It’s hard to overstate the case against farm-raised seafood, so we applaud Target’s recent decision to stop selling factory-fished salmon in its stores. The mass merchandiser has already, “eliminated all farmed salmon from its fresh, frozen and smoked seafood sections at stores nationwide,” replacing it with wild-caught Alaskan fish. By the end of the year, all Target-sold sushi will follow suit.

He had a chance to affect history. You, too, have a chance to affect history.
— President Obama, quoted by the Washington Post, showing House Democrats a portrait of Abraham Lincoln before their vote on the climate-change bill.

An Environmental Protection Agency declaration and a Supreme Court ruling were two major stories about asbestos that made headlines this week — neither of them good news.
Wednesday the Environmental Protection Agency declared a public health emergency in and near Libby, Mont., where decades of asbestos contamination from a vermiculite mine has left hundreds of [...]

Yesterday was Opening Day of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season. To mark the day, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist offered up this video in which he’s certainly looking tanned and, dare we say it, senatorial.
Let’s see, canned goods, batteries, radio, cellphone — yep, I s’pose I’m ready for a “safe hurricane season,” Charlie. Thanks!
My [...]

All I’m saying is it’s hard not to notice parallels with Katrina when you hear about flooding, evacuations, and levee breaks. But there are several key differences with the Fargo flood.
For one, the area is about 93 percent white, which could affect how some respond to the victims. For another, a competent president is in [...]

If like me you have a yard, and if like mine it crunches underfoot, then this site can help you decide whether it’s your imagination or you really should be sniffing the wind for wildfires.
Drought.gov offers a fascinating array of maps that tell you more than you want to know about the status and outlook [...]

At a time when newspapers are imploding, whole newspaper chains are going unsold on the market and the news media are casting about to understand how to serve their audiences in a rapidly changing communications environment, it might not seem the most prudent thing in the world to start up a news organization. But if [...]

Ike arrives in Cuba
Hurricane Ike devastated parts of Cuba and money is needed now to help people as they struggle to survive. Because of our country’s idiotic stance toward the aging and ailing Fidel Castro, it’s hard to get relief to those who need it.
The State Department allows only a very few organizations to assist, [...]

I occasionally sign one of those form letters battling some big issue. I rarely edit the form letter and usually forget about it about a nanosecond after I hit the “send” button. But recently the recipients of these form letters have been responding. Here’s an e-mail I received out of the blue today from a [...]

Local news here in Southern California is reporting that upwards of 1 million people have been evacuated because of the fire storms. Last night, when the number was about half that, Keith Olbermann suggested that this could be the largest forced migration of Americans since the Civil War.
“I am very confident in our ability to [...]