Saturday, March 29, 2008

Taser Use Soars as Concerns Mount Over Safety. VANCOUVER - The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has doubled its use of Taser stun guns since 2005, according to an investigation by CBC and the Canadian Press. The RCMP has also been found to be less than forthright in producing information related to Taser incidents. The use of Tasers by Canadian policing forces has become [...] [CommonDreams.org » Headlines07] 12:43:29 PM    comment []

Craig Newmark: Eloquence from the White House. (From Time magazine "Perspectives") "So?" From Dick Cheney, when told that most Americans don't believe the Iraq War was worth it "the American people have input every four years, and that's the way our system is set up." From Dana Perino, when asked if the Bush White House cares about input from Americans [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 12:13:12 PM    comment []

YOU GO BILL!! Bill Press: Should Obama Drop Out of the Race?. What happened to the Democratic Party? I'm a lifelong Democrat. I've volunteered in countless Democratic campaigns. I've managed campaigns for Democrats. I was a Democratic candidate for statewide office in California. For three years, I was Chair of the California Democratic Party. But I don't recognize the Democratic Party today. The party I knew loved a good fight, loved debating the issues, recognized the value of a high-profile, hard-fought primary battle - and believed in giving everyone a fair shot. Today, the Democratic Party's turned into a bunch of weak-willed weenies. What's going on? The party is blessed with two of the best candidates ever to run for president. The party's making history with the first African-American and the first woman having a serious shot at the presidency. In every state, the Democratic primary is attracting record numbers of new voters and building a huge, new pool of Democrats that will benefit all Democratic candidates in November. And how do party leaders respond? By trying to shut down the primary. This is insane! Bill Richardson endorses Barack Obama. Good for him. But he can't stop there. He calls on Hillary Clinton to get out of the race. Patrick Leahy and Chris Dodd endorse Obama. Good for them, too. But, same thing. Both feel somehow compelled to add that Clinton should quit. Why? There is no more rationale for Clinton to drop out of the race than there is for Obama to drop out of the race. True, Clinton hasn't locked up the nomination yet. But neither has Obama. True, even if she wins every delegate in every remaining primary, Clinton can not reach the magic 2024 delegates necessary to secure the nomination. But neither can Obama. True, Obama leads in delegates, the number of states won, and popular vote. But Clinton leads in electoral votes. Plus, and here's the most important point: It's not over yet. Until it is, we can't be sure of the outcome. And it would be a big mistake to end it prematurely. There's been many a boxing match where one fighter won 14 rounds, only to get knocked out in the 15th. All these Obama supporters calling on Clinton to drop out aren't helping their candidate, either. They make Obama look like he's afraid of a fight. And they themselves look like a stereotypical bunch of men telling a woman she can't hack it in politics, so she might as well get back in the kitchen. No, Hillary Clinton should not quit this race. And neither should Barack Obama. They're both great candidates. Either one of them will make a great president. So let the primaries continue and let the voters decide. If Obama ends up the nominee, I'll do handstands on the White House lawn. But only if he wins it, fair and square. Get more thoughts and pre-order a copy of "Trainwreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (And Not a Moment Too Soon)" at www.billpressshow.com [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 12:07:55 PM    comment []

FRANKLY, I THINK THIS IS A LOAD OF POOP. AS CONTENTIOUS AS THE RACE MAY BECOME, DEMS ARE NOT GOING TO OPT FOR JOHN MCCAIN, A MAN FAR REMOVED FROM DEMOCRATIC, AMERICAN AND DECENT VALUES. Democrats Fear Tight Obama-Clinton Finish Could Damage Party's Chances. WASHINGTON — For all their delight in soaring voter registration and strong poll numbers, some Democrats fear the contest between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton might have a nightmarish end, which could wreck a promising election year. The chief worry is that Clinton may carry her recent winning streak into Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina and other states, leaving her with unquestioned momentum but fewer pledged delegates than Obama. Party leaders then would face a wrenching choice: Steer the nomination to a fading Obama, even as signs suggested Clinton could be the stronger candidate in November; or go with the surging Clinton and risk infuriating Obama's supporters, especially blacks, the Democratic Party's most loyal base. Some anxious Democrats want party elders to step in now to generate more "superdelegate" support for Obama, effectively choking off Clinton's hopes before she can bolster them further. But many say that is unlikely, and they pray the final 10 contests will make the ultimate choice fairly obvious, not excruciating. Barring a complete meltdown by Obama, Clinton has almost no chance of surpassing his number of pledged delegates, even if she scores upset wins in states such as Oregon, which votes May 20. But such victories would encourage her to keep criticizing Obama _ her only hope for the nomination _ and thus heighten doubts about Obama's ability to defeat Republican Sen. John McCain in the fall. That scenario troubles many Democrats, especially those who feel Obama's nomination is all but inevitable. "This is going to give Republicans a chance to try to destroy everything we've been trying to work for for eight years," said Ken Foxworth, a Democratic National Committee member from Minnesota and superdelegate who backs Obama. Superdelegates are party officials, including members of Congress, who can back any candidate they wish. With neither Obama nor Clinton able to secure the nomination with the pledged delegates they win in primaries and caucuses, the superdelegates ultimately will decide the outcome. Many undeclared superdelegates express confidence that all will be well. Democratic voters will unite in the fall, they say, and the injuries that Obama and Clinton inflict on each other this spring will heal. Privately, however, some party insiders worry that these superdelegates may be blithely marching toward a treacherous crossroad, where they will have to choose between a deeply wounded Obama and a soaring Clinton whose success was built on tearing down the party's front-runner in terms of delegates. A senior Democratic Senate aide, who would speak only on background because most members of Congress bar their staff members from being quoted by name, called it a nightmare that's getting worse. The Democrats' optimism of February has been replaced by fear, this aide said, referring to the widely held view last month that Obama was coasting to the nomination after winning 11 straight contests. Clinton halted the skid in Texas and Ohio on March 4 and is favored to win the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. If the New York senator also tops Obama in Indiana and North Carolina on May 6, West Virginia a week later, and Kentucky and/or Oregon on May 20, her supporters will argue that the dynamic has sharply changed in ways party leaders cannot ignore. Obama is no longer the sure-footed campaigner who piled up wins and delegates in February, they will say, and the superdelegates' obligation to the party is to nominate the sprinting Clinton, even if it angers Obama backers. Of course, Obama could practically extinguish Clinton's final hopes by winning one or more of those states. Many Democrats believe he will, suggesting Clinton's continued campaign is a hopeless, albeit potentially harmful, endeavor. Obama's nomination is "a foregone conclusion," Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., told National Journal. Dodd endorsed Obama after trying for the nomination himself. He's ahead of Clinton in delegates, popular votes, states won and fundraising. Obama seems nearly certain to finish the primary season far ahead of Clinton financially. At the end of February his campaign had $30 million on hand, while Clinton's had only $3 million more in cash than in debts. Some Obama supporters question Clinton's motives: They suggest she is counting on a stunning gaffe or shocking revelation to cripple Obama and hand her the nomination. Others float a more sinister possibility, which has found its way into mainstream news accounts: Clinton hopes to damage Obama so severely that he loses to McCain this fall, clearing her path to challenge McCain in 2012, when he will be 75. Clinton scoffs at such suggestions, and calls on voters to support whomever is the Democratic nominee in November. Whatever her motives, many Democrats fear that Clinton's continued criticisms can only hurt the man they see as their all-but-certain nominee. They point to a recent Gallup poll, in which 28 percent of Clinton's Democratic supporters said they would vote for McCain if Obama is the party's nominee. Nineteen percent of Obama's supporters said they would vote for McCain if Clinton gets the nod. Faced with such disturbing trends, some Democrats want party elders either to persuade Clinton to drop out, or to orchestrate enough superdelegate endorsements of Obama to make her defeat inevitable. But high-profile Democrats, including former president Jimmy Carter, former vice president Al Gore, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, have refrained from such moves so far. "My job is to make sure the person who loses feels like they have been treated fairly so that their supporters will support the winner," Dean told The Associated Press. Indeed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi drew objections from Clinton backers when she approached the issue by saying she shared Obama's view that superdelegates should be guided by the vote for pledged delegates. This week, one of Obama's prominent supporters, Sen. Patrick Leahy took the next step. The Vermont Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee said Clinton can't win enough delegates and should drop out and support Obama. Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Southern Politics, Media, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina, said it's probably asking too much of Dean and others to step in. In an era of sharply contested primaries and largely meaningless nominating conventions, he said "we don't have any power brokers any more" who could somehow negotiate a resolution. Pat Waak, chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party, said the worriers should relax. "I actually think it's good for the party to get through this process," she said. "It gives everybody a chance to be part of it," she said, noting that Democratic voter registration is soaring in many states. In Pennsylvania, Democrats have registered a staggering 161,000 new voters since last fall, pushing their numbers over 4 million for the first time. In Oregon, nearly 10,000 voters have refiled as Democrats in the last seven weeks. Waak added, however: "The concern I have is the kind of level of attack that has come up" between Obama and Clinton. "I don't think that is good for the party." Superdelegates will have to choose this summer, Waak said, and it will be easy if Obama can significantly increase his lead in delegates, popular votes and states won. On the other hand, she said, "the narrower the margin and the less conclusive it is, the harder it becomes." ___ Associated Press Writer Nedra Pickler contributed to this report. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 8:29:37 AM    comment []

Published on Friday, March 28, 2008 by CommonDreams.org Three Mile Island at 29: Reactors and Infant Health By John LaForge Today marks 29 years since the partial meltdown and radiation disaster at Three Mile Island (TMI) near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.News accounts noted the reactor[base ']s loss-of-coolant, fuel melting, multiple explosions, venting of radioactive gases, dumping of contaminated water and the buildup of explosive hydrogen inside the reactor vessel. The accident caused such a nationwide scare that the expansion of nuclear power ended in the United States. Yet the environmental and health consequences of the TMI disaster aren[base ']t widely understood. Official cover-ups, industry propaganda, and ignorance of radiation-induced illnesses have led to present-day trivialization of TMI and a supposed revival of reactor construction. Any such revival is totally dependent on billions in federal subsidies included in the recent energy bill, because, as Forbes magazine blazoned across its cover: [base "]The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale.[per thou] The nuclear industry[base ']s attempt to raise nuclear power from the dead involves denying the damage resulting from TMI itself and flies in the face of 25 years of science regarding the effects of low-dose radiation. One Wisconsin legislator said on the record last December, [base "]Three Mile Island was a success of containment.[per thou] Things weren[base ']t much different in 1979. President Carter[base ']s Kemeny Commission hurriedly finished its report on the disaster issuing it in Oct. 1979. The commission did not consider any data on the effects of wind-borne radiation, although the wind blew 6-to-9 mph toward upstate New York and western Pennsylvania. Over 10 million curies of radioactive noble gases including 43,000 curies of krypton-85 [~] which stays in the environment for 100 years [~] as well as 15-to-24 curies of radioactive iodine-131, were vented from the [base "]containment[per thou] building. (A curie [~] 37 billion disintegrations per second [~] is a huge amount of radiation.) As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) later noted, several [base "]deliberate but uncontrolled releases[per thou] were used to vent radioactive gas. Official airborne release estimates are just guesses, because of the insufficient number of outside radiation monitors half weren[base ']t working, and a large number of them went off-scale. On the third day of the venting of these gases, half the population within 15 miles [~] 144,000 people [~] fled the area. By this time the bulk of the accident[base ']s airborne radiation was already spewed and drifting on the wind. In addition, approximately 400,000 gallons of radioactive cooling water that had leaked from the reactor were secretly dumped into the Susquehanna River, a source of drinking water for nearby communities. Later about 2.3 million gallons of radioactively contaminated cooling water were allowed to be [base "]evaporated[per thou] into the atmosphere. In 1980, Pennsylvania State Health Department authorities reported a sharp rise in hypothyroidism in newborn infants in the three counties downwind from the reactor. Late in 1979, four times as many infants as normal were born with the disease. The NRC said the increase was unrelated to radiation released by TMI. Upwind incidence of the disease had dropped to below the national average. The same year, six workers entered the heavily contaminated reactor building. Five of the six later died of radiation-induced cancers. David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists reports that UCS opposed license renewal for the surviving TMI units and demanded health studies for neighbors. The NRC refused. In the county where TMI is located infant deaths soared 53.7 percent in the first month after the accident; 27 percent in the first year. As originally published, the federal government[base ']s own Monthly Vital Statistics Report shows a statistically significant rise in infant and over-all mortality rates shortly after the accident. Studying 10 counties closest to TMI, Jay M. Gould, in his meticulously documented 1990 book Deadly Deceit, found that childhood cancers, other infant diseases, and deaths from birth defects were 15% to 35% higher than before the accident, and those from breast cancer 7% higher. These increases far exceeded those elsewhere in Pennsylvania. Gould suggests that between 50,000 and 100,000 excess deaths occurred after the TMI accident. Joseph Mangano of the New York-based Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) says, [base "]The NRC allows reactors to emit a certain level of radiation, but it does not do follow-up studies to see if there are excessive infant deaths, birth defects or cancers.[per thou] Leukemia deaths among kids fewer than 10 years of age (between 1980 and 1984) jumped almost 50 percent compared to the national rate. Mangano reports that [base "]between 1980 and 1984, death rates in the three nearest counties were considerably higher than 1970-74 (before the reactor opened) for leukemia, female breast, thyroid and bone and joint cancers.[per thou] The Spring 2000 edition of Environmental Epidemiology and Toxicology Mangano and Ernest Sternglass reported that in counties adjacent to nuclear reactors, infant mortality falls dramatically after the reactors close. The RPHP study found that in the first two years after the reactors were shuttered, infant death rates fell 15-to-20 percent. In communities near Big Rock Point in Michigan for example, the decrease in infant mortality rates was 54 percent; at Maine Yankee, the percentage decrease was 33.4 %. The evidence of cancers caused by reactor operations brings to mind the words of Roger Mattson, former Director of NRC Division of Systems Safety, who said during the TMI meltdown, [base "]I[base ']m not sure why you are not moving people. I don[base ']t know what we are protecting at this point.[per thou] John LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch, an environmental action group in Wisconsin, and edits its quarterly newsletter. His articles on nuclear power, weapons and waste have appeared in New Internationalist, Z Magazine, Earth Island Journal, The Progressive, the opinion page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and elsewhere. 8:18:16 AM    comment []