In an explosive first-hand account, ecosystem biologist Linda Hooper-Bui describes how Obama administration and BP lawyers are making independent scientific analysis of the Gulf region an impossibility. Hooper-Bui has found that only scientists who are part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process to determine BP's civil liability get full access to contaminated sites and research data. Pete Tuttle, USFWS environmental contaminant specialist and Department of Interior NRDA coordinator, admitted to The Scientist that "researchers wishing to formally participate in NRDA must sign a contract that includes a confidentiality agreement" that "prevents signees from releasing information from studies and findings until authorized by the Department of Justice at some later and unspecified date."
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Bryan Fischer: the Atheists' Strongest Argument 
Hahaha! – Meet Rick Scott, a Florida billionaire GOPer running for Governor. He is a former CEO of Columbia HCA, which is accused of massive fraud.
Anyway, he was having a press conference to talk about ethics when he got served in front of the entire gaggle.
Local Hero Makes Bail - Scott Slater, beloved Flight Attendant from Jet Blue was arrested and has made bail and is free!
"That oil might be degraded all the way to CO2 and water in a matter of weeks."
-- Bill Walker, director of Mississippi's Department of Marine Handjob Resources Link
"If a small animal got coated with enough oil, it could smother it.
But if you got enough toothpaste on you, you couldn't breathe."
-- Haley Barbour, trying to get pelicans to brush their teeth, Link
"I want to see a new reality show, "The Barbour Family Eats Gulf Seafood! "
-- mistermix Link
"Global warming is a hoax!
Those thermometers are LYING!"
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http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/08/epa-declares-global-warming-debate-over.html
Karen Handel, Another Victim of Flunking America 101 The growing chorus of opposition to an Islamic cultural center that will be installed on property already owned by the group that wants to construct it is horrifying to any Constitutional civil libertarian...you know, like us. We are horrified by the so-called "good, upstandin' 'Murkuns" who scream about the sanctity of a Constitution they haven't read opposing an exercise of religious liberty. But we are more horrified that people in positions of leadership are struck mute in the face of the mob.
Then you have these religious leaders...the only ones we can think of off the top of our secular, heathen heads that we would hesitate before strangling with the entrails of a freshly-murdered royal "More than 40 Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders said they were deeply troubled by some of the opposition and how protesters have demonized all Muslims and exploited fear. ... "We have witnessed this sinful corruption of religion across faith traditions throughout history and must condemn it without equivocation whenever or wherever it occurs," the religious leaders wrote in their statement. "However, we fail to honor those murdered on that awful day - including Muslim Americans killed in the Twin Towers and Pentagon - by betraying our nation's historic commitment to religious liberty, fueling ugly stereotypes about Islam and demeaning the vast majority of Muslims committed to peace.""
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Economic Terrorism
Wall Street's war against Main Street never ends. Digby:
Possibly one of the most depressing, yet entirely predictable, political moments in a long string of depressing moments is this summer's obsession with Muslim and Mexican bashing (with a dollop of good old fashioned white on black racism) while the real miscreants in our system carry on unmolested and their apologists insist that we must appease them or risk even worse consequences.Here's Krugman:
I'm saddened but not really surprised by Robert Rubin's declaration that we don't need more stimulus. It has seemed to me from early on in this crisis that Rubin and his disciples wanted to believe that this world crisis was something like the 1997-98 Asian crisis, and amenable to similar solutions.SNIP
It's even worse than that actually, as Krugman has laid out elsewhere. Rubin and friends have persuaded themselves that the only important government function in the economy is the care and feeding of the Wall Street banksters.SNIP
Wall Street, the banks and the corporate CEOs are still saying that unless the government does what it wants it to do --- austerity for average Americans so the wealthy can dine on their wasting carcasses --- they will blow whole damned thing up. I guess they figure that if the Mad Max scenario comes to pass they'll have enough money to hire one of those private armies Glenn Beck is angling for to keep the riff raff off their islands.
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