Oak Harbor, OH—An environmental coalition opposing the 20-year license extension at the problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor on Ohio’s Lake Erie shore has cited scores of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) documents, obtained by Beyond Nuclear through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), to show how dangerous cracking of the concrete shield building containment actually is, despite FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) denial and downplaying.

The filing is posted online, as are the NRC documents revealed through FOIA.

In one document (FOIA Document B/9), NRC’s Pete Hernandez states: “I think the greater concern is will the SB [Shield Building] stay standing, and not whether or not the decorative concrete will fall off. Because the licensee has not performed core bores to see if there is cracking in the credited concrete, do they have a basis to say that the structural concrete will maintain a Seismic II/I condition?”

Voting rights advocates continue to call for weekend voting hours in light of the recent directive from the Secretary of State that closes down weekend voting across the state.

While the Secretary of State's new directive creates uniformity, it is not fair in its impact on voting populations. Get a copy of the report here

Early Voting article.

Join us at the corner of Broad and 4th on August 20th at 2pm for a Rally to Restore Weekend Voting in Ohio!

We will start the the Ohio Secretary of State's office (at the corner of Broad and 4th St) then we will march to the Franklin County Board of Election's Meeting to have our voices heard.

Contact Camille Wimbish for more information!

State and local officials confirm the public records have been moved to off-site storage, though they remain in the custody of County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus...
The ballots cast in Waukesha County during the June 5th Gubernatorial recall in Wisconsin appear to be safe from destruction at the hands of one of the nation's most notorious election officials.
For now.

In our exclusive exposé earlier today, we detailed the threat made by the infamous Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus to "destroy" the county's ballots from the historic recall election between Gov. Scott Walker and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, as early as noon today, in apparent contravention of state law. The threat to destroy the ballots was made even as they (and the rest of the ballots cast in the election across the state) are still subjects of public records requests by a number of citizen groups attempting to verify the otherwise completely unverified results of the race by examining the ballots by hand for the first time.

The Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism (CICJ) which publishes the freepress.org made a comprehensive public records request on July 3, 2012 to virtually every county and municipal election official in Wisconsin. The Free Press wanted to look at the ballots from the June 5, 2012 recall election of Governor Scott Walker. As outlined in a previous Free Press article, our staff was concerned with the election results deviating so far from the exit polls that predicted an evenly divided vote – or too close to call. Walker won with a 7% discrepancy from the polls.

With Wisconsin’s history as a progressive and honest state, the CICJ did not anticipate any problems with our public record request. Imagine our shock when Kathy Nickolaus, the Waukesha County Clerk, sent us an 8-page letter containing directives that made it practically impossible for us to look at the Wisconsin ballots, which are public records under that state’s laws.

Israel’s ‘Bomb Iran’ Timetable
More Washington insiders are coming to the conclusion that Israel’s leaders are planning to attack Iran before the U.S. election in November in the expectation that American forces will be drawn in. There is widespread recognition that, without U.S. military involvement, an Israeli attack would be highly risky and, at best, only marginally successful.

At this point, to dissuade Israeli leaders from mounting such an attack might require a public statement by President Barack Obama warning Israel not to count on U.S. forces — not even for the “clean-up.” Though Obama has done pretty much everything short of making such a public statement, he clearly wants to avoid a confrontation with Israel in the weeks before the election.

However, Obama’s silence regarding a public warning speaks volumes to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.