The McGangBang: A McChicken Sandwich INSIDE a Double Cheeseburger  http://bit.ly/1XNfMz

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
Posted on November 20, 2009, Printed on November 20, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/144086/

This post originally appeared in PEEK.

Rick Perry is out of control.

Even as the controversy over his execution of an innocent man goes unresolved, last night the Texas Governor rejected a rare clemency recommendation from the state Board of Pardons and Paroles for a man facing execution for a murder he did not commit.

Robert Lee Thompson was an accomplice in a violent convenience store robbery in Houston in 1996, when his co-conspirator fatally shot the sales clerk, a man named Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed. Thompson himself fired shots that wounded Mohammed, but it was his partner, Sammy Butler, who pulled the trigger that would leave him dead. Butler was tried and sentenced to life. A different jury found Thompson guilty and sentenced him to death.

Thompson was sentenced under Texas's Law of Parties, a cynical legal statute that allows multiple parties to be found guilty of the same crime, even if they did not directly participate in it. Similar to other felony murder statutes, Texas's law states that "if, in the attempt to carry out a conspiracy to commit one felony, another felony is committed by one of the conspirators, all conspirators are guilty of the felony actually committed, though having no intent to commit it."

Under the Law of Parties, defendants can be held responsible for "failing to anticipate" that the "conspiracy" would lead to a murder.

Numerous defendants who did not kill anyone have been executed under the Law of Parties; that Perry wouldn't hesitate to sign off on Thompson's execution should comes as no surprise. But yesterday Thompson was granted a recommendation for clemency by the state's Board of Pardons and Paroles -- an extremely rare move. The Board, whose members are political appointments, has only recommended clemency two other times in recent memory.

One of these was two years ago in the case of Kenneth Foster, Jr., who also faced execution under the Law of Parties. In his case, the murder took place while he was in a car, 18 feet away. A grassroots campaign rose up to stop Foster's execution and in August 2007, Perry took the Board's recommendation and spared his life.

Yesterday, the Board voted 5 to 2 to spare Robert Lee Thompson, a "highly unusual" move in the words of the Houston Chronicle, and one described by Thompson's lawyer, as "hugely significant."

"I'm thrilled," he said, upon hearing news of the Board vote.

But in Texas, the Governor has the final say in clemency decisions. Despite the rare recommendation, Perry, who faces a close primary election next year against Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, was unmoved. Hours after the Board's vote, he released a statement saying that he saw "no reason" to spare Thompson's life.

Thompson was executed on schedule, at 6pm Texas time. According to AP reporter Michael Graczyk, "his mother cried uncontrollably, stomped her feet and finally demanded to be taken from the witness area before her son was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m."

Statements were released by the Texas Moratorium Network on behalf of family members of death row prisoners also sentenced under the Law of Parties, including one from Terri Been, whose brother, Jeff Wood, came close to being executed in August 2008 for a murder he did not commit.

"I must say that I was surprised to hear that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles grew a conscious and voted in favor of clemency for Robert Thompson, since they unanimously voted for the execution of my brother, Jeff Wood, who was also convicted under the law of parties despite the fact that he is factually innocent of murder," said Been. "However, I was not surprised to hear Perry didn't jump on board the clemency train as the man has no sense of true justice."  

Efforts have been made to roll back the Law of Parties. This year, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill to ban executions of people convicted under the Law of Parties who did not actually kill anyone. The legislation never made it out of the Senate.

Scott Cobb of the Texas Moratorium Network accused Perry of playing politics with the death penalty.

"Rick Perry is using the death penalty issue to endear himself to right-wing voters in the upcoming Republican primary, but his actions do not reflect the priorities of mainstream Texans who are increasingly concerned about the fairness of the Texas death penalty system," he said.

This summer, Perry signed off on the 200th execution of his career, a record unmatched even by his predecessor, George W. Bush. It is a grotesque figure, one that includes the killing of more than one prisoner with overwhelming innocence claims, including Reginald Blanton, who was executed last month.

Robert Lee Thompson may have committed a violent crime, but in the end, he was not a murderer. The same cannot be said for Perry.

Liliana Segura is a staff writer and editor of AlterNet's Rights and Liberties and World Special Coverage.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/144086/

By Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise
Posted on November 20, 2009, Printed on November 20, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://majikthise.typepad.com//144085/

This story should put the annoying "bad mommy" confessional genre out of its misery. Nothing can top this. Bad mommies have officially jumped the shark:

An Arkansas mom allegedly allowed a police office to taze (link fixed) her 10-year-old daughter because the girl was having a tantrum. The girl will face disorderly conduct charges. The head of the Arkansas State Police says he isn't sure if the officer made a mistake when he shocked an unarmed child who wouldn't take a shower.

Lindsay Beyerstein a New York writer blogging at Majikthise.

© 2009 Majikthise All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://majikthise.typepad.com//144085/

http://bit.ly/1sYcz3

An eminent rabbi was so exhausted after three days of constant cocaine-fuelled partying with escorts that his pimp grew worried and cancelled that day’s supply of girls, a jury was told.

Rabbi Baruch Chalomish, 55, who has a £6 million fortune, was a scholarly academic, an accomplished businessman, a charity giver and a dutiful family man until his first wife died of cancer and his world fell apart.

He turned to alcohol in his depression, then took refuge in cocaine, spending up to £1,000 a week. He lived in squalor, seeking comfort from prostitutes, Manchester Crown Court was told.

The prosecution said that Chalomish was the financier in a commercial cocaine supply business while Nasir Abbas, 54, a convicted drug dealer, provided the drugs and the customers.

The pair rented a luxury flat in Manchester and for ten days over the new year enjoyed a non-stop party. Mr Abbas admitted to police that he procured a supply of girls from an agency called Pure Class. They were also offered cocaine.

The court was told that on the ninth day, and after the rabbi had stayed up for three straight days, Mr Abbas was so concerned about his health that he scrapped that day’s supply of prostitutes. In a text message to a woman called Clio he wrote: “Hi Clio, I have tried to wake Shel up but I don’t want to wake him. He was very tired because he had no sleep for three days, needed to rest, because he is going to his office to work on Monday at 8. Please cancel the party today.”

Michael Goldwater, for the prosecution, said that at 9am on January 5 police raided the flat finding evidence of a substantial drugs operation including cocaine, cutting agents and scales. Officers found an equal amount of the drug at Chalomish’s home in Prestwich, in the heart of Manchester’s Orthodox Jewish community, as well as cutting agents and more than £15,000 in cash.

Chalomish denies supplying the drug but admits having it. Mr Abbas, who said that he was too scared to attend the trial after the rabbi “sent around some heavies” to threaten him, faces charges of having cocaine with intent to supply.

Jonathan Goldberg, QC, for the defence, said that the rabbi’s fall from grace was a tragedy. He said that his client never supplied the drug but hoarded large supplies of pure cocaine to evade “unscrupulous dealers” known to use rat poison and other dangerous mixing agents. The trial continues.

 by http://bit.ly/8Xg1Yp

Chalk up a rare victory for the little guy (and the nation itself). The Bill To Audit Federal Reserve Passes Key Hurdle

In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter.

The measure, cosponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), authorizes the Government Accountability Office to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the Fed's opaque deals with foreign central banks and major U.S. financial institutions. The Fed has never had a real audit in its history and little is known of what it does with the trillions of dollars at its disposal.

Backers of the Watt amendment pressed their case on Wednesday by sending a letter from a "political cross section of prominent economists" backing a measure like Watt's. HuffPost reported, however, that those economists might well have be prominent, but they certainly aren't a "political cross section." Seven of the eight economists in question have extensive connections to the Fed -- and half of them are currently on the Fed payroll. Those affiliations were not noted in the letter.

The playbook in Washington often goes like this: When a measure that threatens the establishment builds enough momentum that it must be dealt with, it is labeled as "unserious." The Washington Post editorial board, true to the script, called Paul's measure "an unserious answer to a serious question."

And it particularly rankles the center that a pair of "wingnuts" are behind a successful effort to challenge the prevailing order. [See Grayson Called "Wingnut" By New York Times].

For anyone remaining confused, the debate was further clarified by the central bank itself: Federal Reserve Vice Chair Don Cohn and General Counsel Scott Alvarez spent much of the day calling committee members, urging them to oppose the Paul-Grayson amendment in favor of Watt's, a member of Congress who asked for confidentiality told HuffPost.

Paul's opponents also placed a letter from former Fed chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker on the seats of every committee member. Such a move is in violation of House rules and Grayson was able to have the letters removed.

As the day wore on and support held for the Paul-Grayson side, the Fed still could hope that both would pass. Watt's amendment, which included additional restriction, would then trump Paul's.

To counter that possibility, the Paul-Grayson side moved to fully replace Watt's amendment with theirs, leaving only one amendment to vote on. The motion carried and the amendment passed in a landslide.

Frank said he was opposing the Paul amendment because it could be perceived as influencing monetary policy, which can have inflationary pressure. "Perception is very important in monetary policy," said Frank.

He urged a no vote, yet 15 Democrats bucked him, voting with Paul.

"Today was Waterloo for Fed secrecy," a victorious Grayson said afterwards.

Clearly Grayson has this story cold. Equally as clearly, Barney Frank is a liar who never supported a true audit the Fed proposal in the first place.

Thanks to the Huffington Post for running these stories. Also thanks go to everyone who called, phoned, or faxed in support for the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson amendment.

Bear in mind there will be other attempts to water down this bill and/or to change it dramatically in the Senate. Be prepared to phone, fax, and call in again as necessary.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

 by Susie Madrak http://bit.ly/4AAgY4

Congressional Democrats are calling for two inquiries after the New York Times reported earlier this week that drug companies were jacking up their prices, negating savings they promised for healthcare reform:

Responding to news reports of unusually high wholesale price increases in brand-name prescription drugs, four House leaders and one senator asked for government reviews of the pricing practices.

Although drug makers challenge the theory, some experts say the run-up in wholesale prices may be partly related to the industry’s concerns about future cost containment under any health care legislation.

“Recent studies have indicated that the industry may be artificially raising prices for certain pharmaceutical products in expectation of new reforms,” the House Democrats wrote in a letter to the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress. “Any price gouging is unacceptable, but anticipatory price gouging is especially offensive,” the letter added, asking the G.A.O. to conduct an expedited review of the price increases.

[...] Separately, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, a Democrat who has led efforts in the Senate to seek more concessions from drug makers, wrote to the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services asking for “an immediate and thorough investigation into drug industry pricing and recent increases, and the extent to which these increases may affect the Medicare and Medicaid programs.”

 by David Weigel http://bit.ly/5O9llv

 by Ben Popken http://bit.ly/6mvPfK

By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica
Posted on November 10, 2009, Printed on November 20, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143850/

As New York gears up for a massive expansion of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, state officials have made a potentially troubling discovery about the wastewater created by the process: It's radioactive. And they have yet to say how they'll deal with it.

The information comes from New York's Department of Environmental Conservation, which analyzed 13 samples of wastewater brought thousands of feet to the surface from drilling and found that they contain levels of radium-226, a derivative of uranium, as high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the environment and thousands of times the limit safe for people to drink.

The findings, if backed up with more tests, have several implications: The energy industry would likely face stiffer regulations and expenses, and have more trouble finding treatment plants to accept its waste -- if any would at all. Companies would need to license their waste handlers and test their workers for radioactive exposure, and possibly ship waste across the country. And the state would have to sort out how its laws for radioactive waste might apply to drilling and how the waste could impact water supplies and the environment.

What is less clear is how the wastewater may affect the health of New Yorkers, since the danger depends on how much radiation people are exposed to and how they are exposed to it. Radium is known to cause bone, liver and breast cancers, and the EPA publishes exposure guidelines for it, but there is still disagreement over exactly how dangerous low-level doses can be to workers who handle it, or to the public.

The DEC has yet to address any of these questions. But New York's Health Department raised concerns about the amount of radioactive materials in the wastewater in a confidential letter to the DEC's oil and gas regulators in July.

"Handling and disposal of this wastewater could be a public health concern," DOH officials said in the letter, which was obtained by ProPublica. "The issues raised are not trivial, but are also not insurmountable."

The letter warned that the state may have difficulty disposing of the drilling waste, that thorough testing will be needed at water treatment plants, and that workers may need to be monitored for radiation as much as they might be at nuclear facilities.

Health Department officials declined to comment on the letter. The DEC sent an e-mail response to questions about the radioactivity stating that "concentrations are generally not a problem for water discharges, or in solid waste streams" in New York state. But the agency did not directly address the radioactivity levels, which were disclosed in the appendices of the agency's environmental review of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, released Sept. 30.

The review did not calculate how much radioactivity people may be exposed to, even though such calculations are routinely completed by scientists studying radiation exposure. Yet the review concluded that radiation levels were "very low" and that the wastewater "does not present a risk to workers." DEC officials declined to explain how they reached this conclusion.

Although the review pointed to a possible need for radioactive licensing and disposal for certain materials, and it looked at other states with laws aimed at radioactive waste from drilling, the DEC said there is no precedent for examining how these radioactive materials might affect the environment when brought to the surface at the volumes and scale expected in New York. And it said that more study is needed before the DEC can lay out precise plans to deal with the waste.

In comments to ProPublica, the DEC emphasized that the environmental review proposes testing all wastewater for radioactivity before it is allowed to leave the well site, and said that the volumes of brine water, which contain most of the radioactivity detected, would be far less than the volumes of fluid from hydraulic fracturing that are removed from the well.

What scientists call naturally occurring radioactive materials -- known by the acronym NORM -- are common in oil and gas drilling waste, and especially in brine, the dirty water that has been soaking in the shale for centuries. Radium, a potent carcinogen, is among the most dangerous of these metals because it gives off radon gas, accumulates in plants and vegetables and takes 1,600 years to decay. Geologists say radioactivity levels can vary across the Marcellus, but the tests taken so far suggest the amount of radioactive material measured in New York is far higher than in many other places.

The state took its 13 samples -- 11 of which significantly exceeded legal limits -- between October 2008 and April 2009. The DEC did not respond to questions about whether additional sampling has begun or whether the state would begin issuing drilling permits before the radioactivity issues are resolved. The DEC told ProPublica it did not know where the wastewater would be treated.

"It's got to go somewhere," said Theodore Adams, a radiation remediation and water treatment consultant with 30 years of experience with radioactive waste. "It's not going to just go away."

A Vague Threat

Determining the health threat that radioactive material poses to workers and to the public is complicated. Measuring human exposure -- which is quantified in doses of millirems per year -- from radiation is notoriously difficult, in part because it depends on variables like whether objects interfere with radiation, or how sustained exposure is over long periods of time.

Gas industry workers, for example, would almost certainly face an increased risk of cancer if they worked in a confined space where radon gas, a leading cause of lung cancer and a derivative of radium, can collect to dangerous levels. They would also be at risk if they somehow swallowed or breathed fumes from the radioactive wastewater, or handled the concentrated materials regularly for 20 years. But without these types of intensive or confined exposures, the materials may be less dangerous, making it difficult to discern effects on workers' health, experts say.

People absorb radioactivity in their daily routines, complicating health assessments. Eighty percent of human radioactivity exposure comes from natural sources, according to the EPA. Everything from granite countertops to a pile of playground dirt can emit radioactivity that is higher than the EPA, which regulates based on a theory that zero exposure is best, may prefer.

"You start with the world where you and I are getting an exposure from the sun, from the soil we walk on, from the brick in our house that on average is about 400 millirems a year -- which is dangerous," said Tom Lenhart, a former member of the federal-state Interagency Steering Committee on Radiation Standards. "The EPA would never allow that kind of exposure. So you are starting from a baseline of dangerous exposure, and this is what makes regulating it a nightmare."

The EPA estimates that Americans are exposed to about 300 to 360 millirems per year, including routine artificial exposures like getting an X-ray or flying in an airplane. Each multiple of this "background level" denotes a proportional increase in the chance of getting cancer.

The natural radioactivity of the Marcellus Shale has caused concern since the mid-1980s, when high levels of radon gas were found in the basements of homes in Marcellus, a town in upstate New York, where the shale reaches the surface. The question has long been, if the Marcellus can cause radioactive gas to seep into people's basements, how much radioactivity might be infused into the water left over from drilling? Add to that the question of how much human exposure can be expected from the radiation detected at some Marcellus drilling sites.

In its environmental review, the state said it couldn't answer those questions because exposure depends on so many variables and because the units of measurement for human exposure and concentrations in water are incompatible. There is "no simple or universally accepted equivalence between these units," the DEC wrote in its environmental review.

But Rick Kessy, operations manager for Fortuna Energy, a subsidiary of Canadian Talisman Energy and the largest gas producer in New York, says his company has assessed worker exposure at two of the company's well sites in Pennsylvania, where it found no serious risk.

And a U.S. Department of Energy expert who specializes in such exposure conversions said an analysis in New York should be "very easy to do."

"If they know the concentrations and they know the exposure pathways it should be straightforward to calculate that," said Charley Yu, who runs the national computer dose modeling program at Argonne National Labs for the U.S. Department of Energy.

In fact, New York's DEC used Yu's government modeling program, called RESRAD, in a 1999 study [1] to establish radioactivity exposure risks for oilfield brine spread on roads, a common disposal practice. Its brine samples in that case contained far less radium than the Marcellus water. It laid out a simple scenario, assuming a person walked on the road for two hours a day over 20 years and a fixed quantity of brine was spread there. That study found no threat to human health.

No such analysis was included in the state's recent supplemental environmental impact statement.

Few Disposal Options

All this would be of substantially less concern if New York were like most of the other states that produce some radioactive waste during natural gas drilling. In those states, the waste is re-injected underground. But in New York, injection disposal wells are uncommon, and those that do exist aren't licensed to receive radioactive waste or Marcellus Shale wastewater, according to the EPA. Instead, most drilling wastewater is treated by municipal or industrial water treatment plants and discharged back into public waterways.

The radium-laden wastewater would almost certainly need to be carefully treated by plants capable of filtering out the radioactive substances. Kessy, the Fortuna manager, which operates five of the wells with spiked readings in New York, said the levels are higher than he has seen elsewhere. Treatment plants in Pennsylvania are accepting Fortuna wastewater with much lower levels of radioactivity from the company's wells there, Kessy said, but if plants can't take the higher concentrations, it could be crippling.

"In the event that they were not able to comply due to high radioactivity, they would reject the water," Kessy said. "And if we did not have a viable option for it, our operations would just shut down. There is no other option."

It is not clear which treatment plants, if any in New York, are capable of handling such material.

DEC spokesman Yancey Roy said that "there are currently no facilities specifically designated for treating them." He added that the state depends on the drilling companies to make sure there is a legal treatment option for the water, and then reviews those plans.

"The department has not received any permit submissions from the well operators that include details about treatment options for the brine containing NORM," he said. "So we do not know what treatment options are being considered or how effective NORM removal will be."

ProPublica contacted several plant managers in central New York who said they could not take the waste or were not familiar with state regulations.

"We are not set up to take radioactive substances," said Patricia Pastella, commissioner of the Onondaga County Department of Water Environment Protection, which operates the Metropolitan plant in Syracuse, N.Y. "It does present a problem with disposal."

Filtering the water is just one of several problems. Plants that can filter out the radioactive materials are left with a concentrated sludge that has substantially higher radioactivity than the wastewater. Sludge can also collect inside the pipes at well sites, in waste pits and in holding tanks.

Federal laws don't directly address naturally occurring radioactivity, and the oil and gas industry is exempt from federal laws dictating handling of toxic waste, leaving the burden on New York state. New York has laws governing radioactive materials, but the state's drilling plans don't specify when they would apply.

Experts who reviewed the concentrations of radioactive metals found in New York's wastewater said the leftover sludge is likely to exceed the legal limits for hazardous waste and would need to be shipped to Idaho or Washington, to some of the only landfills in the country permitted to accept it.

Fortuna's Kessy said that's an acceptable cost of doing business. "We'll be willing, of course, to fund the necessary disposal means," he said.

The same may be required of some of the equipment used in drilling, which can eventually emit much higher levels of radiation than the water itself. Louisiana, for example, began regulating radioactive materials after it found radioactive build-up in pipes [2] dumped in scrap yards and in the steel used to build schoolyard bleachers.

But the levels in that state were just one-eighth of those measured so far in New York.

"I don't believe anyone has taken a look, seriously, at what the unintended consequences are to dealing with these kinds of materials," said Theodore Adams, the radioactive waste disposal consultant. "It's a unique animal -- a unique disposal -- and depending on where it is located and who is receiving it, it could have an impact."

Abrahm Lustgarten is a former staff writer and contributor for Fortune, and has written for Salon, Esquire, the Washington Post and the New York Times since receiving his master's in journalism from Columbia University in 2003.

© 2009 ProPublica All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143850/