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Front Page News
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In 1990, Congress passed an amendment to the Clean Air Act which ordered a state to set more stringent limits on air pollution if that state determined that the Clean Air Act was insufficient inside its borders. The monitoring requirements and sufficiency determination were not optional; states were...
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This week's roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers is right here . Go see what everyone's been talking about this week. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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For today's edition of Feel Good Friday, here's Marvin Gaye singing "Sexual Healing," one of the greatest soul songs of all time: He left us way too early. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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The majority of US corporations are evading (or at least avoiding) paying their fair share of income taxes : Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative...
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Once again, Nancy Pelosi has demonstrated her utter lack of leadership skills by caving to the GOP; this time, it's on offshore oil drilling : House Republican Leader John Boehner on Tuesday urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to call lawmakers back into session to pass a bill expanding drilling in federal...
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We're now witnessing a back-door repeal of the Endangered Species Act: The Bush administration yesterday proposed a regulatory overhaul of the Endangered Species Act to allow federal agencies to decide whether protected species would be imperiled by agency projects, eliminating the independent scientific...
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In today's Washington Post, Richard Holbrooke had this to say about Russia's invasion of Georgia: Russia's goal is not simply, as it claims, restoring the status quo in South Ossetia. It wants regime change in Georgia. [...] But its greatest goal is to replace Saakashvili -- a man Vladimir Putin despises...
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Here's something I don't say very often: a story in today's Knoxville News Sentinel is such a masterful example of beautiful storytelling, it brought a tear to my eye. This piece by Scott Barker describes the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra's Music And Wellness Program , in which musicians visit hospital...
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For the remainder of August, I'll be substituting for R. Neal as author of the TennViews Sunday roundup. This week's edition is here . Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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I've updated my PGP public key. Click here if you want it. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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Given yesterday's election results, I think this week's Feel Good Friday post should somehow reflect the relationship between Knox County voters and many of our local elected officials. Aretha Franklin's "Chain of Fools" describes that relationship pretty accurately: Most of us are just links in their...
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The Knox County primary election in February seemed to send a message that voters in this county were still angry over Black Wednesday and intended to exert their control over elected officials run amok; today's county general election proved that assumption wrong . With today's election of Sisk, Ballard,...
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Salim Hamdan was convicted today of providing material support to terrorists in a sham kangaroo court convened at Guantanamo. His "trial" included the admission of inflammatory, irrelevant evidence such as the 1998 African embassy bombings and the 9/11 attacks, neither of which he was accused of knowing...
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Via Rex Hammock , Paris Hilton responds to McCain's recent sleazy ad depicting Obama alongside her and Britney Spears: Maybe I'm showing my age, but it seems like every presidential campaign becomes ever more surreal than the last one. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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For today's edition of Feel Good Friday, I thought I'd share one of the funniest things David Sedaris has ever written. Here he is reading his classic essay, "Six To Eight Black Men" (audio only): Source . UPDATE: SquirrelQueen and Ginger have today's FGF roundups. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us...
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Every year, agricultural runoff from Midwestern states pumps extraordinary amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus into the Mississippi River. These chemicals collect at the mouth of the river, in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. This causes a dead zone in the Gulf, in which low oxygen levels...
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Because I feel like it, here's my favorite stand-up comedian, Eddie Izzard, discussing Pavlov's somewhat less well-known experiments with cats: The man's a genius. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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David Neiwert, who has written extensively about eliminationist rhetoric from the right wing against liberals, had this to say about Sunday's tragedy in Knoxville: In reality, of course, rhetoric like this has historically played a critical role in some of the ugliest episodes in American history, as...
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Yesterday, a senseless act of non-random violence struck this city. A man, mad at the world and blaming liberals for his personal ills, targeted the innocent congregants of a progressive church in Knoxville, killing two and wounding seven. Like everyone else in Knoxville, I've spent the last couple of...
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For this week's edition of Feel Good Friday, I thought I'd share some Martha and the Vandellas. Here's the classic "Nowhere to Run": Those ladies were one of the greatest acts Motown ever produced. For more of today's FGF, start here , here , and here . UPDATE: LWC has the roundup here . Share this post:...
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Foreign Policy has a short but fascinating interview with former Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who was the chief architect of the 1995 Dayton Agreement , which ended the war in Bosnia. He discusses the recent arrest of the fugitive Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic, and its parallels with the recent...
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Salon has obtained a confidential memo written for certain members of Congress that outlines a proposal for an inquiry modeled on the Church Committee ; this modern version of Church would focus on the malfeasance of the Bush administration, and it hints at Constitutional and legal violations which go...
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A couple of days ago, the Pope apologized again, this time in Sydney, for the Catholic Church's global sex abuse scandal : Speaking in Sydney, where he is participating in World Youth Day celebrations, the pontiff called the abuses 'a grave betrayal of trust' that deserved condemnation and called for...
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This week's TennViews roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers is here . Topics cover Gore's speech, the dysfunctional TN GOP, assaults on abortion rights, dispatches from Netroots Nation, health care, bank stability, and the announcement of the new VW plant in Chattanooga. We've been busy this week, so...
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In the emerging tradition of Feel Good Friday , here's the Commitments' version of "Mustang Sally": That ought to make the day right. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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Today, Al Gore gave a speech at George Washington University in which he called for a massive push to transform our energy economy; he audaciously suggested that we can and must convert 100 percent of our electricity generation to clean sources within a mere ten years. By relying on solar, wind, and...
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I ran across these two quotes from Angela Davis , both of which bear remembering: First, on President Bush : When Bush says democracy, I often wonder what he's referring to. Then, dear Angela pretty much sums up our shallow culture's obsession with style over substance : It is both humiliating and humbling...
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A Supreme Court decision from 2007 ( PDF here ) mandated that the Environmental Protection Agency was required under the Clean Air Act to determine if anthropogenic carbon dioxide represents a threat to human health. In December, the EPA sent an email to the White House outlining its findings; the White...
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Today, President Bush rescinded an executive order signed by his father which affirmed the ban on offshore oil drilling (with the exception of a small area off Southern California and a specific region of the Gulf of Mexico). The move was almost entirely symbolic (and political), since federal law also...
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R. Neal has this week's edition of the Tennessee liberal blog roundup here . This week, it covers FISA, Phil Gramm, Fannie Mae, and most importantly, the Allman Brothers. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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I've often thought that President Bush probably read " The Trial " and " 1984 " at some point and mistook them for how-to manuals. Today's signing of the FISA bill tends to support that theory. On the heels of yesterday's capitulation by the Senate on telecom immunity and warrantless spying, President...
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The Senate predictably caved today and passed the FISA reform bill, which included immunity for the telecommunications companies that had conspired with intelligence agencies to spy on Americans without warrant. Bruce Afran, an attorney representing plaintiffs suing the telecom companies over their collaboration,...
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This is hardly shocking : Members of Vice President Cheney's staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official on the health threats posed by global warming, a former Environmental Protection Agency official said today. In a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate...
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This week's roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers is up. Check it out. The sort-of weekly roundup is also featured in today's paper edition of the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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Last night, an electrical storm threatened to cancel my family's annual July 4th fireworks extravaganza. We had everything ready to go: the launchers were set on the ground, and six of us sat in two trucks on top of a hill with the fireworks in covered boxes in the truck beds. The storm came, the rain...
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The Anonymous Liberal said this about Jonah Goldberg : For reasons I cannot explain, big publications keep hiring Jonah Goldberg to write columns that make everyone dumber for having read them. That pretty much sums it up. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is pushing for tighter regulation on oil speculators : Every day, 20 times more oil is traded than delivered. Because of the way energy trades are regulated (or not regulated), speculators control vast amounts of oil by putting down as little as 5% of the purchase cost. In...
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Three stories showed up today, and none of them should come as a surprise: 1) Today is the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska event ; on this day in 1908, something (either a small asteroid or a small comet) exploded in the air over Siberia. Although it never impacted the ground, and the object itself...
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R. Neal has this week's edition of the intermittent, kinda weekly roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers. A lot happened this week, so go here to see what everyone's been talking about. (Mr. Neal has also started yet another blog: SmartEnergyViews is dedicated to news and information on energy efficiency,...
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This year is the 60th anniversary of the start of the Cold War, and today marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Berlin Airlift . In recognition of that anniversary, Spiegel has published an interview with Helmut Schmidt , who was chancellor of West Germany from 1974-1982. It's a fascinating...
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Jann Wenner interviews Barack Obama in this week's issue of "Rolling Stone." After Obama enumerated the contents of his iPod, he said this (via Blah3 ): When Mr. Wenner asked how Mr. Obama might respond to harsh attacks from Republicans, suggesting that Democrats have "cowered" in the past, Mr. Obama...
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In this interview with Amy Goodman , Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) promises to filibuster the horrid FISA amnesty bill when it reaches the Senate. First, he outlines the most potent objections to the bill: Sen. Russ Feingold : Well, this is a great blow to the rights of the American people. And much of...
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The Bush administration's mismanagement of the Census Bureau is posing a threat to the integrity of the 2010 census. Among other problems, there's this : Lawmakers must also ensure that the final census funding bill includes a provision from the House version that would require the bureau to spend $8...
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R. Neal has this week's edition of the Tennessee liberal blog roundup. Go here for this week's edition, including bonus roundups on the AP/blogger controversy and the Fred Hobbs smackdown. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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During this season's "Lost" finale, ABC ran a commercial for a company called " Octagon Global Recruiting ." The commercial and the website seek volunteers to work on the DHARMA Initiative. Visitors to the site may register for email notifications of their recruitment drive, which will kick off at ComicCon...
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Major General Antonio Taguba, who conducted an extensive inquiry into the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, has spoken out again on the Bush regime's lawlessness. In his preface to a new report from Physicians for Human Rights, he says this: In order for [detainees] to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they...
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Today, GOP obstructionists in the Senate filibustered a bill which would have provided tax incentives to build out renewable energy sources and which would have extended tax credits for individuals to purchase plug-in hybrid automobiles. The bill would have cost $17 billion over ten years, which is roughly...
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Last week, the Associated Press sent seven DMCA take-down notices to the Drudge Retort (a liberal counterpoint to that other Drudge) based solely on the fact that they had posted short excerpts of AP wire stories. After some pretty significant blowback (and a boycott of their content), the AP decided...
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This morning, the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Boumediene v. Bush , holding that Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts. As SCOTUSblog said: The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights. If Congress...
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Via Doug McCaughan : That pretty much says it all. Share this post: Email | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit...
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