Category Archives: national

New US Legislation Proposes 60 Billion Gallon Renewable Fuel Standard

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On the first day of the new Congress, Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA), Richard G. Lugar (R-IN), Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-DE), Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND) and Barack Obama (D-IL) introduced legislation that proposes a new federal renewable fuels standard (RFS) of 60 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel by 2030.

The current RFS specifies 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2012. Based on forecasts of fuel consumption of approximately 198 billion gallons of gasoline equivalent in 2030, the 60 billion RFS would work out to approximately 30% of the fuel required.

Article via Green Car Congress

Bush replaces top general in Middle East who opposed troop surge

In what appears to be a military shakeup surrounding Iraq, President Bush has replaced both the top US general in the Middle East and the top general in Iraq, ABC NEWS is reporting on air.

Admiral William J. Fallon will replace Gen. John Abizaid, US commander in the Middle East, who announced his retirement in December and was expected to leave the post in March. Abizaid was a critic of Bush’s efforts to add more troops to Iraq, but the circumstances of his early departure are unclear.

via Raw Story

U.S. Bars Lab From Testing Electronic Voting Machines

A laboratory that has tested most of the nation’s electronic voting systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests.

Experts on voting systems say the Ciber problems underscore longstanding worries about lax inspections in the secretive world of voting-machine testing. The action by the federal Election Assistance Commission seems certain to fan growing concerns about the reliability and security of the devices.

via the NYTimes

Report blasts ExxonMobil for misleading public on climate change, funding psuedo-science

The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report today arguing that oil giant ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.

“ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer,” said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Director of Strategy & Policy. “A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years.”

The report said that a task force that Exxon Mobil helped create on global climate science in 1998 included someone who had led a nonprofit organization called the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, “which had been covertly created by the tobacco company Philip Morris in 1993 to manufacture uncertainty about the health hazards posed by secondhand smoke.”

This report comes on the heels of an unprecedented step by the Royal Society, Britain’s premier scientific academy, which in September 2006 wrote the oil giant to demand that the company withdraw its support for dozens of groups that have “misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence”. The scientists also strongly criticised the company’s public statements on global warming, which they described as “inaccurate and misleading.” (see article)

Exxon Mobil raked in $10.5 billion in net earnings in the third quarter of 2006– a near record in American corporate profits that was second only to the $10.7 billion it recorded for the fourth quarter of 2005.

See the Union of Concerned Scientists Press Release
Read the whole report:
Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil uses Big Tobacco Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science” (pdf)

Saddam Executed for ‘lesser’ crimes to avoid implicating the US?

What could possibly have been the benefit of hanging Saddam before the lengthy history of his heinous crimes (i.e. the wholesale gassing of Kurds) could have been officially and legally documented? His execution for the murder of 148 Shiites was bound to stoke the flames of sectarian violence in the country, as the hanging appeared to be nothing more than legalized revenge at the hands of the Shiites now in power for past crimes against their brothers. Why then would the “autonomous” government of Iraq rush Saddam off to his death? Was this perhaps due to the fact that the US (and others) could have been implicated during courtroom proceedings for the other, more serious, crimes he was charged with?

Well evidently others have had the same thoughts. Famed columnist for the British paper the Independent, Robert Fisk, not surprisingly, pondered similar questions:
But would the Americans and British dare touch a trial in which we would have not only to describe how Saddam got his filthy gas but why the CIA – in the immediate aftermath of the Iraqi war crimes against Halabja – told US diplomats in the Middle East to claim that the gas used on the Kurds was dropped by the Iranians rather than the Iraqis (Saddam still being at the time our favourite ally rather than our favourite war criminal). Just as we in the West were silent when Saddam massacred 180,000 Kurds during the great ethnic cleansing of 1987 and 1988.

Story via The Independent

Same-Sex Marriage Setback in Massachusetts

BOSTON, Jan. 2 — Massachusetts, the only state where same-sex marriage is legal, took a first step toward possibly banning it Tuesday when legislators voted to advance a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman.

The amendment now requires the approval of at least 50 legislators in another vote in the 2007-8 session. Then it would be placed on the November 2008 ballot as a referendum question…

The state’s new governor, Deval Patrick, said “I believe that adults should be free to choose whom they wish to love and to marry,” adding that he objected to using the constitutional amendment process “to give a minority fewer freedoms than the majority.” After the vote, Mr. Patrick said in a statement, “We have work to do over the next year to turn this around.”

Article via NYTimes
want to help? Mass Equality

Panel Seeks End to Death Penalty for New Jersey

TRENTON, Jan. 2 — A legislative commission recommended on Tuesday that New Jersey become the first state to abolish the death penalty since states began reinstating their capital punishment laws 35 years ago. Its report found “no compelling evidence” that capital punishment serves a legitimate purpose, and increasing evidence that it “is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.”

Article via NYTimes

Read the Death Penalty Study Commission Report

With the dollar in trouble, the euro is poised to become the world’s favorite currency

Coming on the heels of announcements by Venezuela and Iran that they may ask buyers to pay for oil in euros rather than US dollars comes news that the value of euro notes in circulation is set exceed the value of circulating dollar notes, according to calculations by the Financial Times.

Yesterday, the United Arab Emirates anounced that it was switching 8% of the nation’s foreign exchange reserves from US dollars to Euros. According to the Bank for Internaional Settlements, the share of foreign-exchange deposits held in dollars by OPEC fell to a two-year low of 65% during the second quarter of 2006.

Perhaps more troubling is the announcement by China in November that it would look to diversify its foreign-exchange reserves, the largest in the word at $1trillion (US), away from the US dollar. China holds a large portion of US debt.

In August, Italy announced it was selling off a large portion of its dollar reserves and instead buying British pounds. Recently, the US dollar hit a 14-year low against the pound sterling. Indonesia is also moving towards the euro and away from the dollar.

maybe it’s time to buy some gold bars…

Euro notes cash in to overtake dollar‘ via Financial Times

Israeli settlement plan angers the US (among others)

The United States has criticised Israel’s decision to approve the construction of a new Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

In a rare rebuke of its close ally, the State Department said such a construction would violate the peace plan known as the roadmap.

Israel said 30 houses for former Gaza Strip settlers will be built in the Jordan Valley.

The 2003 roadmap calls for a complete halt to all settlement activity.

The EU condemned the Israeli settlement plan on Wednesday.

Story via BBC News

Biden running for president; actively touting his plan for Iraq

Add Biden to your candidate ’08 pool…

Senator Biden NEW YORK (AP) – Democratic Sen. Joe Biden wants you to know he is running for president. Definitely. Unequivocally. Absolutely.

“I’m the only guy who will tell you honestly what I’m doing. The others won’t tell you, but I will,” Biden said, wrapping up a fundraising trip to New York before heading to New Hampshire, his ninth visit in just over a year. He’s also campaigned extensively through other early voting states, spending 17 days in Iowa, nine in South Carolina, and four in Nevada.

Considered one of his party’s most experienced spokesmen on international affairs, Biden will assume the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next month. He plans immediately to convene a series of hearings on the Iraq War – a high visibility platform for him to showcase his expertise. He’s also been actively promoting a detailed plan for peace in Iraq that would divide the country along ethnic lines.

Story via Yahoo!News (AP)

Vietnam, LSD and Reds: US opens 25-year-old files on state secrets

Within those documents lie the most turbulent episodes of the 20th century: the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Vietnam war, the CIA’s unauthorised experiments with LSD and its internal thinking on a raft of investigations into coups and assassinations overseas, and the FBI’s hunt for communist sympathisers on US soil.

Story via The Guardian (UK)

[Ed. Note] For a great selection of declassified government documents, check out the National Security Archive

Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA): Klan member?

Some conservatives (the kind that have a white dunce cap and bedsheet in their closet) are enraged that Representative-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN), a Muslim, wants to take his private oath of office on a Koran and not a Christian bible. Really, who does this guy think he is?
Some background on the swearing-in procedure from the Philadelphia Tribune:

House members are sworn in en masse in the chamber, and no Bible or other religious document is used for the oath. However, several incoming House members use Bibles for their individual swearing-in, which is administered by the House speaker and takes place after the official group oath… According to the Library of Congress, Theodore Roosevelt became the first and only president to take an oath without a Bible in 1901. In 1961, John F. Kennedy took his oath on a Catholic ( Douay) version of the Bible. Several Jewish members of Congress have taken their oath on the Torah. Article VI of the Constitution specifies that “… no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Rep. Virgil Goode, a member of the GOP (of course), is so upset about this potential use of the Koran by Ellison, that he wrote a letter, which his office accidentally sent to the local chapter of the Sierra Club. After the letter was picked up by the press, Goode responded “I wrote the letter. I think it speaks for itself…” Some excerpts:

The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran

I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.

Read the actual letter

via TPMmuckraker