I sat down seven years ago this month with my son Adam and told him about the tragic death of a brave American woman named Rachel Corrie. As I informed him who she was, where and how she died, he stared at her two photographs in the paper and said, “Daddy, I will name my first daughter Rachel.” Adam was only nine years old, and I couldn’t have been more proud of him.

Rachel Corrie had a heart bigger than Texas. She paid the ultimate price fighting to uphold the international law that bans collective punishment.

Rachel was a 23 year-old Evergreen State College student from Olympia, WA. Rachel responded to the U.S. and Israeli rejection of a UN Resolution recommending an International Peace Keeping Force be sent into Palestine to serve as a human rights monitor there by enlisting in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

ISM is a group of international volunteers who partake in non-violent direct action resistance to the Israeli occupation. Members of the group live in Palestinian communities and experience first-hand the violence to which Palestinians are subjected every day by the Israeli military.

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During the second week of March more than 200 people from 27 states gathered in Washington, D.C. to lobby federal legislators to support the Clean Water Protection Act, HB 1310, as a way to stop or seriously curtail mountain top removal mining.

“It (the House bill ) would effectively end the valley fill process that's used in mountain top removal, and it would end the greatest majority of mountain top removal mining thereby,” said Bob Kincaid, whose reporting appears on the Horn

Lenny Kohm, Campaign Director for Appalachian Voices, said on Tuesday the bill has 164 co-sponsors.

“These are people who have actually signed on to the bill, and are registered in the Congressional Record as co-sponsors,” Kohm said.

Kohm said the House bill is broader than the Appalachian Restoration Act, S. 696, which was introduced in the Senate almost a year ago.

The Robert Jackson Steering Committee, a group of lawyers and journalists founded to uphold the principles of the Nuremberg Trials, is urging the Department of Justice to proceed with trying Khalil Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and other suspected 9/11 terrorists in federal criminal court, and not in military commissions.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the Committee enumerates several substantial problems with military commissions:

(1) Admissibility of statements following torture in certain circumstances,
(2) Evidence derived from impermissible interrogation methods is not barred,
(3) Evidence seized outside the US without search warrants is not excluded,
(4) The accused is entitled to one "reasonably available" defense counsel,
(5) No mention of the attorney-client privilege,
(6) In a capital case, the accused is entitled to additional counsel "to the greatest extent practicable",
(7) Ex post facto law may be applied,
(8) No right to speedy trial,
(9) Trials may be closed to public,
(10) Conviction by two thirds of jurors rather than unanimity,