“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Allison Killkenney: Occupy the Pipeline: Fracking Threat Comes to NYC
A massive new pipeline that will carry hydrofracked gas is being constructed in New York City. The pipeline, built by subsidiaries of Spectra Energy, will carry the gas from the Marcellus Shale, a bed that lies under Pennsylvania and New York State, into New York City’s gas infrastructure. Naturally, the construction of such a pipeline, carrying controversial highly pressurized gas, has been met with resistance.
In the spring of 2012, Occupy the Pipeline emerged, raising health and safety concerns about the pipeline.
For starters, the group states the Marcellus shale has seventy times the average radioactivity of natural gas and possesses extremely high radon content. Worse, monitoring radon content doesn’t appear to be a priority for federal regulators. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission stated radon risk assessment is “outside their purview.” High radon levels have been linked to increases in the risk of lung cancer among non-smokers, a claim Occupy the Pipeline restates in a video that was recently picked up by Upworthy (the video currently has been viewed over 470,000 times):
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Diplomacy is better than military action in Syria
The reported use of chemical weapons by Syria’s embattled Assad regime has not made much difference in that devastated country. Tens of thousands have been killed in brutal fighting already, and the heart-rending violence continues with no end in sight. [..]
Fortunately, the American people don’t share the lust for war. Tired of wasting lives and resources on misadventure abroad, most Americans oppose even sending arms and supplies to the rebels in Syria. That is also true of public opinion among our European allies.
The horrors in Syria can’t simply be ignored, however. Rather than escalating our military involvement, Obama should redouble our humanitarian efforts both for the growing numbers of displaced refugees, and for those starving inside of Syria. He can seek to reengage the Russian and Chinese – and through them the Iranians – to restrain Assad. He can reengage the U.N. Security Council and press it to take multilateral action, and use our influence with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to check escalating support for the divided rebels. And he can seek to restrain Israel from provoking a regional war with Hezbollah. The president should be seeking to reduce the violence, not arm and escalate it.
Investigators are blaming ammonium nitrate for the massive explosion that devastated most of the town of West, Texas, on April 17. The chemical, which was stored in large amounts at the West Fertilizer Co., is used to make fertilizer. It’s also used by coal companies to blow up mountains.
Ammonium nitrate poses a threat to human and environmental health not only when it catalyzes fatally in a dangerous stockpile but also when particles of the stuff shatter into the air and seep into groundwater from strip mining, say residents of mining communities. Opponents of so-called “mountaintop removal” are in DC this week, taking that message to the Obama administration in a week of action culminating May 8 with a delivery of toxic water to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Amanda Marcotte: Time To Demand All Birth Control Pills Be Sold Over-The-Counter
In all the fussing over the sales of emergency contraception over the counter, it’s easy to forget that there’s another contraception drug out there that should be available over the counter (OTC) but isn’t: the ordinary, everyday birth control pill. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) thinks birth control pills should be sold OTC. Most other countries sell birth control pills OTC. And now, as Think Progress reports, nearly two-thirds of American women say they want the pill sold OTC, and about 30 percent of the respondents who aren’t currently on the pill would consider going on it if this option was available.
So why can’t we have this, when the public and the medical establishment both think it’s a great idea? Part of it is no doubt the politics of it. As the furor over emergency contraception-which you only take in emergencies (and don’t need if you’re consistent with your birth control pills)-demonstrates, the idea of women being able to prevent pregnancy easily sets off all sorts of irrational reactions in this country. You should have to struggle for it to prove you deserve to be not-pregnant, because… mmmph that’s why. The religious right already believes that contraception is “too” easy to get, which is why they’ve been attacking it with so much vigor lately. Trying to make birth control pills available OTC would set off a political firestorm that would make the emergency contraception wars look like mere skirmishes.
Ann Neumann: Guantánamo Is Not an Anomaly – Prisoners in the US Are Force-Fed Every Day
I know a hunger-striking prisoner who hasn’t eaten solid food in more than five years. He is being force-fed by the medical staff where he’s incarcerated. Starving himself, he told me during one of our biweekly phone calls last year, is the only way he has to exercise his first amendment rights and to protest his conviction. Not eating is his only available free speech act. [..]
But William Coleman is not at Guantánamo. He’s in Connecticut. The prison medical staff force-feeding him are on contract from the University of Connecticut, not the U.S. Navy. Guantánamo is not an anomaly. Prisoners – who are on U.S. soil and not an inaccessible island military base – are routinely and systematically force-fed every day.
The accounts of force-feeding coming out of Guantánamo, including Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel’s “Gitmo is Killing Me” in The New York Times two weeks ago, are consistent with how Coleman has described the process to me – and to the Supreme Court of Connecticut.
Kathleen Shuler: Cadmium, Mercury and Phthalates-Oh My!
Over 5000 children’s products contain toxic chemicals linked to cancer, hormone disruption and reproductive problems, including the toxic metals, cadmium, mercury and antimony, as well as phthalates and solvents. A new report by the Washington Toxics Coalition and Safer States reveals the results of manufacturer reporting to the Washington State Department of Ecology.
Makers of kids’ products reported using 41 of the 66 chemicals identified by WA Ecology as a concern for children’s health. Major manufacturers who reported using the chemicals in their products include Walmart, Gap, Gymboree, Hallmark, H & M and others. They use these chemicals in an array of kids’ products, including clothing, footwear, toys, games, jewelry, accessories, baby products, furniture, bedding, arts and crafts supplies and personal care products. Besides exposing kids in the products themselves, some of these chemicals, for example toxic flame retardants, build up in the environment and in the food we eat.
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