TV News LIES

Anyone in a gas-drilling state has seen or heard the ads talking about how fracking creates jobs and those jobs are  keeping “real” Americans’ communities alive. These ads often have a purported member of the community (extra points if it’s a grandmother or a hardworking dad) talking about how grateful they are to the fracking companies for saving their town.

The subtext, of course, is that people opposed to fracking are at best indifferent to the survival of these communities, at worst utterly opposed to it because of snobbery or hatred for people brave enough to do manual labor.

As head of the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Division of Mineral Resources, Bradley J. Field is a prominent figure in an agency that has promoted hydraulic fracturing as a risk-free and impeccably regulated technology with a proven track record in New York.

Perhaps it's relevant that Field also sees global warming as a good thing. Field is listed on the Global Warming Petition Project calling for the U.S. to reject international global warming agreements, while claiming there is “no convincing evidence” that manmade greenhouse gases will disrupt the earth’s climate.

Israeli officials have taken the highly controversial step of creating the first university in a settlement in the West Bank. A higher education council for the occupied territory decided in favour of the upgrade for the college in Ariel, after it was recommended by Israel's education minister.

It is being seen as a significant victory for the settler movement. However many Israeli academics and the Palestinians have condemned the move.

For the first time in generations, marijuana is legally growing in New Jersey.In a sign that the Garden State's budding medical marijuana program is finally moving forward, the first crop has been growing hydroponically for about a month in a 5,000-square-foot warehouse in an undisclosed location, officials said.

The first plants are about a foot high, said Joseph Stevens, president of the Greenleaf Compassion Center, the first licensed provider of medical pot. By mid-September, the center's Montclair dispensary should be open and accepting patients to buy marijuana, he said.

A compilation of independent scientific studies and reports related to the health impacts of hydrofracking was presented to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo today by a representative of a delegation of medical doctors and scientists.

In a cover letter, the experts have requested a meeting with the Governor to discuss his desire for “the facts and logic and science and information,” which he says will be the basis for his decision on the controversial gas drilling technique.

The Boy Scouts of America has said it will continue to deny membership to gay people because doing so "is in the best interest of Scouting."  Its announcement followed a two-year internal study which was prompted by heated debate over the policy of excluding gay Scouts and Scout leaders.

Bob Mazzuca, Chief Scout Executive of Boy Scouts of America, said: "The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers, and at the appropriate time and in the right setting.

An explosive transcript of one of Tony Blair's final conversations with George Bush before the invasion of Iraq may be suppressed by the coalition government, Whitehall sources have confirmed.

Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, believes there is "a case to answer" in favour of blocking an information tribunal ruling that ordered the former leaders' telephone exchange to be released in the public interest.

Some businesses have figured out a way to make a go of it, even in tight times:  Just do business like the Pentagon and its contractors.

Say you're out in the country, seeing the sights, when you spot a nondescript place with a giant, neon sign that screams, "EAT!" in three colors.  You pull in, go inside, order a 'burger, fries, and a pop -- the penultimate American meal.