Truthout 2/21

William Rivers Pitt | The Revolution Is Being Televised
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "I wrote this past weekend about the very real danger facing the Republican Party in 2012 thanks to the 'Tea Party' uprising within the GOP base. I noted that it was preposterous to be talking about the inside baseball of the '12 election three years out, and it turns out that assessment was exactly correct. The GOP's Tea Party problem is blowing up right now, and threatens to wreak extreme havoc for them not only in the upcoming midterms, but in the next several elections to come."
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Obama Pressed to Release Identity of Telecom Lobbyists
William Fisher, Truthout: "Despite President Barack Obama's pledge in the State of the Union address to 'require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress,' the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says the Obama administration has been 'fighting hard to stop the release of the names of these representatives.'"
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Gaza Fishermen Fight to Keep a Way of Life Alive
Pam Rasmussen, Truthout: "Once upon a time, this little strip of land (just 139 square miles, about twice the size of Washington, DC) was a potentially booming resort and fishing capital, with 25 miles of beautiful coastline and beaches and a Mediterranean seaport teeming with sardines and shrimp."
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Congress Launches Investigation into Gas Drilling Practices
Sabrina Shankman and Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica: "Two of the largest companies involved in natural gas drilling have acknowledged pumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel-based fluids into the ground in the process of hydraulic fracturing, raising further concerns that existing state and federal regulations don't adequately protect drinking water from drilling."
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Iran, What Regime?
Le Monde's editorialist: "On Monday, February 15, American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton characterized the Iranian regime as a virtual military dictatorship. Although Mrs. Clinton, an accomplished Yale graduate, often takes on a professorial tone, Monday she was not indulging in an academic exercise on the typology of political regimes...She was delivering a warning: the United States and their allies will be imposing a sanctions regime against Iran, specifically targeting the Guardians of the Revolution."
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Without More Federal Help, States Might Cut Medicaid
David Goldstein, McClatchy Newspapers: "Unless Congress bails them out, states probably will have to cut health coverage for low-income families and others without insurance, a new report says. Lawmakers included higher Medicaid reimbursement funds for states in last year's economic stimulus bill, but the money will expire next Dec. 31."
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Some Sanity Creeps into the Drug War
Jess Hunter-Bowman, Minuteman Media: "There's one thing that Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama have all agreed on: expanding military aid to Latin America to fight the so-called 'Drug War.' A new phase of the Drug War began in 2000 under President Bill Clinton, with $1.3 billion in 'emergency' funding to fight cocaine production in Colombia by destroying the raw material for it - coca plants. President George W. Bush continued the fight, which sent nearly $6 billion in aid to Colombia between 2000 and 2008."
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Bulgarian Government Forced Down on Genetically Modified Crops
Claudia Ciobanu, Inter Press Service: "Campaigning by environmental groups and the general public has weakened the determination of the Bulgarian government to allow the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in this country. In January 2010, the Bulgarian parliament voted, on a first reading, legislation allowing the release of GM organisms into the environment. But as the law awaited final passage, the Environmental Parliamentary Committee came under public pressure to accept a five-year moratorium on GM cultivation and a ban on testing near organic fields and beehives."
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Asia-Produced Ozone Making its Way to US
Les Blumenthal, McClatchy Newspapers: "A new study further bolsters concerns that pollution blowing across the Pacific Ocean from China and other rapidly developing Asian nations may swamp efforts to clean up the air in the Western United States and make it difficult for states and cities to meet federal standards."
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