Washington is descending into another silly season. Let’s end this diversion of dust and smoke as partisans hype mock “scandals” for political profit.

The real scandals — like that of children in poverty — are simply being ignored. In this rich nation, nearly 8 million children under the age of 18 are being raised in what are called “areas of concentrated poverty.” These are the ghettos, barrios and impoverished rural areas where more than 30 percent of families live below the poverty line (a little over $22,000 for a family of four in 2010, when these figures date from). The number of children living in these communities is rising: It’s up 25 percent since 2000, according to the Data Snapshot of Kids Count, the nonpartisan organization whose report is the source of this data.

Earthquakes continue to rattle the damaged nuclear facility at Fukushima Daiichi. The list below shows only the strongest ones- there are weaker ones almost daily. The good news is that the radioactivity does decay with time, decreasing the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear fire. The bad news is that the buildings housing the spent fuel pools and melted-down reactor cores also decay with time, bombarded as they are with radioactivity, and shaken by earthquakes. Concrete crumbles, pipes break, rats gnaw at wire systems.

TEPCO, Tokyo Electric Power, which runs the facility, is in reactive mode, literally putting out fires, repairing damaged equipment, dealing with overflows of radioactive water. The Japanese mafia, Yakuza, drains off a good portion of the massive public funding poured into the containment/cleanup process. The workers are overexposed to radiation, and even so can only be on site for a short time until they've reached over the maximum exposure allowed, so the supply of workers is running short.

The following statement of Leah Bolger, Secretary of Defense and David Swanson, Secretary of Peace, of the Foreign Affairs Branch of the Green Shadow Cabinet, is available online here. It may be republished with attribution and a link back to its original web location.

The Obama administration has seemingly painted itself into yet another military corner by announcing that use of chemical weapons by Syria would constitute a red line that would mandate military action on the part of the United States. Now we are hearing reports that the red line may have been crossed, and some prominent officials are calling for the U.S. to step up its aid to the rebels and/or impose a no-fly zone. Proponents of military action such as Secretary of State John Kerry and hawkish Senator John McCain seem to think that the U.S. can sort out the “good guys” in the Syrian civil war, and use U.S. military assets to help the rebels take down the Assad government.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Southeast Asian sex workers, supported by the United Nations, exhibited their paintings, photographs and multimedia depicting violence, oral sex, repression under Islamic sharia law and other personal experiences.

"Here in the corner, you see a scene of a blowjob," Vanessa Ho said in an interview, pointing at a complex painting created by a sex worker named Dhivithra in Singapore.

"In the second scene, you see someone negotiating money as well as safe sex," said Ms. Ho, program coordinator of Project X, which she described as a "human rights-based organization for sex workers in Singapore."

The painting also displays "handcuffs on a pair of arms, symbolizing how the sex workers are constantly being criminalized," she said.

"You see some sex workers who just focus on money, and other sex workers keen to find love in their life. And in the bigger story here, on the [painting's] right-hand side, is of the wedding."

The solo Singaporean entry at the art exhibition was painted by a sex worker "inspired" by an older prostitute's true story.