Well we are indeed 'exceptional'. We are exceptionally cruel to our own citizens who are most in need of our help.

Like you tax cuts, remember Walkerton Ontario.

Walkerton is a relatively small community located in Ontario. The water supply for the town of Walkerton was operated by the Walkerton Public Utilities Commission. The water supply became contaminated with the highly dangerous O157:H7 strain of E. coli bacteria, from farm runoff into an adjacent well that was known for years to be vulnerable to contamination.

At least seven people died directly from drinking the E. coli contaminated water, who might have been saved if the Walkerton Public Utilities Commission had admitted to contaminated water sooner, and about 2,500 became ill.

A public inquiry wound up laying part of the blame for the Walkerton disaster on cutbacks ordered by the Harris Conservative Government. It estimated that the Walkerton water tragedy cost a minimum of $64.5-155 million. Conservative tax cuts at work.

Hay Thom i know this is unrelated but please read this! http://republican-news.org/current/news/2011/06/shots_fired_at_st_matthews.html Some news about Ireland!

Well, obviously we would be better off in many instances if the FDA didn't exist. However, once in a while they do good work. Not often, admittedly, but sometimes. And if we get rid of the FDA, here's what's going to happen: the huge agriculture corporations will ignore even the few health and safety regulations that they now obey, and there will be a swath of food-related illnesses sweeping through America. And because the FDA will not exist at that time, there will no agency that can be FORCED, against its will and kicking and screaming all the way, to take action against the corporate monsters. The agribusiness corporations are so worried about the FDA that they have spent untold millions of dollars bribing FDA officials to ignore our safe food laws, and untold millions more hiring FDA officials when they retire. They are worried about the FDA because all it would take would be one president who, (unlike Obama) has the courage to kick ass and take names, and one FDA head who has the same attitude, and they could send agribusiness running for cover. Trust me, we're better off having the FDA, even with the idiots, traitors, fascists, nazis, and other republicans who are currently running it.

Food Taster jobs, why not! It fits in nicely with the feudal ideology the right wing embraces with unrelenting passion. Although I think the peasants deserve hazard pay for this kind of work!

Look on the bright side, local Farmers Markets will explode with business as folks get sick of horse meat burgers.

Thom, The radio show was excellent today!

I am glad that the moratorium on nuclear testing was passed, since over 700 nuclear tests were conducted in Nevada alone.This radiation circled the globe several times over and has given all of us damaged DNA.Why does it have to be that most scientists are working on weapons of mass destruction and not how to irrigate the Sahara, invent 100% effective contraception, eliminating the need for fossil fuels or reducing global poverty?

Oh my God what will be do without the Food and Death Administration? Of course Amish Farmers selling Raw milk are probably breathing a sigh of relief. The FDA spent over a year and who knows how many dollars and resources courtesy of we the tax payers in a sting operation to bust an Amish farmer selling raw milk. Some of us have a real problem with this kind of "protection." It has no place in a free society. We have seen the FDA raid and extort natural food companies like Garden of Life in some cases because of testimonials customers have given about how much their products helped them. The FDA won't even allow a company to claim that vitamin C cures scurvy without sending in heavily armed stormtroopers to bring the evil doers to justice. Cherry products can't even reference the fact that cherries ease inflamamation because that would be considered a crime by the FDA. They raidied Wyldwood Cellars, a Kansas based producer of elderberry juice, a very well known natural immune system enhancing product , because they dared to tell people this juice was good for their health. As Natural News reports: in response the raw milk issue the FDA replied: "there is no deeply rooted historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds."

The FDA goes further, stating that "there is no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular kind of food [because] comprehensive federal regulation of the food supply has been in effect at least since Congress enacted the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906. ... Thus, plaintiffs' claim to a fundamental privacy interest in obtaining 'foods of their own choice' for themselves and their families is without merit."

In other words, the agency has stated that because Congress has given FDA the authority to regulate food, there is no such thing as a right to acquire any given food.

Furthermore, the FDA says, "there is no generalized right to bodily and physical health."

"Finally, even if such a right did exist, it would not render FDA's regulations unconstitutional because prohibiting the interstate sale and distribution of unpasteurized milk promotes 'bodily and physical health.'"

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031934_FDA_food_freedom.html#ixzz1PrODH3C3

This is a tyrannical unconstitutional agency that creates its own regulations aka LAWS and is totally unaccountable to the people. Unelected bureuacrats should not be writing laws. As Dr. Gary Null, Dr. Merkola, and Mike Adams from natural news point out again and again, the FDA is the biggest threat to alternative medicines, natural cures, herbal medicines and nutritional based healing. Meanwhile American continue to be poisoned by BIg Pharma drugs and vaccines that are "FDA approved." This idea that the FDA is keeping us safe is a complete fallacy. We would be better off if they were completely defunded.

It's time for Victory Gardens. As many of us as possible should grow them. Only this time, we're intending victory over the corporations and the corrupt government to serve them. Waiting in vain for legislation that might actually protect us doesn't seem viable to me any longer.

The more food we can grow and share on a community level, the healthier we will be, the less fuel we will consume, and we will put less money in corporate agriculture's pocket. It's fast becoming our only choice as manufactured food and mass-produced meat, fruit and vegetables become too dangerous to ingest.

well said Kass Thanks

It's becoming abundantly clear that whoever is in power don't feel that they need the American citizen anymore.......for anything.

i wonder how many of us will have to die, one way or another before we stand up to the monsters who have brought The Shock Doctrine home to USA? It's getting kinda late, here, folks

"Tim DeChristopher is scheduled to be sentenced in a Salt Lake City courtroom by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson on July 26. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine for fraudulently bidding in December 2008 on parcels of land, including areas around eastern Utah’s national parks, which were being sold off by the Bush administration to the oil and natural gas industry. As Bidder No. 70, he drove up the prices of some of the bids and won more than a dozen other parcels for $1.8 million. The government is asking Judge Benson to send DeChristopher to prison for four and a half years."

"...(the judge) said it was not their (the jurors) job to decide if this (pamplets passed out) is right or wrong, but to listen to what he said was the law and follow that even if they thought it was morally unjust. They were not allowed to use [their] conscience. They were told they would be violating their oath if they decided this on conscience rather than the evidence that he told them to listen to."

We must refuse to be obedient to injustice!

from Chris Hedge's article in Truthdig:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/this_hero_didnt_stand_a_chance_20110...

When the system is corrupt we owe no allegience or respect...only obstruction to injustice.

There's no Daily Topics post for today, so I'll use this.

Thom, you missed two details in reading Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution--it was listing the types of cases covered by, not powers of, the whole judiciary branch of the government, not specifically the Supreme Court. There's no reason it would list a power to declare laws Unconstitutional there, if it exists. "Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party" is where this power comes in. If you sue a corporation for having a policy that is against the law, the court can nullify that policy, barring the corporation from enforcing that policy. Analogously, you can sue the federal government for having a law that is in violation of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court can nullify that law, barring the federal government from enforcing that law.