Articles by David Roberts

Author of Rolling Stone piece gets all bloggy.

Speaking of great stuff on blogs:

Yesterday in Daily Grist, we pointed to a story in Rolling Stone about Bush's effort (hidden in his massive budget bill) to create a "Sunset Commission" that would have the power to eliminate government programs and whole agencies (say, the EPA) that were deemed "non-productive" (by the standards of the industry lobbyists that would populate the commission). It's a pretty brazen effort to accomplish by fiat what the right can't accomplish through public persuasion and legislation.

Anyway, the story was summarized, along with some supplemental material from OMBWatch and elsewhere, in a diary at DailyKos, which was followed -- as usual on DKos -- by a lively discussion. The author of the piece, Osha Gray Davidson, responded to lots of those comments on a blog called Booman Tribune, which in turn was reprinted and further discussed in another DKos diary.

So, if you found the story interesting, read all that stuff for some great follow-up. Vive les blogs!

An extraordinary diary on DailyKos about the coal industry.

Thanks to this comment from Chris (proprietor of the excellent OrganicMatter blog), I came across this diary over at DailyKos, which is one of the best I've ever read.

It's about coal, and it's written by a guy who grew up around coal mining and has been involved in the industry his whole life (and still is). Quit reading this and go read it instead.

USDA recommends mercury as part of a healthy diet.

Seems there's a bit of a snafu in that fancy new food pyramid the USDA recently unveiled.

[Swordfish and king mackerel] are among [the fish] most contaminated with mercury, a pollutant released from coal-fired power plants -- which the Bush administration has failed to crack down on. According to E.P.A. research, some 600,000 U.S. newborns, each year, are at risk for learning disorders and behavioral problems because of their exposure to the neurotoxin in the womb.

The USDA's new Web site ignores all these mercury warnings, recommending the very fish most likely to contain high levels of mercury. "Not only does the new food pyramid shirk away from telling the public which unhealthy foods to avoid," said David Wallinga, director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Food and Health Program in Minneapolis, "it actually tells people to eat fish that other federal agencies warn are too contaminated with mercury to eat."

Oops!

Invisible satire

Judging from the letters we got about it, nobody -- and I mean nobody -- got this joke.

So, if your satire is so subtle that nobody gets it, does that make it really, really good, or really, really bad? I suspect the latter ...