Shea Gunther

From the page: "Undoubtedly you've heard someone cite the statistic that the United States gets half its electricity from coal. It's been repeated so many times that it often goes unexamined. Which is a shame because when you look at how individual states get their electricity the nation really shows a great range of coal usage. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the national statistic is inaccurate, but it certainly blurs the details of our national energy usage to the degree that I'd categorize it as an eco-myth:" - Shea Gunther

While it's hard to ignore the bad news about fish stocks - U.N. statistics show 75% of wild fish stocks are depleted or exploited - the world's clamoring for protein sources is increasingly loud. That's why a long-term sustainable fish farming experiment with a fish called Branzini (also known as European sea bass) is so promising. Aquaculture is one key to supplying people with fish, and nearly half the fish consumed is now farmed rather than caught. But the most successful aquaculture experiments have not been entirely sustainable environmentally. And using smaller fish as the ground-up food for farming larger varieties has been decried as a huge waste. - Shea Gunther

Tearyan Brown became a father when he was 16. He did what a lot of inner-city kids desperate to make money do. He sold drugs. He was arrested and sent to jail three years later for dealing marijuana and PCP on the streets of Trenton, N.J., mostly to white kids driving in from the suburbs. It was a job which saw him robbed at gunpoint and stabbed in the chest. But it made him about $1,400 a week. Brown, when he got out after three and a half years, was done with street life. He got a job as a security guard and then as a fork lift operator. He eventually made about $30,000 a year. He shepherded his son through high school, then college and a master's degree. His boy, now 24, is a high school teacher in Texas. Brown would not leave the streets of Trenton but his son would. It made him proud. It gave him hope. And then one morning in 2005 when he was visiting his mother's house the cops showed up. He saw the cruiser and the officers standing on his mother's porch. He hurried down the... - Shea Gunther

From the page: ""Everything should be on the table," Webb says. And there it is -- damn the consequences! This is why, even as editorialists in the mainstream media applaud his efforts to reform the overall criminal justice system, he's also racking up headlines in High Times magazine and getting shout-outs from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws for his "candor and political courage." Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, better known by the acronym LEAP -- a group of current and former law enforcement officers -- is running a petition on its Internet site in support of Webb's commission. The petition and a video of Webb appear beneath the group's signature pitch: photos of Al Capone ("Alcohol Smuggler") and Pablo Escobar ("Drug Cartel"), accompanied by the line, "Same problem . . . same solution. Repeal Prohibition Now!" " - Shea Gunther

On July 7, 1989, the masters of the Eastern empire gathered in Bucharest for a fateful summit. They were a rogue's gallery of the world's dictators, assembled in the capital of the worst among them: Romania's own Nicolae Ceausescu, Europe's last Stalinist, the dark lord of the old Eastern bloc's most repressive Communist regime. They were the hunters: Erich Honecker, the murderous boss of the German Democratic Republic, architect of the wall that separated his East Germany from the West. There was Poland's Wojciech Jaruzelski, the man who declared martial law in 1980 and broke the famed trade union Solidarity. Czechoslovak strongman Milos Jakes was there, as well as Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, whose secret police stooges once tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II. This day, however, the hunted was one of their own: reformist Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, whose determination to bring democracy and free markets to his country threatened them all. And so, in the interests of... - Shea Gunther

From the page: ""It may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down [and] plod along," Sarah Palin said Friday, in an attempt to suggest that serving her full term as governor would add to the nation's apathy. "That's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out." Sarah Palin is no quitter. That's why she's quitting." - Shea Gunther

From the page: "Ask my little girl Isabella what she wants to eat and it's either a. grilled cheese sandwich or b. peanut butter and jelly. Suggest that she should eat her spinach, broccoli or brussels sprouts first and you get an encyclopedic explanation of why she can't eat it--it doesn't taste good, it's too hot, you have to chew it too much, etc etc etc. But the other weekend we stayed with our friends Rachel and Steffen Schneider at Hawthorne Valley Farm (from which we buy our produce as part of local eating). Rachel took Isabella out into the field to harvest a squash and then they cooked it together. Isabella wolfed it down. The picture above shows Isabella with a squash she picked out of our own community garden today. We also harvested some lettuce. Isabella can't wait to eat them both." - Shea Gunther