Why Arizona Drew The Line

(Rense) – Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed a law – SB 1070 – that prohibits the harboring of illegal aliens and makes it a state crime for an alien to commit certain federal immigration crimes. It also requires police officers who, in the course of a traffic stop or other law-enforcement action, come to a “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal alien verify the person’s immigration status with the federal government.

Predictably, groups that favor relaxed enforcement of immigration laws, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, insist the law is unconstitutional. Less predictably, President Obama declared it “misguided” and said the Justice Department would take a look.

Presumably, the government lawyers who do so will actually read the law, something its critics don’t seem to have done. The arguments we’ve heard against it either misrepresent its text or are otherwise inaccurate. As someone who helped draft the statute, I will rebut the major criticisms individually:

Are Prozac and Other Psychiatric Drugs Causing the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America?

(AlterNet) – An interview with investigative reporter Robert Whitaker, about the dramatic increase in mental illness disability and its surprising cause. Read More Here

Oil Spill

(RawStory) – BP CEO: ‘It wasn’t our accident’ but we’ll clean spill; Liability waivers were ‘misstep’ – Read More Here

(TimesOnline) – BP warned of rig fault ten years ago

BP faces fresh questions over the cause of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill after it emerged that problems with the type of equipment that led to the disaster were first reported a decade ago. Read More Here

(AL) – Despite plan, not a single fire boom on hand on Gulf Coast at time of oil spill

A single fire boom being towed by two boats can burn up to 1,800 barrels of oil an hour, Bohleber said. That translates to 75,000 gallons an hour, raising the possibility that the spill could have been contained at the accident scene 100 miles from shore. Read More Here

(WashingtonsBlog) – Oceanographer “Cannot Think Of Any Scenario Where The Oil Doesn’t Eventually Reach The Florida Keys”

As I explained in detail yesterday, the oil spill may be carried by the “loop current” to Florida:
How could the oil get all the way from Louisiana to Florida, where the Gulf Stream flows?
As Discovery explains: Read More Here

(PressTV) – Iran offers to help contain US oil spill

The National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC) has offered to assist the US in efforts to prevent an ecological disaster caused by the spreading oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Read More Here

(CBSNews) – Gulf Oil Slick Just Miles From Louisiana Coast Line

With shifting winds, hope is fading as the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is about to reach Louisiana’s coast. As Mark Strassmann tells us, many are preparing for the worst.

MSM: Watching TV ‘makes toddlers less intelligent’

(LondonIndependent) – Parents, beware CBeebies: watching television makes toddlers fatter and stupider at primary school, according to new research.

Scientists who tracked the progress of pre-school children found that the more television they watched aged two-and- a-half the worse they were at mathematics, the more junk food they ate, and the more they were bullied by other pupils.

MSM: Jones feels not so unusually hot, after all

(HeraldSun) – Now even Climategate’s Phil Jones, of the infamous Climatic Research Unit, concedes this warm period isn’t so unprecedented after all. CO2 Science reports on his latest joint paper:

In the words of the seven scientists, “temperatures during the warmest intervals of the Medieval Warm Period,” which they defined as occurring some 900 to 1300 years ago, “were as warm as or slightly warmer than present day Greenland temperatures.”

“You’ll Pry My Car out of my Cold-Dead Hands” – Cindy Sheehan

(SoapBox) – The scope of the tragedy of the undersea oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is shocking. Please don’t call it a “spill” the gash in our Mother Earth is literally hemorrhaging oily death-blood.

British Petroleum, the company who owns the offshore well, gave “liberally” to candidates in the 2008 election cycle, with the largest donor receiving $71,000 for his campaign—Barack Obama.

We should scream bloody-murder about BP and boycott them straight to bankruptcy. Additionally, the company that everyone on the “left” loves to hate: Halliburton probably shares a majority of the blame for this catastrophe of biblical proportions, too.

The Hutaree Case Falls Apart

(LewRockwell) – Federal District Judge Victoria Roberts has ruled that the nine members of the so-called Hutaree Militia accused of plotting to wage war against the Regime can be released on bail. Prosecutors had argued that bail should be denied because the group posed a severe danger to public safety.

Judge orders release of 9 Hutaree militia

(Freep) – A federal judge in Detroit today ordered the release of nine members of a Lenawee County Christian militia group freed on bond over the objections of federal prosecutors.

“The United States is correct that it need not wait until people are killed before it arrests conspirators,” U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts said in a 36-page decision. “But, the Defendants are also correct: their right to engage in hate-filled, venomous speech, is a right that deserves First Amendment protection.”

She said federal prosecutors failed to persuade her that the defendants must be jailed until trial.

World War

(Reuters) – Iran: Punish U.S. for “shameful” nuclear threats

Calling nuclear weapons “disgusting and shameful,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged the United Nations on Monday to punish countries like the United States that threaten to use them. Read More Here

(TruthDig) – No One Cares – Chris Hedges

We are approaching a decade of war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq is in its eighth year. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands more Afghans and Pakistani civilians have been killed. Millions have been driven into squalid displacement and refugee camps. Thousands of our own soldiers and Marines have died or been crippled physically and psychologically. Read More Here

(ConspiringTimes) – Taliban Claim Unverified Responsibility: Times Square Car Bomb, Prelude To Nuclear Attack? – Read More Here

(GordonDuff) – Israeli Intel Group Shows Its Hand in Times Square Bomb Hoax

Who would have believed it? Only days after a warning of an Israeli “false flag” bombing against the US “in the works” a massive car bomb is discovered in Time Square! Better yet, though no intelligence organization in the world could discover anyone claiming responsibility for this embarrassing failure, SITE Intelligence, a group rumored as the “voice of the Mossad” has placed the blame on the Pakistani Taliban.

This is the same group that has come up with numerous bin Laden “audio” tapes, seemingly, though tiny and nearly totally unstaffed, whenever it is convenient for Israel to point a finger at someone, magically Site Intelligence, run by former IDF soldier Rita Katz, whose father was executed as a spy by Saddam Hussein, makes another “unbelievable” intelligence find. Read More Here

(PaulWatson) – Al-Qaeda Terror Tape Proven Fraudulent Once Again

Investigators say no evidence of foreign involvement in Times Square car bombing, contradicting alleged Taliban tape released by dubious Pentagon front group Read More Here

(AFP) – Al-Qaeda not behind NY car bomb: mayor

Authorities in New York said Sunday that Al-Qaeda was not behind an attempted car bombing of Times Square and that police had several strong leads, including camera footage of a suspicious man leaving the scene. Read More Here

(GlobalResearch) – High-Tech Death from Above: U.S. Drone Wars Fuel War Crimes – Tom Burghardt

As America continues its uncontrolled flight towards disaster, Israeli-style “targeted killings” (assassinations) of alleged militants and unarmed civilians in the “Afpak theatre” are on the rise. Read More Here

(TheHindu) – Military Dominance: Obama’s Fake Nuclear Disarmament Initiative allows the U.S. to Assert its Global Military Hegemony

Experts say that U.S. missile defences and Prompt Global Strike weapons, far from promoting nuclear disarmament, may trigger a new arms race.

Hardly had Russia and the United States signed a nuclear arms reduction treaty, New START, the U.S. pushed ahead with the development of new conventional weapon systems that threaten to stall nuclear disarmament and discredit U.S. non-proliferation efforts at the NPT Review Conference opening in New York on Monday. Read More Here

(NewAmericanEmpire) – Obama’s Threat to Launch a Nuclear Attack on Iran

By now, most everybody knows that the (2003-) Bush-Cheney Iraq War was based on fiction [http://news.antiwar.com/2009/08/10/elbaradei-regrets-not-doing-more-to-stop-iraq-war/] and on deception [http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/07/22_lies.html]. There was no such thing as “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, the rationale for an illegal attack against that country. And Bush II and his accomplices knew that. Read More Here

(IranAffairs) – US Threatens to Nuke Iran and Anyone Else it Feels like Nuking – Read More Here

(RussiaToday) – Video: US walkout on speech by Ahmadinejad ‘shows West biased against Iran’

The Iranian president has told the UN there’s not a shred of credible evidence his country’s developing nuclear weapons. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also attacked the US accusing it of double standards. He was speaking at the start of a conference reviewing the non-proliferation treaty.

Economy

(AU) – Housing market will implode, warns Edward Chancellor

AUSTRALIA is in the midst of an unsustainable housing bubble that could burst at any time, warns the man who predicted the global credit bust of 2007. Read More Here

(DailyFinance) – FDIC Shuts Seven More Banks at a Cost of Over $7 Billion

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation closed seven more banks on Apr. 30, bringing the total to 64 for the year. The day was particularly expensive, costing the agency just over $7 billion. Read More Here

(Telegraph) – Radical tax on debt put to parties

Households should pay a new tax on every pound of debt they owe, according to one of Britain’s leading economists. Read More Here

(BusinessInsider) – Find Out How Much The Greek Bailout Is Costing YOU – Read More Here

(GlobalResearch) – The Criminalization of Wall Street: Will Any Exec at Goldman Sachs Go to Jail? – Danny Schechter

Will Goldman survive the assault? Will the threat of criminal charges being pursued against the world’s leading investment bank spill over onto others on Wall Street? Is the criminalization of the crisis underway, or is all this just a maneuver? Read More Here

(InfoClearingHouse) – The Subprime Conspiracy: Was There A Plan to Blow Up The Economy? – Mike Whitney

Many people now believe that the financial crisis was not an accident. They think that the Bush administration and the Fed knew what Wall Street was up to and provided their support. This isn’t as far fetched as it sounds. Read More Here

(Reuters) – Morgan Stanley fined $14 mln for hidden block oil trade

U.S. futures regulators fined Morgan Stanley (MS.N) $14 million for failing to report a big block oil trade and fined Moore Capital $25 million for attempting to manipulate palladium and platinum futures. Read More Here

(TheState) – Bartering up as economy down

Bartering, trading goods or services rather than charging cash, is an ancient practice. But it has gained popularity during the economic meltdown that left many short on cash but rich in talent or treasures. Read More Here

(BusinessInsider) – David Kotok: $12.5 Billion Is Just The Start Of The Oil Cleanup Costs, And A Double-Dip Is Now Way More Likely

David Kotok of Cumberland Advisors is out with some very gloomy comments about the economic ramifications of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and what it will cost. First he notes the ugliest case scenario:

This spew stoppage takes longer to reach a full closure; the subsequent cleanup may take a decade. The Gulf becomes a damaged sea for a generation. The oil slick leaks beyond the western Florida coast, enters the Gulfstream and reaches the eastern coast of the United States and beyond. Use your imagination for the rest of the damage. Monetary cost is now measured in the many hundreds of billions of dollars.

As for numbers: Read More Here

(WebOfDebt) – Hollywood and The Rigging of Financial Markets – Ellen Brown

Betting on the Gross Profits of Upcoming Movies Read More Here

(HuffingtonPost) – Video: Warren Buffett – Nothing ‘Unique’ About Goldman Sachs Deal Targeted By The SEC

In two interviews this morning, Warren Buffett reiterated his support for Goldman Sachs in the wake of the SEC’s civil fraud charges levied against the bank. Read More Here

Why Do So Many Bad Things Keep Happening To The United States?

(EconomicCollapse) – At a time when the American economy is already reeling like a drunken sailor, the United States is being hit by what seems like an endless parade of horrible disasters that threaten to push the fragile financial system over the edge.  The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is now destroying not only the the entire economy of the Gulf Coast but also the entire way of life for hundreds of thousands of people is getting all the headlines right now, but it is far from the only major crisis that has hit the United States recently.  The old saying, “when it rains it pours”, is certainly applicable to the United States right now.  Already faced with some of the biggest economic problems in a generation, America is also being forced to deal with horrifying natural disasters, rapidly growing environmental nightmares and agricultural problems that could end up being absolutely unprecedented.  So why do so many bad things keep happening to the United States?  Does there come a point when the economic damage from all of these disasters just becomes too much?  After all, how many body blows can the “biggest economy in the world” take and still remain standing?

Did Osama bin Laden Confess to the 9/11 Attacks, and Did He Die, in 2001? – Prof David Ray Griffin

(GlobalResearch) – In 2009, I published a little book entitled Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?1 Much evidence, I showed, suggested that Osama bin Laden had died on or about December 13, 2001. (Although this book was ignored by the US press, it received major reviews in British newspapers,2 and it even provided the basis for a BBC special.3) Pointing out that the only evidence to the contrary consists of “messages from bin Laden” in the form of audiotapes and videotapes that have appeared since 2001, I devoted one chapter to an examination of the most important of these tapes, showing that none are demonstrably authentic and that some are almost certainly fakes.

Video: Corporate Media Plays Down Pro-Illegal Immigration Thugs Who Terrorized Santa Cruz

(PaulWatson) – Imagine the uproar if 200 Tea Party members had gone on a rampage through a downtown city, smashing windows, starting fires, and spraying graffiti everywhere, the corporate media would be all over it, and yet gangs of pro-illegal immigration demonstrators do this and much worse on a regular basis, with no national news coverage whatsoever.
“A large group of protesters demonstrating at a May Day rally for worker’s and immigrant rights downtown broke off into a riot vandalizing about a dozen businesses around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, police said,” reports The Santa Cruz Sentinel. Read More Here

Mother of all gushers could kill Earth’s oceans

(PESN) – Imagine a pipe 5 feet wide spewing crude oil like a fire hose from what could be the planets’ largest, high-pressure oil and gas reserve.  With the best technology available to man, the Deepwater Horizon rig popped a hole into that reserve and was overwhelmed.  If this isn’t contained, it could poison all the oceans of the world.

“Well if you say the fire hose has a 70,000 psi pump on the other end yes!  No comparison here.   The volume out rises geometrically with pressure.  Its a squares function. Two times the pressure is 4 times the push.   The Alaska pipeline is 4 feet in diameter and pushes with a lot less pressure.  This situation in the Gulf of Mexico is stunning dangerous.” — Paul Noel (May 2, 2010)

Oil Spill: Here’s the Inside Scoop

(WashingtonsBlog) – The Gulf oil spill is much worse than originally believed.

As the Christian Science Monitor writes:

It’s now likely that the actual amount of the oil spill dwarfs the Coast Guard’s figure of 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day.

Independent scientists estimate that the renegade wellhead at the bottom of the Gulf could be spewing up to 25,000 barrels a day. If chokeholds on the riser pipe break down further, up to 50,000 barrels a day could be released, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration memo obtained by the Mobile, Ala., Press-Register.

Video: Ron Paul’s Texas Straight Talk

May 3, 2010 – Congressional Pay Freeze a Good Start: Time to Restore Fiscal Sanity!