the big 5 stories:

#1 - Monsanto's FrankenFoods go to Supreme Court

This could be a watershed moment in the history of genetically-modified foods as the High Court hears Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, revolves around an herbicide-resistant alfalfa, the planting of which has been banned in the U.S. since a federal court prohibited the multinational Monsanto from selling the seeds in 2007.

That decision found that the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not do a thorough enough study of the impacts the GM alfalfa would have on human health and the environment and ordered the agency to do another environmental impact statement (EIS) review. Full Story

#2 - Lawmakers Call for Troops on the Streets of Chicago

In what are the seeds of a full-blown police state in the US, Illinois state Reps. and Chicago Democrats John Fritchey and LaShawn Ford are calling for on the governor, Chicago mayor Daley and Superintendent Jody Weis to use the National Guard in response to crime in the city.

The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits members of the federal uniformed services, including the State National Guard, from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain law and order on non-federal property within the United States. The act does not apply to National Guard units while under the authority of the governor of a state. Full Story

#3 - Pennsylvania's Choice: Gas or Clean Water

In rural Pennsylvania, a process for extracting gas from shale known as fracking has released dangerous gases into a community's drinking water, forcing families to leave their native places.

For the Ely family, their problems run deep, underneath the soil, in their roots. Scott Ely grew up on this land, but things have changed since he was a child. For the last year and four months, he and his family have been unable to drink their water. The problems began when he agreed to allow Cabot Oil and Gas to drill on his property. The Elys are one of more than a dozen families in Dimock, Pennsylvania who have water that is full of methane gas. Full Story

#4 - Lawsuits Fly as Local Police Work With Homeland Security

In an article titled, DHS accomplices face legal liability, Checkpoint USA's seven year lawsuit against several tribal police officers was recently mentioned on the Identity Project's website. The article also references several other pending cases involving local police acting on behalf of Department of Homeland Security agencies such as the TSA.

In all the cases referenced in the article, the courts have been dismissing charges against federal agencies but have allowed the lawsuits to proceed against local and state actors. The primary reason appearing to be because local and state actors are playing the largest role in civil rights violations, even if they are taking their marching orders so to speak from federal agents. Full Story

#5 - Our Emerging Barter Economy

More Americans are swapping over spending. The current economy has seen an increase in families going through their homes to swap out clutter for items they want or, more and more, need. Full Story

also:
*GM slammed for using Bailout money to pay off loan

*Barring of candidates may change Iraq vote outcome

*The slippery slope to strikes on Iran

*Vermont is a step closer to its own single-payer health care system

*As volcano grounded aerial spraying, rare blue skies emerged

the big story (late edition)

The Coming Energy Burden

Republicans and Democrats, Oil Companies and Environmentalist All for Gas Tax Increase

WASHINGTON - Leading voices in the Senate are considering a new tax on gasoline, as part of an effort to win Republican and oil industry support for the energy and climate bill now idling in Congress.

The tax, which according to early estimates would be in the range of 15 cents a gallon, was conceived with the input of several oil companies, including Shell, BP and Conoco Phillips, and is being championed by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

It is shaping up as a critical but controversial piece in the efforts by Graham, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to write a climate bill that moderate Republicans could support. Along those lines, the bill will also include an expansion of offshore oil drilling and major new incentives for nuclear power plant construction.

Environmental groups have long advocated gasoline taxes to reduce fossil fuel consumption; the oil industry has spent heavily in recent years to fight taxes that the industry says would harm consumers.

In this case, though, several oil companies are floating the tax plan because it figures to cost them far less than other climate proposals, including a climate bill the House passed last year.

Read more...

*Oil May Rise as US Deliberately Supplies Drop

*Obama’s Green Economy: Made in China

*Alex Jones:Running on empty




earlier:

Destruction of Videotapes Documented in CIA E-mail

Email shows CIA head signed off on destroying tapes showing torturing of detainees

WASHINGTON – Internal CIA e-mails show the former agency head, Porter Goss, agreed with a top aide's 2005 decision to destroy videotapes of the harsh interrogation of a terror suspect, a controversial action that remains the focus of an FBI investigation.

The documents show that, despite Goss' apparent agreement, CIA officials almost immediately began worrying they'd done something wrong. The e-mails also indicate that President George W. Bush's White House counsel, Harriet Miers, hadn't been informed of the tapes' destruction and was "livid" to find out later.

The videos showed CIA interrogators using waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique that's widely considered torture, on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaydah. The videos showed that interrogators did not follow the waterboarding procedures authorized by the Bush administration, the documents indicate.

Jose Rodriguez, the agency's top clandestine officer, worried the 92 tapes would be "devastating" to the CIA if they ever surfaced, the documents show. He approved the destruction of the tapes.

Rodriguez told Goss and others he "felt it was extremely important to destroy the tapes and that if there was any heat, he would take it," according to a November 2005 e-mail.

Goss, according to the e-mail, laughed and said he'd be the one to take the heat.

The e-mail then states: "PG, however, agreed with the decision."

Read more...

the big story (late edition)

Google Chrome Steals Your Privacy

Microsoft has hit out at Google's Chrome browser, claiming that it doesn't respect users' privacy

Microsoft recently posted a video called "Google Chrome Steals Your Privacy" to its TechNet Website. The video explained why Microsoft didn't trust Chrome's privacy and used Internet Explorer 8 as a comparison.

The video has since disappeared but not before Ars Technica saw it and dissected the accusations made. Ars reports that the main accusation Microsoft makes is that Google's move to consolidate both the search and address bar means more of your information is being sent to Google. IE8, on the other hand, keeps these separate and sends less of your information to the search provider.

"As I start to type an address into the address bar, Fiddler [a Web debugging proxy] shows that for nearly every character I type, Chrome sends a request back to Google," Ars cites IE product manager
Pete LePage as saying. "I haven't even hit enter yet to load the website and Google is already getting information about the domain
and sites I'm visiting."

Next LePage shows us how different things look when you do the same thing using Internet Explorer 8. He begins to type the same address into the URL bar and sure enough, nothing is sent to Microsoft until he presses enter.

Read more...


earlier:

Judge: Bush-Obama Wiretaps Are Illegal

The ruling was also a rebuff to President Obama who criticized Bush's surveillance program while running for President. Obama's Justice Department argued that courts lacked the power to decide whether the program was legal because any evidence of actual wiretapping was a secret that could not be disclosed without damaging national security. The Justice Department declined to say whether it would appeal today's ruling

The Bush administration wiretapped a U.S.-based Islamic charity under an illegal surveillance program that was not authorized by Congress or the courts, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled today.

The ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker marked the first time that a court has found that the government illegally wiretapped an individual or organization since President George W. Bush authorized warrantless wiretapping of suspected foreign terrorists in 2001.

The government inadvertently sent a classified document in 2004 to the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, reportedly showing that two of its lawyers had been wiretapped. Several months after the surveillance began, the government classified Al-Haramain as a terrorist organization, a description its leaders called false.

The now-defunct charity, which was headquartered in Oregon, returned the document at the government's request and could not use it as evidence in a lawsuit it filed over the wiretapping. But Walker said today that Al-Haramain had established, through public statements by officials and nonclassified evidence, that the government had intercepted its calls without obtaining the court warrant required by a 1978 law.

Bush acknowledged in December 2005 that he had ordered the National Security Agency, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to intercept phone calls and e-mails between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists without a warrant. He claimed the power to override the 1978 law's requirement of advance court approval for all such surveillance.

Today, Walker said Bush had lacked that authority.

Read more...

earlier:

Green No More

Obama adopts the "Drill, Baby, Drill" policy as the administration opens up the East Coast and Alaska to offshore oil drilling. This new policy fly in the face of his 2008 campaign stance. Between his coal advocacy and push for the corporate-friendly "Cap and Trade" initiative, is it time to stop considering the Democratic President pro-environment?

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.


The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.

Under the plan, the coastline from New Jersey northward would remain closed to all oil and gas activity. So would the Pacific Coast, from Mexico to the Canadian border.

The environmentally sensitive Bristol Bay in southwestern Alaska would be protected and no drilling would be allowed under the plan, officials said. But large tracts in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska — nearly 130 million acres — would be eligible for exploration and drilling after extensive studies.

The proposal is to be announced by President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Wednesday, but administration officials agreed to preview the details on the condition that they not be identified.

But even as Mr. Obama curries favors with pro-drilling interests, he risks a backlash from some coastal governors, senators and environmental advocates, who say that the relatively small amounts of oil to be gained in the offshore areas are not worth the environmental risks.

Read more...

the big story (late edition)

POPE IMPLICATED IN COVER-UP OF WISCONSIN SEX ABUSE CASE

Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

Read more...


earlier:
update: 28% DWP rate increase to go to create 1600 "green doctors" position to police resident's carbon practices

Al Gore & LA Mayor vs LA: 28% Energy Hike
Latest of many energy increases that are coming to your city soon

The voters said no at the polls but Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa still imposed a "carbon surcharge" on monthly water bills in the name of "green" despite the fact it was a crony pay-off. Energy prices for citizens and businesses have increased 70 percent in 2 years in a city that is losing jobs, people, and businesses daily. Now another in a series rate hikes is being proposed under the threat of city-wide bankruptcy. Al Gore is giving the unpopular increases a "green" justification as other mayors look on.

from Huffington Post:
In a rebuke to Mayor Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously today to review his proposal to raise DWP rates. The LA Times reports:

On a 15-0 vote, the council asserted jurisdiction over the Department of Water and Power board's decision to approve the first of four increases over the next year to help pay for renewable energy and other expenditures.

Several council members said they were especially disturbed by Villaraigosa's warning, sent to them in writing the night before the vote, that a failure to let the rate hikes stand would cause the DWP to renege on its plan to provide $73 million to the city's strained general fund, which pays for basic services such as public safety and parks.

This has become a particularly contentious issue in recent days, especially as the Mayor shifts focus from the hikes a s a Green initiative, to one essential for the city's economic survival. The LA Weekly weighs in:

Funny, because Mayor V. has been saying for months that the word bankruptcy is not in his vocabulary -- that it's not going to happen under his watch. Of course, he did not tie his DWP rate increases to the city's budget problems -- which would make the hikes look like indirect taxes -- until Tuesday.

Regardless of the Mayor's change in tone, his initiative has still received the endorsement of heavy-hitter environmentalists like Al Gore and the Sierra Club. In a blog post for the HuffPost LA, Bill Corcoran of the Sierra Club writes:

By supporting the Mayor's proposed investments in clean energy now, members of the Los Angeles City Council can demonstrate the foresight to protect their constituents from drastic and avoidable rate increases in the future--especially those low-income families that could be devastated by such a hardship. This proposal addresses concerns about increasing rates in the midst of tough economic times by incentivizing energy efficiency programs, which allows families to manage the bottom line of their DWP bills as rates are marginally increased.

Read more...