From The Half-Red House

The Homeland Security department has ordered all environmental laws waived along 470 miles of the US/Mexico border. This waiver endangers rare and endangered animals, sensitive plants, water supplies for people and the fragile desert land itself. One of the best explanations of what’s just happened can be found in a blog by Melissa Del Bosque of the Texas Observer. One infuriating detail that Del Bosque points out is that Congress gave Homeland Security the power to waive environmental regulations as part of the ill-conceived “Real ID” act. What in the name of all the gods and goddesses does permission to rape the Earth have to do with ID cards?

Once you have the facts, you may want to send an email to (or even call) your Congressperson. The easiest way to do this is to go to the FCNL Contact Congress page; there you can find your congressperson’s contact information and even use their user-friendly web interface to compose your own letter.

The London Telegraph is speculating that the US Federal Reserve might nationalize the big investment banks the same way Norway, Sweden and Denmark did in the 1990’s. Doing so would avoid windfall bailouts of the banks’ management or investors and solve the problems much more quickly than the kind of bailout action taken in the case of Bear-Stearns. This seems to be a sign that the powers that be in the US are finally realizing that socialism and social-democracy in Europe has been working much better than the laissez-faire capitalism of the US, and that it’s time to follow sane and prudent models that work. Next, maybe, we’ll finally get socialized medicine on the Danish or British model, albeit 60 years too late