News Nuggets 611

 A reflection of El Capitan in the Merced River in winter in Yosemite National Park.  From National geographic.

REGIONAL ENVIRONMENT NUGGET!!
Bradford County Fracking Spill Stopped After Two Days Of Leaking Chemicals In Pennsylvania from the Associated Press via Huffington Post
"Thousands of gallons of brine water used in the hydraulic fracturing drilling operation leaked from the out-of-control well following the equipment failure Tuesday night. Some of the drilling fluid crossed farm fields and entered a stream, but company officials say there was minimal environmental impact."

In The East, Plans For A Post-Gadhafi Libya (Peter Kenyon) from NPR's Morning Edition Saturday
"Although the battle is still raging in Libya, the people in the eastern part of the country are already making plans for the new society they hope to have if and when Moammar Gadhafi falls."
While the storyline out of Lybya lately has been one of stalemate, the people Kenyon interviews remind us how truly revolutionary (in a good way) even the ideas of "democracy" and "freedom" can be.

Syria: Is Assad's Clan Turning Against Him? from Time Magazine
"...some now believe that inside the regime, the President isn't as powerful as he might seem. One activist said: "We wonder who really makes decisions in this country.""

As I noted in an earlier post, I had suspected that this split was growing.

What Happens When the Arab Spring Turns to Summer? (David Ignatius) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had it right when he said in March that this is "dark territory"; it's impossible to read the overhead imagery, so to speak, and know what's down there in terms of outcomes. In what follows, I want to offer a skeptical analytical look -- not predicting failure, but warning of obstacles ahead."

Libyan Army Ordered To Retreat From City Of Misrata, Says Wounded Government Soldier from Reuters via the Huffington Post
""We have been told to withdraw. We were told to withdraw yesterday," the soldier, Khaled Dorman, told Reuters."
All may not be what it seems with this story.  The tribes that support the Qaddafi regime have apparently communicated to him that, if the army can't take Misrata, the army should get out of the way and the tribes will take the city.  While I know nothing about these tribes, I'm curious -- are they better armed than the army?!  Till now it has seemed that advanced armaments have been the decisive advantage Qaddafi had.  What do the tribes have that the army doesn't?

Is America Still a Serious Nation? (Robert Shrum) from The Week
"A serious nation would not shortchange an intervention in Libya that's as right as Vietnam was wrong."
I do not share Shrum's sense of moral clarity concerning a comparison of Libya and Vietnam -- even as I agree with his critique of the intervention as being per-se inevitably some new version of Vietnam.  I often think that, for those on the right, intervention becomes justified because they are locked into a non-interventionist narrative shaped by Munich, 1938 where all dictators become Hitlers and all those willing to negotiate become Neville Chamberlains.  In contrast, on the left the narrative is shaped by Vietnam where intervention is inevitably futile and greater involvement equals a costly, values-destroying quagmire.  As a historian, I find analogies from the past routinely to be quite useful and insightful.  In these two circumstances, however, I find both to be so completely worn out by their adherents as to be more ideological litmus-tests than evidence of people genuinely *learning* from the past.  In my view, US intervention in Libya was driven NOT by any high "rescuing freedom" narrative but more by an emerging condition where doing nothing involved as much geopolitical and moral peril as taking action.  I'll say more later.

The 3-Word Phrase That Signals Obama's Intentions on Taxes (Joshua Green) from the Atlantic
"it's when he said that "millionaires and billionaires" could afford to pay a little more. A cheer went up in the room where he was watching, one Democrat told me, when Obama uttered it. In fact, Obama used it four times. ... Thus, when Obama invoked "millionaires and billionaires," he was signaling to his party that he means business."

Conservative Strategists Warn GOP About Economic Risks Of Pushing Debt Ceiling Debate Too Far from the Huffington Post
"If the markets get spooked, U.S. treasury bond yields will spike, driving up interest rates and increasing the price of borrowing money for everyone from the federal government to municipalities to consumers, Fratto warned. The cascading effects on the economy would be severe and long-lasting."

Wanna Buy a Turnpike? (Gail Collins) from the New York Times
"Right now you’re probably asking yourself: How are all the angry new governors doing? Great! Fear and loathing may abound, but it’s business-friendly fear and loathing."

One and a Half Cheers for the Bishops (Mark Shields) from Creators Syndicate
"Signed by Bishops Henry Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., the chair of the Bishops Committee on International Justice and Peace, and Stephen Blare, chair of the Committee on Domestic Peace and Human Development, the letter was clear and unambiguous that "a central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects 'the least of these' (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first." Toward that objective, "a just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons.""

Genetic Breakthrough May Stop Mosquitoes Spreading Malaria from the Independent [of the UK]
"Scientists have figured out a way to block the spread of malaria using genetically-modified (GM) mosquitoes that carry synthetic genes to curb the transmission of the blood parasite when the insect bites its human host."

Wall Street Front Group Loading Up Conservative Activists With Soft Ball Questions For GOP Town Halls from Think Progress
"Slate’s Dave Weigel reports that American Action Network, a relatively new conservative front group founded by a group of Wall Street bankers, is loading up conservative activists with softball questions and talking points to bolster Republican lawmakers on the Ryan plan"
Here's Weigel's original story.

Town Hall Citizens Confront Rep. Sean Duffy For Voting To Privatize Medicare And Defend Tax Breaks For Rich from Think Progress
"All across America, a Main Street Movement has broken out to defend the middle class against right-wing attacks on labor rights and basic public services.... On Tuesday, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) was the latest congressman to face the ire of Main Street America during a town hall event with constituents who stopped being polite and started getting real."

Of Donald, Dunces and Dogma (Charles Blow) from the New York Times
"Let me be clear: Trump’s little game doesn’t reflect American ideology as much as it exposes the flaws within it.  It further exacerbates a corrosive culture on the right that now celebrates the Cult of Idiocy — from Glenn Beck to Michele Bachmann — where riling liberals is more valuable than reason and logic, and where intellectualism and even basic learnedness are viewed with suspicion and contempt."
Out pundit-of-the-day!!

RELIGION NUGGETS!!
David Brooks started a very interesting conversation about the nature of 21st century religious faith in his column about the qualities of the recent musical "The Book of Mormon".  Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Beast has a great response!!