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Is the debate over the Ground Zero mosque fanning the flames for Islamic fundamentalists?

Mexican traffickers have 'supersized' the marijuana trade, using armed guards and trip wires to safeguard plots nestled in national parks, the AP reports.

Like the gangsters of prohibition, the only "quick and easy" way to rid ourselves of this pestilence may be legalization.

Last week, the UK LibDem party was thrown into scandal when two of its Lords proposed an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill that would allow for national web-censorship, particularly aimed at "web-lockers" like Google Docs and YouSendIt. Now a leaked document from the British Phonographic Institute suggests that the amendment was basically written by the record industry lobby and entered into law on their behalf by representatives of the "party of liberty." This weekend, LibDem members who attend the national convention in Birmingham will have the chance to vote on an emergency measure affirming the party's commitment to an open and just Internet, repudiating this disastrous measure. If you (or someone you know) is attending the convention, please support the "Save the Net" emergency measure and help rehabilitate the party's reputation on fundamental freedoms in the information society.

Proving once again that special interests can "buy" the "support" of politicians of any stripe! And they can do so regardless of the "best interests" of the "majority of the people", who those politicians are supposedly morally (by honor) and legally (by oath) bound to represent!

The American Dream is a 30 minute animated film that shows you how you've been scammed by the most basic elements of the government system. From the author: All of us Americans strive for the American Dream, and this film shows you why your dream is getting farther and farther away. Do you know how your money is created? Or how banking works? Why did housing prices skyrocket and then plunge? Do you really know what the Federal Reserve System is and how it affects you every single day? The American Dream takes an entertaining but hard hitting look at how the problems we have today are nothing new, and why leaders throughout our history have warned us and fought against the current type of financial system we have in America today. You will be challenged to investigate some very entrenched and powerful institutions in this nation, and hopefully encouraged to help get our nation back on track.

Right about now in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, dozens of pregnant female polar bears are preparing to give birth in dens they dug into the snowdrifts last month, unaware that the fate of their home, and possibly their species, hinges on the price of gasoline. The Obama administration can and should change that.

Using data from the Whitehouse, this chart shows gross national debt as a percentage of gross domestic product since 1950. As the highlighted areas show, cumulative debt increased during the Reagan-Bush Administrations and under the current Bush Administration. It is currently more than 65% of GDP. Source: zFacts.

The scientific community has long agreed that our dependence on fossil fuels inflicts massive damage on the environment and our health, while warming the globe in the process. But beyond the damage these fuels cause to us now, what will happen when the world's supply of oil runs out? In a new video series from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Foss, Richard Heinberg and other scientists, researchers and writers explain. Go here to learn more about "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate," and to see the other videos in the series.

US military action against Libya absent imminent threat or Congressional approval is outside the legal scope of the Presidency. Senator Barack Obama, December 20, 2007: "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today released the following statement and letter to Congressional leaders after the President announced that the United States will support a United Nations-approved attack on Libya:

"This legislation would undo decades of public land protections by opening up an area the size of Wyoming to new industrial activity. It would allow some of the country's most pristine and spectacular landscapes to be exploited, including the vast majority of undisturbed national forests. "Mining, logging and drilling are already permitted in more than half of our national forests and other public lands. This bill would open the door to such activity on most of the rest. As a result, valuable fish and wildlife could be lost and clean drinking water for millions of Americans compromised. "This legislation would undo the nation's tradition of managing these lands with a balanced approach. It would also disregard years of work by lawmakers from both parties to craft proposals with diverse stakeholders to safeguard these undeveloped areas. In addition, the bill would eliminate interim protections on wild places that people use and enjoy. We urge Members of Congress to oppose H.R. 1581."

Drought could parch close to 70 percent of the planet's soil by 2025 unless countries implement policies to slow desertification, a senior United Nations official has warned. "If we cannot find a solution to this problem... in 2025, close to 70 percent could be affected," Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, said Friday. Drought currently affects at least 41 percent of the planet and environmental degradation has caused it to spike by 15 to 25 percent since 1990, according to a global climate report. "There will not be global security without food security" in dry regions, Gnacadja said at the start of the ninth UN conference on the convention in the Argentine capital. "A green deal is necessary" for developing countries working to combat drought, he stressed. The next meeting on the convention is scheduled to take place in South Korea in 2010.

A National Public Radio profile from last year points out that Taiwan has one of the world's best health care systems and it is cost efficient too. All Things Considered, April 15, 2008 · At the end of the 20th century, Taiwan became a rich country, almost overnight. But it still had a poor country's health care - about half the population had no coverage at all. So Taiwan set out to design a National health care system from scratch. What makes Taiwan unique is the way the country figured out how to cover everyone.

My first post here. Just joined. Live in Taiwan and can attest to the brilliance of the healthcare system here. It's a much better model than Canda. (And I'm a Canadian.)

This story originally appeared at Truthdig. Robert Scheer is the author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street (Nation Books).    A "working class hero," John Lennon told us in his song of that title, "is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you're so clever and classless and free/ But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see."

DemocracyNow.org -The manhunt for Osama Bin Laden is over. Nearly 10 years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, U.S forces are said to have assassinated the Saudi-born founder of Al Qaeda inside Pakistan. At the time of his death, Bin Laden was living in a heavily fortified mansion just a mile from the Pakistani Army's principal military academy. The U.S. operation was reportedly carried out by 25 Navy Seals under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command. It is unclear what role Pakistan played in the killing. For analysis, Democracy Now! interviews Jeremy Scahill, the national security correspondent for The Nation magazine. This clip is part of an hour-long roundtable discussion about Bin Laden's death and the ongoing war on terrorism. Click here to watch the entire interview: http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2011/5/2

It's important, yes, and must be addressed. But by a wide margin, it's not the nation's most pressing economic problem. That would be the widespread and persistent joblessness that has plagued the labor market since the Great Recession began in 2008. Almost 14 million people - 9.1 percent of the labor force - were officially counted as unemployed last month. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. There were almost 9 million part-time workers who wanted, but couldn't find, full-time jobs; 28 million in jobs they would have quit under normal conditions; and an additional 2.2 million who wanted work but couldn't find any and dropped out of the labor force. If the economy could generate jobs at the median wage for even half of these people, national income would grow by more than 10 times the total interest cost of the 2011 deficit (which was less than $40 billion). So anyone who says that reducing the deficit is more urgent than reducing unemployment is saying, in effect, that we should burn hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods and services in a national bonfire. We ought to be tackling both problems at once. But in today's fractious political climate, many promising dual-purpose remedies - like infrastructure investments that would generate large and rapid returns - are called unthinkable, in the false belief that they would impoverish our grandchildren. Yet there are other ways to attack unemployment that could garner bipartisan support. Perhaps the most promising is a payroll tax holiday.

We are at a pivotal moment in American history, and many Americans watching the deficit talks in Washington are confused, perplexed, angry and frustrated. This country, which has paid its debts from Day 1, must pay its debts. Anyone who says it is not a big deal for this country to default clearly does not understand what he or she is talking about. This is a nation whose faith and credit has been the gold standard of countries throughout the world. Some people simply say we're not going to pay our debt, that there's nothing to really worry about. Those are people who are wishing our economy harm for political reasons, and those are people whose attitudes will have terrible consequences for virtually every working family in this country in terms of higher interest rates, in terms of significant job loss, in terms of making a very unstable global economy even more unstable. Our right-wing friends in the House of Representatives have given us an option. What they have said is end Medicare as we know it and force elderly people, many of whom don't have the money, to pay substantially more for their health care. So when you're 70 under their plan and you get sick and you don't have a whole lot of income, we don't know what happens to you. They forget to tell us that if their plan was passed you're going to have to pay a heck of a lot more for the prescription drugs you're getting today. They we're going to throw millions of kids off health insurance. If your mom or dad is in a nursing home and that nursing home bill is paid significantly by Medicaid and Medicaid isn't paying anymore, they forgot to tell us what happens to your mom or dad in that nursing home. What happens? And what happens today if you are unemployed and you're not able to get unemployment extension? What happens if you are a middle-class family desperately trying to send their kids to college and you make savage cuts to Pell grants and you can't go to college? What does it mean for the nation if we