Bush spells it out: And there should be no doubt in anybody’s mind what I believe a judge — the philosophy of a judge. And Harriet Miers shares that philosophy. Look, I’m upbeat about the tone of the hearings,...
Read MoreIt appears to be going the way of all Superfund cleanup sites, which means it just won’t get cleaned up. I gather the program has been defunded.
It’s hard to find pictures of Mount Dioxin in Pensacola. I did find this aerial view. Looks like the EPA in its infinite wisdom has decided to just cover it and not decontaminate. Even those in the city who had been going along with not doing much about it are now irate.
ETC was a former wood-treating company. The facility occupies 26 acres in an industrial area, but three African-American residential neighborhoods are in the immediate vicinity of ETC. The site was first developed for creosote wood preserving in 1941. Penta-chlorophenol (PCP) has been used as a preservative at the site since 1963 and was the only preservative used after 1970. Manufacturing activities have not taken place at the facility since October 1982, and the site was officially abandoned through bankruptcy proceedings in February 1991.
Lemonade
by Raymond Carver (who lived and is buried in Port Angeles, in a cemetery plot that overlooks the Strait and is graced by a marble bench and his poems, engraved)
When he came to my house months ago to measure
my walls for bookcases, Jim Sears didn’t look like a man
who’d lose his only child to the high waters
of the Elwha River. He was bushy-haired, confident,
cracking his knuckles, alive with energy, as we
discussed tiers, and brackets, and this oak stain
compared to that. But it’s a small town, this town,
a small world here. …
Hurricane Katrina has exposed the ugly veil of poverty for many Americans and prison for many young people left without a sense of hope. In my Kos diary from last night, I wrote about how teens hopelessly caught in the cycle of poverty face the prospect of life imprisonment as a result of Katrina and the way the Bush administration plays politics with human lives.
By contrast, Democrats and Progressives everywhere are generating ideas to put America back to work and craft a New Deal for the 21st Century. Tonight, I will feature a letter from Consumer’s Union President Jim Guest on his ideas.
Read MoreHe was called ‘the poet laureate of comedy’: 
Often called “the poet laureate of comedy,” Mr. Russell may be best known today as one of the polyester-wearing guests on TV quiz show reruns, cracking wise and rhyming couplets in the company of such B-list celebrities as Paul Lynde, Fanny Flagg and Charles Nelson Reilly. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he was a frequent guest on “To Tell the Truth,” “Match Game 73,” “Masquerade Party,” “What’s My Line?” and “Hollywood Squares.” He hosted a daytime game show called “Your Number’s Up.”
But children in past decades probably know him from a certain musical remake of The Wizard of Oz:
Read MoreIn addition to his numerous TV appearances, he was the Tin Man in “The Wiz,” the 1978 black-cast remake of “The Wizard of Oz.” It was a role that allowed him to showcase his versatility as a singer, dancer, actor and comedian.
