I'm Down With Dennis

Let me get this straight. The Senate will pass a public option if the House will. And the House will, because it already did. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won't allow it. So the mortal enemy of public-option backers is . . . Dennis Kucinich.

Why? Because when Congressman Kucinich said he'd stand for a public option he stupidly thought he was supposed to mean it.

Let's review a brief history of the disease known as "health insurance reform."

When the president and the speaker of the House thought it would be strategic to censor any talk of single-payer healthcare, almost every member of Congress and almost every astroturfing party-before-country activist group and labor union, and almost every follower of those groups, fell obediently into line. "We'll open the debate with the least we'll settle for, a pathetic token public-option," they thought cleverly, rubbing their hands together. "Then we'll compromise down from there."

Worthington school officials feel the heat: some community members oppose the teaching of global warming science

WCRSFM.ORG

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman on WCRS Radio

Click on the link to go to the WCRS site and listen to the latest "Unconscious Voices" radio program featuring Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman. Produced by Tom Over, Robb Ebright, Josh Paulson and Joey Pigg.
Radio Show link

Glen Beck on the Census

Sinful parents

Coalfield residents lobby on Capitol Hill

During the second week of March more than 200 people from 27 states gathered in Washington, D.C. to lobby federal legislators to support the Clean Water Protection Act, HB 1310, as a way to stop or seriously curtail mountain top removal mining.

“It (the House bill ) would effectively end the valley fill process that's used in mountain top removal, and it would end the greatest majority of mountain top removal mining thereby,” said Bob Kincaid, whose reporting appears on the Horn

Lenny Kohm, Campaign Director for Appalachian Voices, said on Tuesday the bill has 164 co-sponsors.

“These are people who have actually signed on to the bill, and are registered in the Congressional Record as co-sponsors,” Kohm said.

Kohm said the House bill is broader than the Appalachian Restoration Act, S. 696, which was introduced in the Senate almost a year ago.

U.S. surveillance blimp fights harsh criticism

BANGKOK, Thailand -- An Arlington, Virginia-based company is defending its harshly criticized US $ 9.7 million sale of a helium-filled blimp, equipped with infrared thermal cameras, to Thailand's army for hunting Islamist guerrillas in the south. Scathing criticism of the California-built Sky Dragon blimp, and its cameras, has been repeatedly published in Thailand's media during recent weeks, and voiced by worried politicians.

They describe the airship as a waste of money, not fully able to fly on operational missions, and impractical for Thailand's low-intensity guerrilla war where Muslim rebels hide in hilly jungles.

"The demand to fly the ship daily is there, but it's pointless to fly it if the entire surveillance system is not operational," said Aria International's President and CEO Mike "Bing" Crosby in an e-mail interview. "We are completing these tasks now, and should have the system turned over to the RTA (Royal Thai Army) in the very near future."

Dear Eric Holder: Try accused criminals in courts of law

The Robert Jackson Steering Committee, a group of lawyers and journalists founded to uphold the principles of the Nuremberg Trials, is urging the Department of Justice to proceed with trying Khalil Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and other suspected 9/11 terrorists in federal criminal court, and not in military commissions.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the Committee enumerates several substantial problems with military commissions:

(1) Admissibility of statements following torture in certain circumstances,
(2) Evidence derived from impermissible interrogation methods is not barred,
(3) Evidence seized outside the US without search warrants is not excluded,
(4) The accused is entitled to one "reasonably available" defense counsel,
(5) No mention of the attorney-client privilege,
(6) In a capital case, the accused is entitled to additional counsel "to the greatest extent practicable",
(7) Ex post facto law may be applied,
(8) No right to speedy trial,
(9) Trials may be closed to public,
(10) Conviction by two thirds of jurors rather than unanimity,

War in a box

The event on the House floor Wednesday (March 10) was monumental -- the first major congressional debate about U.S. military operations in Afghanistan since lawmakers authorized the invasion of that country in autumn 2001. But, as Rep. Patrick Kennedy noted with disgust on Wednesday, the House press gallery was nearly empty. He concluded: “It’s despicable, the national press corps right now.”

Sure enough, the Thursday edition of the New York Times had no room for the historic debate on its front page, which did have room for a large Starbucks ad across the bottom.

Despite the news media and the lopsided pro-war tilt on Capitol Hill (reflected in the 356-65 vote Wednesday against invoking the War Powers Act), antiwar organizing has a lot of hospitable terrain at the grassroots. National polling shows widespread opposition to the Afghanistan war effort -- a far cry from the dominant lockstep conformity in Congress.

Alternative reading of the Al-Mabhouh murder

The killing of Palestinian activist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on January 19, 2010 was clearly a well-planned, violent and sadistic act, committed by Israeli assassins in the supposed safety of a sovereign country.

Yes, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was a Palestinian activist. We have no reason to believe otherwise. He spent years of his life in Israeli prison – and one year in an Egyptian jail – for his political activism. This, however, gives no credibility to Israel’s accusation that al-Mabhouh was a killer of Israelis. This assertion becomes even more problematic when considering that al-Mabhouh’s assassination was, according to British media, ordered by accused Israeli war criminals and rightwing politicians.

According to the Sunday Times, Meir Dagan, the current director of Mossad briefed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the assassination plan during a meeting in early January. "The people of Israel trust you. Good luck," Netanyahu reportedly said at the end of this meeting.

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