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Rebuilding Clean Air Policy
Robert Sussman writes for The Center for American Progress: "The US clean air program sustained a severe blow on July 9 when a three-judge court in Washington, DC, overturned a sweeping Environmental Protection Agency rule - the Clean Air Interstate Rule - that was key to meeting air quality standards. CAIR mandated deep cuts in nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions at fossil-fuel power plants in 28 Eastern states and the District of Columbia."

Casting Doubt on a Voting Plan
Errol Louis writes in the New York Daily News: "Seventy-two days from now, when an estimated 122 million Americans will vote for our next president, nearly every crucial part of Election Day machinery - from the operation of the machines to the clarity of the ballot choices - will be, in many places, a confusing mess."

The Smash of Civilizations
Chalmers Johnson writes for TomDispatch.com: "There have been many dispiriting sights on TV since George Bush launched his ill-starred war on Iraq -- the pictures from Abu Ghraib, Fallujah laid waste, American soldiers kicking down the doors of private homes and pointing assault rifles at women and children. But few have reverberated historically like the looting of Baghdad's museum -- or been forgotten more quickly in this country."

That Troubled Terrorism List
The New York Times editorial states: "A half-billion-dollar emergency program to repair the nation’s main and deeply flawed terrorist watch list is 'on the brink of collapse,' according to a Congressional investigation. That means that warning signs of a terrorist attack could again be lost in the chaos. The new program, known as Railhead, is intended to fix the problems with the current outmoded program. That database - begun as an urgent priority after the Sept. 11 attacks - has been bedeviled by an array of problems, including the inability to do basic searches to find suspects’ names."

A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash
Amy Harmon, The New York Times: "In February, the Florida Department of Education modified its standards to explicitly require, for the first time, the state's public schools to teach evolution, calling it "the organizing principle of life science." Spurred in part by legal rulings against school districts seeking to favor religious versions of natural history, over a dozen other states have also given more emphasis in recent years to what has long been the scientific consensus: that all of the diverse life forms on Earth descended from a common ancestor, through a process of mutation and natural selection, over billions of years."

The Three Dumbest Neocon Predictions since the Disaster in Iraq
John Dolan writes for Alternet: "Now that the Beijing games have wound up, we can get on to a sporting event with real significance: a Neocon Olympics to decide the most grossly wrong, stupid prediction by a Neocon pundit post-Iraq. Of course, it's a very rich field. Being totally wrong about absolutely everything is the Neocons' job, and they've been working overtime on it. Their proudest moment had to be in the lead-up to the Iraq war when Kenneth Adelman assured America that democratizing Iraq would be "a cakewalk." Indeed, early Neocons like Adelman and Richard Perle (who predicted that Iraq would settle down "at the first whiff of gunpowder") set the bar for disastrously wrong predictions so high that some have suggested that the trophy be retired in their honor. But doing that would mean shutting out all the more recent Neocon predictions. Their little mistakes may not have cost as many trillions of dollars and thousands of lives as Adelman and Perle's, but give them time."

Net Neturality: Why You Should Give A Damn
Michael Janover writes in the Rocky Mountain News that if you believe in a true open market and don't want to give your freedom of choice to some corporate Big Brother, if you don't want your Internet experience censored, if you enjoy watching YouTube or visiting Facebook without limitations -- you probably support Net Neutrality without even realizing it.

Key News Audiences now Blend Online and Traditional Sources
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press says that for more than a decade, the audiences for most traditional news sources have steadily declined, as the number of people getting news online has surged. However, today it is not a choice between traditional sources and the Internet for the core elements of today's news audiences.

Pattern of Severe Anti-Gay Violence Nationwide
The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) reports a recent rash of at least 13 brutal and violent hate crimes that have occurred throughout the country on the heels of the murder of 15 year-old Lawrence King in Los Angeles and the brutal beating of Duanna Johnson, both in February of 2008. NCAVP reports that these hate crimes may indicate a frightening trend of increases in both the number and severity of anti-LGBT violence. NCAVP continues to be humbled by the strength and the dignity of these victims and survivors, and their loved ones.