Wisconsin "Governer" Scott Walker may have trouble spelling his job title in his latest email, but he has no trouble raising and spending money on ads to improve his image as the state braces for a high-stakes, high-dollar recall campaign.
A judge in New York sided with Monsanto and against organic farmers in the first case of its kind seeking to protect famers from being accused of patent infringement upon unintentional contamination by Monsanto's GMO seed.
Organic farmers sought a judgment against Monsanto to protect themselves from being sued for patent infringement when their crops are unintentionally contaminated with the company's genetically modified (GMO) seed, was dismissed in federal district court in New York by Judge Naomi Buchwald called the plaintiffs' concern an "intangible worry, unanchored in time."
Even before a recall election prompted by some 1 million Wisconsin residents has been scheduled, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has given himself a new job. In an email to constituents on March 2, he changed his title from Governor to "Governer."
The error was discovered by Madison disc jockey Nick Nice, who wrote in a Facebook message: "Actual screen shot from Walker's latest email. I don't even think Bush would have misspelled 'President.' Wow."
Earlier in the year, a Walker press release misspelled his hometown of Delavan, Wisconsin. It is unlikely that Wisconsin teachers, who lost the right to bargain for such matters as health insurance, working conditions and pensions under Walker, will provide the remedial spelling classes needed.
It was just another balmy-frigid February 28 for Andrea Musher. She stood outside the Wisconsin State Capitol with a green parasol, a pink frangipani, and a sign with palm fronds rising forth.
Madison's former poet laureate, Musher was one of about 25 protesters who gathered on what they called "Palm Tuesday" to celebrate the emergence of a new Wisconsin state tree, which could be dubbed the "O'Reilly Palm."
The event commemorated the anniversary of the day Fox News ran video of violent "Wisconsin" protesters, with palm trees waving in the background. Musher's palm was intended to help people understand that Fox "pretends to be a news source. Instead they are a source of propaganda and fabrication."
-- By Brendan Fischer and William Dooling.
MADISON -- Claims by an out-of-state Tea Party group that the campaign to recall Governor Scott Walker is fraught with error do not stand up to even limited scrutiny.
Findings released this week from the Tea Party-led "Verify the Recall" effort allege that recall proponents fell short of the 540,000 signatures necessary to recall Governor Scott Walker. However, a cursory review of the pages they allege are erroneous actually include the information they claim is missing. Signatures the groups deem "ineligible" are very clearly legitimate. Some of the problems appear to arise from data entry errors on the part of True the Vote volunteers.
Nine months before tens of thousands flocked to a popular music festival in Austin, Texas, the concert park grounds were spread with sewage sludge. It was autumn of 2009, and sewage sludge was used as a "fertilizer" to make the grass -- parched from prior dry seasons -- green. But it rained the weekend of the festival, turning the grounds into a huge mud pit, with a stench that one concert-goer described as the smell of "pig manure," with the consistency of pudding.
Following the event, several attendees reported rashes and other maladies that they believe were contracted from coming in contact with the churned up human and industrial waste. The local media was abuzz with stories of the festival's epidemiological aftermath.
The Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College has selected the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) for its annual "Izzy Award," which recognizes outstanding achievement in independent media. CMD was recognized for its ALEC Exposed project, and shares this year's award with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who was recognized for his exceptional reporting from Tahir Square. The award is named for the legendary I.F. Stone, the maverick investigative journalist who challenged Joe McCarthy's scare campaign and was the first to question the Gulf of Tonkin hoax.
By Harriet Rowan and Sara Jerving
After months of talking about "reforming" Wisconsin's public schools, Republican state legislators are starting to move on a number of proposals. The greatly anticipated bills bear the marks of having been poured through the filter of the American Legislative Exchange Council's agenda for school reform before they were exposed to the light of day.
This week, for instance, there is a hearing on a voucher bill for special needs children that appears to be modeled on the ALEC Special Needs Scholarship Program Act. Other measures are in the works to hold teachers "accountable" for the performance of their students, but not at voucher schools of the type supported by ALEC.
A federal court will rule in coming weeks on Wisconsin's redistricting plan, after sharply criticizing Republican lawmakers for developing the maps under a veil of secrecy and shutting the public out of the process. Along with voter ID legislation inspired by an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model, GOP legislators in Wisconsin appear to be reshaping elections for partisan political advantage.
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