BP spill reveals urgent necessity to stop digging up poison and burning it for fuel.
"Drill baby drill" people and the media are treating this as negligence of BP. It's all about BP and not about systemic problems and false business models.
Cutting subsidies, redirecting resources to conservation and encouraging the private sector to clean and safe sources of energy are vital steps to a sustainable future.

There's a potential solution to the Gulf oil spill that neither BP, nor the federal government, nor anyone — save a couple intuitive engineers — seems willing to try. As The Politics Blog reported on Tuesday in an interview with former Shell Oil president John Hofmeister, the untapped solution involves using empty supertankers to suck the spill off the surface, treat and discharge the contaminated water, and either salvage or destroy the slick.

"America's current dependence on energy imports and its rising levels of indebtedness due to the pursuit of wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan to secure a position of advantage in the competition for access to the energy resources of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, reflect the failures of American leaders in the 1970s and 1980s to think through the consequences of the choices made with regards to energy self-sufficiency and diversification of energy sources. Thirty years on, American policymakers have validated George Santayana's pithy observation, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Hopefully, the Deepwater Horizon disaster will help them to focus their minds on both history and the future - given the unsustainable present that has been based upon wishful thinking that Wall Street's financial speculation and wars for energy resources are sound bases for economic success. Sen. Robert Byrd's prediction of a turning point in the recent history of the world has come to pass."

Second-grader joins national movement that's declaring `immigrant rights are civil rights.' The issue of migration is an issue of civil rights more than security. Migration from Mexico is largely a result of unfair trade policies.

A federal judge has rejected the Bush administration's justification for warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists and ruled that federal agents had eavesdropped illegally on a US-based Islamic charity.

An Australian court finds that the existing drug laws, by reversing the onus of proof, violate the presumption of innocence. But all convictions stand. To any legislator who willingly allows the reverse onus of proof to continue, I say: May it please God that you become a victim of it.

Rightwing pundits jumped on Obama for saying we do better when we share. These two British researchers show the correlation of inequality and level of trust, murder- and imprisonment rates, mental illness and life expectancy. John Kenneth Galbraith decried the public squalor existing alongside private opulence. Will the crisis lead us to a balance of public & private?

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