mjh’s blog — we know 21st-century technology guarantees the land’s protection

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski:

But if Arctic oil development was going to harm the environment or wildlife, then I would agree opening it would not be worth the cost. But the vast majority of Alaskans, including Alaska’s Eskimos who know it best, support ANWR’s development because we know 21st-century technology guarantees the land’s protection.

I hope Murkowski’s words haunt her forever. mjh

Alaska spill cleanup continues By RACHEL D’ORO, The Associated Press

“Hopefully, the tundra will recover,” said Ed Meggert with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. “It’s never going to be perfect.”

Officials emphasize the spill bears a small imprint, taking up a size smaller than two football fields in a vast industrial hub traversed by a network of pipelines, oil gathering stations and power plants. And despite the numbing conditions, the weather is actually helping recovery, turning oil thick as honey, so it doesn’t spread as quickly as it would in warmer temperatures.

The Prudhoe incident surpasses the 38,000 gallons spilled on the North Slope in 2001 but is much less than the 11 million gallons spilled in Prince William Sound when the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989.

The source of the spill was a quarter-inch hole apparently caused by corrosion inside the three-mile line that leads to the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

Workers on Saturday repaired the rupture, welding a metal sleeve on a six-foot section of the line.

Cold Slows Alaska Oil Spill Cleanup By RACHEL D‘ORO

The pipeline is equipped with a leak detection system, but officials do not know when the crude began trickling out of the line. BP will investigate whether the system was working at the time, Fausett said.

mjh’s blog Search Results for ANWR

If you’re like me, you may wince or roll your eyes at references to all Republicans as being a part of a “Culture of Corruption.” Most of the Republicans I know personally are fairly decent. Only one would like to see me arrested.

However, there is NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER that the elections in 2000 and 2004 constituted a perfect storm for two powerful influences in our society: the sleaziest Capitalists and the most repressive Puritans — keep reading if you have any doubts. Even if we don’t slide into fascism, the worst corporations will cut our throats while the scolds burn our corpses.

I don’t remember what Democratic corruption or incompetence looks like (yeah, yeah — “Santa Fe” — OK, fine), but I’d take it any day over what’s happening now. mjh

Welcome to NADA, the New American Dark Ages, where feudalism is new again. Next year, the founders of Ave Maria are going to build a big wall and moat around the town and begin raising an army to defend themselves from the heathens. After that, they’ll begin marching on Miami in a campaign called “Freedom to Kill for Christ”. mjh

New Florida town would restrict abortion CNN.com

If Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas S. Monaghan has his way, a new town being built in Florida will be governed according to strict Roman Catholic principles, with no place to get an abortion, pornography or birth control.

The pizza magnate is bankrolling the project with at least $250 million and calls it “God’s will.” …

The town of Ave Maria is being constructed around Ave Maria University, the first Catholic university to be built in the United States in about 40 years. Both are set to open next year about 25 miles east of Naples in southwestern Florida.

The town and the university, developed in partnership with the Barron Collier Co., an agricultural and real estate business, will be set on 5,000 acres with a European-inspired town center, a massive church and what planners call the largest crucifix in the nation, at nearly 65 feet tall. Monaghan envisions 11,000 homes and 20,000 residents.

During a speech last year at a Catholic men’s gathering in Boston, Monaghan said that in his community, stores will not sell pornographic magazines, pharmacies will not carry condoms or birth control pills, and cable television will have no X-rated channels. …

Gov. Jeb Bush, at the site’s groundbreaking earlier this month, lauded the development as a new kind of town where faith and freedom will merge to create a community of like-minded citizens. Bush, a convert to Catholicism, did not speak specifically to the proposed restrictions. …

Frances Kissling, president of the liberal Washington-based Catholics for a Free Choice, likened Monaghan’s concept to Islamic fundamentalism.

“This is un-American,” Kissling said. “I don’t think in a democratic society you can have a legally organized township that will seek to have any kind of public service whatsoever and try to restrict the constitutional rights of citizens.”

‘Pizza pope’ builds a Catholic heaven – Sunday Times – Times Online by Tony Allen-Mills, New York

A FORMER marine who was raised by nuns and made a fortune selling pizza has embarked on a £230m plan to build the first town in America to be run according to strict Catholic principles.

Abortions, pornography and contraceptives will be banned in the new Florida town of Ave Maria, which has begun to take shape on former vegetable farms 90 miles northwest of Miami. …

Ave Maria’s pharmacies will not be allowed to sell condoms or birth control pills. …

The land on the western edge of the Everglades swamp will eventually house up to 30,000 people, with 5,000 students living on the university campus. …

The Florida developers managing the project claim more than 7,000 people have already expressed interest in buying homes in the town. Retailers and other businesses are reportedly close to leasing 60% of the intended commercial space. …

Sources close to the project said Monaghan was particularly disturbed by what he regards as the failure of western civilisation to resist Islamic fundamentalism. In a speech to students last year Healy warned that Islam “no longer faces a religiously dynamic West”. …

Monaghan believes he has more than the law on his side. “I think it’s God’s will to do this,” he said.

Ave Maria : Naples, Florida
a new community of uncompromising quality and boundless opportunity.
Ave Maria University

Keep in mind that after abortion is illegal, the next step is outlawing birth control. After that? Re-read The Handmaid’s Tale” or take a good look at Sharia. mjh

In South Dakota, at least the pretense is finally over By Ellen Goodman

The ban passed with the clear, stated intention of overturning Roe in a changed Supreme Court. This is a ban so extreme that it outflanks the prolife president. It’s a confrontation so direct that even many in the antiabortion leadership are uneasy with the strategy and the timing. Though not, you will note, with the goal. …

Even this week, with superb irony, Governor Rounds promised tender care for the women he would force to continue their pregnancies. Representative Hunt explained that women themselves would not be prosecuted under the law because any woman choosing abortion was ”not thinking clearly.” …

This is what it looks like in front of the curtain. South Dakota’s law would make felons out of doctors who perform nearly any abortion. The government would replace women as moral decision-makers. And it would trump doctors as medical decision-makers. …

The ban, slated to go into effect July 1, will be challenged in court and possibly by a statewide vote. But hopes of prolife purists are clearly pinned on the belief in a Supreme Court majority ready to reverse Roe. The hopes of the rest of us are pinned on seeing, really seeing, extremists in the spotlights.

”I think the South Dakota issue reflects the divisiveness that Americans are tired of,” says NARAL’s Keenan. Much political chatter this year has urged prochoice advocates and politicians to move to the right. How many more times are they required to recite the pledge — ”We want abortion to be safe, legal, and rare” — while prolife purists fight to make it unsafe and illegal?

On Tuesday, NARAL Pro-Choice America launched a Prevention First Day of Action. The press release of the day read optimistically: ”Birth Control, Something We Can All Agree On.” But the subject of the day was the ban and the battle.

Common ground, anyone? South Dakota just put another torch to it.

Poll: U.S. inconsistent on abortion – MSNBC.com

In 2005, states enacted 52 measures to restrict access to abortion, according to the private Guttmacher Institute, and more are pending. …

52 percent of those surveyed thought abortion should be legal in most or all cases; 43 percent said it should be illegal most or all of the time.

The survey, taken Feb. 28-March 2, found that men’s and women’s views were similar, although men were a little more likely to be undecided.

With slight shifts one way or another, this is about where Americans have been for decades.