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Friday, May 20
Framing the Dissolution of the Filibuster: How Republican Senators Justify the Grab for Absolute Power
by
Linda Thieman
on Fri 20 May 2005 02:20 PM CDT
 Framing the Dissolution of the Filibuster: How Republican Senators Justify the Grab for Absolute Power
By Robert S. Rivkin, Pacific News Service, AlterNet.org
You've
got to hand it to the Senate Republican leaders. Launching debate on
May 17, Majority Leader Bill Frist offered the most succinct argument
for ramrodding [Bush's] most extreme judicial nominees through the
Senate confirmation process. With dazzling simplicity, he opened the
debate with the statement that, as a matter of simple fairness, all 10
of Bush's nominees are entitled to "an up or down vote" because a
majority of senators supports their confirmation.
The Republicans have identified a theme - or as linguistics professor and commentator George Lakoff would put it, a "frame" - that the average American can understand. "Up or Down Vote" - what's complicated about that?
The
Democrats have tried to expose the hypocrisy of this propaganda by
pointing out that the Republicans, in effect, "filibustered" over 60 of
President Clinton's judicial nominees by killing their nominations in
committee - and preventing a vote on the Senate floor. Moreover, Frist
was required to admit that even he voted in favor of the filibuster on
at least one occasion.
In TV
ads placed by radical right groups that are closely connected to the
Republican Party, another deceptive theme has been pushed: that Bush's
most controversial judicial nominations are designed to stop "judicial
activism" by "arrogant" courts. Would Republicans admit that the 1896
decision in which the Supreme Court interpreted the equal protection
clause of the 14th Amendment to permit racial segregation, was an act
of judicial activism? Would Republicans admit that another 19th century
Supreme Court decision that allowed corporations to be cloaked with the
constitutional rights of a "person," was an act of judicial activism?
(Click here to read the complete article.)
Iowa Farm Fields Increase Dead Zones, Starve the World's Seas
by
Linda Thieman
on Fri 20 May 2005 03:48 AM CDT
 Iowa Farm Fields Increase Dead Zones, Starve the World's Seas
by Janet Raloff, ScienceNews.org
Caused almost exclusively by human
activities, massive oxygen-starved waters, called "Dead Zones," are
developing along the world's coasts and are becoming increasingly
common and recurrent
For
many years now, an annual dead zone has developed in the Gulf [of
Mexico], beginning as early as February and sometimes lasting until
mid-fall. This zone — water where the oxygen content is so low that
denizens can't survive — tends to leave no surface clue.
There's no mystery as to what triggers this annual hypoxic zone,
as the oxygen-starved region is formally termed. Into the Gulf of
Mexico, the Mississippi River deposits water that is heavily enriched
with plant nutrients, principally nitrate. This pollutant fertilizes
the abundant growth of tiny, floating algae. As blooms of the algae go
through their natural life cycles and die, they fall to the bottom and
create a feast for bacteria. Growing in unnatural abundance, the
bacteria use up most of the oxygen from the bottom water.
Dead zones tend to develop in quiet, deep water a few km offshore.
Typically, they appear where a river spews rich plumes of nutrients
into water that's stratified because of either temperature or salinity
differences between the bottom and the top of the water column. If the
water doesn't mix, oxygen isn't replenished in the lower half.
...Sixty-eight large, persistent, and recurring dead zones spanning the
world's seas were reported for the first time during the 1990s. . .
. On March 29, [2005], the United Nations Environment Program . .
. concluded that there are [now] some 150 recurring and permanent dead
zones in seas worldwide.
...Fully oxygenated waters contain as much as 10 parts per million of
oxygen. Once oxygen falls to 5 ppm, fish and other aquatic animals have
trouble breathing. Sharks begin vacating areas with 3 ppm of oxygen,
while most other fish can hold out until about 2 ppm. Sediment dwellers
that can't leave a hypoxic zone begin dying at around 1.5 ppm.
...When spring rains scour farm fields as far upstream as
Minnesota and [Iowa,] spilling huge quantities of nitrogen
into the Mississippi, it's only a matter of weeks before the oxygen
concentrations in the Gulf begin to respond. "Once a decline starts, it
goes from about 5 [ppm] to close to 0 in about 7 to 10 days," [says
Nancy Rabalais, an aquatic ecologist with the Louisiana Universities
Marine Consortium in Chauvin].
(Click here to read the complete article.)
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