Morning No: Different Priorities

by: Natasha Chart

Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 07:09

- Obama finally makes some recess appointments. Craig Becker is in, labor should be happy. Dawn Johnsen isn't, more evidence the president thinks women's health care is icky. Islam Siddiqui, a notorious pesticide pusher from an industry association that freaked out about the White House organic garden, is in.

- In case you missed it, health insurance reform added back $250 million to abstinence-only education, a program known to have no lasting effect on teen sexual behavior besides to reduce condom and birth control use.

- If you follow environmental issues, you probably know that ExxonMobil has been a huge funder of climate science denial. Though as it turns out, Koch industries is the biggest supporter of climate misinformation, outspending Exxon Mobil by close to 3:1. If you don't follow environmental politics though, Koch's funding of Heritage, Cato and the Manhattan Institute probably puts a wrench in your day now and again, anyhow.

- KBR will finally have to face Jamie Leigh Jones in court after she was raped by several fellow KBR employees, locked in a shipping container and then told by the company that her contract barred her from suing them over it.

- Russia reels from a second set of twin suicide bomb attacks in Dagestan, a North Caucasus republic. A local police official is among the 12 dead.

- The systemic implications of peak oil are all very well and good, but peak copper?

- Pedophiles and their accomplices seem to have no end of enablers. Eeeew.

- The wingnuts, they're coming for your Social Security. And they might have plenty of friends at the president's deficit commission. Via Avedon.

- Here's the lowdown on government housing support programs, along with the bad news that not only might the market not be coming back, it might be headed for another dive.

- A small amount of chocolate every day may be good for your heart. I know what I'm getting at the store today.