Monday, January 9th, 2012
JASON DePARLE, - The New York Times
Stephan: The fictions of American life are peeling away one by one. We have the best healthcare in the world. A lie. We have the best school system in the world. A lie. We have the best justice system in the world. A lie. America is the most upwardly mobile country in the world. A lie. If we can't face the truth about ourselves, we can't fix what is broken. And if you have been listening to the candidate debates you can see at least a large part of America is not interested in the truth at all.
WASHINGTON - Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. ‘Movin’ on up,
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Monday, January 9th, 2012
JOSEPH J. MANGANO, - Radiation and Public Health Project
Stephan: The corporate media doesn't touch the story, and the governments in both Japan and U.S. lie. Here is the truth, it isn't pretty and it's fatal.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.
Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman note that their estimate of 14,000 excess U.S. deaths in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima meltdowns is comparable to the 16,500 excess deaths in the 17 weeks after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. The rise in reported deaths after Fukushima was largest among U.S. infants under age one. The 2010-2011 increase for infant deaths in the spring was 1.8 percent, compared to a decrease of 8.37 percent in the preceding 14 weeks.
The IJHS article will be published Tuesday and will be available online as of 11 a.m. EST at http://www.radiation.org.
Just six days after the disastrous meltdowns struck four reactors at Fukushima on March 11, scientists detected the plume of toxic fallout had arrived over American shores. Subsequent measurements by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency […]
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Monday, January 9th, 2012
Stephan: It may surprise you that while I deplore the power of money in our politics, I do not object to what James Bopp and his firm are doing. He has become expert at something that is legal. It is a citizen's right to do that. What is appalling is Congress' pusillanimous failure not to correct this. The response to Mr. Bopp is legislative.
Wedged up against the Illinois border on the banks of the Wabash River, Terre Haute, Indiana, has seen better days. Many factories have closed, and downtown has too many vacant storefronts. But there are signs of activity: Indiana State University has grown, the federal prison still provides reliable jobs-and the ten-lawyer litigation machine that occupies the offices of attorney James Bopp Jr. at the corner of 6th and Wabash is going full tilt.
Bopp is best known as the lawyer behind a case involving a 90-minute film made in 2008 attacking then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Bopp’s suit ultimately resulted in the landmark 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, in which the Supreme Court held that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts such as the movie and its promotional ads were legitimate expressions of free speech and couldn’t be limited by campaign-finance laws. The ruling overturned key restrictions on the use of corporate and union money in politics.
Bopp is already well into the next phase of his crusade to topple as many of the state and federal limits on the role of money in politics as can be done in one man’s lifetime.
Over the past 30 years, Bopp […]
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Sunday, January 8th, 2012
TIM MURPHY, - Mother Jones
Stephan: I have been following this movement for several years ever since a friend, who is also a Libertarian, told me he was moving to New Hampshire as part of a plan to take over the state. In states with low population, such as North Dakota or Montana, for instance, I actually think this could be done. New Hampshire may be a test case. The problem of course, as this report points out, is that fractious people can never agree on anything for long.
Ian Freeman’s campaign of civil disobedience started on the autumn day in 2008 when the Blue Light Gang came for his couch. It was a plaid three-seater, anonymous even by the standards of living-room furniture, except that it occupied prime real estate on the front lawn of his two-story, white-and-green renter in Keene, New Hampshire. His tenants used it for bird-watching. But in this quiet college town near the Vermont border, that put him on the wrong side of a city ordinance that considers such exterior furnishings ‘rubbish.’ A neighbor lodged a complaint. Code enforcement-the Blue Light Gang, as Freeman calls them-asked him to get rid of the couch. He refused. A man has to stand for something.
Plus: Read about the myth of the independent New Hampshire voter.
In court, Freeman (whose given surname is Bernard) represented himself and grilled the lone witness, a city code enforcer. He refused to plead guilty-or not guilty, for that matter-and instead asked the city to pay him a $5,000-per-hour appearance fee (PDF); otherwise he’d consider it kidnapping. The court was not amused. What started as a fine for littering (PDF) escalated to a 90-day jail sentence for three counts of contempt plus an […]
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Sunday, January 8th, 2012
BRIAN VASTAG, - The Washington Post
Stephan: If you are an older man this is important information you should discuss with your physician.
Find prostate cancer early, save a life.
That message has been pervasive since 1986, when a blood test for prostate cancer first hit the market. But more evidence suggests that, in many or even most cases, the message is wrong.
The latest blow against prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing came Friday from a large, long-term study that found routine testing in men ages 55 to 74 did not prevent deaths from prostate cancer.
‘The message is that routine mass screening is not the way to go,
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