Nature in the News

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Lions and Cheetahs and Elephants, Oh My! - Let them run wild. In North America.

slate.com

by C. Josh Donlan

August 18, 2005

As the first Americans strolled onto their open real estate 13,000 years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, their continent quickly lost much of its grandeur.

Elephants: not just for zoos, anymore "Rewilding" - bringing elephants, cheetahs, and lions out of captivity to run free in parts of North America -could help save these megafauna from global extinction. More important, it would restore to the continent biological functions lost millenniums ago. The big guys would help stop the march of the pests and weeds-rats and dandelions-that will otherwise take over the landscape. And they would promote the natural processes that generate biodiversity.

Warming hits 'tipping point'

Guardian Unlimited (UK)

by Ian Sample

August 11, 2005

Siberia feels the heat It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting.

The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

Bush Wants Land Transferred to City

The Washington Post (DC)

by Spencer S. Hsu and Dana Hedgpeth

July 16, 2005

D.C. Control of Mostly Waterfront Property Could Increase Tax Revenue by Millions.

President Bush proposed yesterday to give the District government control over roughly 200 acres of federal land in the city, most of it waterfront property where redevelopment could increase D.C. tax revenue by tens of millions of dollars a year. The 15 acres of National Park Service land northwest of RFK would be turned over to the city on the condition that some of it be provided to a D.C. public charter boarding school, such as one run by the nonprofit SEED Foundation, city officials said.

$4.25 million verdict in teen's drowning

The Press Democrat (CA)

by Mike Geniella

June 3, 2005

Jurors say they wanted to send message to Ukiah school district for death during swimming class.

In a stinging rebuke to local school officials, a Mendocino County jury Thursday awarded $4.25 million to the grieving parents of a 13-year-old boy who drowned at the city pool during a 2003 swimming class. The jury, which took less than 90 minutes to reach its unanimous verdict, awarded Sandy and Joe Talamo $250,000 more than their attorneys had sought.

The REAL ID Act: How It Violates U.S. Treaty Obligations, Insults International Law, Undermines Our Security, and Betrays Eleanor Roosevelt's Legacy

Find Law's Legal Commentary

by Noah S. Leavitt

May 9, 2005

Late last week, the U.S. House quickly approved an $82 billion appropriations bill to fund America's military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. This bill is headed to the Senate in the next few days.

Tucked inside this massive funding package are some of the most sweeping - and, many have said, harshest - changes to immigration law in years. Representative James Sensenbrenner (R - Wis), the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is the primary sponsor of this legislation, which is known as the "REAL ID" Act.

The most high-profile provision of REAL ID would mandate that applicants for state drivers' licenses must prove they are in the U.S. legally, in order to get identification that may be used at federal facilities (airports, national parks, government offices, and so on).

The end of analog TV

MSNBC

by Michael Rogers

April 24, 2005

Will America's favorite technology really go dark next year? Depending on the outcome of discussions in Congress, television as we know it may end at exactly midnight Dec. 31, 2006.

That's the date Congress targeted, a decade ago, for the end of analog television broadcasting and a full cutover to a digital format. If enforced, that means that overnight, somewhere around 70 million television sets now connected to rabbit ears or roof-top antennas will suddenly and forever go blank, unless their owners purchase a special converter box. Back when the legislation was written, New Year's Eve 2006 probably looked as safely distant as the dark side of the moon.

House votes for oil drilling in Alaskan refuge

MSNBC

April 21, 2005

Stage set for clash with Senate; Bush wants energy bill by summer

The House voted late Wednesday to allow oil drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge. The bill's sponsors said oil from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as much as a million barrels a day, will be needed to help curtail the country's growing dependence on oil imports.

Millions exposed to possible ID theft

MSNBC

by Rueters

April 18, 2005

IRS security flaws put taxpayers at risk, study finds. The IRS promised to fix any problems and find out if tax returns had been exposed to outsiders.

Computer-security flaws at the U.S. tax-collection agency expose millions of taxpayers to potential identity theft or illegal police snooping, according to a congressional report released Monday.

Ignoring suffering of everyone who isn't Terri Schiavo

The Arizona Republic

by Ed Montini

March 29, 2005

There is a con man's technique that politicians sometimes use to manipulate the public and never has it worked better than with the tragic case of Terri Schiavo.

The scheme involves making a very big deal about the plight of a single person to get us to ignore the plight of hundreds, thousands or even millions of others. Two-bit hustlers use distraction and diversion techniques to lift your wallet or empty your bank account. Political flimflammers use the tragedy of a single family to distract you from the horror they are inflicting upon your friends and neighbors.

IRS Collects $3.2 Billion from Son of Boss; Final Figure Should Top $3.5 Billion

Uncle Fed's Tax Board

by National Tax Services, Inc.

March 24, 2005

The Internal Revenue Service announced today that taxpayers participating in the Son of Boss tax shelter settlement have so far paid in more than $3.2.

Son of Boss was an abusive transaction aggressively marketed in the late 1990s and 2000 primarily to wealthy individuals. The settlement initiative required taxpayers to concede 100 percent of the claimed tax losses and pay a penalty of either 10 percent or 20 percent unless they previously disclosed the transactions to the IRS.

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