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Stamp out postal rate hikes!

The Post Office is about to accept a hike in its rates that would put diverse and free speech in America at risk. Postal regulators have decided to adopt a plan that locks in special favors to the nation's largest publishers, like Time Warner and Hearst, while unfairly burdening smaller and independent magazines with higher postal rates. You can help reverse this unfair decision by signing our letter demanding that the new postal rates stop favoring Big Media over small publishers: Sign Our Letter to Stamp Out the Rate Hikes

The plan to give Big Media lower rates was submitted by Time Warner, the nation's largest publisher. Surprisingly, postal regulators chose the Time Warner plan -- with no public input -- instead of another proposal that would have imposed an equal increase on all publishers.

If implemented, the Time Warner plan could push many smaller publications to the brink of bankruptcy.

RE: Is "Green" Tom Friedman the new eco-Orwell of Solartopia?

Harvey Wasserman's piece is excellent.

Friedman is, as usual, speaking the issue of the day not necessarily his knowledge or experience. He's repeating the same unexamined, ignorant and largely corrupt notion of our energy future. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

Mass media has consistently and thoroughly ignored the rise of everything from organic farming to solar energy to new railways to eco-restoration to dozens of other trends that have occurred in the last 35 or so years, trends blithely dismissed as "new age" or "hippy dippy" or whatever. That's what they had to do because they can't handle the truth of it all. These new things don't fit the old paradigm so they are rejected, as are their proponents. It's not just a commercial denial, but a denial of the substantive change that many people know is happening, but don't want to face. Half this society is skidding along with it's heels dug in as it heads for the cliff, while the other half has already jumped off.

USA: cornering the market on morality

“We have morality on our side….”
---William Blum

Ironic words flowing from the pen of a man who has devoted forty years of his life to hard-core dissent against the United States, the most moral nation in the history of civilization.

We are a nation founded upon bedrock principles of Christianity.

Would Christ not have approved of chattel slavery, the Native American genocide, and the millions of “savages” we have slaughtered to expand our borders and to maintain “Pax Americana?” Those who have died to sustain our peace and prosperity were but martyrs for a cause greater than themselves. In a sense, each one of them was a little Jesus.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Guns don't kill people. Crazy people with guns kill people. Crazy people who slip through loopholes in gun laws kill people.

            Everyone knows when Cho Seung-Hui got his guns. Nobody knows when he went bonkers.

            It had to be before December 2005, when a Virginia judge found him "an imminent danger to himself because of mental illness. A temporary detention order commanded that the 5-foot-8 Virginia Tech student be taken to Carilion St. Albans Behavioral facility in Christiansburg.

            The order claimed he was "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization, and presents an imminent danger to self or others as a result of mental illness, or is so seriously mentally ill as to be substantially unable to care for self, and is incapable of volunteering or unwilling to volunteer for treatment."

            Except, Special Justice Paul M. Barnett's order had an asterisk.

Your Earth Day To-Do List!

The bad news: Global warming is real. The better news: there are real ways you can help. In honor of Earth Day, here are five things you can do to make a cleaner planet and a better tomorrow. The best part is they are low-cost or free -- but have a huge impact.
1. Reduce. Here's a bright idea: Swap out five standard light bulbs for energy-saving compact fluorescents. They use 25% less energy and last 10 times as long. Other ways to save: unplug unused appliances and take public transit. For more cool tips, go to the Natural Resources Defense Council website: Act for Change

2. Offset. Once you've done what you can to reduce your impact on the environment, offset the rest. Make a donation to reverse the greenhouse gases you produce. Go to CarbonFund.org: CarbonFund

3. Recycle. Have an old cellphone just sitting in a drawer? CollectiveGood can send these phones for use in developing countries, or safely recycles materials from them. To donate your phone today

"I hope it's your family members that die" - US Representative Dana Rohrabacker

"I HOPE IT'S YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS THAT DIE" said US Representative Dana Rohrabacker to American citizens who questioned the Bush Administration’s unlawful extraordinary rendition policies.

Congressional hearings provide a deep insight into the inner spirit of our elected representatives-and sometimes, the insight is not pretty.

On April 17, we witnessed Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) unleash his unbridled anger onto members of the European Parliament’s committee on Human rights who were invited guests and witnesses in the House Foreign Affairs European subcommittee hearing. The European Parliamentary human rights committee had issued a report in January, 2007 sharply critical of the Bush administration’s extraordinary rendition program in which persons from all over the world were detained by either CIA or local police and then flown by CIA jet (torture taxi) to other countries where they were imprisoned (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Libya, Djibouti, Morocco, Yemen. The report was equally critical of European governments for allowing the unlawful flights to take place.

The accomplices: Sundance George and Butch Reid and the Virginia Tech massacre

He had accomplices. Don't kid yourself: 23-year-old Cho Seung-hui didn't forge his two little pistols in his smithy shop.

He had a dealer, a guns-and-bullets pusher-man who put the heat in his hand, took the kid's money and pocketed it with a grin.

"Whether you are looking for a pistol for affordable training or simply the excitement of shooting, the P22 is the pistol for you!"

That's the ad on the Walther website for the student-reaper, a Walther .22.

Not that Walther, or its fellow murder-maker, Glock, which crafted the other Weapon of Student Mass Destruction, the Glock 9mm, kept all of the killer kid's money. The gun makers religiously tithe a portion of their grim reapings to their friends in Washington.

This report isn't about gun control legislation or the right to bear arms or any of that sideways crap. This is about a group of co-conspirators who dropped two killing devices into the hands of someone who shouldn't have had access to a plastic spoon.

Another path to peace: the case for Kucinich

The Democratic leadership in Congress wants the war to be around in 2008 so that a Democrat can win the White House by "opposing" the war.  Congressman Rahm Emanuel has explained this to the Washington Post.  The ONLY way to convince the top Democrats that this calculation is wrong is to promote in the presidential primary the only candidate who is trying in every way possible to end the war now.  If we do that, the Democrats will understand that they cannot wait until after November of 2008 to end the war.

Season of grief

The news went straight to the Dad Zone of my heart and I thought about my 20-year-old daughter finishing up her junior year in St. Paul, Minn. I thought about book bags and attitude, tentative career plans and those uncomfortable plastic chairs with the flip-up elbow rests — the stuff of a young person’s becoming — and then I went numb with grief.

On the most ordinary of ordinary days this week, on a different campus but in my mind the same campus, the future was shattered with a methodical popping noise.

While the horror is still fresh, before we have satisfied ourselves with superficial understanding and moved on — oh yeah, another loner with a gun — I invoke this prayerful meditation from Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet”:

A selective definition of voter fraud

Even as Alberto Gonzales rehearses his excuses for the strange dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys, which he will perform in public at a Senate hearing this week, he is looking like a marginal player in this scandal. In keeping with his presidential nickname "Fredo," the attorney general probably never understood the broader plan originating in the Bush White House.

            Developed by political chief Karl Rove, that scheme was evidently designed to advance his objective of discouraging minority and other voters with the bad habit of supporting Democrats. In Republican parlance such attempts to hamper registration, intimidate citizens and reduce turnout in targeted communities are lauded as "combating voter fraud." Several of the fired U.S. attorneys had angered party operatives, including Rove, because they had shown so little enthusiasm for trumping up fraud cases against Democrats.

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