Note that in this hot, never-ebbing, electoral season, global warming is not among the issues given much attention. This is the case despite the fact that the trend in rising temperatures and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to rise at crisis levels, and that 97% of all climate scientists have been persuaded by the best scientific evidence that global warming is having increasingly deleterious and disruptive effects on the climate. Recent polls find that an increasing percentage of respondents agree that global warming is occurring, that it is caused by human activities, most notably by the burning of fossil fuels for energy, and that the government should take actions that would reduce the problem.

If we lived in a more politically responsive time, government would pass and enforce a carbon tax and undertake massive support for renewable energy, conservation, and efficiency policies. As the matter stands, the Republicans in the U.S. Congress oppose and would surely stop any such legislative initiatives and the Democrats with other priorities have not pressed the issue.

In late October 1968, Beverly Deepe, a 33-year-old Saigon correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, came upon a story that could have changed history. A six-year veteran covering the Vietnam War, she learned from South Vietnamese sources that Richard Nixon’s campaign was collaborating behind the scenes with the Saigon government to derail President Lyndon Johnson’s peace talks.

On Oct. 28, Deepe sent her startling information to her Monitor editors in the United States, asking them to have the Washington bureau “check out a report that [South Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States] Bui Diem had sent a cable to the Foreign Ministry about contact with the Nixon camp,” she told me in a recent e-mail exchange.

At that moment in 1968, the stakes surrounding Nixon’s secret contacts could hardly be higher. With half a million U.S. soldiers serving in the war zone – and with more than 30,000 already dead – a peace deal could have saved countless lives, both American and Vietnamese. Progress toward a settlement also could have meant defeat for Nixon on Election Day, Nov. 5.

Don’t Forget About Vote Purging In Texas and Ohio

Mr. Thomas E Stewart, lobbyist for the Oil and Gas industry and executive director of Ohio Oil and Gas Association based out Granville Ohio, testified before the House Public Utilities Commission on May 22nd, 2012 concerning Governor Kasich’s ‘Energy Bill’, SB 315. Many amendments were offered to SB 315 concerning full chemical disclosure, dye tracers, fresh water well testing, local decision making on well placement and background checks for well operators, that would have added much needed protection for Ohioans, but these were disregarded for the most part in favor of a ‘gag’ rule which ties the hands of first responders and doctors in treating anyone affected by a toxic spill or drill site accident.

What we got tonight, June 5th, in Wisconsin was the same old stench, coming from the same old corner of the room, even more pungent than usual. If it smells a bit acrid to you, that would be the ashes of your democracy still smoldering. To wit, there was a huge turnout (highly favorable to the Democratic candidate Barrett), in fact they're still waiting in line to vote in Milwaukee and elsewhere nearly two hours after poll closing; and the immediate post-closing Exit Polls had it a dead heat, 50%-50%. But the only place those polls were posted was as a Bar Chart in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Not a single network posted any Exit Poll numbers, though they all have been regularly posting them throughout the 2012 primary season within a few minutes of poll closing. But they all called the race "extremely tight," since they were looking at the same 50%-50% Exit Poll that the Journal Sentinel at least had the courage to post in some format.