A WORD FROM THE CLERGY

Amen, Father Greeley. Amen.

IT IS A DAMNED GOOD LIBRARY

The Cleveland Public Library (seriously one of the highlights of living in northern Ohio) and the CLEVNET Library Consortium are making over 150 audio books available online via eBooks. I haven't checked to see if it works with iTunes yet, but persue the holdings at the Digital Library Connection.

THE ONLY RELAXING IN THE BUSH ERA IS DONE TO ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS

The Bush administration's new forest policy relaxes environmental oversight, allowing individual managers leeway to allow drilling, clear-cutting, or whatever the hell else they want to allow. According to the New York Times:

The long-awaited rules relax longstanding provisions on environmental reviews and the protection of wildlife on 191 million acres of national forest and grasslands. They also cut back on requirements for public participation in forest planning decisions.

As could easily be predicted before the election, Bush's policies are resulting in more people being killed and maimed, more people falling into poverty, and more degradation of the environment. Thanks a lot, Republican voters. I hope you're happy with what you've done.

RECYCLING FOR SURVIVAL

Most of America frowns upon scrap collecting (we like tossing our cans in recycle bins but shun those who actually wallow through and sort refuse for scrap), but what the Pentagon is doing is disgraceful. Kudos to Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) for (however gently) calling them on it.

President Bush should pardon six Army reservists from Ohio who were court-martialed for taking equipment to carry out their mission in Iraq, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Tuesday.

In a letter to the president, Durbin said the members of the 656th Transportation Company may have committed a technical violation and an error in judgment but the military should not have treated this mistake as a felony.

"The punishment is completely out of step with the violation," Durbin said. "Soldiers have been scavenging for equipment on battlefields from the time of the Romans to the present day. ... Yes, they made a mistake, but it was not so someone could get rich; these soldiers were trying to protect their unit and accomplish their mission."

Support the troops, Bush.

BARACK OBAMA IS OFFICIALLY A CELEBRITY

Winning the Senate seat isn't confirmation, a contract to write a children's book is. Obama just signed a three-book, $1.9 million contract with Random House.

The first book, due out in spring 2006, will focus on Obama's political convictions. The children's book, also scheduled for 2006 under the Random House imprint Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, will rely on his experiences as a self-described ``skinny young kid with big ears and the funny name'' who grew up to be a U.S. senator.

Topic and publication date for the third book have not been determined.

Based on the topics of the first two books, my prediction for the third book is that it will outline Obama's vision of the future of the United States and will be published either in the late winter or middle of the summer of 2008. You may draw your own conclusions.

HELP MAKE CLEVELAND SUSTAINABLE

The city's looking to hire a City Sustainability Program Officer. Check out the job description at The Tree.

ELIMINATING IMPOVRISHMENT

From the mailbox:

Innovative Models to Improving Job Placement and Retention is the hot topic for the next Tuesdays at REI with Walter Ginn, Executive Director of Towards Employment and its new national model ACHIEVE. You'll also hear from Yvonne Tufts Jeans, Workforce Manager of ShoreBank Cleveland/Jobs Partnership in Cleveland, and an innovative faith-based model first developed in North Carolina with moderator James Harris, of HL/Communications during the next session Tue 12/21 at 4PM. Call 368-5540. Case/Weatherhead School of Management The Center for Regional Economic Issues, Peter B. Lewis Building, 11119 Bellflower Rd.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: NORTHERN EDITION

Framing global warming as a rights issue.

Representatives of poor countries and communities - from the Arctic fringes to the atolls of the tropics to the flanks of the Himalayas - say they are imperiled by rising temperatures and seas through no fault of their own. They are casting the issue as no longer simply an environmental problem but as an assault on their basic human rights.

The commission, an investigative arm of the Organization of American States, has no enforcement powers. But a declaration that the United States has violated the Inuit's rights could create the foundation for an eventual lawsuit, either against the United States in an international court or against American companies in federal court, said a number of legal experts, including some aligned with industry.

Such a petition could have decent prospects now that industrial countries, including the United States, have concluded in recent reports and studies that warming linked to heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emissions is contributing to big environmental changes in the Arctic, a number of experts said.

E2 UPDATE

You may recall the two high-profile nightclub tragedies in Rhode Island and Chicago almost two years ago. The trial of the Chicago-based E2 club's owners has been delayed.

THE FUTURE

Noah Cross would smile at this feature on water rights in California.

CAN YOU DRIVE EMISSION-FREE IN MINNEAPOLIS?

Testing fuel cell cars in cold weather.

CHOOSE THE BLUE

If you wish to target your money to the corporations that support Democrats (or boycott those that support Republicans, check out Choose the Blue for a guide to the biggest donors to each party.

If you're a political junkie curious where all the money goes in politics (both for 2004 and previous years), run, don't walk to opensecrets.org for the details.

THE WORLD AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

I like what Google's doing. I look forward to using their digitized library holdings as reference tools.

WAIT TIL NEXT YEAR

The White Sox are not going to be good in 2005.

A NOBEL PRIZE CAN HELP WITH THE PRESS

Wangari Maathai has an op-ed piece about the Green Belt Movement in today's New York Times. Read the whole column, but take her conclusion to heart:

I believe the Nobel Committee recognized the links between the environment, democracy and peace and sought to bring them to worldwide attention with the Peace Prize that I am accepting today. The committee, I believe, is seeking to encourage community efforts to restore the earth at a time when we face the ecological crises of deforestation, desertification, water scarcity and a lack of biological diversity.

Unless we properly manage resources like forests, water, land, minerals and oil, we will not win the fight against poverty. And there will not be peace. Old conflicts will rage on and new resource wars will erupt unless we change the path we are on.

To celebrate this award, and the work it recognizes of those around the world, let me recall the words of Gandhi: My life is my message. Also, plant a tree.

WHAT WILL OBAMA DO?

Redstate has the Senate Democrats' purported wishlist for committee assignments. Barack Obama's name shows up for foreign relations and the enviornment. The former would be to boost his presidential ambitions, the latter is consistent with his track record in the Illinois senate. Might environmental justice get discussed more in commitee hearings? I'm guessing yes, maybe even by Republicans Obama may be able to reach.

NEW YORK 2006

Eliot Spitzer has officially announced he is running for governor of New York.

"I believe that the state is at a moment of crisis, where our economy is hemorrhaging jobs, we are increasingly laden with taxes and debt, we have government that is unaccountable and dysfunctional and is failing to address the critical issues, both process and substantive, that a government has an obligation to address."

Spitzer's candidacy will no doubt focus on the public interest (including environmental protection) and accountability of government to the people. Nancy Pelosi voiced these themes when she took over as minority leader, but they sadly have not been at the forefront of national political rhetoric over the past two years. Perhaps Spitzer being on the news regularly in the nation's top media market (not that he's been anonymous in the past) may help, not just in New York, but nationwide.

WANNA BE AN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES STUDENT?

...check out this resource for scholarships. If you're a prospective undergrad or grad student, you can find all sorts of scholarships from the government, nonprofits, professional organizations, etc.

SAY MY NAME

ESPN's Page 2 has Paul Lukas on the history of unconventional jersey names in pro sports. A favorite:

1979: Giants shortstop Johnnie LeMaster, the target of relentless booing from San Francisco fans, takes the field wearing "Boo" on his back. The crowd laughs -- then boos. LeMaster goes back to a regular jersey after one game.

THERE'S AN OIL BARGE WINDING...

Feature on the oil-stained lower branch of the Delaware River...

BRINGING TO THANKSGIVING

I'm slow posting this, but Charles C. Mann wrote a fine op-ed piece in the New York Times for Thanksgiving discussing some of the ecological changes wrought by Europeans when they arrived in the Americas. He has a forthcoming book, but readers interested in a more detailed discussion of the transition in New England should find a copy of William Cronon's wonderful Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology in New England.

THE FIRST BUSH CAMPAIGN STAFFER TO BE INDICTED

...James Tobin, in New Hampshire, for 2002 phone-jamming hijinks.

A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted James Tobin, President Bush's former New England campaign chairman, on four counts related to the jamming of get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002.

State Democrats, who have filed a lawsuit over the jamming, had accused Tobin in October of involvement in the conspiracy.

Tobin, 44, stepped down Oct. 15, but released a statement calling the allegations "without merit."

The 2002 jamming consisted of computer-generated calls to get-out-the-vote phones run by Democrats and the nonpartisan Manchester firefighters' union. More than 800 hang-up calls tied up phones for about 1 1/2 hours.

The indictment charges Tobin with conspiracy to commit telephone harassment and aiding and abetting of telephone harassment. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.

The indictment alleges that Tobin and coconspirators sought to disrupt communications to five phone numbers associated with the Democratic Party and one with the firefighters' union.

SMART CAR COMING TO US

Zap Cars out of California will sell the little fuel-efficient wonders here.

THANKS FOR KILLING OUR KIDS, REPUBLICAN VOTERS

If you voted for Bush, you have no way of claiming you did not know this was going to happen. More soon.

Calling the Republican party "pro-life" is like calling John Wayne Gacy "pro-children"...

BUSH V. SALMON

In a surprise to nobody who has been awake the past four years, the Bush administration has officially moved away from the ledge the Clinton administration ever so timidly crept near when it considered removal of dams from the Columbia and Snake rivers in attempts to bolster the salmon populations of those systems. That ain't gonna happen now, not that it was ever likely.

Readers interested in reading more about the changes to the Columbia ought to check out Richard White's book The Organic Machine. For more about how dams in the west have reshaped American ecology and society (not just in the west but throughout the nation), Donald Worster's Rivers of Empire and the late Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert are must-reads (Reisner's book being particularly appropriate for those seeking lively page-turners for holiday reading).