For the third time in less than two years, a bipartisan group of senators has raised alarms bells over problems with reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.
Specifically, the four senators — Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Republicans Susan Collins of Maine, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Charles Grassley of Iowa — are upset about oversight of the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan and wonder why President Barack Obama has been slow to do something about it.
Senators question reconstruction oversight in Afghanistan
Fresh claims US is running secret prison in Afghanistan
Prisoners are being abused at a "secret jail" in the main American military base in Afghanistan, according to a report from a US policy think tank. Ex-detainees said they were deprived of sleep and held in cold isolation cells in the site at Bagram, says New York-based Open Society Foundations.
A BBC investigation in April uncovered similar allegations of prisoner abuse at a hidden facility in Bagram airbase. The US military repeated its denial that it was operating a secret jail.
Bisphenol A officially declared toxic by Canada
Canada became the first country in the world yesterday to declare bisphenol A (BPA) to be a toxic substance that poses risks to human health and the environment.
BPA is an industrial chemical used to make a hard, clear plastic such as re-usable polycarbonate baby bottles. It is also used in the manufacture of epoxy resins, which act as a protective lining on the inside of metal-based food and beverage cans.
How Religion Is Killing Our Most Vulnerable Youth
An increasingly popular bumper sticker reads, "Guns Don't Kill People -- RELIGION Kills People!" In light of recent events I would add religion kills young people: gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender young people.Perhaps not directly, though. And religion is certainly not the only source of anti-gay sentiment in the culture. But it's hard to deny that religious voices denouncing LGBT people contribute to the atmosphere in which violence against LGBT people and bullying of LGBT youth can flourish.
How Radical Christian Conservatives May Succeed in Destroying Democracy
There is a yearning by tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement, to destroy the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment. They seek out of ignorance and desperation to create a utopian society based on “biblical law.”
They want to transform America’s secular state into a tyrannical theocracy. These radicals, rather than the terrorists who oppose us, are the gravest threat to our open society. They have, with the backing of hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate money, gained tremendous power. They peddle pseudoscience such as “Intelligent Design” in our schools.
EPA faulted for not disclosing coal ash's recycling risks
The Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general reported this week that the EPA had improperly used an official website to promote ways of recycling the waste that's left over when power plants burn coal, commonly known as coal ash.
The inspector general's report says the website didn't tell the public that the EPA had decided that coal ash no longer should be dumped in empty pits and that it had concerns about the safety of other uses of the material in loose form, such as fertilizer and road fill.
The Uses and Misuses of Intelligence in Four US Wars
President Harry S. Truman created the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 to ensure that the policy community would have access to independent intelligence analysis that was free of the policy advocacy of the Department of State and the Department of Defense.
The CIA's most important analytic mission was the production of national intelligence estimates (NIEs) and assessments that tracked significant political and military developments and provided premonitory intelligence on looming threats and confrontations.
Mozilo settles Countrywide fraud case at $67.5 million
Former Countrywide chief Angelo Mozilo agreed to a settlement of $67.5 million to resolve charges that he duped the home loan company's investors while reaping a personal windfall, but Bank of America will pick up two-thirds of the bill.
Mozilo, poster boy of the subprime mortgage market's boom and bust, reached a last-minute deal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission before his trial on civil fraud charges was to start on Tuesday.
Clinton aide's idea: Let Iraq shoot down U.S. plane
General Hugh Shelton, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during parts of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, has a new memoir out that contains this significant-seeming story: Back in the late 1990s, Shelton says a member of Clinton's cabinet asked him to allow Saddam Hussein to shoot down an American plane over Iraq as a pretext for starting a war. The way Shelton tells the story, this was a serious request.
Remember, the context here is the Clinton Administration's years of trying to overthrow Saddam -- including in a little-remembered 1996 CIA coup attempt. In December 1998 (most likely after the request was made to Shelton), Clinton bombed Iraq for four days in Operation Desert Fox, which Clinton said was a response to Saddam's lack of cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors.
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