"And the facts are these: The 1,700-mile pipeline would worsen the climate crisis, threaten hundreds of rivers and streams, pass through the habitat of at least 20 imperiled species (like whooping cranes) and further the destruction of Canada's incredible boreal forests, where the tar sands are mined."
LIKE and SHARE if you believe the Keystone pipeline debate should be driven by facts and science.
National Republican Congressional Committee: Blinded by Science?
Posted: 06/12/2013
Let me blow your mind for a second: When you put rocks in water, they sink.
Advanced scientific concept, huh? Seems so, at least to our friends over at the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Earlier this month, Rep. Raúl Grijalva made the point about the rocks in a great video demonstrating the dangers of the Keystone XL, the massive oil pipeline the oil industry wants to build from Canada to Texas. In his video Grijalva dropped bits of rock-like tar sands oil -- the same form that's produced when it's mined -- into a beaker of water to show how they sank right to the bottom.
The point? When tar sands oil spills from a pipeline and into a river or stream, it goes straight to the bottom and becomes nearly impossible to clean up. (And Keystone XL will spill -- the State Department predicts as many as 100 times during its lifetime.)
The NRCC, though, apparently didn't like Grijalva's science lesson, so it launched an attack that was, well, bizarrely vacuous.
Check out the Center for Biological Diversity's counterpunch; then share it with your friends and social media contacts.
One thing's clear in this debate over Keystone: It ought to be driven by facts and sound science. And the facts are these: The 1,700-mile pipeline would worsen the climate crisis, threaten hundreds of rivers and streams, pass through the habitat of at least 20 imperiled species (like whooping cranes) and further the destruction of Canada's incredible boreal forests, where the tar sands are mined.
And that's not to mention the spills. Yes, up to 100 during Keystone's lifetime is the estimate. If you want to see the kind of destruction that a tar sands spill would produce, just ask those who live along the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, where 800,000 gallons were spilled from a pipeline in 2010. Or residents of Mayflower, Ark., where 400,000 gallons of tar sands crude spilled into their neighborhood in March.
The decision on Keystone XL will ultimately be made by President Obama, likely later this year. He doesn't need to be a science buff to know this pipeline is a terrible idea.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-karnas/national-republican-congressional-committee_b_3429571.html
![HAHA! Awesome!
Thanks to @[372907772721976:274:Tea Party Cat]
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In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden's whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an "executive coup" against the US constitution.
Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.
The government claims it has a court warrant under Fisa – but that unconstitutionally sweeping warrant is from a secret court, shielded from effective oversight, almost totally deferential to executive requests. As Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst, put it: "It is a kangaroo court with a rubber stamp."
For the president then to say that there is judicial oversight is nonsense – as is the alleged oversight function of the intelligence committees in Congress. Not for the first time – as with issues of torture, kidnapping, detention, assassination by drones and death squads –they have shown themselves to be thoroughly co-opted by the agencies they supposedly monitor. They are also black holes for information that the public needs to know.
The fact that congressional leaders were "briefed" on this and went along with it, without any open debate, hearings, staff analysis, or any real chance for effective dissent, only shows how broken the system of checks and balances is in this country.
Obviously, the United States is not now a police state. But given the extent of this invasion of people's privacy, we do have the full electronic and legislative infrastructure of such a state. If, for instance, there was now a war that led to a large-scale anti-war movement – like the one we had against the war in Vietnam – or, more likely, if we suffered one more attack on the scale of 9/11, I fear for our democracy. These powers are extremely dangerous.
There are legitimate reasons for secrecy, and specifically for secrecy about communications intelligence. That's why Bradley Mannning and I – both of whom had access to such intelligence with clearances higher than top-secret – chose not to disclose any information with that classification. And it is why Edward Snowden has committed himself to withhold publication of most of what he might have revealed.
But what is not legitimate is to use a secrecy system to hide programs that are blatantly unconstitutional in their breadth and potential abuse. Neither the president nor Congress as a whole may by themselves revoke the fourth amendment – and that's why what Snowden has revealed so far was secret from the American people.
In 1975, Senator Frank Church spoke of the National Security Agency in these terms:
"I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."
Daniel Ellsberg
