Thursday, Dec 18th
Last update08:26:17 AM GMT
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack gave his personal approval for a 381-acre clear-cut in America's largest stand of temperate rain forest.
The 17-million acre forest is the largest stand of continuous temperate rain forest in the U.S. and contains a lot of old-growth trees. It's basically a snapshot of what the world looked like before we rolled heavy onto the scene.
TVNL Comment: How is THAT for "change?"
On Friday, July 10th, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin signed House Joint Resolution 27 (HJR27), sponsored by State Rep. Mike Kelly. The resolution “claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.”
The House passed the resolution by a vote of 37-0 (3 not voting) and the Senate passed it by a vote of 40-0.
Even the most cruel terrorist attacks to befall the country haven't instilled an understanding among the Israelis about the connection between cause and effect - between occupation and terrorism. Thanks to the media and the politicians - two of the worst agents for dumbing down and blinding Israeli society - we learned that the Arabs were born to kill, the whole world is against us, anti-Semitism determines how Israel is dealt with, and there is no connection between our actions and the price we pay.
Conservationists say new strategies must be devised to protect animals, such as the rhinoceros and tiger, from extinction. Hundreds of delegates who attended a meeting by CITES, the Convention on International Trade In Endangered Species, are urging tougher police action to stop the lucrative illegal trade in endangered species.
Over a decade ago a young woman approached me on the California Senate floor with a petition against the Taliban. Women are being repressed, tortured and killed by religious fundamentalists, she said. I signed on.
But I had no idea then that I was joining The Feminist Majority in a coalition with the Pentagon to invade and occupy Afghanistan.
People with mental illness are increasingly ending up being imprisoned, rather than in the mental health care system where many of them belong. With the down economy, states and counties — who are primarily responsible for the health of the indigent — cut social services first. And with most public psychiatric hospitals long-since closed, people who have a mental disorder end up being warehoused not in hospitals, but in prisons.
This week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, released a stunning new report detailing significant barriers that many female veterans face in accessing healthcare at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Not just for policy wonks, this report should be required reading for every American. Some of the critical findings include:
U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, actively helped Chinese interrogators question members of China's Uighur minority, including physically restraining them so they could be photographed against their will, according to testimony presented Thursday to a congressional subcommittee.
"Permitting an inquiry into what fragments of information various government agents knew, or should have known, and at what time, but did not tell the defendants, threatens thoroughly to confuse and prejudice the jury, distract from the major issues of the case, and add to the trial substantial expense and delay," the judge wrote.
A motion to admit the 9/11 Commission Report, published in 2004 and ordered by Congress, was denied except for a chronology of the report.
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