Why can’t we go back to a time when the government didn’t spy on people? Who are FBI and NSA spying on today? What happened to all the rights that are amended to our constitution?

Paper: FBI spied on MLK widow for years

from RawStory.com Headlines

Federal agents spied on the widow of Martin Luther King Jr. for several years after his assassination in 1968, according to newly released documents that reveal the FBI worried about her following in the footsteps of the slain civil rights icon.

Coretta Scott King might try to tie “the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement” according to some of the nearly 500 pages of intelligence files, which go on to show how the FBI trailed King at public appearances and kept close tabs on her travel.The documents were obtained by Houston television station KHOU in a story published Thursday. Coretta Scott King died in January 2006. She was 78.

One memo shows that the FBI even read and reviewed King’s 1969 book about her late husband. The entry made a point to say that her “selfless, magnanimous, decorous attitude is belied by … (her) actual shrewd, calculating, businesslike activities.”

The documents also focus on her relationship with Stanley Levison, who was a close adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. and a person the government long suspected was a communist.

There is also evidence that the Nixon administration and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were kept informed of the FBI’s surveillance.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s activities were long known to have been monitored by the federal government. News of intelligence gathering on famous Americans and war critics became so infamous that rules to curtail domestic spying were put in place in the 1970s.

OK. Texas started. In addition to the ones mentioned here, there are also schools with some solar panels. Can the whole country do this? Can we do a better job at recycling at school? Can we turn in more work electronically and not on paper? Can they cut down on the AC sometimes? What’s happening where you live?

Schools find it easy being green

Districts strive to make campuses eco-friendly.

Click-2-Listen

By Raven L. Hill
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, August 26, 2007

When it comes to building schools, district leaders and taxpayers are focused on being green: being environmentally friendly as well as fiscally responsible.

Several campuses are opening for the first time Monday in the Austin area, and dozens of other campuses and school buildings are under construction or are being renovated. Many have gone green — using recyclable materials in construction and operation and saving on water and energy — as part of a nationwide movement that touts green schools as healthier for students and cheaper to operate.

Almost four years ago, the Austin school district made the largest purchase to date of renewable energy from Austin Energy’s GreenChoice program: 45.7 million kilowatt-hours annually of solar, wind or geothermal power. It was the largest such purchase by a school district nationwide. The district is eligible for $430,000 in Austin Energy rebates for environmentally friendly projects in the 2004 $519.5 million bond program.

When Pickle Elementary School opened in Northeast Austin in 1999, it was the first Austin campus to include green building features like proper solar orientation to better take advantage of natural light, which helps it use 25 percent less energy than other campuses, along with rainwater collection to replace water that evaporates out of air conditioners and salvaged long-leaf pine floors. An analysis estimates that those features will save the district $12 million over the life of the school.

Schools represent the largest construction sector in the nation, with $53 billion being spent this year, and they are the fastest-growing market for green building, which is expected to account for 5 percent to 10 percent of the school construction market by 2010, according to the Council of Educational Facility Planners International.

About 60 schools across the country, including two in Dallas and Houston, have been certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit organization in Washington that sets “green” standards. An additional 370 are in the pipeline; one San Marcos school is among the nine in Texas.

I wonder who is behind THESE people.

Not everyone believes that it’s easier being green, however. Saying that building costs would skyrocket, the Fast Growth School Coalition, a group of 124 Texas school districts, helped defeat a bill during the most recent legislative session that would have required all school construction to fall in line with standards set by the Green Building Council.

So …. If half the republican people want us to withdraw troops from Iraq, we can assume that even more of the democratic people want to withdraw troops. So when will the politicians in Washington know what the people know? When will they listen? When will they start a withdrawal?

This is from ThinkProgress:

51 percent:

Number of Republicans in Iowa who “favor a withdrawal of all United States military from Iraq within the next six months.” Just 39 percent are against a withdrawal. (via Atrios)

Why does Fox News want us to have a war with Iran? Why do Americans let Fox News decide what is happening in our foreign policy? Why don’t they have to report real facts?

I just got this email. But it sounds like people in other states can call their governor too.

—Freckles Cassie

Dear Cassie,

George Bush has done it again. He has sided with insurance and drug company profits over the health and well-being of our nation’s children. Late Friday night, the Bush administration released a letter to state health officials that
effectively eliminated health insurance coverage for millions of American kids. This underhanded one-size-fits-all cutback limits Texas’s ability to cover uninsured kids and cripples any chance of reasonable expansion.¹

What can you do? Let’s face it; President Bush isn’t going to take your call.

On the other hand, when the governor of a state calls, even Bush will listen.

Call Governor Perry right now and demand that Texas stands up to President Bush’s anti-children campaign.

Governor Rick Perry
512 463-2000

Here’s what you can say:

“President Bush’s new rules which reduce the availability of the Children’s Health Insurance Program for uninsured kids must be repealed. Governor Perry must call President Bush today and demand a complete rollback of the new rules. Can I count on the governor to stand up for our kids?”

Please report how your call went here:
http://www.DemocracyforAmerica.com/chipcalls

This is a very important time. Congress is poised to send an extensive expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Plan to Bush’s desk next month, and Bush has already threatened to veto it. If we amp up the pressure now on a rules change they didn’t even think we’d notice, we send Bush and Republicans in Congress a clear message that the health of America’s children always comes first.

Please call the Governor right now. Your neighbor’s kid might be depending on it.

Charles Chamberlain

Political Director

¹: “Rules May Limit Health Program Aiding Children” NYTimes,8-21-2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/washington/21health.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

I can not imagine going a whole year without reading a book. Can you? 25% of American adults did not read a single book last year! I hope that they at least read teen political blogs! Ye gads! AND, it turns out that liberals read a lot more than conservatives. That shouldn’t be a surprise! Two stories about this:

POLL: Liberals Read More Books Than Conservatives

from Think Progress by Amanda

A new AP-Ipsos poll finds that liberals read more books than conservatives. Some highlights from the poll:

– 34 percent of conservatives have not read a book within the past year, compared with 22 percent of liberals and moderates.

– Among those who had read at least one book, conservatives “typically read eight” books in the past year. Liberals read nine, moderates five.

– “By slightly wider margins, Democrats tended to read more books than Republicans and independents. There were no differences by political party in the percentage of those who said they had not read at least one book.”

Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, attempted to explain the results: “The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: ‘No, don’t raise my taxes, no new taxes. It’s pretty hard to write a book saying, ‘No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes’ on every page.”

Responding to the poll, White House spokesman Tony Fratto attacked liberals for being too “locquacious”:

Obfuscation usually requires a lot more words than if you simply focus on fundamental principles, so I’m not at all surprised by the loquaciousness of liberals.

A recent Pew Research Study survey also found that viewers of the conservative Fox News channel had the lowest knowledge of national and international affairs.

One in four read no books last year

By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer

There it sits on your night stand, that book you’ve meant to read for who knows how long but haven’t yet cracked open. Tonight, as you feel its stare from beneath that teetering pile of magazines, know one thing — you are not alone.

One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year — half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn’t read any, the usual number read was seven.

(more…)

When I was in elementary school, I went to a really old school. It was OK, but not new. A lot of neighborhoods in my town had newer schools and I always thought it would be cool to go to one. Mine was fine, but a new one looked like it would be cool. Everything pretty and clean. But I just saw this in the paper and I am glad I went where I did. NO WAY would I go to a school like this? What were they thinking when they decided to build it on the site of a chemical company? Who is checking that it is safe? Who is double-checking? And why didn’t they test the water before now? Is this going to be one of those places where half the kids have cancer in 10 years and then they still won’t shut it?

State says school is safe but needs tests before opening

School is planned to open on the site of a former chemical company

Click-2-Listen

By Melissa Mixon
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, August 21, 2007

State officials say that an elementary school opening on the site of a former chemical company is safe but that the groundwater on the property needs to be tested before the school opens in the Leander district next year.

Officials with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said the tests are necessary to determine whether harmful vapors found at the 40-acre site had reached the water, 70 to 80 feet below.
The water would not pose a threat to people at the school if vapors are found, but it could affect karsts and creatures that live in the water, said Alan Batcheller, director of the commission’s remediation division.

He said the tests are an environmental issue, not a “health effects issue.”

“Based on everything we’ve looked at, and Leander ISD has collected a lot of information … there are no reasons to believe that the building cannot be converted to a school,” he said.

The commission has been reviewing the site for months and issued its final report to the district and a roomful of parents during a town hall meeting Monday night.

“They agree we may open the school and it’s a safe place for students and teachers,” district spokesman Bill Britcher said.

The findings came as a relief to most parents, some of whom raised concerns about harmful chemicals, such as mercury, found on the site.

“There really were no surprises,” said Kelli Merchant, the school’s Parent Teacher Association president. “I’m just ready to put this all to rest and move forward.”

Last month, the panel ranked the site a “moderate to high potential hazard.”

Until 2003, the chemical company Sasol North America Inc. operated a research and development facility on the site, using chemicals to produce products such as shampoos and soaps.

The commission recommended that the district build a well on the site to test the ground water and show whether the vapors are naturally occurring or man-made, Batcheller said.

The recommendations add to ones made by Weston Solutions, an environmental engineering firm hired by the district to test the site.

In May, the firm said the site was safe but recommended testing during the first year Grandview Hills Elementary is open.

The district will meet with the commission and Weston Solutions to determine the next step, Superintendent Tom Glenn said.

mmixon@statesman.com, 512- 246-0043

Here is a TV report on the same school.

This is from NJ but I like it a lot. Why shouldn’t everyone have the same marriage rights?

My dad left when I was five. He did not die. He was not in a war. He just left. After he left I was angry at him and sad, but I did not have a grief camp. Maybe it would have made things easier for me and for my brother.  They’re probably very helpful and I am glad they exist. My brother and I  were just angry for a while and then dealt with other issues and then FINALLY went to therapy about it more than six years later.

But now our country has grief camps for kids, because of the Iraq War.  Great idea, HORRIBLE reason for needing it.

At Camp Good Grief, all the children are mourning for a parent or other relative who died while serving in the military.

“Age doesn’t matter. The grief process is the same,” said Vanessa
Gabrielson, a camp counselor whose father was killed in Iraq in 2003. “Every time I go, it gets easier, and I learn something from them.”

Some of the campers have never discussed their parent’s death.
Others describe the grisly details of war matter-of-factly. But being with children who have endured a similar loss provides comfort, counselors said.

More than 20 children ranging from 7 to 19 years old attended the one-day camp this past week in Salado, near Fort Hood. About 40 parents and other adults attended a separate survivor seminar,
also run by the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors.

The nonprofit organization known as TAPS has held an annual children’s camp in Alexandria, Va., since shortly after the group was founded in 1994. It began holding camps and adult seminars nationwide last fall in cities near military bases.

The children and their parents grieve for family members who were killed by roadside bombs, snipers or crashes. Others lost relatives to accidents, illness or suicide after their loved ones returned to the U.S.

The United States should not need to have a camp where kids can
grieve because their parents died as soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We should not be in this war. We should not have started this war.

We need to get out of Iraq and as part of the money we pay them
to repair what we did for their country, maybe we should set up grief
camps there for all of the kids who lost a brother or a sister or a mom or a dad or a best friend because of this war.  I bet there are a lot of kids in Iraq who need a grief camp.

Think Progress has a post up called

If It’s Sunday, It’s Karl Rove

and in it they have a list of questions that they want the talk show hosts to ask Rove. Here’s the list:

• Promoting the war as a member of the White House Iraq Group
• Leaking Valerie Plame’s identity
• Compiling the list of fired U.S. attorneys
• Politicizing government agencies
• Dealing with Jack Abramoff
• Violating White House email record-keeping rules
  

In addition to those, I think they should also ask him about these things:

• Who Jeff Gannon was spending nights with in the White House?
• Is George Bush drinking or doing drugs?
• Who is the real president, Bush or Cheney?
• Why did you decide to leave now?
• What gave you the idea that there are no rules for you and your friends?
• Why did you decide Congress doesn’t matter anymore?
• Did you rig the voting machines?
• Don’t you feel guilty destroying the country like this?

What else would you ask him?

I have a friend that always wants to sell stuff on eBay.  I don’t know if he has ever sold anything but he knows how.  His plan is to offer something really, really cheap so people will bid on it, and then have a $50 shipping charge.  Well, I hope he never becomes a defense contractor with no morals at all, because then look what might happen!

This is from Think Progress:

Pentagon paid $998,798 to ship two 19-cent washers.

The Pentagon paid a small South Carolina parts supplier about $20.5 million over six years “for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas. The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq.”

OK, here’s the deal.  I know it costs money to get stuff safely to Iraq and then safely to the place you’re sending them.  My brother does it all the time through the army and it takes a while.  So they always send over EXTRA PARTS for all the vehicles they send!  But maybe these marines needed the screws fast.  What about FedEx?  What about UPS?  The screws are all going to the same place — how much could it possibly cost.

 But I live in Texas.  Right near an army base in fact.  Pretty safe.  A friend sent me a DVD and it cost her $2.36.  If I needed it overnight she could get it to me for $10 or $15.  If she got on an airplane to bring it to me, it would cost about $500.  And why couldn’t the guys from the army base in Texas go to the hardware store themselves and get a few washers.  They don’t get paid a lot, but most of them have an extra 38 cents!

This is corruption.  That’s why they didn’t think of any of those solutions.  But the real question is if the company will have to give back the money and if they will be able to get more contracts from the government in the future.  Will they go to jail?

Am I the only one that is not surprised by this headline? Or the details? People a lot older than I am seem very surprised that the government is behaving like this, but kids are used to having no privacy and no personal freedom. So, if they can take this from Americans now and patriotic older Americans (who expect the constitution to be in force) get upset, what will it take to upset my generation?

Domestic Use of Spy Satellites To Widen
Law Enforcement Getting New Access To Secret Imagery
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 16, 2007; A01

The Bush administration has approved a plan to expand domestic access to some of the most powerful tools of 21st-century spycraft, giving law enforcement officials and others the ability to view data obtained from satellite and aircraft sensors that can see through cloud cover and even penetrate buildings and underground bunkers.

A program approved by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security will allow broader domestic use of secret overhead imagery beginning as
early as this fall, with the expectation that state and local law
enforcement officials will eventually be able to tap into technology once largely restricted to foreign surveillance.

Administration officials say the program will give domestic security and emergency preparedness agencies new capabilities in dealing with a range of threats, from illegal immigration and terrorism to hurricanes and forest fires. But the program, described yesterday by the Wall Street Journal, quickly provoked opposition from civil liberties advocates, who said the government is crossing a well-established line against the use of military assets in domestic law enforcement.

Although the federal government has long permitted the use of spy-satellite imagery for certain scientific functions — such as creating topographic maps or monitoring volcanic activity — the administration’s decision would provide domestic authorities with unprecedented access to high-resolution, real-time satellite photos.

They could also have access to much more. A statement issued yesterday by the Department of Homeland Security said that officials envision “more robust access” not only to imagery but also to “the collection, analysis and production skills and capabilities of the intelligence community.”

Do they REALLY think I am going to want to believe in their God and their bible if they jam creationism down my throat instead of real science?

But what about the teenagers who don’t know anything about real science? What happens to them when they get to college?

Trouble In Texas: School Board Chairman Seeks Religion In Science Class

The Texas Freedom Network (TFN) on Tuesday revealed a side of “intelligent design” proponents rarely seen by the public at large. The group released a transcript and recording of an extraordinarily candid speech given in 2005 by recently named State Board of Education Chairman Ron McLeroy.

McLeroy told a gathering at Grace Bible Church in Bryan, Texas,
of his efforts to expunge evolution from the state’s high school
biology textbooks. “Back in November 2003, we finished [the] …adoption process for the biology textbooks in Texas…. I want to tell you all the arguments made by all the intelligent-design
group, all the creationist intelligent design people, I can guarantee the other side heard exactly nothing,” he said.

He went on, condemning other Christian board members for not following his lead.

“[T]he four really conservative, orthodox Christians on the board were the only ones who were willing to stand up to the textbooks and say they don’t present the weaknesses of evolution,” he said. “Amazing.”

He admonished the audience not to bicker over the finer points of creationism because they were united under a “big tent” against evolution.

“Whether you’re a progressive creationist, recent creationist, young-Earth, old-Earth, it’s all in the tent of intelligent design,” McLeroy said. “And intelligent design here at Grace Bible Church
is actually a smaller tent than you would have in the intelligent
design movement as a whole, because we are all Biblical literalists…. So because it’s a bigger tent, just don’t waste our time arguing with each other about…all of the side issues.”

“Modern science today,” McLeroy complained, “is totally based on naturalism,” thus “it is the naturalistic base that is [our] target.”

Karl Rove is resigning to spend more time with this woman. Yep. Leaving the white house and all that power to spend more time with her.

Fox News has a timeline of all the time Rove and Bush have spent together.

CNN described Rove’s resignation like this:

Emotional Rove: It has been a joy

President Bush has called him “the architect” and “boy genius.” Today, he called him “friend.” Standing next to Bush, his voice cracking, Karl Rove, talked about quitting his job as Bush’s senior political adviser. “It has been the joy and the honor of a lifetime.” full story

Or …..

• Maybe he is just getting pushed out by Cheney.
• Maybe someone has pictures of him with Jeff Gannon.
• Maybe he’s going to work from home on a laptop and a telephone.
• Maybe he has plane tickets to a country that won’t send him back and make him answer questions from Congress or the Hague or anywhere else.

Please leave a comment with your own possibility. RWCole came up with these:

1) Rove wanted to leave after losin the last election- but Clusterfuck wouldn’t let him- now it’s time to go.
2) Rove is about to be indicted
3) Rove was photographed having wild sex with a male goat
4) Rove is about to join Thompson’s campaign and insure that no dem ever gets access to the paper trail in the oval office.
5) Rove has 18 more months to sell his influence with clusterfuck to the highest bidder and become a wealthy man.

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Compare these two headlines about Iraq, both from today. Who do you believe? Who has a reason to lie to us and who is telling the truth?

Iraqi PM calls for crisis summit

Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, has called for a summit of the nation’s main political factions in an attempt to break Iraq’s political paralysis.

In recent weeks almost all Sunni members of the cabinet have quit. Others are boycotting meetings, leaving at least 17 cabinet seats empty.

Many of them have accused Mr Maliki of sidelining them.

A BBC correspondent says the crisis is worrying for the US, which wants to see progress before withdrawing troops.

“I have called the political leaders for a meeting to discuss the main issues in the political process. The first meeting may
happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” Mr Maliki announced on Sunday.

A senior Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani, has already arrived in Baghdad for the talks.

It is expected he will play a key role in the negotiations, says the BBC’s Richard Galpin in Baghdad.

In particular he will try to get the Sunni parties to decide whether to rejoin the government or go into opposition.

Bush: Iraq Strategy Sees Good Results

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine — President Bush, presiding over a nation dispirited by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on Saturday cast both conflicts in terms of “encouraging news.” In stating his case, the president emphasized enemy
deaths.

“Our new strategy is delivering good results,” Bush said of Iraq in his weekly radio address, taped at his parents’ summer home on the rocky coast of Maine.

The president said his buildup of U.S. forces in Iraq, designed to provide security for the Iraqi government, was taking hold and showing gains. He acknowledged again, though, that Iraq has made frustratingly
slow political progress.

Bush’s comments came as Washington, like much of the nation, has shifted into vacation time. He said that in an otherwise slow news month, the war against terrorists rages on.