TV News LIES

Federal health officials continue to uncover excessive levels of previous water contamination at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. A new study of the North Carolina base’s main water system that was released Friday demonstrates a rapidly increasing level of human carcinogens in the drinking water starting as early as 1948 and peaking in the mid-1980s.

“These are highest levels of drinking water contamination in this country that I’m aware of,” said Richard Clapp, an epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who’s studied the findings.

Last month a three-year-long federal prosecution of Blackwater collapsed. The government’s 15-felony indictment—on such charges as conspiring to hide purchases of automatic rifles and other weapons from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives—could have led to years of jail time for Blackwater personnel.

In the end, however, the government got only misdemeanor guilty pleas by two former executives, each of whom were sentenced to four months of house arrest, three years’ probation, and a fine of $5,000. Prosecutors dropped charges against three other executives named in the suit and abandoned the felony charges altogether.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation, of which I am a board member, today published the leaked audio of Bradley Manning's statements to the court during his hearing last week. A statement from the organization follows.Today, Freedom of the Press Foundation published the full, previously unreleased audio recording of Private First Class Bradley Manning’s speech to the military court in Ft. Meade about his motivations for leaking over 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks.

While unofficial transcripts of this statement are widely available, this marks the first time the American public has heard the actual voice of Manning.

Across several days at Guantánamo last month, lawyers and the military jousted at the war court over whether it was possible to know that a listening device was affixed to the ceilings of the cells where defense attorneys meet the men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The overarching issue was attorney-client privilege and whether some secret agency was violating it by eavesdropping on lawyers meeting with their clients at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.
Army and Navy officers testified that nobody was listening, and the equipment was a legacy from the days when the FBI controlled those particular cells.

he Air Force joined the Marines and the Army in dropping tuition assistance programs due to federal budget cuts, officials said. Airmen at Yokota Air Base in Japan were told their applications for assistance would likely be rejected if submitted after Tuesday, Stars and Strips reported.

The Air Force is also strictly limiting professional education at the service's Non-Commissioned Officer Academy and at Squadron Office School, Stars and Stripes said.

The reasons for the F-35’s relative immunity are a stark illustration of why it is so difficult to cut the country’s defense spending. Lockheed Martin has spread the work across 45 states — critics call it “political engineering” — which in turn has generated broad bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. Any reduction in the planned U.S. purchase risks antagonizing the eight other nations that have committed to buying the aircraft by increasing their per-plane costs.

And senior military leaders warn that the stealthy, technologically sophisticated F-35 is essential to confront Iran, China and other potential adversaries that may employ advanced anti-aircraft defenses.