Tell us again how this won't happen with the Keystone pipeline

Arkansas residents evacuate as Exxon-Mobil tar sands pipeline ruptures

An Exxon-Mobil oil pipeline ruptured Friday afternoon in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, forcing the evacuation of 20 homes and shutting down sections of interstate highway. According to Little Rock’s KATV, a hazardous materials team from the Office of Emergency Management has contained the spill and is currently attempting a cleanup. 

The burst pipe is part of the Pegasus pipeline network, which connects tar sands along the Gulf coast to refineries in Houston. Thousands of gallons of crude oil erupted from the breach around 3:00 p.m. on Friday, spilling through a housing subdivision and into the town’s storm drainage system, fouling drainage ditches and shutting down Highway 365 and Interstate 40. 

Residents were evacuated to avoid health hazards from crude oil fumes and to keep stray sparks from igniting the standing oil. Emergency workers contained the spill by hastily constructing earthen dams.

Amazing and stupid facts for you to peruse

Amazing facts about the human body.

Explaining what happened (and didn't happen) to the Senate filibuster.

Word for the day:  Defenestration.

Asking Dick Cheney about gun control is moronic... and gun owners heckle a father of one of the dead of Sandy Hook school.   Everyone should have a gun... especially these people.  And GPS makes kids end up getting shot in a man's driveway.  Booman addresses the gun violence problem.

And speaking of moronic, an Alabama GOP Congressman Proposes Amendment That Would Effectively Kill The United States Government and Arkansas introduces a “heartbeat bill” that would jail doctors for performing abortions after 6 weeks and (Fox News link, sorry) Mississippi bill would nullify federal laws

Homemade 'death ray'.

Corporations are so slow in taking toxic chemicals out of our food....

So much joy

Gays finally able to get married.

So much sorrow. Norway.

So many lies.

So much stupidity.

So much fraud.

So much of everything.

Mike Huckabee and Frankie Parker

Maha of Mahablog relates the small and petty viciousness of Huckabee:

Frankie Parker was also a prisoner when Mike Huckabee became governor. And Frankie Parker was guilty; no one says otherwise. In 1984, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, he killed his former in-laws and held his ex-wife hostage. He was sentenced to be executed, and after years of hearings and appeals and stays, the execution was scheduled for September 17, 1996. Thus, Parker was on death row when Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker was convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy by the Whitewater witch hunters. After Tucker resigned, Huckabee became governor.

What makes Parker’s case unique? One day, while Parker was in solitary confinement, he asked for a Bible. The Bible was the only book prisoners in solitary were allowed to read. A guard–possibly thinking this would be a nice joke– tossed him a copy of the Dhammapada instead. Frankie found Buddhism.

[snip]

A Zen priest gave Parker jukai, which is something like confirmation as a Buddhist. Several prominent Tibetan masters visited him. Prominent American Zen teachers, including Philip Kapleau and Robert Aitken, wrote letters on behalf of Parker. According to the New York Times, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa both wrote to Governor Huckabee urging him to commute Parker’s death sentence and let him serve life in prison.

And do you know what the Rev. Mr. Huckabee did? He moved Parker’s execution date from September 17 to August 8 so he would be executed six weeks sooner. And he was.

Doesn't this story remind you of someone we know?

No rights to an abortion

Will lead you straight to what has happened to a woman in Nicaragua, death by ectopic pregnancy. She went untreated because of the severe anti-abortion laws in effect.

Echidne of Echidne of the Snakes explains:

She went to a health center, was referred to a maternity hospital two hours away, and was then told to go back home for the night. With an ectopic pregnancy!

Read the whole article. Various authorities argue that physicians should act quickly and decisively in the cases of an ectopic pregnancy because there is no possibility of the fetus surviving. At the same time physicians are not actually told this, but fear that they will go to prison if they interfere. As one physician said:

"Many are thinking that instead of taking the risk, it is better to let a woman die," said Dr. Leonel Arguello, president of the Nicaraguan Society of General Medicine.

Indeed. Because the life of the fetus is of value. The life of the woman? Not so much.

Here is the link to the full story. Welcome to Gilead.

Update: Phila of Bouphonia writes about Gail Russell Chaddock's decision that Huckabee is the best to lead the nation. Phila finds this nugget from 1996 when Huckabee was governor of Arkansas:

This is what allows Huckabee to feel the sinner's soul-deep craving for punishment as if it were his own, and to fulfill it:

Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas today refused to authorize a Medicaid payment for an abortion for a 15-year-old girl whose stepfather has been charged with incest, despite a Federal judge's order that such payments were required by Federal law.

Wouldn't he make just a wonderful president?

Maybe just one good old fashioned terrorist strike

Would bring back the good old days where fear kept the citizens in line and the Republicans could gut the treasury with no oversight:

[Dennis Milligan, chairman of the Saline County Arkansas Republican Party] said Republicans will have a hard time winning 30 House seats in next year’s election.
[snip]
He said he’s “150 percent” behind Bush on the war in Iraq.

“At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country,” Milligan said.

Those were the days, huh, Dennis?

(link via Buzzflash)

And just why do you want to bring a backhoe into the Crater of Diamonds State park, Mr. Jones?

A couple of eight-year-old twin boys have found a 2.50 carat raw diamond that could be worth thousands of dollars, according to the director of a state park in the southern US state of Arkansas.

Greg Palast exposes the mini-Rovian tactics of Timothy Griffin, a new US Attorney thanks to the Patriot Act

Greg Palast:

There was one big hoohah in Washington yesterday as House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers pulled down the pants on George Bush's firing of US Attorneys to expose a scheme to punish prosecutors who wouldn't bend to political pressure.

But the Committee missed a big one: Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove's assistant, the President's pick as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Key voters on Griffin's hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. Nice guy, eh? Naughty or nice, however, is not the issue. Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In October 2004, our investigations team at BBC Newsnight received a series of astonishing emails from Mr. Griffin, then Research Director for the Republican National Committee. He didn't mean to send them to us. They were highly confidential memos meant only for RNC honchos.

However, Griffin made a wee mistake. Instead of sending the emails - potential evidence of a crime - to email addresses ending with the domain name "@GeorgeWBush.com" he sent them to "@GeorgeWBush.ORG," a website run by prankster John Wooden, who owns "GeorgeWBush.org." When Wooden got the treasure trove of Rove-ian ravings, he sent them to us.

And we dug in, decoding, and mapping the voters on what Griffin called "Caging" lists, spreadsheets with 70,000 names of voters marked for challenge. Overwhelmingly, these were Black and Hispanic voters from Democratic precincts.

The Griffin scheme was sickly brilliant. We learned that the RNC sent first-class letters to new voters in minority precincts, marked "Do not forward." Several sheets contained nothing but soldiers, other sheets, homeless shelters. Targets included the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and that city's State Street Rescue Mission. Another target, Edward Waters College, a school for African-Americans.

If these voters were not currently at their home voting address, they were tagged as "suspect" and their registration wiped out or their ballot challenged and not counted. Of course, these 'cages' captured thousands of students, the homeless and those in the military though they are legitimate voters.

But it is illegal to challenge voters en masse where race is an element in the targeting. So several lawyers told us, including Ralph Neas, famed civil rights attorney with People for the American Way.

Griffin himself ducked our cameras, but his RNC team tried to sell us the notion that the caging sheets were, in fact, not illegal voter hit lists, but a roster of donors to the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign. Republican donors at homeless shelters?

Over the past weeks, Griffin has said he would step down if he had to face Congressional confirmation. However, the President appointed Griffin to the law enforcement post using an odd little provision of the USA Patriot Act that could allow Griffin to skip Congressional questioning altogether.