Latest From Our Writers

We're not in Kansas anymore. And thank goodness, because it seems that things there have slipped backwards a number of decades recently. This Thursday will mark the first day in a four-day series of "courtroom-style" debates about evolution. That's right. They're not just debating teaching evolution. They're actually planning on debating evolution itself.

The debate may be pretty one-sided, though, since every reputable science organization in the state is planning to boycott the proceedings. The American Association for the Advancement of Science—which publishes the journal Science—"respectfully declined" to participate :

After much consideration, AAAS respectfully declines to participate in this hearing out of concern that rather than contribute to science education, it will most likely serve to confuse the public about the nature of the scientific enterprise.

More »»

Help us spread the word about these important stories...

Email to a friend

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on OurFuture.org.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Your Email: *

Your Name: *

Send To: *

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas. You can only email up to 10 recipients

You are going to email the following: The Earth Is Round. Probably.

Message Subject: (Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from OurFuture.org

Message Body: (Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the OurFuture.org web site.

Your Personal Message: *

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• Delicious
• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Propeller
• Reddit
• Magnoliacom
• Newsvine
• Furl
• Facebook
• Google
• Yahoo
• Technorati

Public Citizen just field an amicus brief with the Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. "The brief states that FERC illegally deregulated the electric rates under its jurisdiction, allowing the market to set rates, when only Congress can deregulate rates." The result was an overcharging of consumers billions of dollars. If you recall who actually designed and executed that market manipulation, it was Enron. Who was the primary advocate for deregulation? Enron.

More »»

Perhaps emboldened by the Schiavo case, Florida officials are making headlines again for intervening in tragic and complex private medical decisions—this time involving abortion. Jeb Bush’s child welfare agency, the Florida Department of Children and Families, has gone to court to stop a 13-year-old child in foster care from getting an abortion. DCF’s argument —for which Jeb has expressed support—is that the girl isn't mature enough to make her own medical choices. The rejoinder to that is so obvious it hardly bears mention, but I can't help myself: Yet, she's mature enough to have a baby??!!

One of the tragedies of this case is that the girl did exactly what we want teenagers in trouble to do: Find a trusted adult and confide in him or her. She then went to a health care center and decided to seek an abortion. At that point DCF intervened, citing concerns that the girl is likely to suffer "detrimental effects" from an abortion.

More »»

Watching television: It's as much a part of the American Way as apple pie and the Fourth of July. Then again, so is freedom of expression. But that's not the way right-wing fundamentalists see it. The on-again, off-again fight to increase FCC indecency fines continues, as the House in February passed legislation to increase indecency fines on broadcast TV and radio. The issue is expected to hit the Senate in the near future, and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, plans to advance legislation to expand indecency fines to cable television.

Perhaps Stevens is not familiar with the concept of voluntary media (or, more likely, perhaps he's ignoring it.) Cable TV and the Internet—unlike broadcast TV—are considered "voluntary" because you have to actively subscribe to the services to see the content. While broadcast TV streams into every home that has a television set (and it is therefore in the public interest to have some indecency standards to protect children), no one has to watch cable.

More »»

Sometimes, to find the truth in a situation you need to sleep with rats. Literally.  In 1994, author and journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc did just that, spending the night in a sweltering, rat-infested Bronx apartment, while working on her book, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx (a book, by the way, that I have recommended to just about anyone who will listen to me). Over the span of 10 years, beginning in the late 1980s, LeBlanc was an observer, and sometimes participant, in the lives of two young Puerto Rican women, Jessica and Coco.  During that period of time, the girls had a combined eight children by six fathers and tried to maintain relationships with boyfriends in jail. Jessica herself served time on drug-related charges missing out on most of her oldest daughter's childhood. 

More »»

The strange coincidence of these events begs the question: What have we gained and what have we lost in this war of choice? Was the loss of life, treasure and our international reputation worth the purported—although not officially acknowledged—strategic gains of invading Iraq?

I won’t waste pixels here dignifying the WMD rationale for war—which by now has been widely dismissed and which the cowardly members of Congress who voted for war would have known was a ruse if they’d bothered to pay attention and risk looking "unpatriotic."

About that whole Iraq-is-a-front-in-the-war-on-terror argument, where to start? If actual incidents of terrorist acts are any guide for how this so-called war on terror is progressing, then the Bush administration can’t claim success. Its own State Department reports a record number of terrorist attacks in 2004 —three times the count for 2003.

More »»

I just took the time to read Elizabeth Kolbert's "The Climate Of Man I" in the April 25 issue of The New Yorker . Oy. Kolbert provides a real service to the community by explaining the wonky but dangerous concept of positive feedback loops and how they're accelerating the rate of climate change. It's really quite an accessible read, even if it's a wee bit longer than your standard op-ed.

Here's the thesis, tucked in towards the end:

Almost wherever you looked, temperatures in the Arctic were rising, and at a rate that surprised even those who had expected to find clear signs of climate change. Robert Corell, an American oceanographer and a former assistant director at the National Science Foundation, coördinated the study. In his opening remarks, he ran through its findings—shrinking sea ice, receding glaciers, thawing permafrost—and summed them up as follows: “The Arctic climate is warming rapidly now, with an emphasis on now.” Particularly alarming, Corell said, were the most recent data from Greenland, which showed the ice sheet melting much faster “than we thought possible even a decade ago.”

More »»

Help us spread the word about these important stories...

Email to a friend

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on OurFuture.org.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Your Email: *

Your Name: *

Send To: *

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas. You can only email up to 10 recipients

You are going to email the following: The More Things Change, The More Things Change

Message Subject: (Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from OurFuture.org

Message Body: (Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the OurFuture.org web site.

Your Personal Message: *

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• Delicious
• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Propeller
• Reddit
• Magnoliacom
• Newsvine
• Furl
• Facebook
• Google
• Yahoo
• Technorati

I just returned from a rally at the Capitol as part of a national day of action to protect Social Security. There was a strong and diverse turnout of citizens. There was also a new poll released this morning, citing that more than half of Americans oppose privatizing Social Security. Both of these events give a lot of credence to what The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes wrote in this week's issue: The president and Republicans need a Social Security exit strategy.

More »»

Beyond the slimy but pedestrian observation that the Washington Post is further handing its Op-Ed page over to industry shills, today's piece by Ambassador John Ritch, "The Key To Our Energy Future ," is just short-sighted and wrong. Ritch wants us to believe that the only path to reducing carbon emissions is one where nuclear power generation is increased 10 times:

To avert climate catastrophe, greenhouse emissions must be reduced over the next 50 years by 60 percent -- even as population growth and economic development are combining to double or triple world energy consumption.

Every authoritative energy analysis points to an inescapable imperative: Humankind cannot conceivably achieve a global clean-energy revolution without a rapid expansion of nuclear power to generate electricity, produce hydrogen for tomorrow's vehicles and drive seawater-desalination plants to meet a fast-emerging world water crisis.

This reality requires a tenfold increase in nuclear energy during the 21st century...

More »»

Help us spread the word about these important stories...

Email to a friend

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on OurFuture.org.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Your Email: *

Your Name: *

Send To: *

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas. You can only email up to 10 recipients

You are going to email the following: Nuclear Waste Of Time

Message Subject: (Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from OurFuture.org

Message Body: (Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the OurFuture.org web site.

Your Personal Message: *

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• Delicious
• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Propeller
• Reddit
• Magnoliacom
• Newsvine
• Furl
• Facebook
• Google
• Yahoo
• Technorati

It's pretty much a worst-case scenario: A teenage girl is pregnant and can't talk to her family about it. Maybe her father or stepfather is violent and abusive. Maybe she knows she'll get kicked out of the house. Maybe the pregnancy is the result of incest. She can't get an abortion without parental permission in her state (as is the case in 43 states). Desperate for help, she turns to her aunt, her adult sister, her school counselor or a friend's mother.

More »»