A theory like Intelligent Design could only emerge in a society so coddled most of rarely come into contact with natural nature and are able to ignore the reality of our own bodies. It also depends on having most of its proponents be male. And it definitely ignores easily observed reality that does not fit into the “theory.”

Editor's Note: This post was authored specially for Unbossed by the Executive Director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, Andrew Villeneuve. NPI is a grassroots group of progressive thinkers that seek to promote progressive, responsible leadership and policies for America. NPI's major Internet projects include its blog and Pacific Northwest Portal.

Transportation.

It's a key issue that human society has grappled with for decades, even centuries, and which today is perhaps more problematic than ever before.

Within about the last century, transportation has evolved more rapidly than any other era in recorded history. The biggest changes are certainly the widespread adoption of the automobile and the airplane as major modes of transportation.

Washington State, also known by its nickname, "The Evergreen State", was the 43rd state to join the Union when it became a state in 1889. Originally, Washington State was part of the Oregon Territory, but when Oregon petitioned the Congress to become a state, it was divided into the new state of Oregon and the Washington Territory.

Today, the Evergreen State is home to over six million people, many of whom live in the Seattle-Puget Sound metropolitan area. Our metropolitan area (and our state) is known for being home to major companies such as Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon.com.

And transportation in the Evergreen State is a very important issue, and, this year -it's also a very hot issue.

Most Americans are aware that the eastern United States is very different from the western part of the United States. And one of the biggest differences has to do with transportation.

Many urban areas in the West (especially suburban areas) were designed for automobiles and not for people. In my home town of Redmond, Washington (home to software giant Microsoft) there are far more people on the road downtown then there are on the sidewalks. In fact, the sidewalks are normally empty and devoid of people.

The Asian Tribune published an excellent article today summarizing the troubles in the Maldives and the government's intricate political manuevering occurring among its Nuclear Club™ neighbors of the tiny island archipelago.

Growing Signs of Unrest in the Maldives makes a fascinating connection between the historic distrust of neighbors India, China, and Pakistan and the growing hard-line but not yet jihadi Islamic movement in the Maldives.

As a continuing public service, er... well, this is the first one, we here at Unbossed want to do our part in lowering the national unemployment rate one God-fearin' American at a time.

Today's job tip comes to us from none other than Focus on the Family.

Well, then, you are in good company these days. What with unemployment at 7% in Michigan, a lot of people are dying for a job, any job.

But some people really are dying for their jobs, more of them this year than in the past. US workplace deaths are up. And Latino workers and older workers are suffering the highest increases.

You won't find this good news on OSHA's website. No, there it's all about consultation and other good news.

And, as you'll see, what you find in the report leaves out more than it includes. For what is left out, go to the end of this post.

Hurricane Katrina is shaping up to be catastrophic and the city of New Orleans is being evacuated. Bloggers are offering shelter at the following links:

DailyKos here, and here. Also, BoomanTribune and, for those with conservative friends and relatives, Redstate.

If you know of more links, please post them in the comments. Peace be with you, New Orleans.

Junk Charts as described by its author, Kaiser:

Edward Tufte has declared chartjunk as an enemy of clear, informative graphics of data. Chartjunk is everywhere, particularly in mainstream media. I am a junk artist dedicated to recycling chartjunk as junk art.

This one's for you, tunesmith, chartmaker extraordinaire.

If you had $15 billion to use battling HIV/AIDS in the 15 countries most afflicted by it, how would you spend it? There are plenty of effective strategies out there, and plenty of good groups implementing them. But now imagine that you’re a Republican whose election to national office was due in part to the support of the religious right. Now how would you spend that $15 billion?

TABOR. If that acronym doesn't send shivers down your spine then you ain't payin' enough attention.

As many of you know, Colorado is in the throes of a ballot intiative this November to provide for a five year timeout from the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights-mandated rebate to taxpayers when thre is an overage of revenues over expenditures in the state budget. For the last couple of years, Coloradans have not received rebates because of the Bush recession effect on the state budget.

The Constitutionally-enacted state budget disaster has further emboldened the "starve the beast" mentality of Grover Norquist's ilk to financially punish public healthcare, K-12 education, higher education, and basic governmental responsibilities, like road construction and pension plans for governmental employees. The ruse is "smaller government = better government" rather than their more nefarious plans to privatize government services for their own profit and control.

Unfortunately for Colorado residents, we are the lab rats for the national pro-TABOR groups coming to a state near you.

Clint Jencks is in the hospital and very ill. That name may mean a lot to some, nothing to others. How about Salt of the Earth? Same thing, no doubt.

The movie Salt of the Earth tells the story of an attempt to organize workers in the mines of New Mexico. Clint Jencks played himself in the film - an Anglo union organizer.

To some, especially in the labor movement, Salt of the Earth is one of the greatest films ever made about labor struggle. Not a lot of competition there, of course.

To those looking to recover Latino history or Southwest history, it has gained new importance in recent years. In its day it was controversial because of its unabashed Marxist viewpoint. Today its ideas and language are so radical they can seem alien, not possibly part of the American landscape. Yet they are, were.

According to a profile by The Seattle Times (hardly a bastion of liberal think), the independence of the US Food and Drug Administration is severely compromised by the surprise appointment of a physician-cum-biotech investment newsletter editor and American Enterprise Institute resident scholar to oversee the FDA's fast-track approval process for drug and biotech products, a priority for many Wall Street funds and the pharmaceutical industry.

Only a month ago, Dr. Scott Gottlieb was a Wall Street insider, promoting hot biotech stocks to investors.

Now Gottlieb holds the No. 2 job at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the federal agency that approves new drugs, oversees their safety and affects the fortunes of companies he once touted.

In Part I, we talked about some of the conditions that have caused schools to turn to contingent academics. In this part, we talk about the consequences of a system built on contingent academics.

If you come from a poor or even middle class family the answer is increasingly likely to be: Yes. It is estimated that about 60% of students are now being taught by contingent academics.

But what's wrong with that, you might ask. It keeps costs low and makes education available to more of us. And, in this time of state budgets being squeezed by low tax policies, what other choice is there?

What was I doing last summer about this time? Well, I was trying to be optimistic about the outcome of the election mostly. In some ways it seems so much has changed since then. There was that little matter of the November unpleasantness. New phrases have entered our vocabulary - "spending political capital" for one.

To help you get in the reverie spirit, I am including a link from the Sloganator. Nice music. Clever slogans. How do they resonate one year later?

And here's another link for all who despair. Are you in despair? Energized? How does this video fit - or not fit - within the arc of your life this past year?

We're cooking up a new couple new series that will launch soon.

One is a follow-up to our Roads Scholar series, another is a new investigative series on the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, and a third will feature a little blogged about subject — classism in America.

While the UB team pours over those subjects, what else would you like to see us cover? What would you be willing to co-write for the site? Who in the blogosphere is doing good work that we can help recognize and promote?

Step up and say your piece.

The pro-democracy movement in the Maldives has taken a beating literally and figuratively in recent weeks.

Last month, What's Wrong With This Picture? outlined several inter-related issues with respect to the Maldivian government's lack of human rights protections for bloggers and opposition party leadership. It culiminated in a fatwa condeming the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights as violating Islamic law.

Last week, the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) organized protests across the country to mark the one year anniversary of Black Friday — the island nation's largest public demonstration demanding the release of jailed pro-reform leaders which led to government security forces using batons and tear gas on unarmed civilians to disperse the protests.

^{Mohamed Nasheed, MDP Chair, and colleagues moments before he was arrested at a peaceful protest on August 12, 2005.}

Sounds straightforward enough, right? Citizens are taking to the streets to demand democratic reforms and the resignation of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom who has held power since 1978.

Eh, not really.

Tyson. It’s what your family deserves. Or maybe not.

Depends on how you feel about a company now being sued for having whites only restrooms and so much more of the same. Check the calendar. Is it 1955?

Want to know more or are you just chicken?!

If you are reading this, you probably know someone who made or is making an important life decision - where to go to college - based on information in the U.S. News & World Report annual ranking of colleges - and, my personal concern, law schools.

You may be less aware that it forces colleges to spend money for programs just so they will get higher USNWR ratings. They have driven schools to be less willing to take a chance on students who are interesting and seem to have potential but whose low scores may mean a school drops a notch or two in its rankings. Lower rankings translate into lower applications, which translate into worse student scores, which . . . and that’s just for starters.

Clusty is a

specially-developed Vivísimo clustering algorithm puts search results together (clusters them) based on textual and linguistic similarity. This raw similarity is augmented with heuristics (i.e., human knowledge) — coded by Vivísimo's programmers and partly invented by them — based on what users wish to see when they examine clustered documents. The clusters are shown to users in the style of folders and sub-folders.

This is not about politics per se. This is about a highly contentious subject, but it is not intended to take sides. Despite that intention, I am certain it will be read by at least some as being about taking a side. I believe that, if we are ever to make progress in the world, we must ultimately look one another in the eyes with understanding.

So this is an attempt to shed light on the human dimension of one issue in the news, so that when you watch or read or hear the news, you will know something important that is not talked about. This is about one part of the pullout from Gaza.

Tomorrow in Colorado, the ashes of journalist Dr. Hunter S. Thompson will be blown out of a cannon in keeping with his wishes. I wrote the following last February, and I re-post it now in his memory.

We're All Liars

It's been a week since that glorious bastard, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, left this one-horse planet, blew this shitty pop stand, pulled the trigger, and got the hell out of here. I'm sad that he's gone, I miss him already, but I don't think he ever really liked it here anyway.

Last week, unbossed ran a story on how to do investigative blogging. If just a small percentage of the liberal blogosphere started peeking into the dark corners, just think how much we could effect positive change. That piece provided basic how-to's. There is a halfway house to investigative blogging where you uncover information not generally known and put together the pieces yourself.

The fact is that there are lots of people out there who are paid to investigate and who have lots of information that is not getting out. If bloggers took it upon themselves to have a route where they looked in on a specific set of sites, we could move more important information into the public view. So here is one site.

According to a story in the Denver Business Journal, local panhandlers pocketed $4.6 million last year.

Apparently these successful "street entrepreneurs" have raised the interest of the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District and the Denver Office of Economic Development who commissioned the survey "to quantify for the first time how much money is given to panhandlers."

Is the business community's concern an expression of compassion for folks down-on-their-luck or a corporatist attempt to steal a good idea and brand it as the next big Fast Company™ breakthrough?

Throw that pro forma in the trash. Just find a good corner near Colfax and Downing.

As if we need any more examples of our critically ill healthcare system, it seems like we're getting hit from all sides — employers, poor children, and the middle class. Interesting bedfellows, you think? Read on.

^{map from Rand McNally.com}

And from the official Unbossed Division of Roads Scholarship, Dead Horse Department, we bring you Road Trip Wednesday.

Let us bow our heads in tribute to the 96th birthday of Andrew McNally III, an executive with Rand McNally & Co., the oldest map publisher in the US and the first to print a road guide for the automobile.

On Friday, August 12, 2005, federal district judge Rosemary Collyer issued a surprising decision. She ruled that the Department of Homeland Security violated the law by setting up a churlish "collective bargaining system" for DHS employees. "Churlish" is my word, not Collyer's, but it makes it easier to capture the essence of a 57 page decision.

This post includes links to posts already out on the subject, links to the decision, and a bio of the judge.

For a few years, I volunteered as a dog walker at my local humane society. For two hours a week, through the cold of Michigan winters and in the even more dreadful heat and humidity of summer, in rain and over slippery rain-slick or ice-slick ground, I walked as many dogs as I could. We were supposed to spend one-half hour with each dog, but if I did that, many dogs would have no chance that day to get out of their kennels to relieve themselves, to be away for just a few minutes from the grey concrete walls and the noise of the other dogs. So most days it was a new dog every 15 to 10 minutes.

This past week readers of Unbossed have been with us for a great ride, and we have gained many new friends. On Monday we began a series of stories, starting with The Hidden Costs of Toll Roads that revealed details of an investigation into overreaching. By Thursday, our work was in a Reuters story. That same day, the issues we were raising played were posed as questions in a legislative hearing.

Not bad for three days’ work. That left a few days in the workweek to set more things to rights. Well, not quite. There was more to the story than this.

Before the series appeared, there was a lot of work and planning. Some of what we learned in putting this series together may be useful to other bloggers.

While the topics of transportation and the Watts riots are still fresh in our minds, it’s a good time to consider one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s less-well-known statements: “Urban transit systems in most American cities are a genuine civil rights issue.”

It’s expensive to own a car. According to the Surface Transportation Policy Project, the poorest fifth of American families spend 42 percent of their income to purchase, operate, and maintain automobiles. Cars are important, because two-thirds of all new jobs are located in the suburbs, which are often harder to reach through public transportation. Yet 90 percent of former welfare recipients don’t have access to a car, so they’re left with a choice of limiting their job prospects or piecing together a lengthy, complicated commute by public transit.

In Los Angeles, as in many other cities, the people with limited access to cars are disproportionately low-income people of color, the elderly, and the disabled—and the areas where they live are served disproportionately by bus service, rather than rail. Buses are frequently late and overcrowded, and their infrequent service and unpredictability can stretch a trip of a few miles into an hours-long ordeal. Robert Garcia, who worked as an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, draws a connection between LA’s transit conditions and the Watts riots:

On August 11, 1965, police in Los Angeles arrested a man named Marquette Fry, along with his brother and his mother, sparking the infamous Watts riots. The violence lasted six days, leaving 34 dead and 1,000 injured.

The divisions in Los Angeles -- in our nation -- are such that there is still disagreement about what happened that summer and what the causes were. Even the label is in dispute -- what the world has agreed to call a riot, local activists call a revolt.

Prolacta Bioscience announced this week that it recently opened the nation’s first large-scale facility to process human breast milk.

According to BizJournals.com [subscription required]:

The California-based facility will accept donated breast milk from several banks across the country and “use various pasteurization, formulation, and filling processes” to manufacture “high-quality donor milk” that can be ordered with specific fat, protein, and calorie contents.

Designer breast milk? May I have a skinny mocha latte with an Evenflo nipple, please?

This week, we at Unbossed hit the road running with a look at privatizing the highways and we're drivin' that puppy till the wheels fall off. Or this weekend, whichever comes first. Blog-pooling along with us are Colorado locals em rosa, Soapblox Colorado, and Stupid Slab.

The Left Coaster has proudly spawned a new blog, Low and Left. So far they've had everything from Killer Drones to Karl! The Musical. Funny, raunchy, and informative, it's a must if you enjoy laughing while horrified. Read How'd That Happen?! and you'll see what I mean.

We've been focusing on Colorado and on just one road in Colorado. But we know that this is not just about one road, one state, or one legislative hearing. Thanks to EMRosa for her notes, photos, and play-by-play comments on her blog.

So for the non-Coloradans out there, tell us what is happening in your neck of the road. And tell us why. How does it fit or not fit with the story unfolding in Colorado? What role does state tax policy play? Are you a TABOR state? Are there plans to make you a TABOR state? Who are your allies? Are there ways you can make use of the information we have put together? What is missing?

This week President Bush signed the new highway act, legislation that provides $15 billion in funding for public-private roads as demonstration projects. The ultimate goal is to demonstrate the superiority of the private sector over government. The theory is that competition forces businesses to provide the best services at the lowest price. Government is supposed to be monopolistic, corrupt, and grossly inefficient. When it taxes us, we can be certain it is misusing our money.

That is the theory in a nutshell, one that is widely accepted these days.

Some even go so far as to believe we can tax-cut our way to prosperity.

Colorado highway "slowdown" sparks debate on toll roads
Thu Aug 11, 2005 2:01 PM ET

By Daniel Sorid

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 11 (Reuters) - A stretch of country highway near Denver has become an unlikely rallying point for opponents of the privatization and tolling of roads.

The highway, known as Tower Road, was inexplicably slowed several years ago to 40 miles per hour from 55, and traffic lights appeared at three intersections.

The move had locals in the town of Commerce City, Colorado, population 35,000, scratching their heads. Just as a new toll road had opened up near the town, their lightly traveled local thoroughfare got a lot slower.

Newly disclosed documents show that, as part of a non-compete agreement with the toll road authority 10 years ago, officials from the town of Commerce City agreed to intentionally slow down the road -- now much busier with hotels and office buildings -- to discourage drivers from skipping out on paying to use the toll highway.

"They didn't want to have Tower Road be a competitive thoroughfare," said Robert Gehler, the Commerce City attorney, who was a part of the negotiations.

The disclosure of the Tower Road slowdown -- discovered by an inquisitive Colorado resident who posted it on the blog http://www.unbossed.com -- shines a light on the touchy issue of non-compete agreements, which are a common component of toll roads.

more at this link.

Colorado Transportation Legislative Review Committee proceedings.

Click on the link to House Committee Room 0112.

According to the agenda, the director of the E-470 Authority is scheduled to speak at 1:30pm MDT.

UPDATE: Reuters is covering the Roads Scholar series here with a mention of the "inquisitive Colorado resident" that blogs at Unbossed. Kudos Bob!!!

In Hidden Costs of Toll Roads, we saw that local governments sometimes impede traffic on free, public, highways, in order to protect the interests of a toll road's investors.

Why would they do this?

The Colorado State Transportation Legislative Review Committee has a meeting scheduled this week with both the Northwest Parkway and E-470 toll road authorities from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Room 112 at the State Capitol on Thursday, August 11. The public is not given a chance to testify, but is welcome to attend.

Guest post by Rob Dougherty at Stupid Slab

One proposal in Colorado to help alleviate traffic congestion is a passenger railroad that would run north-south through the state to give travellers an alternative to driving. That sounds fine to me if people will use it. If not it will lose money and the taxpayers will have to bail it out. The same question applies to toll roads. If people won't pay to use it then we'll all be saddled with the debt.

We’re all taking on roads at Unbossed this week. Me? I’m going to tell you why, in certain places, we don’t need roads AT ALL!!

As I demonstrated last week roads on the American landscape severally damage our ecosystem. For that reason only, our society should protect assure the existence of large amounts of roadless areas and congressionally designated Wilderness.

But, is there an economic reason to protect these areas?

As with the entire Progressive movement in America, one of the major failures of the environmental movement throughout the past 30 years has been the failure to link our conservation goals with economics with the economic needs of real human beings. Trees with people, so to speak. For a time, this was glossed over by successes such as the Clean Water Act, the Wilderness Act and so on but it inevitably has come back to haunt the environmentalists and the Progressive community as a whole. By far the majority of Americans yearn for clean water, clean air, protected landscapes and the conservation of wildlife. But if we as a nation and as Progressives don't tie the protection of water, land and air to economics and jobs then we will surely fail in our quest. The Right-Wing has been WAY too good at framing this issue as jobs vs the environment. The conservation movement has been WAY too lame at walking right into this trap by forgetting that local communities and local economies are the bulwark against the excesses of exploitive capitalism and the environmental degradation thus associated.

We can have clean air, clean water, wild wilderness AND healthy economies. Wilderness is Step I:

The new federal Highways Bill that was passed by the Senate and House July 29, provides $15 billion in funding for public-private partnerships to build roads and bridges.

Support for public-private partnerships has been signaled for years by the Federal Highway Administration and through a number of studies by the FHWA and the Congressional Budget Office. Colorado’s E-470 has often been included in those studies and reports, often referred to as a model for future roads.

This post includes excerpts from those studies that should be helpful to those who want more information on E-470. These reports are often quite long, so these excerpts will take you quickly to those parts most relevant to E-470. For those who want more, the links will take you to the studies in full.

In 1995 and 1996, the Colorado E-470 Public Highway Authority entered into noncompete agreements with several cities and counties. The purpose of the noncompete agreements was to make free public roads so unattractive that drivers would feel that paying a toll was preferable.

The Hidden Costs of Toll Roads described some parts of those noncompete agreements. This piece continues the story.

FYI. Excerpts from the key documents relied on by this post are at the end. They are not otherwise available on-line.

An editorial by the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank that advocates toll roads, says, "A new traffic signal that hastens traffic flow produces economic benefits. Similarly, one that hinders more than hastens, cause[s] economic damage."

Free-market think tanks also argue that toll roads benefit everyone because they reduce traffic on existing roads, causing traffic on existing roads to flow more efficiently.

It is therefore no small irony that local governments in Colorado have agreed to deliberately impede traffic on existing highways near a toll road in order to protect the toll roads' investors.

If we Americans love our cars and the call of the open road, the same cannot be said for the process of building those roads. But this week Unbossed is going to show you why we should be paying attention.

Ever feel like we're under siege by the right? Do you read the next outrageous legislation or proposal and wonder where they come up with this stuff? Do you feel dazed after having been blind-sided by some whacky law that suddenly sprouts in states nationwide?

If so, you're probably spending too much time in the reality-based community. So you're not always on defense, you need to know what's brewing in that other community -- the strange world of the right-wing "think tanks."

If you take a gander around the prominent liberal blogs it is readily apparent that essays about Iraq, Karl Rove/Valerie Plame/Judith Miller scandal, John Roberts' SCOTUS nomination, inside baseball polling figures, and the latest assinine statement by the wingnut de jour dominate the discussions.

So here's your chance to be Blog Editor For a Day™.

Take the poll and add your thoughts below:

Next week, unbossed will begin a series of investigative reports that examine how public funds were used and why certain deals were made.

Stay tuned.

They’ve been out for a couple of weeks now, so you’ve probably seen the Chevron ads about the end of “the era of easy oil.” The TV ads are brief, just an alarming statistic (“The world consumes two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered”) coupled with a not-too-pointed question (“So is this something you should be worried about?”), and then the campaign’s URL, willyoujoinus.com, on the screen. The print ads, featured for the past couple of weeks in the Economist and other publications, go into more detail on the world’s oil plight, and then offer these stirring words:

Yes, today is the 24th anniversary of the firing of the PATCO strikers by President Ronald Reagan. It was an illegal strike, because they were public sector workers, so Reagan had the legal right to fire them. On the other hand, those workers had legitimate grievances about poor working conditions that had the potential to endanger the airplanes they guided through our airways.

Firing the PATCO workers is now regarded as a aign employers in the private sector took to engage in an aggressive war against unions.

So to honor those public workers and to reflect on where we are today, I am asking you to give a few minutes to look at the state of public sector workers today.

The Bush administration really is hands on when it comes to this nation’s workers. Or since it does have other priorities - wars to fight, oil to extract - and those also need hands-on attention, it can at least give a finger to workers. And it sure does. Week after week. Many fingers given to workers. It all adds up.

So here are just two ways the Bush administration has been busy protecting workers this week.

Just in time to observe the 24th anniversary of the firing of the PATCO workers (August 5).

If you follow the MSM in general, you would think either that unions no longer exist in the US or that they do little more than have leaders that get indicted. Over the last few weeks, you could have added that the have very public schisms, the details of which are vague at best. Those who follow union news outside the MSM could add the battle for card check recognition legislation. And that about sums it up.

But have you heard anything about BIT, HIT, and HIT-HOME?

This is the second of two parts. Part one can be found here

Yesterday I wrote about the U.S. government's once-secret mycoherbicide program in which scientists are genetically altering fungi to kill certain plants. Chemical herbicides like Roundup are already being used in our so-called drug war, and some Republican politicians are now promoting the use of mycoherbicides as a "safe" alternative.

You can understand a lot about American thinking by considering Disneyland. A good argument could be made that our foreign policy is summed up by the philosophy: "It's a small world, after all." Catchy tune, nice thought, brown, black, yellow, white, red - we are all the same. Inaccurate.

But today, we are going to Tomorrowland.

The '50's were a time of boundless enthusiasm for technology and confidence in technological fixes coupled with abject fear of whatever we classified as the other.

We should have had it the other way around.

This is the first in a two part series.

In the category of Worst Ideas You've Probably Never Heard Of, some Republican politicians are once again pushing the use of mycoherbicides -- fungi that kill plants -- for use in their beloved drug war.

Like a fungus itself, this idea just won't go away. The theory as presented by the drug warriors is quite simple -- take a fungus that kills poppies or coca or marijuana, spread it around Afghanistan or Colombia or Florida, and -- voila! -- no more drug problem.

I can't decide whether they really are that stupid about science, or whether they're operating from some movie villain playbook, but the idea really is as ridiculous as it sounds and they're taking action now.

I thought it might be interesting to find out where folks are from.

Where were you born?
Where have you lived?
Where are you now?
Where would you like to be?

Time to step into the breech, lurkers. I know you're out there. I get the daily secret Homeland Security Reports with GIS mapping and subversive underpants analyzer.

On Thursday, July 28th, 2005, the Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2005 was introduced in the House of Representatives. The Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2005 would protect 58.5 million acres of National Forest lands from commercial logging and road building. This Act would reinstate one of the most popular rules put in place by President Clinton…a provision the Bush Administration has been obsessively attempting to overturn

President Clinton’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule was one of the most popular land management decisions in the history of the United States. The Roadless Rule was approved following 70 years of scientific study and more than 600 public meetings across the country. During its consideration, 2.5 million Americans wrote the Federal government in support of the rule, making it the most popular in American history. Since then, another 1.8 million comments were received by the Bush administration opposing their plan and urging reinstatement of the original protection policy. Since the Bush gang usurped power 4 years ago, they have been trying to gut President Clinton's most far-reaching and visionary achievement. Several court decisions have upheld the Roadless Rule despite the Administration's failure to implement it and support it in court.

Never one to let public opinion stand in the way of a stupid move, (2.3 million Americans - nearly 95% of all comments received - supported Clinton's rule and then voiced opposition to its repeal in 2002) the Bush Administration seems posed to finally have the Roadless Rule revoked.

But....why should we care about this?

The American Society of Hypertension, the largest medical group in the U.S. dedicated to research and treatment of high blood pressure, announced that it was ending its 16-year relationship with the American Journal of Hypertension (AJH) over a dispute on editorial policy.

Dr. John H. Laragh, co-founder of the society and the long-time editor of its journal, alleged in a recent journal editorial [subscription required] that:

...the society's leaders are being improperly influenced by financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry and becoming, in essence, marketers for drug companies.

Follow the Lasix® paved road...

Having your government treat you as a citizen of a democracy rather than a customer will soon be a thing of the past if Gov. Schwarzenegger has his way. This is not just about selling off California to the lowest bidder. Take a look at your local government website, and you are likely to see that you are now a customer.