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Last Friday, Columbia Pictures released Green Hornet, a movie about an unlikely super hero, which uses much of the same innovative technology behind digital film spectacles like Avatar. No doubt kids are transfixed; they may have gone multiple times and will likely become addicted to the iPhone and iPad video game, “Green Hornet: Wheels of Justice.” And if we don’t tell them that geometry is behind nearly every frame, the kids who love Green Hornet just might end up as the next generation of engineers.
The U.S. certainly needs

I’m writing this on Martin Luther King Day which is a widely celebrated holiday but my office is open for business today. Like many national holidays, ML King Day is anticipated by many as a day to sleep in a bit, putter around the house, perhaps a parade or just hanging out. Obviously, I feel differently about it. To me,

From his seat on the bus delivering him to aid retreating congressional Republicans conjuring their newest Dem-defeating strategies last weekend in Baltimore, Republican pollster/linguistic illusionist Frank Luntz issued a dare. He was on Public Radio International’s (PRI) aptly named To the Point , hosted by Warren Olney, a rare journalistic beacon of integrity and trustworthiness, where the discussion was about political rhetoric before and after Tucson.
Olney had quoted Glenn Beck’s stated desire “to kill Charlie Rangel with a shovel” and his prayers that “Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames.” These quotes prompted the Machiavellian conservative “language guy” to say “What I don’t understand is… why you haven’t provided quotes from MSNBC and Keith

In November 2010, in Hatton, Sri Lanka, Devarathnam Yogendra cooperated with the Bribery Commission to catch police officer IP Wijesuriya accepting bribes. A representative from the Bribery Commission watched as Wijesuriya accepted a bribe, then arrested him on charges of bribery (Case No.: 50600/01 in the Chief Magistrate’s Court of Colombo). Now Yogendra is being harassed, accused of fabricated offenses, assaulted, and threatened with death as a result of his involvement — by members of Sri Lanka’s police force.
In recent months, policemen have attempted to intimidate Yogendra with threats and violence. These officers have repeatedly abused the judicial system, filing false charges against

Just so you know: There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to buy high-capacity magazines for your favorite firearm. Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced my list. So we’ll have to figure out some of those perfectly good reasons for ourselves. Feel free to chime in — it’s like the ammo makers always say: The more, the

This week’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by President Obama stressed the importance of creating a pro-growth, pro-business regulatory environment which will help put Americans back to work. For many people who don’t live in Washington, the regulations passed by agencies like the FDA, the EPA and others seem less important than the big and well-publicized fights in Congress. But in reality, they are often much more impactful on business and hiring than, say, fights over tax cuts or Wall Street reform.
In his op-ed, the president talked about the case of saccharin, the sugar substitute, which the FDA deemed to be safe, but the EPA regulated as hazardous waste. This costs the companies that make the faux sugar millions of dollars every year to properly dispose and handle a product that is obviously not

Besieged citizens from the central Appalachian coalfields faced down Acting West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and a large crowd of Big Coal lobbyists and inflamed coal miners at a rally inside the state capitol with their own solemn march on the mounting health care crisis from mountaintop removal mining.
While the Friends of Coal-sponsored “call to arms” rally filled the state’s rotunda with the fervor of an old-time revival of denial, the dauntless coalfields residents paraded with signs that reframed the governor’s discussion on the EPA’s recent decision to veto the Spruce Mine permit as a reminder of still unrecognized health care impacts from the reckless strip-mining technique.
“This issue is not about coal,” said coal miner’s son and long-time coalfields justice activist Bo Webb. “It’s about the denial that a certain type of mining–mountaintop removing mining, which only provides 8 percent of our national coal production–is recklessly taking lives and our health across the coalfields of central Appalachia.”
While the governor stressed the issue of strip-mining jobs at stake, residents also pointed to the reality that more jobs have been lost and economic devastation have taken place due to the increasing mechanization of mountaintop removal and strip-mining operations and the stranglehold of such operations in blocking out any economic development or diversification
(Paul Corbit Brown photography)
Using millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives near residential areas and critical watersheds and waterways, mountaintop removal mining is the process of literally blowing off the tops of ranges and dumping toxic coal waste in the valleys.
Toting plastic bottles of toxic coal sludge and slurry from their wells and faucets, carrying signs that listed the health care impacts of mountaintop removal mining in their historic communities, the coalfield residents called on participants to recognize the mounting costs of reckless mining on the region’s affected

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Fox “News”: The most disinformative name in news!; California retreats…from the rising ocean; Update in the investigation of the nation’s worst coal mine accident in 40 years; Northern hemisphere’s growing season is growing longer … PLUS: Shh, don’t tell Fox! The Chinese president is a “global warming alarmist” … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Secret USDA study shows new pesticide is killing bees; Taxpayers subsidize “free” parking; Biotech firm patents organism that poops oil; Fracking Hell: the untold story of natural gas development in the Northeast; Interior

In March of 1980, a hate-filled, half-crazy man armed with a gun he got legally walked into my father’s office and shot him to death. Over the last 30 plus years I’ve had lots of time to think about hate speech, about the legal definition of insanity, and about how easy it is to get guns in our country.
As many have pointed out, hate speech doesn’t pull triggers, but is particularly dangerous when consumed by unbalanced people. In my father’s case, it was, I believe, left-wing hate speech that helped kill him: his murderer, a veteran of the civil rights movement, had taken in a lot of vitriol about my father over the years–that he was a sell-out, a CIA agent, the devil; that he, like other Jewish people who worked on the civil rights movement, was just trying to control

Today America celebrates the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy assuming the presidency, with Kennedy remaining the most popular president of the last 50 years.
Let’s end the mythology that America is moving to the right. In a Gallup poll released in December Americans gave John F. Kennedy an approval rating of 85%, the highest of any of the 9 presidents who have served in the last 50 years.
In the Gallup poll Ronald Reagan was second with 74% approval while Bill Clinton was third with

Even Superman has his bad days. We saw that last Sunday when the New England Patriots, widely viewed as the Superman of football, were beaten by the underdog New York Jets.
We saw it again in recent months when gold, the investment arena’s Superman, switched from the man of steel to a powder puff after racking up 10 straight years of gains (30% last year) during which it shot up more than six fold from $228 an ounce in 2001 to a recent all-time high in early December of $1,432.50. But since then, the yellow metal, which is looking quite toppy,has backtracked to around $1,350.
This decline, though hardly awesome, has led to a series of warnings, such as “the gold bubble is about to burst” and “a collapse in gold is imminent.”
One of the country’s dogged trackers of precious metals, a skilled market timer who warned of the recent gold selloff, is online investment adviser, Mark Leibovit, editor of the VR Gold Letter in Sedona, AZ. His latest thoughts: More gold weakness could be in the works into March which might knock down the price 10% to 25% from its recent high (which raises the prospects of a possible drop to as low as roughly $1,070).
But after the gold drop, he sees a likely gold pop.
The metal, as Leibovit sees it, has to overcome the lack of strong upside volume and the recent resistance to re-establish its short-term

The shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has led to a multitude of unanswered questions surrounding: gun regulation (or lack thereof); heated political rhetoric and its consequences; and what if any effect all of this will have on the 2012 presidential election.
An additional question yet to be properly discussed much less answered is: Who will represent Arizona in Giffords’ stead? Thankfully Rep. Giffords is on the road to recovery. However, it will be long, arduous and

Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, Jeopardy’s two greatest champions, have brains packed with facts. In one Final Jeopardy, Rutter actually recalled that President James Garfield’s wife was named Lucretia. And he deduced from this that the Mediterranean island that shared a nickname with a 19th century First Lady was “Crete.”
You might think that IBM’s Jeopardy computer, which is taking on Rutter and Jennings next month, would “know” billions of facts. But in truth, Watson is sure of

Of late, have you noticed how many speak in run-on sentences?
I’ve labeled them, Monologists”!
Beginning with one thought, they breathlessly advance to the next, continue on with a third, and so it goes, barely pausing a sec for possible response or input.
I’ve begun timing these “Monologists”, and am astonished that they can effortlessly precede for way beyond a hour.
In their overly self-centeredness, they must deeply believe their tales to be of extraordinary interest, whether the all-too-polite listener has already tuned out or not.
The irony being, of course, that frequently these stories contain the most boring of mundane details, revealing neither insight nor information.
Perhaps they have forgotten how to make a point.
Perhaps they spend too much time alone and have become addicted to their own reflective voice.
However, I have come to think that this may be the result of the over-use of our “new” one-sided technology.
By emailing on computer or smart (?) phone, texting, or leaving endless messages on voicemail,
there is no necessity for interplay. One merely “states”, speaks,

An Iraqi-born man accused in a US court on terrorism and conspiracy charges has been arrested in Edmonton, Alberta.
Faruq Khalil Muhammad Isa, 38, is accused of supporting a network of fighters that attacked a US convoy in Iraq in 2009, killing five US soldiers.
US prosecutors Mr Isa gave the network material support and sought to become a suicide bomber himself.
Mr Isa, a Canadian citizen, appeared in court on Thursday. His lawyer pledged to fight extradition to the

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Hu says China not seeking arms race or domination

Although Ahmed Ghailani’s lawyer today made a valiant effort to argue that his client’s conviction in November should be reversed, he will have an uphill battle convincing a very skeptical federal judge.
Defense attorney Michael Bachrach argued strenuously in federal court today that the verdict should be reversed because it was inconsistent: Ghailani was acquitted of 284 counts, including conspiracy to bomb the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, but he was convicted of one charge: conspiracy to destroy U.S. property. But the only

by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger The federal trial of three Pennsylvania police officers accused of covering up the murder of an undocumented Mexican immigrant opened last week–reigniting critical discussion about the recent rise of anti-immigrant hate crimes. The officers–former Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew Nestor, Lt. William Moyer and Patrolman Jason Hayes–allegedly attempted to conceal the racially motivated nature of the 2008 murder of 25-year-old Luis Ramirez, who was brutally beaten to death in a park by a group of teenagers spouting racial

Every time I begin writing this blog entry, something else happens to the Copts in Egypt. Earlier this week, an off-duty police officer opened fire on a train in the Minya governorate, killing one Coptic Christian and wounding five others. On New Year’s Eve, as Coptic Orthodox Christian worshippers celebrated the New Year in Alexandria, Egypt, a bomb detonated, killing at least 23 and injuring over 100 others.
Back in November, Al Qaeda in Iraq issued a statement threatening the Copts of Egypt after Al Qaeda’s massacre of a central Baghdad church. In response, the Egyptian government renounced such threats and vowed to protect Copts from Al

It is with a heavy heart that I continue to reflect upon the horrendous act of violence that occurred in Arizona on January 8, 2011. During this time of reflection, I pray for my colleague, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, her family, staff, supporters and all of the victims and survivors of this unspeakable act of violence. I am encouraged to see Gabby’s continued recovery, and I extend my sympathy to the families and friends whose loved ones were killed, and pray for the full recovery of all of the injured. Whether they had a title or not, these were human beings whose lives were cut short by this senseless act of gun violence.
The tragedy in Tucson was fresh in my mind on Monday as I gathered with the community to commemorate and celebrate the life of

Next month will mark the one-year anniversary of the launch of President Obama’s escalated military campaign in Afghanistan. One year later, violence is still getting worse and costs are skyrocketing. After more than nine years, it’s time to end this war.
Take a strong public stand against the war by posting your picture and comment on Rethink Afghanistan’s new “Because It’s Time” feature.
On February 13, 2010, NATO troops launched Operation Moshtarak in the Marjah district of Helmand