Courtesy Rawstory:

New data from U.S. polling firm Gallup shows nearly half of Americans — a record number — are in support of legalizing and taxing marijuana for recreational use by adults.RELATED: Two California airports have policy allowing passengers to fly with pot

The poll clearly illustrates a generational and political divide on the issue, with 78 percent of self-described liberals saying they would like to see the drug legalized and 72 percent of self-described conservatives being opposed. Gallup also found that 50 percent of Americans under 50-years-old are in favor of legalization, but just 28 percent of seniors agree.

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The Nevada Senate has voted to override Gov. Jim Gibbon’s veto of a measure that would give domestic partners, whether gay or straight, many of the rights and benefits that Nevada offers to married couples.

The bill provides that domestic partners have the same rights as married couples in matters like community property and responsibility for debts.

More from The New York Times/AP Story.

Courtesy The Christian Science Monitor:

The billion-gallon wave of toxic coal-ash sludge that burst from a power-plant retention pond and buried 300 acres of rural Tennessee hints at a far larger problem: hundreds of similar threats nationwide.

More than 1,300 coal-ash waste sites are dotted across the United States, about half of them actively used, federal data show. Some are landfills. The rest are “surface impoundments” (storage lagoons), which, like the one in Tennessee, mix ash with water.

Coal ash has some beneficial uses. It can be mixed with concrete to make roads, for example. But storing coal ash in a retention pond – common at coal-fired power plants nationwide – can be a threat to the environment and humans as well: The ash contains many toxic metals, including arsenic, lead, and chromium.

At least 67 coal-ash sites have been found to be damaging drinking-water supplies in communities across 23 states, the US Environmental Protection Agency reported last year. But those EPA-identified sites grossly understate the threat, environmentalists say.

EPA study finds only 13 ’safe’ coal-ash waste dumps

Among an additional 155 landfill and surface-impoundment sites in 36 states reviewed by the EPA in 2007, all but 13 had no liner or an inadequate clay liner. Most – two-thirds of them – had no liner at all. (An impermeable liner is needed to keep toxic metals from leaching from the ash into groundwater supplies.)

This concerns Kevin Madonna, who, with his law-firm partner, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,  keeps a close eye on water-pollution issues. Using last year’s EPA data, Mr. Madonna cross-checked coal-ash lagoons and landfills that had either a clay liner or no liner to see which ones were close to human populations and waterways.

One-third are close to human populations

Of the 155 waste sites, more than one-third were close or very close to significant human populations; two-thirds were near or very near key waterways, Madonna found. About half of the sites were coal-ash surface impoundments (lagoons).

“You have toxic wastes leaking into water bodies from probably every single one of these lagoons,” Madonna says. “It’s a huge mess.”

Little is known about coal-ash storage sites, which are lightly regulated by states and exempt from federal hazardous-waste regulations. Many are decades old, which increases the potential for leakage and containment failure, experts and environmentalists say.

Lisa Evans, an attorney for Earthjustice, an environmental group, says the EPA underestimates the problem. “Most impoundments are not monitored at all,” she says. “The list of sites identified by the EPA in 2007 is far from comprehensive.”

-Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Courtesy Rawstory:

Monday, outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney made a startling statement on a nation-wide, televised broadcast.

When asked by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl whether he approved of interrogation tactics used against a so-called “high value prisoner” at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison, Mr. Cheney, in a break from his history of being press-shy, admitted to giving official sanctioning of torture.

“I supported it,” he said regarding the practice known as “water-boarding,” a form of simulated drowning. After World War II, Japanese soldiers were tried and convicted of war crimes in US courts for water-boarding, a practice which the outgoing Bush administration attempted to enshrine in policy.

“I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do,” Cheney said. “And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.”

He added: “It’s been a remarkably successful effort, and I think the results speak for themselves.”

ABC asked him if in hindsight he thought the tactics went too far. “I don’t,” he said.

-Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

OMAHA, Nebraska (CNN) – Nebraska officials said they’re concerned about an apparent rush by parents to drop their teenage children off at hospitals before lawmakers change the state’s troubled “safe haven” law.

The latest cases came the day before the state Legislature kicked off a special session to add an age limit to the law.

On Thursday, a boy, 14, and his 17-year-old sister were dropped off at an Omaha hospital; the girl ran away from the hospital, officials said. A 5-year-old boy was left by his mother at a different hospital, officials said.

The day before, a father flew in from Miami, Florida, to leave his teenage son at a hospital, officials said.

“Please don’t bring your teenager to Nebraska,” Gov. Dave Heineman said. “Think of what you are saying. You are saying you no longer support them. You no longer love them.”  Watch as lawmakers convene to change law »

Nebraska’s safe haven law was intended to allow parents to hand over an infant anonymously to a hospital without being prosecuted. Of the 34 children who have been dropped off at hospitals, officials said, not one has been an infant.

All but six have been older than 10, according to a Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services analysis.

State officials said that because of legislative procedures, it will take at least a week to change the language of the safe haven law, creating a window where more parents could try to take advantage of the loophole in the statute.

“We are ready and prepared that that situation occurs,” said Todd Landry of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. “We want people to understand that this is not the right way of getting the service for your child, your teenager or your family.”

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Courtesy NYTimes:

denly, everything old is New Deal again. Reagan is out; F.D.R. is in. Still, how much guidance does the Roosevelt era really offer for today’s world?

The answer is, a lot. But Barack Obama should learn from F.D.R.’s failures as well as from his achievements: the truth is that the New Deal wasn’t as successful in the short run as it was in the long run. And the reason for F.D.R.’s limited short-run success, which almost undid his whole program, was the fact that his economic policies were too cautious.

About the New Deal’s long-run achievements: the institutions F.D.R. built have proved both durable and essential. Indeed, those institutions remain the bedrock of our nation’s economic stability. Imagine how much worse the financial crisis would be if the New Deal hadn’t insured most bank deposits. Imagine how insecure older Americans would feel right now if Republicans had managed to dismantle Social Security.

Can Mr. Obama achieve something comparable? Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s new chief of staff, has declared that “you don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste.” Progressives hope that the Obama administration, like the New Deal, will respond to the current economic and financial crisis by creating institutions, especially a universal health care system, that will change the shape of American society for generations to come.

But the new administration should try not to emulate a less successful aspect of the New Deal: its inadequate response to the Great Depression itself.

Now, there’s a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse. So it’s important to know that most of what you hear along those lines is based on deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. The New Deal brought real relief to most Americans.

That said, F.D.R. did not, in fact, manage to engineer a full economic recovery during his first two terms. This failure is often cited as evidence against Keynesian economics, which says that increased public spending can get a stalled economy moving. But the definitive study of fiscal policy in the ’30s, by the M.I.T. economist E. Cary Brown, reached a very different conclusion: fiscal stimulus was unsuccessful “not because it does not work, but because it was not tried.”

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Courtesy BBC News:

Asian markets have risen sharply, a day after China announced a huge investment plan to kick-start its slowing economy.

Stocks leapt in Japan, China and Hong Kong, buoyed by China’s efforts to sustain its growth rates, on which many Asian economies depend.

About $586bn (£370bn) is to go into housing, infrastructure and post-earthquake reconstruction in China over the next two years.

Correspondents say the package is a response to falling growth and exports.

There will also be significant cuts in company tax, while banks will be allowed to lend more to projects involving rural development and technical innovation.

The government also promised a shift to a “moderately easy” monetary policy.

“The investment expansion should be done swiftly and forcefully,” a State Council meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao concluded.

“It’s a huge package,” Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency after a meeting of the Group of 20 finance officials in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

“It will have an influence not only on the world economy in supporting demand but also a lot of influence on the Chinese economy itself, and I think it is good news for correcting imbalances.”

Market bounce

-Article Continued @ Sourced Site.

Courtesy Celsias:

The United States and Canada have often been uneasy neighbors, perhaps never more so than when Canada included the U.S. on a list ofcountries that torture inmates  .

That flashpoint aside, Canada’s recent habit of distancing itself may have less to do with politics and more to do with a perceivedextraterritorial expansion   of U.S. environmental laws – a state of affairs that wakens Canadian fears of being gobbled up by its larger, stronger and louder neighbor.  

For example, in July of this year, the National Academies   expressed the opinion   that the United States should pass Great Lakes protection laws more closely mirroring the standards sets by the International Maritime Organization   (IMO) – standards which Canada had already adopted.

On October 3, President Bush took up the challenge by signing theGreat Lakes Compact  , a complex, 13-part bill that will protect the Lakes’ water from unwarranted diversion and protect the water itself via standards for everything from industrial chemicals to sewage, including ballast water regulations aimed at preventing the introduction and spread of invasive species   (PDF).

This Compact, almost a decade in the making   and several times stalled by state governors unwilling to accept a broader but more limiting portfolio of protections, is now law. Diversions outside the Lakes area will require the unanimous agreement of all eight   governors (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York) and the heads of adjacent Canadian provinces (Quebec and Ontario).

That the Compact is still not as comprehensive as standards set by the IMO is unfortunate. Even so, the Compact is by far the most thorough bill yet passed in the U.S. regarding Great Lakes water, and not a moment too soon as drought   spreads throughout the U.S. southeast, southwest, the Pacific Coast, Idaho, and even into the upper Great Plains.

The bill, a political hot potato among U.S. governors, finally won grudging Canadian acceptance when the U.S. Senate incorporated an amendment, at the Council of Canadian’s request, prohibiting sales to water bottlers  . Most likely, Canadians felt they had no choice. NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, clearly defines water as both a service and an investment  , opening wide the door to sales south of the U.S. border by any U.S. government agency looking for an edge in Mexico.

These water-sale schemes weren’t isolated to the U.S, however. The Compact, which serves an area in the U.S. and contiguous Canadian provinces with a population of approximately 40 million, is the offshoot of a 1999 proposal from Ontario   to ship Lakes water to Asia, and Ontario was not the only schemer. At various times, British Columbia, Quebec and Newfoundland had also considered licensing bulk water exports. 

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Courtesy NYTimes:

While Americans eagerly vote for the next president, here’s a sobering reminder: As of Tuesday, George W. Bush still has 77 days left in the White House — and he’s not wasting a minute.

President Bush’s aides have been scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights, among others — few for the good. Most presidents put on a last-minute policy stamp, but in Mr. Bush’s case it is more like a wrecking ball. We fear it could take months, or years, for the next president to identify and then undo all of the damage.

Here is a look — by no means comprehensive — at some of Mr. Bush’s recent parting gifts and those we fear are yet to come.

CIVIL LIBERTIES We don’t know all of the ways that the administration has violated Americans’ rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Last month, Attorney General Michael Mukasey rushed out new guidelines for the F.B.I. that permit agents to use chillingly intrusive techniques to collect information on Americans even where there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

Agents will be allowed to use informants to infiltrate lawful groups, engage in prolonged physical surveillance and lie about their identity while questioning a subject’s neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends. The changes also give the F.B.I. — which has a long history of spying on civil rights groups and others — expanded latitude to use these techniques on people identified by racial, ethnic and religious background.

The administration showed further disdain for Americans’ privacy rights and for Congress’s power by making clear that it will ignore a provision in the legislation that established the Department of Homeland Security. The law requires the department’s privacy officer to account annually for any activity that could affect Americans’ privacy — and clearly stipulates that the report cannot be edited by any other officials at the department or the White House.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has now released a memo asserting that the law “does not prohibit” officials from homeland security or the White House from reviewing the report. The memo then argues that since the law allows the officials to review the report, it would be unconstitutional to stop them from changing it. George Orwell couldn’t have done better.

THE ENVIRONMENT The administration has been especially busy weakening regulations that promote clean air and clean water and protect endangered species.

Mr. Bush, or more to the point, Vice President Dick Cheney, came to office determined to dismantle Bill Clinton’s environmental legacy, undo decades of environmental law and keep their friends in industry happy. They have had less success than we feared, but only because of the determined opposition of environmental groups, courageous members of Congress and protests from citizens. But the White House keeps trying.

Mr. Bush’s secretary of the interior, Dirk Kempthorne, has recently carved out significant exceptions to regulations requiring expert scientific review of any federal project that might harm endangered or threatened species (one consequence will be to relieve the agency of the need to assess the impact of global warming on at-risk species). The department also is rushing to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list — again. The wolves were re-listed after a federal judge ruled the government had not lived up to its own recovery plan.

Article continues @ Sourced Site,

Courtesy Common Dream:

My very first job after graduating from Harvard Law School was as a part-time lawyer for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains in Denver. I was working on cases related to expanding access to birth control to all couples regardless of their marital status. At the time the birth control pill was recently approved as safe, but it was not yet legal in all states for all women. The Supreme Court in 1965 established basic privacy rights to birth control, but only for women who could produce a marriage license.

Fast forward to 2008, 40 years later. In my worst nightmare, it never crossed my mind that voters in Colorado would be considering a constitutional amendment that could outlaw birth control pills. Emergency contraceptives could also be illegal under Proposition 48, a form of birth control that if taken up to 72 hours after intercourse can prevent an unwanted pregnancy, especially used by rape and incest victims.

If you need more reasons to Vote No on 48, chances are you or your own family will be affected if this crazy proposal passes. Like thousands of living women in Colorado in the 1970’s, I struggled with difficult pregnancies. I lost twins during my second pregnancy and almost died during childbirth. It was a painful time for my family, as it is for all families. I can only imagine how devastating it would have been if government officials had shown up on my doorstep, asking questions about what had happened, was it really a miscarriage? Yet, couples could face that kind of unthinkable government investigation if Colorado voters allow Amendment 48 to pass.

If you don’t believe it could happen, just take a look at the plain language of the Amendment. It would amend the Colorado constitution to grant, for the first time, inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law to fertilized eggs. Even the proponents of the Amendment admit they don’t know all the possible ramifications.

Would couples struggling to get pregnant be allowed to use in vitro fertilization, which depends on fertilizing more eggs than a woman can carry to term? Would common birth control methods, such as the Pill, IUDs, the Patch, and the Ring, be outlawed because they operate by preventing fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus?

Could child welfare agencies be called to investigate abuse of a fertilized egg? Would a fertilized egg have standing to sue a woman for getting chemotherapy for cancer because it might be harmed? Amendment 48 would open more than 20,000 statutes and regulations to re-interpretation by the courts and lawyers. Almost every area of the law would be affected, including criminal law, family law, trusts and estates, elder law, tort law, juvenile law, health law, and business law.

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.