National Media Corps

By Phil Plait for Slate | Posted Monday, May 13, 2013

"Over the past few years, the Canadian government has been lurching into antiscience territory. For example, they’ve been muzzling scientists, essentially censoring them from talking about their research. Scientists have fought back against this, though from what I hear with limited success.

By Paul Begala for The Daily Beast and Newsweek | May 6, 2013
Will supporting guns finally cause politicians to lose their jobs?

"BACK WHEN I was President Clinton’s political adviser, I cited poll numbers to try to talk him out of even a tiny tax increase on the middle class, in the form of a four-cent hike in the gas tax. But the final word went to Lloyd Bentsen, Clinton’s Treasury secretary. 'Mr. President,' he said, 'I’m sure Paul’s polls are correct. But I never saw a fella lose his seat for voting for a four-penny gas tax.'

"...Bentsen’s political observation comes to mind in the current discussion of gun control. Sure, the polls say 90 percent of Americans support expanded background checks. But have you ever seen anyone lose his or her seat for voting against gun control? I’ve seen more than I care to recall lose their seat for supporting it."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/05/06/paul-begala-the-price-i...

By Fred Kaplan for Slate | Posted Monday, March 11, 2013

"On Feb. 26, 2003, President George W. Bush gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, spelling out what he saw as the link between freedom and security in the Middle East. 'A liberated Iraq,' he said, 'can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region' by serving 'as a dramatic and inspiring example … for other nations in the region.'

"He invaded Iraq three weeks later. The spread of freedom wasn’t the war’s driving motive, but it was considered an enticing side effect, and not just by Bush. His deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, had mused the previous fall that the spark ignited by regime-change 'would be something quite significant for Iraq … It's going to cast a very large shadow, starting with Syria and Iran, but across the whole Arab world.'

"Ten years later, it's clear that the Iraq war cast 'a very large shadow' indeed, but it was a much darker shadow than the fantasists who ran American foreign policy back then foresaw."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2013/03/iraq...

BP's 200-million Gallon Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Was Worst Environmental Disaster in U.S. History, Killing Thousands of Rare and Endangered Species

"TUCSON, Ariz.— The Center for Biological Diversity today [October 4, 2010] awarded former BP CEO Tony Hayward its 2010 Rubber Dodo Award. The award is given annually to the person who has done the most to drive endangered species extinct."

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2010/rubber-dodo-...

Posted by Michael Lemonick Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 2:00 pm

Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2010/06/17/hot-times-in-antarctica/#ixz...

"The world's polar regions are warming up faster than the global average, but the western edge of the Antarctic Peninsula is especially steamy. Over the past 50 years, winter temperatures have shot up by an almost unbelievable 6°C—more than five times the global average, according to a paper just published in Science."

The Center for Biological Diversity has launched a Gulf-Crisis Web site that will be updated daily with information on how big the spill is, where it's hitting shore, what species are suffering the impacts, and how the rescue effort is going.