In addition, the spouse of a heterosexual service member being deployed overseas can seek help obtaining a visa, may have access to medical facilities and has legal immunity for some laws in foreign jurisdictions. Those benefits will not be available to same-sex couples.

Under the order, gay and lesbian service members may file a form with the Defense Department that declares they are in a "domestic partnership," defined as a "committed relationship between two adults of the same sex."

It will take several months to update computer software to permit same-sex partners to receive military identification cards, officials said, but the new benefits must be available by Oct. 1.

Officials said the cost of the expanded benefits would be negligible at a time when the Pentagon faces potentially deep budget cuts. They cited estimates that 5,600 same-sex couples are on active duty, 3,400 serve in the National Guard and Reserves, and 8,000 are retirees.

Gay rights groups applauded the latest move, but critics said the administration was circumventing the Defense of Marriage Act.

"Today, the Pentagon took a historic step forward toward righting the wrong of inequality in our armed forces, but there is still more work to be done," said Chad Griffin, president of Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization.

"Once again, the president is eroding our military's apolitical stance and forcing conformity onto the rest of society by pushing his liberal social agenda through the Department of Defense," said Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Panetta, who is expected to leave the Pentagon this month, vowed when he first took the job in 2011 to study additional steps to equalize benefits. Aides said Monday he wanted to fulfill that promise before he stepped down.

His likely successor, former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, promised at his confirmation hearing last month to pursue expanded benefits for gay and lesbian service members.

The Senate Armed Services Committee was expected to vote Tuesday to recommend Hagel be confirmed, but several Republican senators planned to delay a vote on his confirmation.

david.cloud@latimes.com

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Why Thousands of Spiders Are Crawling in the Skies Over Brazil

Last week, spiders descended in droves upon a town in southern Brazil — literally.

When 20-year-old web designer Erick Reis left a friend’s house on Sunday, he saw what looked like thousands of spiders overhead, reported G1, a Brazilian news site, on Feb. 8. The large, sturdy spiders were hanging from power lines and poles, and crawling around on a vast network of silk strands spun over the town of Santo Antonio da Platina.

Reis did what many of us might do: He pulled out his camera and shot a video of spiders seemingly falling from the sky.

As creeptastic is it may be, “The phenomenon observed is not really surprising,” said Leticia Aviles, who studies social spiders at the University of British Columbia. “Either social or colonial spiders may occur in large aggregations, as the one shown in the video.” The reason, she and others say, is simple: This is how they hunt.

An early report suggested the swarming spiders were Anelosimus eximius, a social species of spider that weaves communal webs, lives together as adults, and shares childcare duties.

However, it appears that initial assessment may be wrong. The spiders in the video are more likely a species of colonial spider that aggregates individual webs and lives in groups only temporarily, dispersing before reproducing, Aviles said.

“The spiders I saw in the video are not Anelosimus eximius,” said Deborah Smith, an entomologist at the University of Kansas who specializes in social spiders. She notes that A. eximius is a bit smaller than the arachnids Reis filmed, and may not live that far south. “The spiders in the video are very large and robust,” she said. “It might be worth looking at Parawixia bistriata, a large, group-living orb weaver, to see if that one fits the bill.”

Arachnologist George Uetz agrees. “This is definitely not Anelosimus eximius,” said Uetz, who studies spiders at the University of Cincinnati. He notes that the spiders appear to be spread out on a colonial network of individual orb webs (rather than building a communal nest) and resemble big, orb-weaving spiders — perhaps Parawixia bistriata. “This colony is quite large,” he said, noting that the spiders aren’t actually raining down. “The web is fixed, although it is very fine and mostly invisible,” he said.

Cornell University arachnologist Linda Rayor and Aviles also agree that what’s probably being filmed is a massive P. bistriata colony. That species lives in South American savannas and spins colonial webs. A bit of good news is that their venom is not believed to be harmful to humans, Uetz said.

If this is Parawixia, or a similar species, there’s a reason the spiders may have appeared to come out of nowhere. “At night, they all collect in a colonial retreat, probably out of sight in a tree,” Uetz said. ”Then they build the colonial framework early in the day, and build individual webs upon it. They sit on these webs and capture prey.”

Whether the spiders are setting up camp or dispersing is an open question. It’s possible that Reis caught the conglomerate just as they had moved in to a new home — in which case he’ll see spiders in the sky whenever he visits his friends. At least for as long as insects are plentiful and the neighborhood is safe from birds, or until it’s time to reproduce. P. bistriata colonies dissolve before the spiders make more spiders, Aviles said. When they are clumped together, the groups tend to comprise single families.

“I suppose those can be quite large,” Aviles said. “Or, in some cases, multiple families may remain aggregated, giving rise to a colony as huge as the one shown in the video.”

It’s also possible the spiders were caught in the act of dispersing, and that the massive web overhead is temporary, though that’s more likely if the spiders are, in fact, Anelosimus eximius. An easy to make a determine which species they are is to look for the presence of an orb web, which would point toward Parawixia, Aviles said. Or better yet, snap a close-up photo of one of the spiders. Any volunteers?

Video: Acoisacoisada1/YouTube

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Health Testing on Mice Is Found Misleading in Some Cases

Evan McGlinn for The New York Times

Dr. H. Shaw Warren is one of the authors of a new study that questions the use of laboratory mice as models for all human diseases.

For decades, mice have been the species of choice in the study of human diseases. But now, researchers report evidence that the mouse model has been totally misleading for at least three major killers — sepsis, burns and trauma. As a result, years and billions of dollars have been wasted following false leads, they say.

The study’s findings do not mean that mice are useless models for all human diseases. But, its authors said, they do raise troubling questions about diseases like the ones in the study that involve the immune system, including cancer and heart disease.

“Our article raises at least the possibility that a parallel situation may be present,” said Dr. H. Shaw Warren, a sepsis researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and a lead author of the new study.

The paper, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, helps explain why every one of nearly 150 drugs tested at a huge expense in patients with sepsis has failed. The drug tests all were based on studies in mice. And mice, it turns out, can have something that looks like sepsis in humans, but is very different from the condition in humans.

Medical experts not associated with the study said that the findings should change the course of research worldwide for a deadly and frustrating condition. Sepsis, a potentially deadly reaction that occurs as the body tries to fight an infection, afflicts 750,000 patients a year in the United States, kills one-fourth to one-half of them, and costs the nation $17 billion a year. It is the leading cause of death in intensive-care units.

“This is a game changer,” said Dr. Mitchell Fink, a sepsis expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, of the new study.

“It’s amazing,” said Dr. Richard Wenzel, a former chairman at the department of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University and a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. “They are absolutely right on.”

Potentially deadly immune responses occur when a person’s immune system overreacts to what it perceives as danger signals, including toxic molecules from bacteria, viruses, fungi, or proteins released from cells damaged by trauma or burns, said Dr. Clifford S. Deutschman, who directs sepsis research at the University of Pennsylvania and was not part of the study.

The ramped-up immune system releases its own proteins in such overwhelming amounts that capillaries begin to leak. The leak becomes excessive, and serum seeps out of the tiny blood vessels. Blood pressure falls, and vital organs do not get enough blood. Despite efforts, doctors and nurses in an intensive-care unit or an emergency room may be unable to keep up with the leaks, stop the infection or halt the tissue damage. Vital organs eventually fail.

The new study, which took 10 years and involved 39 researchers from across the country, began by studying white blood cells from hundreds of patients with severe burns, trauma or sepsis to see what genes were being used by white blood cells when responding to these danger signals.

The researchers found some interesting patterns and accumulated a large, rigorously collected data set that should help move the field forward, said Ronald W. Davis, a genomics expert at Stanford University and a lead author of the new paper. Some patterns seemed to predict who would survive and who would end up in intensive care, clinging to life and, often, dying.

The group had tried to publish its findings in several papers. One objection, Dr. Davis said, was that the researchers had not shown the same gene response had happened in mice.

“They were so used to doing mouse studies that they thought that was how you validate things,” he said. “They are so ingrained in trying to cure mice that they forget we are trying to cure humans.”

“That started us thinking,” he continued. “Is it the same in the mouse or not?”

The group decided to look, expecting to find some similarities. But when the data were analyzed, there were none at all.

“We were kind of blown away,” Dr. Davis said.

The drug failures became clear. For example, often in mice, a gene would be used, while in humans, the comparable gene would be suppressed. A drug that worked in mice by disabling that gene could make the response even more deadly in humans.

Even more surprising, Dr. Warren said, was that different conditions in mice — burns, trauma, sepsis — did not fit the same pattern. Each condition used different groups of genes. In humans, though, similar genes were used in all three conditions. That means, Dr. Warren said, that if researchers can find a drug that works for one of those conditions in people, it might work for all three.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 11, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the position of Dr. Richard Wenzel. He is a former chairman of the department of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is not currently the chairman.

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Media Decoder Blog: Univision and Disney Give Details of Fusion, a Channel for Latinos

A new 24-hour news and entertainment channel has a name, Fusion. It also has powerful backers in Univision and ABC News, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, and distribution deals in at least 20 million homes. What is not known is whether Fusion has an audience.

Fusion will have its premiere late this summer, the companies announced Monday, as the first cable channel aimed to appeal specifically to English-speaking Latinos who can find news and entertainment elsewhere. Its reception will test whether second-generation Latinos want to watch television programming specifically for them.

The 50-50 jointly owned channel underscores the growing influence of a booming population over media companies, marketers and politicians. In 2010, there were 50.5 million Hispanics living in the United States, up from 35.3 million a decade ago, according to the 2010 census. That number is expected to grow by 167 percent by 2050, compared with an estimated 42 percent growth rate for the nation’s total population. Latinos voted in record number in the 2012 presidential election and helped sway the results in Barack Obama’s favor.

“The level of growth of Hispanics in the United States is huge, and that growth is not coming from immigration,” said Isaac Lee, the president of Univision News.

But creating a new 24-hour cable channel for a relatively narrow audience that already has plenty of options in both English and Spanish is a risky proposition. Studies show English-speaking Latinos watch the same types of programs as non-Hispanics.

“This audience identifies as Americans first,” said Larry Lubin, co-founder and president of Lubin Lawrence Inc., a brand consultancy that advised both companies. He also stressed that the venture needed to broaden its appeal. “The brand will be a failure if it only appeals to Latinos.”

Univision has rapidly expanded to meet growing demand, increasing in the last several years to 12 channels from three, including cable channels devoted to sports and telenovela marathons. Fusion represents its first English-language effort.

“This community is exploding from a size and influence perspective, but also from a diversity perspective,” said Cesar Conde, president of Univision Networks. “And we’re going through an explosive period in our evolution.”

Univision and Disney executives first sat down to discuss a joint venture channel aimed at Latinos in March 2011. For Univision, Fusion represents a chance for the largest Spanish-language network to break out of its image as the home of imported Mexican soap operas, soccer and variety shows.

Nearly half of all Latinos in the United States speak more or an equal amount of English at home, a shift Univision has had to adapt to. “They watch English shows,” said Mr. Lubin, adding that they might watch Univision “maybe if they’re at their grandmother’s house.”

For Disney, the cable channel represents a broader corporate effort to appeal to marketers hoping to reach Latino viewers. Nielsen projects the buying power of Hispanics, estimated at $1 trillion in 2010, to grow to $1.5 trillion by 2015. In 2010, advertisers spent $4.3 billion to reach Hispanics, up 14 percent from 2009, according to the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies. Unlike NBC with MSNBC, ABC does not have a cable news channel.

Univision spearheaded the channel’s programming and hired employees for its Miami-based headquarters. Disney, which has leverage with cable and satellite providers because of ESPN, handled distributing the channel. So far deals have been struck with Cablevision, Charter, Cox Communications, AT&T U-Verse and Google Fiber. A spokeswoman for ABC News said additional distribution deals were in the works and that the existing ones made Fusion available in states with the largest Hispanic populations, including Texas, California, Florida and Illinois.

Fusion will broadcast unscripted series and specials, all with a Latino slant. Mr. Lee pointed to series like National Geographic’s “Locked Up Abroad” about tourists who end up in foreign prisons, as the type of documentary series he hoped the channel would do. Extensive news coverage in collaboration with ABC News will revolve around the interests of Latinos. Coverage of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation, for instance, would focus on potential Latin American candidates to succeed him, Mr. Lee said.

The goal at ABC News is that the partnership infuses its editorial choices with a Hispanic perspective. “This will absolutely play a part in our programming choices,” said Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News.

ABC News has provided employees with free Spanish lessons. Univision’s key news anchors, Jorge Ramos and María Elena Salinas, made appearances during ABC News’s election coverage. Univision has installed a liaison in the ABC newsroom in New York to foster collaboration. Sharing news gathering and production resources with Univision could also help ABC News trim costs.

Univision’s influence on ABC News’s editorial choices has already been felt. After the Mexican singer Jenni Rivera died in a plane crash in December “we knew to put it on Page 1 because our friends at Univision called me and said, ‘This is going to be the most important event for millions of U.S. Hispanics. Pay attention to this,’ ” Mr. Sherwood said.

Univision’s Spanish-language programming faces competition. In August, News Corporation introduced MundoFOX, a Spanish-language broadcast channel. Under the ownership of Comcast, NBCUniversal has increased investment in Telemundo.

But the biggest competition for Fusion might not come from traditional television. The median age of Hispanics in the United States is 28, and Latinos spent 68 percent more time watching video on the Internet than non-Hispanics, according to figures from Telemundo. Enticing those viewers to watch the old-fashioned way may prove tough.

Last year, the then-unnamed Fusion began news coverage online, in time to cover the presidential election. The channel’s online presence will grow leading up to the TV inauguration. “We will treat digital as the first screen, not the second screen,” Mr. Lee said.

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Gen. Joseph Dunford becomes U.S. commander in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. took over Sunday as the newest and probably last U.S. commander in Afghanistan, charged with ending America's longest war even as insurgents continue to challenge the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Dunford, a four-star Marine officer, arrives as the U.S.-led NATO coalition has closed three-quarters of its 800 bases and as it watches to see whether the Afghan security forces it trained can keep the Taliban insurgency at bay.

A ceremony inside the coalition's heavily guarded compound in Kabul marked the end of the 19-month tenure of Gen. John R. Allen, whose command was marred by a rash of deadly "insider" attacks by Afghan forces against their U.S. and NATO trainers and by strained relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

But in remarks tinged with emotion Sunday, Allen pointed to significant progress, including the growth of the Afghan security forces, an increase in Afghan-led military operations, a sharp reduction in civilian casualties and the withdrawal of about 35,000 U.S. troops.

"This is victory," Allen said. "This is what winning looks like, and we should not shrink from using those words."

Allen was cleared of wrongdoing last month in a Pentagon inquiry into emails he exchanged with a woman who was linked to the sex scandal that forced the resignation of CIA Director David H. Petraeus. Allen has been nominated to lead North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Europe.

By replacing Allen with Dunford, the respected but low-key assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, President Obama hopes to repair ties with Karzai so they can cement a long-term security deal that could see several thousand U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan beyond the withdrawal of combat forces next year.

Embracing Allen at the ceremony, Dunford stressed continuity in the mission.

"What's not changed is the will of this coalition," he said. "What's not changed is the growing capability of our Afghan partners."

Obama is expected to spell out plans for the troop withdrawal and a post-2014 U.S. military presence in Afghanistan as early as his State of the Union message Tuesday. Although White House officials have said it's possible that no U.S. troops would remain, Pentagon officials are calling for a residual force that would focus on counter-terrorism and supporting Afghan forces.

Dunford will have a key seat at the table as U.S. officials try to work out the security agreement, which will hinge on earning assurances from Afghan leaders that they won't release prisoners currently in U.S. custody and will guarantee U.S. troops immunity from prosecution in Afghan courts. The failure to reach an immunity guarantee was a main reason no U.S. troops remained in Iraq after the war ended there.

About 65,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan, down from a high of 100,000. Despite flagging U.S. support for the war, military commanders contend that removing the remaining troops precipitously could cause Afghan security forces to collapse.

In his Senate confirmation hearing in November, Dunford offered no prescriptions for troop levels but cautioned against withdrawing too quickly, saying it could destabilize the region.

U.S. officials recently estimated that a residual American force could number from 6,000 to 9,000 troops — fewer than the 15,000 senior military commanders had wanted. Experts say that Dunford will be charged with figuring out how such a force could achieve U.S. strategic aims.

"A major challenge will be identifying a mission that those troops can perform that's useful and doable with that small number," said Stephen Biddle, a defense analyst and professor at George Washington University.

Even as the war winds down, challenges remain. The insider attacks that killed 61 NATO troops in 2012 have dissipated, but only after U.S. troops scaled back joint operations with Afghan forces, hampering training efforts. By next year, Afghan forces are expected to be in the lead of all security operations, but the Taliban, though weakened, retains the ability to attack in Kabul and other strategic areas.

Experts say that Dunford, who earned the nickname "Fighting Joe" when he led a charge from Kuwait into Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, could clash with a second-term Obama Cabinet, whose members — including Secretary of State John F. Kerry and, if he's confirmed, Chuck Hagel as Defense secretary — have not been strong supporters of a large long-term U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

"It's going to be extremely difficult for a commanding general who's not going to have many partners in the administration," said Thomas Donnelly, a military expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.

"It's a bit of a thankless task, for sure."

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Wings of the Seagull Nebula

This image shows the intricate structure of part of the Seagull Nebula, known more formally as IC 2177. These wisps of gas and dust are known as Sharpless 2-296 (officially Sh 2-296) and form part of the “wings” of the celestial bird. This region of the sky is a fascinating muddle of intriguing astronomical objects — a mix of dark and glowing red clouds, weaving amongst bright stars. This new view was captured by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.

Image: ESO [high-resolution]

Caption: ESO

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For Families Struggling with Mental Illness, Carolyn Wolf Is a Guide in the Darkness

When a life starts to unravel, where do you turn for help?

Melissa Klump began to slip in the eighth grade. She couldn’t focus in class, and in a moment of despair she swallowed 60 ibuprofen tablets. She was smart, pretty and ill: depression, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, either bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.

In her 20s, after a more serious suicide attempt, her parents sent her to a residential psychiatric treatment center, and from there to another. It was the treatment of last resort. When she was discharged from the second center last August after slapping another resident, her mother, Elisa Klump, was beside herself.

“I was banging my head against the wall,” the mother said. “What do I do next?” She frantically called support groups, therapy programs, suicide prevention lines, anybody, running down a list of names in a directory of mental health resources. “Finally,” she said, “somebody told me, ‘The person you need to talk to is Carolyn Wolf.’ ”

That call, she said, changed her life and her daughter’s. “Carolyn has given me hope,” she said. “I didn’t know there were people like her out there.”

Carolyn Reinach Wolf is not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional, but a lawyer who has carved out what she says is a unique niche, working with families like the Klumps.

One in 17 American adults suffers from a severe mental illness, and the systems into which they are plunged — hospitals, insurance companies, courts, social services — can be fragmented and overwhelming for families to manage. The recent shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., have brought attention to the need for intervention to prevent such extreme acts of violence, which are rare. But for the great majority of families watching their loved ones suffer, and often suffering themselves, the struggle can be boundless, with little guidance along the way.

“If you Google ‘mental health lawyer,’ ” said Ms. Wolf, a partner with Abrams & Fensterman, “I’m kinda the only game in town.”

On a recent afternoon, she described in her Midtown office the range of her practice.

“We have been known to pull people out of crack dens,” she said. “I have chased people around hotels all over the city with the N.Y.P.D. and my team to get them to a hospital. I had a case years ago where the person was on his way back from Europe, and the family was very concerned that he was symptomatic. I had security people meet him at J.F.K.”

Many lawyers work with mentally ill people or their families, but Ron Honberg, the national director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said he did not know of another lawyer who did what Ms. Wolf does: providing families with a team of psychiatrists, social workers, case managers, life coaches, security guards and others, and then coordinating their services. It can be a lifeline — for people who can afford it, Mr. Honberg said. “Otherwise, families have to do this on their own,” he said. “It’s a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week job, and for some families it never ends.”

Many of Ms. Wolf’s clients declined to be interviewed for this article, but the few who spoke offered an unusual window on the arcane twists and turns of the mental health care system, even for families with money. Their stories illustrate how fraught and sometimes blind such a journey can be.

One rainy morning last month, Lance Sheena, 29, sat with his mother in the spacious family room of her Long Island home. Mr. Sheena was puffy-eyed and sporadically inattentive; the previous night, at the group home where he has been living since late last summer, another resident had been screaming incoherently and was taken away by the police. His mother, Susan Sheena, eased delicately into the family story.

“I don’t talk to a lot of people because they don’t get it,” Ms. Sheena said. “They mean well, but they don’t get it unless they’ve been through a similar experience. And anytime something comes up, like the shooting in Newtown, right away it goes to the mentally ill. And you think, maybe we shouldn’t be so public about this, because people are going to be afraid of us and Lance. It’s a big concern.”

Her son cut her off. “Are you comparing me to the guy that shot those people?”

“No, I’m saying that anytime there’s a shooting, like in Aurora, that’s when these things come out in the news.”

“Did you really just compare me to that guy?”

“No, I didn’t compare you.”

“Then what did you say?”

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The Media Equation: The Inconvenient but Vital Drone Debate

Last week, the debate over drone strikes broke out into plain view during the confirmation hearings for John O. Brennan, President Obama’s choice to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Given that the program has been operating largely under the public radar, a question has been raised whether the news media have done their job in keeping the American public informed about this radically different approach to warfare.

Some think not. In a report released last week by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Tara McKelvey, who has done her share of significant reporting on the issue, suggested that during Mr. Obama’s first term, “the media fell short in its coverage” of the drone program.

She applauded the increased attention to the issue, saying in a survey that coverage in five major media outlets had almost doubled since the start of that term, rising to 625 stories in 2012 from 326 in 2009.

Maybe we are asking the wrong question. Journalists at The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, The New York Times and The New Yorker have done a remarkable job on pulling back the blankets on a covert program overseen by an administration that is very aggressive in protecting secrets.

If the Congress — and perhaps the public — doesn’t know about the drone program, it isn’t for lack of coverage. Perhaps the reason so many people are in the dark is because they want it that way. After all, if the bad guys are on the run without risking legions of boots on the ground, what’s not to like?

For many people, of course, there is plenty not to like. Michael Isikoff of NBC News obtained a 16-page white paper outlining when the government contends that it is legal to kill Americans who join Al Qaeda. His reporting helped make the drone issue part of the confirmation hearings, leading to this statement on Thursday to the Senate Intelligence Committee from Mr. Brennan, which sounded like a parody of Washington doublespeak: “What we need to do is optimize transparency on these issues, but at the same time, optimize secrecy and the protection of our national security.”

Congress, in spite of the pointed questions aimed at Mr. Brennan last week, has been remarkably incurious since the program began.

“Some 3,500 people have died in 420 strikes, and Congress has yet to hold a single public hearing on this issue,” said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It has happened in the dark because we have allowed it to, and the press has far and away been the lead actor in surfacing this issue.”

Back in 2009, Jane Mayer did a deep dive into the issue. “It’s important,” Ms. Mayer said in a telephone interview. “After scientists working for America split the atom, there was an awesome new technology, and they had to come up with a legal framework to contain it. Drones represent a very big change as well, and there should be a lot of open discussion about defining the rules of its use.”

Most of that discussion has occurred in the press, not in the halls of government. An article by Jo Becker and Scott Shane in The New York Times last May revealed that the administration had a “kill list” of people who were targeted for elimination, often by drones.

Last week, an article in The Times by Robert F. Worth, Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane pointed out that drones, which are held by the government to be instruments of precision, are often a blunt technology that sometimes takes out the very people the United States needs in places like Yemen.

If some of the news coming out of the hearings last week was a big surprise, it might be because people chose not to pay close attention.

“I think what you saw on Thursday,” Mr. Shane, referring to the Brennan hearings, said in a telephone interview, “is that people are beginning to realize that they have introduced this whole new way of killing people without public debate or pushback and the disaffection with the lack of oversight boiled over.”

The specifics of the drone program have been carefully shielded at every turn. In January a federal judge ruled against The New York Times in its effort to compel the Justice Department to disclose the memo that provided the legal justification for the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a United States citizen who died in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011, without any due process of law. (The death of an American at the other end of a drone seemed to prompt a new level of interest and scrutiny by the news media.)

Even though the judge, Colleen McMahon, ruled in the government’s favor, she did not sound very happy about it.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com; twitter.com/carr2n

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A delicate new balancing act in senior healthcare

When Claire Gordon arrived at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, nurses knew she needed extra attention.

She was 96, had heart disease and a history of falls. Now she had pneumonia and the flu. A team of Cedars specialists converged on her case to ensure that a bad situation did not turn worse and that she didn't end up with a lengthy, costly hospital stay.

Frail seniors like Gordon account for a disproportionate share of healthcare expenditures because they are frequently hospitalized and often land in intensive care units or are readmitted soon after being released. Now the federal health reform law is driving sweeping changes in how hospitals treat a rapidly growing number of elderly patients.

The U.S. population is aging quickly: People older than 65 are expected to make up nearly 20% of it by 2030. Linda P. Fried, dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said now is the time to train professionals and test efforts to improve care and lower healthcare costs for elderly patients.

"It's incredibly important that we prepare for being in a society where there are a lot of older people," she said. "We have to do this type of experiment right now."

At Cedars-Sinai, where more than half the patients in the medical and surgical wards are 65 or older, one such effort is dubbed the "frailty project." Within 24 hours, nurses assess elderly patients for their risk of complications such as falls, bed sores and delirium. Then a nurse, social worker, pharmacist and physician assess the most vulnerable patients and make an action plan to help them.

The Cedars project stands out nationally because medical professionals are working together to identify high-risk patients at the front end of their hospitalizations to prevent problems at the back end, said Herb Schultz, regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"For seniors, it is better care, it is high-quality care and it is peace of mind," he said.

The effort and others like it also have the potential to reduce healthcare costs by cutting preventable medical errors and readmissions, Schultz said. The federal law penalizes hospitals for both.

Gordon, an articulate woman with brightly painted fingernails and a sense of humor, arrived at Cedars-Sinai by ambulance on a Monday.

Soon, nurse Jacquelyn Maxton was at her bedside asking a series of questions to check for problems with sleep, diet and confusion. The answers led to Gordon's designation as a frail patient. The next day, the project team huddled down the hall and addressed her risks one by one. Medical staff would treat the flu and pneumonia while at the same time addressing underlying health issues that could extend Gordon's stay and slow her recovery, both in the hospital and after going home.

To reduce the chance of falls, nurses placed a yellow band on her wrist that read "fall risk" and ensured that she didn't get up on her own. To prevent bed sores, they got her up and moving as often as possible. To cut down on confusion, they reminded Gordon frequently where she was and made sure she got uninterrupted sleep. Medical staff also stopped a few unnecessary medications that Gordon had been prescribed before her admission, including a heavy narcotic and a sleeping pill.

"It is really a holistic approach to the patient, not just to the disease that they are in here for," said Glenn D. Braunstein, the hospital's vice president for clinical innovation.

Previously, nurse Ivy Dimalanta said, she and her colleagues provided similar care but on a much more random basis. Under the project, the care has become standardized.

The healthcare system has not been well designed to address the needs of seniors who may have had a lifetime of health problems, said Mary Naylor, gerontology professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. As a result, patients sometimes fall through the cracks and return to hospitals again and again.

"That is not good for them and that is not good for society to be using resources in that way," Naylor said.

Using data from related projects, Cedars began a pilot program in 2011 and expanded it last summer. The research is continuing but early results suggest that the interventions are leading to fewer seniors being admitted to the intensive care unit and to shorter hospital stays, said Jeff Borenstein, researcher and lead clinician on the frailty project. "It definitely seems to be going in the right direction," he said.

The hospital is now working with Naylor and the University of Pennsylvania to design a program to help the patients once they go home.

"People who are frail are very vulnerable when they leave the hospital," said Harriet Udin Aronow, a researcher at Cedars. "We want to promote them being safe at home and continuing to recover."

In Gordon's case, she lives alone with the help of her children and a caregiver. The hospital didn't want her experiencing complications that would lengthen the stay, but they also didn't want to discharge her before she was ready. Under the health reform law, hospitals face penalties if patients come back too soon after being released.

Patients and their families often are unaware of the additional attention. Sitting in a chair in front of a vase of pink flowers, Gordon said she knew she would have to do her part to get out of the hospital quickly. "You have to move," she said. "I know you get bed sores if you stay in bed."

Gordon said she was comfortable at the hospital but she wanted to go back to her house as quickly as she could. "There's no place like home," she said.

Two days later, that's where she was.

anna.gorman@latimes.com

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DC Comics Turns the Occupy Movement Into a Superhero Title

Eighteen months after the phrase first entered the collective public consciousness, the plight of the 99 percent is coming to mainstream superhero comics — via a new series from the second biggest publisher in the American comic industry, which just happens to be a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation that makes around $12 billion a year. Irony, anybody?

In May, DC Comics will launch two new series taking place in their mainstream superhero universe that offer different insights into the class struggle in a world filled with superheroes, alien races and inexplicable events. The Green Team, written by Tiny Titans and Superman Family Adventures creators Art Baltazar and Franco, with art by Ig Guara, revives an obscure 1975 concept about teenage rich kids who try to make the world a better place with their outrageous wealth. In an interview promoting the series, Franco promised that it would address questions like “Can money make you happy?” and “If you had unlimited wealth, could you use that to make the lives of people better?”

Obviously, this is one of the more fanciful series DC will be publishing.

But while DC is promoting The Green Team series as the adventures of the “1%,” its companion title, The Movement, is teased as a chance for us to “Meet the 99%… They were the super-powered disenfranchised — now they’re the voice of the people!”

“It’s a book about power,” explained The Movement writer Gail Simone. “Who owns it, who uses it, who suffers from its abuse. As we increasingly move to an age where information is currency, you get these situations where a single viral video can cost a previously unassailable corporation billions, or can upset the power balance of entire governments. And because the sources of that information are so dispersed and nameless, it’s nearly impossible to shut it all down.”

“The thing I find fascinating and a little bit worrisome is, what happens when a hacktivist group whose politics you find completely repulsive has this same kind of power and influence,” she elaborated in an interview at Big Shiny Robot. “What if a racist or homophobic group rises up and organizes in the same manner?”

While the concept is ambitious, the idea that a comic capable of living up to the book’s populist inspiration could come from DC Entertainment still strikes some as unlikely. Matt Pizzolo, the editor of the Occupy Comics anthology, told Wired that “though DC Comics did help launch Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s seminal anarchist epic V For Vendetta over two decades ago, it’s unlikely they would do so today. Between dismantling Vertigo and frankensteining Watchmen, the past year has demonstrated DC isn’t a safe place for bold creators who want to tell the kinds of stories that would inspire things like Occupy, rather than just cash in on them.”

Still, Simone says that the use of the iconography and language of a real-world populist movement is deliberate, promising that the book will reflect today’s decentralized political world and offer ”a slice of rarity that we’re unlikely to see in most superhero books.”

This wouldn’t the first time that DC has attempted to offer pre-packaged populist rebellion, of course; in addition to the aforementioned publication of the anti-establishment V For Vendetta, the company’s Vertigo imprint also published Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, a series centering around an international organization struggling against forces of authority and repression that included anti-corporate themes.

Only time will tell whether The Movement will live up to the subversive examples of these earlier books, or just end up a well-intentioned piece of topical super heroics that trades on, and commodifies, a real political movement.

The Movement #1 will be available in both print and digital formats on May 1, while The Green Team #1 will be released on May 22.

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