"A leaked document shows that the British government recently switched positions to oppose a European Union law that would seek to control manufacturers' use of toxic chemicals that cause brain disorders in children, after pressure from the Bush administration. According to The Independent online, the leaked document reveals that the British government caved to pressure from the Bush administration and successfully led opposition to the EU law that would have forced companies to swap poisonous chemicals for safe ..."

"A little-remarked feature of pending legislation on domestic surveillance has provoked alarm among university and public librarians who say it could allow federal intelligence-gathering on library patrons without sufficient court oversight. Draft House and Senate bills would allow the government to compel any "communications service provider" to provide access to e-mails and other electronic information within the United States as part of federal surveillance of non-U.S. citizens outside the country. ..."

"Read this amazing piece by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker. But gird yourself. It's one of the worst things you'll ever read about your government, and that's saying something: "The C.I.A.’s interrogation program is remarkable for its mechanistic aura. 'It’s one of the most sophisticated, refined programs of torture ever,' an outside expert familiar with the protocol said. 'At every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail. Procedure was adhered to almost to the letter. There was top-down quality control, and..."

"Cusack: So apart from getting obscenely rich, what are these private security and other contractor companies doing with this tsunami of public money that is being thrown at them? Klein: Well, unlike the government, which has allowed the public infrastructure to erode so that we now have collapsing bridges and levees, these guys are making serious and sturdy capital investments. They're planning for the future, building infrastructure -- in Blackwater's case, paramilitary infrastructure. Founded in 1996, the comp..."

"During the last 50 years, hundreds of thousands of military personnel have been involved in human experimentation and other intentional exposures conducted by the Department of Defense (DOD), often without a servicemember's knowledge or consent. In some cases, soldiers who consented to serve as human subjects found themselves participating in experiments quite different from those described at the time they volunteered. For example, thousands of World War II veterans who originally volunteered to "test summer cloth..."

"Supporters of marijuana may finally have an excuse to smoke weed every day. A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation suggests that smoking pot can make the brain grow. Though most drugs inhibit the growth of new brain cells, injections of a synthetic cannibinoid have had the opposite effect in mice in a study performed at the University of Saskatchewan. Research on how drugs affect the brain has been critical to addiction treatment, particularly research on the hippocampus...."

"Madrid, Brussels, London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, and Vienna may well be off-limits to U.S. members of Congress soon. Just as well: they will still be able to enjoy pleasant summer breaks in Crawford, Texas, or Jackson Hole, Wyo., in the best of companies [1], [2]. That's certainly preferable to ending up in a European jail for a very long time. Every one of the 535 members of the 110th Congress is liable to face criminal indictment from the International Criminal Court in de Hague if the U.S. uses nuclear weapons ..."