The nation's top selling conservative author has been banned from appearing on NBC, insiders tell the DRUDGE REPORT. "We are just not going to have her on any more, it's over," a top network source explains. But a second top suit strongly denies there is any "Coulter ban". "Look for a re-invite, as soon as Wednesday," said the news executive, who asked not to be named. NBC's TODAY show abruptly cut Ann Coulter from its planned Tuesday broadcast, claiming the schedule was overbooked. Executives at NBC TODAY replaced Coulter with showbiz reporter Perez Hilton, who recently offered $1,000 to anyone who would throw a pie at Ann Coulter. Hilton is also launching a new book this week, RED CARPET SUICIDE. Coulter was set to unveil her new book, GUILTY. One network insider claims it was the book's theme -- a brutal examination of liberal bias in the new era -- that got executives to dis-invite the controversialist. "We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now," a TODAY insider reveals. "It's such a downer. It's just not the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either." [ MORE AT STORY SITE ]

The extraordinary rainstorms last June caused catastrophic soil erosion in the grain lands of Iowa, where there were gullies 200 feet wide. But even worse damage is done over the long term under normal rainfall - by the little rills and sheets of erosion on incompletely covered or denuded cropland, and by various degradations resulting from industrial procedures and technologies alien to both agriculture and nature. Soil that is used and abused in this way is as nonrenewable as (and far more valuable than) oil. Unlike oil, it has no technological substitute - and no powerful friends in the halls of government. Agriculture has too often involved an insupportable abuse and waste of soil, ever since the first farmers took away the soil-saving cover and roots of perennial plants. Civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland. This irremediable loss, never enough noticed, has been made worse by the huge monocultures and continuous soil-exposure of the agriculture we now practice. To the problem of soil loss, the industrialization of agriculture has added pollution by toxic chemicals, now universally present in our farmlands and streams. Some of this toxicity is associated with the widely acclaimed method of minimum tillage. We should not poison our soils to save them.

The environmental community had labeled Dynegy "the next King Coal" in response to their plans to build the coal plants, the largest new coal fleet proposed in the USA. Last spring thousands of Green America members spoke up to urge Dynegy to cancel the plants. Working with individual and institutional investors, Green America raised concerns about Dynegy's climate risk consistently over the past year. "America doesn't need dirty, expensive coal-fired power plants. A focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy will be far more cost-effective for meeting power needs going forward," said Todd Larsen, Green America's director of Corporate Responsibility. "Investing in efficiency and clean energy will jump start our economy, America's quest for energy independence and the victory over the climate crisis."

To the Terrorist, by definition, that innocent civilians and even children are killed isn't a regrettable cost of taking military action. It's not a cost at all. It's a benefit. It has strategic value. Goldfarb explicitly says this: "to wipe out a man's entire family, it's hard to imagine that doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause." That, of course, is the very same logic that leads Hamas to send suicide bombers to slaughter Israeli teenagers in pizza parlors and on buses and to shoot rockets into their homes. It's the logic that leads Al Qaeda to fly civilian-filled airplanes into civilian-filled office buildings. And it's the logic that leads infinitely weak and deranged people like Goldfarb and Peretz to find value in the killing of innocent Palestinians, including -- one might say, at least in Goldfarb's case: especially -- children.

This is not the first time that the coal ash containment ponds have breached at the Kingston Fossil plant. There have been two in recent years, one in 2003 and in 2006. Danny Collins, the manager of the Rockwood Municipal Airport, said that he'd noticed a green ooze coming from the retention wall of the waste pond for the last year and a half. But this environmental disaster may be the worst in the country's history and the threats to health and the environment are severe, as the residents are beginning to learn. Clean up crews expressed their shock at the size and scope of the accident. "I ain't seen anything like this ever before," said one worker, who asked not to be identified by name because "TVA told us not to say anything. Fifteen years ago there was a tornado here -- it was nothing compared to this," he explained.

Many businesses that owe penalties and fines are scrambling to settle those claims now before Obama takes office.

If you're so inclined, if the temperature of your temperament is just so, if that fourth glass of $10 recession-defying wine is making you feel unusually generous, maybe, just maybe you can muster a bit of sympathy for George W. Bush. Possible? Insane? Blasphemous? Damn straight. It's already happening. I've read a number of pieces and a few strange, sepia-toned articles of late (like this one) that, while certainly not daring to paint Bush with any sort of gushing, rose-colored, wasn't-he-an-unrecognized-genius brush of overt kindness, still attempt to give him a far larger dose of humanity and pathos than which might sit well with your very soul.

More countries should offer to take in Guantanamo prisoners to help U.S. President-elect Barack Obama close the detention camp for terrorism suspects, the U.N.'s torture investigator said on Monday. About 255 men are still held at the U.S.-run naval base in Cuba, a symbol of aggressive interrogation methods that exposed the United States to allegations of torture. Washington has cleared 50 of the detainees for release but cannot return them to home countries due to the risk they would be tortured or persecuted there. Around 500 others have been freed or transferred to other governments since 2002. Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur for the U.N. Human Rights Council, said more countries that had criticized U.S. treatment of Guantanamo detainees should accept some prisoners so Obama could fulfill a campaign pledge to shut down the prison camp.

Preliminary water tests from rivers near a huge coal ash spill in Tennessee show elevated levels of pollutants such as mercury and lead, a environmental group said on Friday. "We're concerned that the water poses a greater risk to residents in the area than has been revealed so far," said Matt Wasson, a program director at Appalachian Voices, a environmental group that coordinated the testing of the water with scientists from Appalachian State University. Fly ash, a byproduct of burning coal, is known to contain small amounts of heavy metals and other pollutants dangerous to human health. In 2000 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decided that the ash would not be managed as a hazardous waste. The environmental group's tests, which took place on December 27, showed higher levels of the pollutants of arsenic, mercury and lead than reported by the TVA and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

For the past three decades, Israel has charted a course that invites its own destruction by relying on two risky propositions: first, that it could extend its security perimeter beyond the reach of a devastating missile attack, and second, that it could permanently control the political debate inside its crucial ally, the United States. If Israel continues to engender hatred across the Muslim world – and thus feeds the growth of Islamic extremism – eventually some radical government or group will get hold of a missile or some other means of delivering a payload against Tel Aviv that would wreak mass devastation.

That the Israelis should use an old Soviet tactic to blind the world's vision of war may not be surprising. But the result is that Palestinian voices – as opposed to those of Western reporters – are now dominating the airwaves. The men and women who are under air and artillery attack by the Israelis are now telling their own story on television and radio and in the papers as they have never been able to tell it before, without the artificial "balance", which so much television journalism imposes on live reporting. Perhaps this will become a new form of coverage – letting the participants tell their own story. The flip side, of course, is that there is no Westerner in Gaza to cross-question Hamas's devious account of events: another victory for the Palestinian militia, handed to them on a plate by the Israelis.

White phosphorus: the smoke-screen chemical that can burn to the bone. White phosphorus bursts into a deep-yellow flame when it is exposed to oxygen, producing a thick white smoke. It is used as a smokescreen or for incendiary devices, but can also be deployed as an anti-personnel flame compound capable of causing potentially fatal burns. Phosphorus burns are almost always second or third-degree because the particles do not stop burning on contact with skin until they have entirely disappeared — it is not unknown for them to reach the bone. Geneva conventions ban the use of phosphorus as an offensive weapon against civilians, but its use as a smokescreen is not prohibited by international law. Israel previously used white phosphorus during its war with Lebanon in 2006. It has been used frequently by British and US forces in recent wars, notably during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Its use was criticized widely. White phosphorus has the slang name “Willy Pete”, which dates from the First World War. It was commonly used in the Vietnam era. Depleted Uranium weaponry is being used as well.

Last week, a US federal district judge, Henry Kennedy, ruled in favor of a case brought by the survivors of the crew of the USS Pueblo, a spy ship captured by the North Korean Navy in 1968, who were held prisoner by North Korea for 11 months, and who were reportedly tortured in captivity. The judge awarded the men $65 million in damages from the state of North Korea. Now I’m happy for the plaintiffs. Torture is flatly banned under international law, and nobody should be tortured under any conditions (whatever Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia may think). But let’s not ignore the irony of this ruling. In general, the federal courts have been incredibly reluctant about making such rulings against the US government for doing the same thing that North Korea did, or even worse.

"President-elect Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress are planning swift action to overturn a Supreme Court decision that made it much harder for people to challenge discrimination in employment, education, housing and other fields. The decision, involving a woman named Lilly M. Ledbetter, who had accused her employer of sex-based pay discrimination, was issued in May 2007. Since then, courts around the country have gone far beyond the facts of that case and cited it as a reason for rejecting lawsuits claiming discrimination based on race, sex, age and disability."

Mining First: "This situation reveals the absence of the state in the model of the mining enclave where the company has control over the social, political and economic life," Congresswoman Gloria Ramos, whose father was a miner and who is herself from Cerro de Pasco, told IPS. "For years the right to work has been granted in exchange for a life marked by pollution and poor living conditions. We have grown up with a culture of short-term profits that has ignored sustainable development," said the legislator. In some areas, local residents receive murky water for only a few hours a day, three times a week, to cover all of their needs. In his conversation with IPS, Pariona acknowledged the serious pollution problem, but blamed it mainly on the past. "The soils in Cerro de Pasco themselves are contaminated with lead and all of the metals found in this area. For over 400 years, mining operations have generated grave and drastic environmental damages," said the Volcan spokesman. But like a festering wound, the open-pit mine continues to grow, in the present.

"The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) today called on the United States Government; including members of Congress, and the international community; including the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to investigate Israel’s reported use of White Phosphorus in its ongoing attack on Gaza. "

In this CBS (!!!!!) report, on Juan Cole's blog, a doctor in Gaza says that he has seen one, ONE, fighter out of hundreds of casualties. "CBS News broadcasts an interview with a Norwegian physician on the scene in Gaza. He says he has seen one military casualty come into the hospital. Of 2500 wounded, 50% are women and children. Doing surgery around the clock. There are injuries you do not want to see-- children coming in with open abdomens, with injured legs, we had to amputate both of them. This is a war on the civilian population of Gaza. It is a very young population. They cannot flee. They are fenced in. They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage."

THE Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant. The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives “a coach and horses” through privacy laws. The hacking is known as “remote searching”. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room. Under the Brussels edict, police across the EU have been given the green light to expand the implementation of a rarely used power involving warrantless intrusive surveillance of private property. The strategy will allow French, German and other EU forces to ask British officers to hack into someone’s UK computer and pass over any material gleaned. A remote search can be granted if a senior officer says he “believes” that it is “proportionate” and necessary to prevent or detect serious crime — defined as any offence attracting a jail sentence of more than three years. However, opposition MPs and civil liberties groups say that the broadening of such intrusive surveillance powers should be regulated by a new act of parliament and court warrants. [ MORE AT STORY SITE - COMING SOON TO THE U.S., IF NOT ALREADY TAKING PLACE! ]

After seeing the new documentary Flow, my 2009 New Year's resolution is to stop buying bottled water. Over $100 billion is spent annually on bottled water, but it would cost only $30 billion to provide clean drinking water to the entire world. Unlike tap water, bottled water is not regulated for cleanliness. And don't even get me started on the mountains of plastic bottles created by the bottled water industry. For 84 terrifying and informative minutes, filmmaker Irena Salina makes a very persuasive case for stopping the commoditization of water and ensuring that everyone has access to clean drinking water. Salina interviews an array of researchers and activists who all describe the frightening international situation: dirty water kills more people than wars, the world is quickly running out of clean water, and water has become a valuable commodity for multinational corporations to exploit for profit. Flow is currently available on DVD. The film is grounded in the question: Who owns the world's water? Without water life cannot exist. But 1.1 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean drinking water, and over 5 million people die annually from water-related illnesses. While Flow is a wake-up call that documents all that is wrong with the world's attitude toward water, the film also profiles a number of technologies that could dramatically improve international access to clean drinking water at a nominal cost.

Mounting budget pressures worsened by the global financial crisis are giving new urgency to calls for the Pentagon and its top suppliers to rein in the runaway costs of nearly every major arms program. Top corporate executives, military officials and analysts told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit this week that seven years of sharp growth in U.S. defense spending were ending and future budgets would flatten out at a high level. But they said the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama had already emphasized its intent to scrutinize major weapons programs closely and make reforms. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told U.S. troops in Kyrgyzstan last week there would be no major cuts in the defense budget for the "next year or two," but "the significant increases that we've seen in recent years are likely to come to a screeching halt."