How much pollution can industry release into the environment without telling local residents? The US Environmental Protection Agency relaxed the law last year, but looks likely to toughen it up again after a high-profile lawsuit was filed in protest last week.
Until recently, US companies had to declare emissions of 230 kilograms or more per year, but last December the EPA increased this threshold tenfold. Twelve US states are now suing the agency to contest the hike.
A new UC Davis study shows that a common antibacterial chemical added to bath soaps can alter hormonal activity in rats and in human cells in the laboratory—and does so by a previously unreported mechanism.
The findings come as an increasing number of studies – of both lab animals and humans – are revealing that some synthetic chemicals in household products can cause health problems by interfering with normal hormone action.
Kennedy successfully tempered a long standing anti-catholic bias held by a rather large number in this country by appealing to the fundamental American belief in a separation of church and state and by reassuring them that he would make decisions based on what his conscience tells him is in the national interest "and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates." Romney will be trying to temper an anti-Mormon bias among a sub-set of the Religious Right by assuring them (through coded conservative Christian language) that he is just as biased against other religions and non-believers as they are and will definitely bow to outside pressures or dictates --- from them.
Norton, 256 pp., $25.95
Perhaps the most powerful lawyer in the Bush administration is also the most reclusive. David Addington, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's counsel from 2001 to 2005, and since then his chief of staff, does not talk to the press. His voice, however, has been enormously influential behind closed doors, where, with Cheney's backing, he has helped shape the administration's strategy in the war on terror, and in particular its aggressively expansive conception of executive power. Sometimes called "Cheney's Cheney," Addington has twenty years of experience in national security matters—he has been a lawyer for the CIA, the secretary of defense, and two congressional committees concerned with intelligence and foreign affairs. He is a prodigious worker, and by all accounts a brilliant inside political player. Richard Shiffrin, deputy general counsel for intelligence at the Defense Department until 2003, called him "an unopposable force."[1] Yet most of the American public has never heard him speak.
Addington's combination of public silence and private power makes him an apt symbol for the Bush administration's general approach to national security. Many of the administration's most controversial policies have been adopted in secret, under Addington's direction, often without much input from other parts of the executive branch, much less other branches of government, and without public accountability. Among the measures we know about are disappearances of detainees into secret CIA prisons, the use of torture to gather evidence, rendition of suspects to countries known for torture, and warrantless wiretapping of Americans.
ATLANTA (AP) -- The nation's teen birth rate has risen for the first time in 14 years, according to a new government report.
The birth rate had been dropping since 1991. The decline had slowed in recent years, but government statisticians said Wednesday it jumped 3 percent from 2005 to 2006.
AUSTIN, Texas—Although most scientists believe tuberculosis emerged only several thousand years ago, new research from The University of Texas at Austin reveals the most ancient evidence of the disease has been found in a 500,000-year-old human fossil from Turkey.
The discovery of the new specimen of the human species, Homo erectus, suggests support for the theory that dark-skinned people who migrate northward from low, tropical latitudes produce less vitamin D, which can adversely affect the immune system as well as the skeleton.
Last summer, when Paul Wolfowitz was forced to resign as president of the World Bank because he obtained a high-paying promotion for his female companion, Shaha Riza, a Middle East expert at the bank, he was welcomed back with open arms by his old comrades at the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute. Wolfowitz's retreat to the conservative philanthropy sponsored think tank that has placed dozens of its staffers within the Bush administration gave him the opportunity to await an opening to rejoin his comrades in government.
A lot of niceties are currently in dispute among Democratic candidates, for example on the question of whether health insurance should be mandated. In the meantime, Republicans are off the hook on matters that are surely of interest to voters. One example: the disappeared issue of contraception.
Consider this: "I fought to define life as beginning at conception rather than at the time of implantation." Thus Mitt Romney on a subject so banal and so revealing, so stunningly revealing, as to have eluded the attention of all the blowhard superintendents of debate at all the Republican encounters so far.
As the subprime loan crisis deepens, Wall Street firms are increasingly coming under scrutiny for their role in selling risky mortgage-related securities to investors.
Many of the home loans tied to these investments quickly defaulted, resulting in billions of dollars of losses for investors. At the same time, many of the companies that sold these securities, concerned about a looming meltdown in the housing market, protected themselves from losses.
Of course, far more is wrong with the mainstream media than can be described, or even enumerated, in one column. But let's give it a shot, using only items that have come up since my last column, all of which speak to the issue of why its members have forfeited our collective trust.
Sloppy accounting by the US army command meant there was no paper trail for much of the spending, they say.
The report, based on a visit from March to May this year, said high levels of violence made it hard to oversee management of the fund.
Truth matters. History and context count. "You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts," the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously observed.
CNN's Lou Dobbs has migrated to a pre-eminent position in the debate on immigration in the U.S. Since he identifies himself as a journalist, he has a special responsibility to rely on facts and to correct misstatements of fact. CNN, which purports to be a news organization, touting itself as the "Most Trusted Name in News," has an equally strong obligation to its audience to tell the truth.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.
The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. The tapes were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that video showing harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to legal risks, several officials said.
From the separation of powers to the Bill of Rights, the United States Constitution remains brilliant in its overall composition. Since 1787, however, we have seen tremendous growth in our technologies, economy, population and military strength. Our founding document no longer addresses the complicated issues that affect our government and our citizens. If we really want to make progress and achieve greater fairness as a society, it is time for elemental change. And we should start by looking at the Constitution, with the goal of holding a new Constitutional Convention.
Sound radical? If so, then the founders were radicals. They would be amazed and disappointed that after 220 years, the inheritors of their Constitution had not tried to adapt to new developments that the founders could never have anticipated in Philadelphia in 1787.
"Join the military and go to college." That's what the recruiters say.
But the deal that today's servicemen and servicewomen get is a far cry from what their fathers and grandfathers got. When President Franklin Roosevelt signed the GI Bill into law in the waning days of World War II, he saw it as part of his New Deal program. The law, officially called the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, promised returning veterans that the government would pay the full cost of tuition and books at any public or private college or job-training program. It also provided unemployment insurance and loans to buy homes and start businesses.
"SCHIP" according to Thom Hartmann, "sounds like something you want to avoid stepping in as you're walking through a cow pasture." Referring to a program to provide healthcare coverage to children nationwide with the hollow acronym SCHIP is just one of many failures of imagination on the part of the Democratic Party. Chart the difference between "SCHIP" and "The Clear Skies Act" and you'll get some sense of the dissonance that has progressives throughout the country scratching their heads in bewilderment.
You may know Hartmann as the host of a progressive radio program on Air America. What you may not know about are his previous gigs in advertising and as the director of a residential treatment center for children. It is this background in advertising and psychology that informs Hartmann's insight into the ability of a politician to connect with Americans. His new book Cracking the Code: The Art and Science of Political Persuasion, is written with the intention of providing progressive Americans with the tools that the advertising industry has mastered: How to tell the story behind your vision in such a way that people can't help but listen.
American right-wing populism is an interesting phenomenon that's coming to the fore once again in its usual nativist and racist form, but also as smooth misrepresentation of "tax reform"; clever, misleading public relations messaging about fair trade; and some fairly outlandish paranoia about conspiracies to erase the borders. Various permutations of these fairly common right-wing themes abound among conservative politicians and thinkers alike. But conservative populism is an oxymoron.
As Phil Agre wrote in this much discussed article about the definition of conservatism, "Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy ... [it] is incompatible with democracy, prosperity and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world."
Like virtually everyone else on the liberal side of the spectrum I've been greatly intrigued by Naomi Klein's new book "The Shock Doctrine," which posits that economic elites practice "disaster capitalism" around the world by taking advantage of the disorientation caused by crisis. It's a very coherent and compelling thesis that gives many of us, for the first time, a framework from which to understand globalization, preemptive war and massive government failure, among other things.
But one of the things that I've found puzzling is the idea that the human motivation for this elaborate regime is plain old greed.Little Rock, Ark -- As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee aggressively pushed for the early release of a convicted rapist despite being warned by numerous women that the convict had sexually assaulted them or their family members, and would likely strike again. The convict went on to rape and murder at least one other woman.
Confidential Arkansas state government records, including letters from these women, obtained by the Huffington Post and revealed publicly for the first time, directly contradict the version of events now being put forward by Huckabee.
The subpoenas, sent by the office of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, requested information from a number of Wall Street firms.
Turns out there might be some truth to the popular wisdom that plump babies are happy babies. A landmark public health study has found that people who had a low birth weight are more likely to experience depression and anxiety later in life.
“We found that even people who had just mild or moderate symptoms of depression or anxiety over their life course were smaller babies than those who had better mental health,” said lead author Ian Colman of the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health. “It suggests a dose-response relationship. As birth weight progressively decreases, it’s more likely that an individual will suffer from mood disorders later in life.”
New Haven, Conn.—Children learn by imitating adults—so much so that they will rethink how an object works if they observe an adult taking unnecessary steps when using that object, according to a Yale study today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Even when you add time pressure, or warn the children not to do the unnecessary actions, they seem unable to avoid reproducing the adult’s irrelevant actions,” said Derek Lyons, doctoral candidate, developmental psychology, and first author of the study. “They have already incorporated the actions into their idea of how the object works.”
Recently the New York Times carried a report on the "noose incidents" that have been occurring with rising frequency around the country, inspired seemingly by the protests over the "Jena 6" case.
The report came complete with a graphic showing where the incidents have occurred. Remarkably, it isn't just happening in the South: the incidents are also being reported in places like Minneapolis; Cicero, Ill.; Pittsburgh; Philadelphia; Newark; Baltimore; and New London, Conn.
by Seymour M. Hersh
November 27, 2006
A month before the November elections, Vice-President Dick Cheney was sitting in on a national-security discussion at the Executive Office Building. The talk took a political turn: what if the Democrats won both the Senate and the House? How would that affect policy toward Iran, which is believed to be on the verge of becoming a nuclear power? At that point, according to someone familiar with the discussion, Cheney began reminiscing about his job as a lineman, in the early nineteen-sixties, for a power company in Wyoming. Copper wire was expensive, and the linemen were instructed to return all unused pieces three feet or longer. No one wanted to deal with the paperwork that resulted, Cheney said, so he and his colleagues found a solution: putting “shorteners” on the wire—that is, cutting it into short pieces and tossing the leftovers at the end of the workday. If the Democrats won on November 7th, the Vice-President said, that victory would not stop the Administration from pursuing a military option with Iran. The White House would put “shorteners” on any legislative restrictions, Cheney said, and thus stop Congress from getting in its way.
If there was ever a possibility that President George W. Bush would drop bombs on Iran, the chances have now shrunk to nearly zero.
In one of the most dramatic National Intelligence Estimates ever, the 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community concluded today "with high confidence" that Iran "halted its nuclear weapons" four years ago, in the fall of 2003.
(PHILADELPHIA) Exposure to lead can hinder the brain’s ability to recover from injury, a recent study in laboratory animals shows. The results have implications for the effects of environmental lead exposure on brain injuries such as stroke, say researchers at Jefferson Medical College, who led the work.
Lead exposure early in life is known to increase the risk for cancer, renal disease, hypertension and cardiovascular disease later in life, and as a result, also increases the risk for stroke and brain damage. Jay Schneider, Ph.D., professor of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology and Neurology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and postdoctoral fellow Emmanuel Decamp, Ph.D., wanted to know if it was possible that lead might alter the potential for plasticity, the ability of the brain to compensate for an injury. They studied young rats that were fed a diet supplemented with lead and compared them to others on a diet without lead. In earlier work in the lab, they found that even brief exposures to lead affected neurotrophic factors in the brain important for growth and maintenance of neurons and their connections.
By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 4, 2007; A01
In December 2005, 9-year-old Fatima Cervantes and her 8-year-old brother boarded a Sizzler ride at a carnival in Austin, thrilled to climb into one of the candy-colored cars on rotating arms. But shortly after their blue car started whirling, Fatima slipped beneath the lap bar and was thrown onto the platform, where a metal arm crushed her head.
Since 1997, Sizzlers have been involved in at least four other deaths and dozens of injuries in the United States. Noting similarities in several accidents, a group of 25 state inspection chiefs requested in June that the ride's manufacturer, Wisdom Industries, take immediate measures to prevent "an unacceptable level of ejection risk."
A majority in both houses of Congress, reflecting the desires of the American people, wants to shift the direction of our energy policy away from the fossil fuel past and towards a renewable energy future.
To that end, the Senate passed an energy bill in June, the House followed in August.
Rep. Henry Waxman, chair of the House Oversight Committee, has challenged new Attorney General Michael Mukasey to demonstrate his independence from the White House, just as Clinton-era AG Janet Reno did in handing over documents related to the president and vice president.
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 2, 2007; A20
A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart.
The secret exercise -- conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject -- was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in Pakistan? Could Pakistani nuclear bunkers be isolated by saturating the surrounding areas with tens of thousands of high-powered mines, dropped from the air and packed with anti-tank and anti-personnel munitions? Or might such a move only worsen the security of Pakistan's arsenal?
MONTPELIER, Vt.—A Canadian company wants to open a new plant in Claremont, N.H., to bottle fresh water from a source in Stockbridge, Vt.
But if Vermont wants to limit how much water the company takes, it may run afoul of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
States around the country are growing increasingly worried about the threats posed to their laws and regulations by the secret tribunals that resolve disputes in international trade. Experts say everything from environmental rules to the licensing of nurses and other professionals could be affected.
For those who have doubts about miracles, a double one occurred today. An honest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear program has been issued and its Key Judgments were made public.
With redraft after redraft, it was what the Germans call “eine schwere Geburt”—a difficult birth, ten months in gestation.
I do not know how often Vice President Dick Cheney visited CIA Headquarters during the gestation period, but I am told he voiced his displeasure as soon as he saw the first sonogram/draft very early this year, and is so displeased with what issued that he has refused to be the godfather.
Did Karl Rove fib to Charlie Rose?
Is the Bush administration preventing Congress from further investigating Rove's role in the Valerie Plame leak case and doing the same regarding the White House?
The answers: Yes, and it seems so.
So where is this credit crisis going? How will it end? What's the prognosis?
As the citizen of a country without an attention span, everyone wants some else to play forecaster and tick off what must be done. And they want it quick and simple even though there are no real quickie responses to a complicated problem. Almost any reassuring soundbite will do. The questions are predicable. What should I do to protect my money? Can't they fix this, after all our economy is supposed to be, oh so, "resilient?"
"Peddlers, panhandlers and prostitutes, they all need to be cleaned out [of Manhattan]." The first time I heard Rudy Giuliani speak was on a NBC nightly news broadcast. It was 1996. I was living in Oakland, Calif., at the time -- 3,000 miles away from Manhattan, where, as mayor, Giuliani was implementing his "clean-up campaign." But the sting of his speech still scared me.
It was the first time I had heard hygienic metaphors to describe poor people like me who were surviving in an underground street-based economy. Rudy Giuliani had become mayor of New York City on a campaign that constructed a new scapegoat for all of America's crime problems: "the squeegee man" (aka a person who cleans car windows at stop lights).
Throughout history, some of the most respected defenders of liberty felt that patriotism implies thoughtfulness over blind acceptance of the norm. Socrates, Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. all encouraged active efforts to improve one's country by adhering to the highest standards of behavior, by government and by the citizens themselves.
There is certainly room for improvement in America. Here is a Top 5 list of candidates for thoughtfulness over blind acceptance.
I too suspect that the last gasp of Big Shitpile involved finding marks in state and local governments.I've wondered about this myself.
By Farah Nayeri
Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Alan Greenspan, who led the U.S. Federal Reserve for 18 years and was revered in the financial markets, was a ``very bad'' Fed chairman.
That's the blunt verdict of Patrick Artus, chief economist of Natixis SA and one of France's most listened-to pundits: He is an economic adviser to the French government.
WASHINGTON — Mustafa Ait Idir is no longer the man he was when Bosnian police set him on the rough road that's now reached to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Algerian native says his bones were broken, his family fractured, his life these past six years stolen away.
With U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.
For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.Using atomic force microscopes, a team of US scientists showed for the first time that the surface of living cancer cells were more than 70 percent softer than their healthy counterparts.
The financial crisis that began late last summer, then took a brief vacation in September and October, is back with a vengeance.
How bad is it? Well, I’ve never seen financial insiders this spooked — not even during the Asian crisis of 1997-98, when economic dominoes seemed to be falling all around the world.
This time, market players seem truly horrified — because they’ve suddenly realized that they don’t understand the complex financial system they created.
