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"The Electronic Privacy Information Center and consumer advocate Ralph Nader are urging President Obama to review the administration's plans to install whole body scanners at U.S. airports. In a joint letter, Marc Rotenberg, the president of EPIC, and Nader asked the president to suspend deployment of the devices until a "comprehensive evaluation" of the effectiveness of the technology and potential health hazards, is completed."

PARIS - Travelers endured spreading chaos on Saturday, as an Icelandic volcano continued to spew ash that winds pushed south and east over an increasing portion of the European continent, causing more airports to shut and thousands of flights to be canceled.

Dick Cheney's charges that the country is less safe because of the way Barack Obama has handled national security matters don't hold water, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. "To suggest that somehow we have become much less safer because of the actions of the administration, I don't think that's borne out by the facts," Powell said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

Seems like only yesterday conservative nabobs of negativity predicted America's ballooning budget deficit would generate soaring inflation and crippling costs of additional federal borrowing.  Remember Standard & Poor's downgrade of the United States? Recall the intense worry about investors' confidence in government bonds - America's IOUs?  Hmmm. Last week ten-year yields on U.S. Treasuries closed at 1.83 percent. In other words, they were wrong. In fact, it's cheaper than ever for the United States to borrow. That's because global investors desperately want the safety of dollars. Almost everywhere else on the globe is riskier. Europe is in a debt crisis, many developing nations are gripped by fears the contagion will spread to them, Japan remains in critical condition, China's growth is slowing.  Put this together with two other facts: Unemployment in America remains sky-high. 14 million Americans are out of work and 25 million are looking for full-time jobs. The nation's infrastructure is crumbling. Our roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, subways, gas pipelines, ports, airports, and school buildings are desperately in need of repair. Deferred maintenance is taking a huge toll. Now connect the dots. Anyone with half a brain will see this is the ideal time to borrow money from the rest of the world to put Americans to work rebuilding the nation's infrastructure.  Problem is, too many in Washington have less than half a brain. 

In today's On the News segment, Thom Hartmann discusses a letter sent by 248 economists demanding a "clean vote" on raising the debt ceiling, new evidence that the body scanners at airports are giving people cancer, new US drone strikes in Somalia, Ohio's ongoing war on organized labor, and more. Scroll down to watch the newscast.

Published 27 July 2011 04:01 PM MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - In a squalid refugee camp beside Mogadishu's airport, some 2,000 desperately hungry women and children await help, many of them weak and dying in tents made of sticks and cloth. Missing from the camp, however, are large numbers of Somali men.