From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/welfare-drug-testing-bill_n_1237333.html

Arthur Delaney
01/27/2012

A Republican member of the Indiana General Assembly withdrew his bill to create a pilot program for drug testing welfare applicants Friday after one of his Democratic colleagues amended the measure to require drug testing for lawmakers.

“There was an amendment offered today that required drug testing for legislators as well and it passed, which led me to have to then withdraw the bill,” said Rep. Jud McMillin (R-Brookville), sponsor of the original welfare drug testing bill.

The Supreme Court ruled drug testing for political candidates unconstitutional in 1997, striking down a Georgia law. McMillin said he withdrew his bill so he could reintroduce it on Monday with a lawmaker drug testing provision that would pass constitutional muster.

“I’ve only withdrawn it temporarily,” he told HuffPost, stressing he carefully crafted his original bill so that it could survive a legal challenge. Last year a federal judge, citing the Constitution’s ban on unreasonable search and seizure, struck down a Florida law that required blanket drug testing of everyone who applied for welfare.

McMillin’s bill would overcome constitutional problems, he said, by setting up a tiered screening scheme in which people can opt-out of random testing. Those who decline random tests would only be screened if they arouse “reasonable suspicion,” either by their demeanor, by being convicted of a crime, or by missing appointments required by the welfare office.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/welfare-drug-testing-bill_n_1237333.html

By Max Blumenthal
January 24, 2012

For nearly a month, a group of foreign policy researcher-bloggers at the Center for American Progress (CAP), an influential liberal think tank based in Washington DC, have faced an unrelenting smear campaign. The smears, initiated by former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block, focused on a few sardonic tweets by CAP bloggers that raised the ire of the pro-Israel and neoconservative political community. One tweet that included the term “Israel Firster” received special attention.

“This kind of demagoguery, anti-Israel invective, and in some cases actual hate speech, is absolutely wrong whether it comes from the extreme Right or Left, and like cancer, it has to be cut out before it metastasizes and destroys the whole body,” Block complained to Jennifer Rubin, a neoconservative columnist for the Washington Post who has accused CAP of “anti-Semitism” and who was recently scolded by the paper’s ombudsman for endorsing a screed advocating the slaughter of Palestinians.

Block’s campaign was transparently designed to force the Democratic establishment to disown a group of researchers who had generated an effective and factually solid counter narrative to the case for a military strike on Iran. And it was well orchestrated, receiving robust and sustained amplification from the right-wing of the pro-Israel community. By January 19, after a who’s who of neoconservative writers and right-leaning Jewish American groups called for the firing of the researchers, and weeks after the small handful of “controversial” tweets had been deleted and apologized for, the smears graduated onto the pages of the Washington Post.

A report by Washington Post staff writer Peter Wallsten summarized the attacks on CAP in a relatively uncritical fashion. In the original edition of the story (uploaded here to Josh Block’s Scribd account), Wallsten featured remarks by Jeffrey Herf, whom he presented as an academic expert on anti-Semitism:

Continue reading at:   http://exiledonline.com/max-blumenthal-washington-post-scrubs-quote-smearing-iran-war-critics-but-ex-camp-guard-jeffrey-goldberg-runs-with-it-anyway/

By Cheryl in Texas
1/23/2012

You’ve got to be ready to strike when the iron is hot – a future jam story.

Right before Christmas, my wonderful hubby and I stopped in at our local grocery store on the way to our homestead to pick up some lunch for later that day. Immediately inside the door, I spotted half pints of blackberries on sale for 67 cents! And I had thought the $1 I paid two weeks before was a great deal. The more we booted it around, we decided that this is part of what being self-reliant is about. We may not be able to grow our own berries (yet), but when you find something like that on a super good deal, you have to be prepared to take advantage and stock up. So we bought five flats! We saved $2.30 per half pint. Now that’s some power bargain shopping. They’re really good, ripe, tasty berries too.

I wish we had time that weekend to just make them all into jam. But alas, being the last weekend before Christmas, that just wasn’t going to happen. And I think we’re low on jelly jars too. So I washed them all up and got them into the freezer in 6 cups portions. But first I froze them spread out on trays so that they’re individually frozen and don’t just become a big frozen blob. Now they’re ready to be turned into jam or syrup or a cobbler whenever we want. It helps that we have an extra freezer. But I really like having things canned, because they won’t ruin in the event of a power outage. And if our previous attempts at making jam are any indication, the blackberry should be pretty darn tootin good too.

So far, since this summer, we’ve made peach jam and canned peaches from a half bushel we bought at the farmers market, plum jam when we found plums on a really good sale at the grocery store and raspberry jam when we found raspberries for a really good price.  Other than the peaches, which were a planned purchase, all the others were spur of the moment decisions when we found a good deal on some produce.

From The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/as-streetlights-vanish-a-return-to-a-darker-age.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share

By A. ROGER EKIRCH
Published: January 7, 2012

Blacksburg, Va.

IN the wake of widespread violence during the New York City blackout of 1977, a newspaper columnist quipped that just one flick of a light switch separated civilization from primordial chaos.

Leaving the hyperbole aside, artificial illumination has arguably been the greatest symbol of modern progress. By making nighttime infinitely more inviting, street lighting — gas lamps beginning in the early 1800s followed by electric lights toward the end of the century — drastically expanded the boundaries of everyday life to include hours once shrouded in darkness. Today, any number of metropolitan areas in the United States and abroad, bathed in the glare of neon and mercury vapor, bill themselves as 24-hour cities, open both for business and pleasure.

So it is all the more remarkable that, in what appears to be a spreading trend, dozens of cities and towns across America — from California and Oregon to Maine — are contemplating significantly reducing the number of street lamps to lower their hefty electric bills. In some communities, utility companies have already torn posts from the ground. Faced with several million dollars in unpaid bills, Highland Park, Mich., has lost two-thirds of its lamps, whereas officials in Rockford, Ill., have extinguished as many as 2,300, or 16 percent of all the city’s streetlights.

Municipal officials, mindful of the winter darkness enveloping residential neighborhoods, have vainly tried to relieve public anxiety. Denials that crime rates will rise are met with skepticism by the public, as are programs to encourage homeowners to install private security lamps or to “adopt a light” for a monthly fee. Street lighting is now at risk of being restricted, as it was in earlier ages, to residences and neighborhoods able to afford it.

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/as-streetlights-vanish-a-return-to-a-darker-age.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share

By Marie Diamond
Jan 26, 2012

Since the 1970s, New Hampshire police have operated under a progressive policyfor handling domestic violence cases that has saved countless lives. Under current law the presumption is that an arrest will be made when police observe evidence of abuse. They have a large degree of discretion and don’t need to witness the assault firsthand or obtain a legal warrant before they can separate the alleged attacker from his victim.

All that will change if Republicans get their way. The state’s GOP legislators are pushing two bills that will reverse a half century of progress, the Concord Monitor reports:

Domestic violence is no longer taken lightly legally or by society. That’s the way it should be, but two bills under consideration by this most unusual of legislatures, would undo that progress and put lives in danger. Both deserve a speedy defeat.

House Bill 1581 would turn the clock back 40 years to an age when a police officer could not make an arrest in a domestic violence case without first getting a warrant unless he or she actually witnessed the crime.

Continue reading at:  http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/26/411865/new-hampshire-republicans-propose-bills-that-prevent-police-from-protecting-domestic-abuse-victims/

The historian and activist dedicated his life to “the countless small actions of unknown people”.

Noam Chomsky
27 Jan 2012

Editor’s note: Today, January 27, is the second anniversary of the death of Howard Zinn. An active participant in the Civil Rights movement, he was dismissed in 1963 from his position as a tenured professor at Spelman College in Atlanta after siding with black women students in the struggle against segregation. In 1967, he wrote one of the first, and most influential, books calling for an end to the war in Vietnam. A veteran of the US Army Air Force, he edited The Pentagon Papers, leaked by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and was later designated a “high security risk” by the FBI.

His best-selling A People’s History of the United States spawned a new field of historical study: People’s Histories. This approach countered the traditional triumphalist examination of “history as written by the victors”, instead concentrating on the poor and seemingly powerless; those who resisted imperial, cultural and corporate hegemony. Zinn was an award-winning social activist, writer and historian - and so who better to share his memory than his close friend and fellow intellectual giant, Noam Chomsky?

Cambridge, Mass - It is not easy for me to write a few words about Howard Zinn, the great American activist and historian. He was a very close friend for 45 years. The families were very close too. His wife Roz, who died of cancer not long before, was also a marvellous person and close friend. Also sombre is the realisation that a whole generation seems to be disappearing, including several other old friends: Edward Said, Eqbal Ahmed and others, who were not only astute and productive scholars, but also dedicated and courageous militants, always on call when needed – which was constant. A combination that is essential if there is to be hope of decent survival.

Howard’s remarkable life and work are summarised best in his own words. His primary concern, he explained, was “the countless small actions of unknown people” that lie at the roots of “those great moments” that enter the historical record – a record that will be profoundly misleading, and seriously disempowering, if it is torn from these roots as it passes through the filters of doctrine and dogma. His life was always closely intertwined with his writings and innumerable talks and interviews. It was devoted, selflessly, to empowerment of the unknown people who brought about great moments. That was true when he was an industrial worker and labour activist, and from the days, 50 years ago, when he was teaching at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, a black college that was open mostly to the small black elite.

While teaching at Spelman, Howard supported the students who were at the cutting edge of the civil rights movement in its early and most dangerous days, many of whom became quite well-known in later years – Alice Walker, Julian Bond and others – and who loved and revered him, as did everyone who knew him well. And as always, he did not just support them, which was rare enough, but also participated directly with them in their most hazardous efforts – no easy undertaking at that time, before there was any organised popular movement and in the face of government hostility that lasted for some years. Finally, popular support was ignited, in large part by the courageous actions of the young people who were sitting in at lunch counters, riding freedom buses, organising demonstrations, facing bitter racism and brutality, sometimes death.

Continue reading at:  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201212382259755885.html