Free Republic

OMG ! This environmental movement is getting to be a royal pain in the arse... literally. For those of you who like to use soft plush toilet paper you better hide because the environmentalists are coming after you. According to a report in the WAPO soft toilet paper is a menace "a dark-comedy example of American excess." The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods. European...

John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney were the founders, with Josh Silver, of Free Press, which has launched a campaign to save the news. Their book, Saving Journalism: The Soul of Democracy, will be published by New Press in the fall. Communities across America are suffering through a crisis that could leave a dramatically diminished version of democracy in its wake. It is not the economic meltdown, although the crisis is related to the broader day of reckoning that appears to have arrived. The crisis of which we speak involves more than mere economics. Journalism is collapsing, and with it...

Coalition seeks to call attention to school's involvement with 'unethical' entities - A UC Berkeley student protest group called the Phoenix Coalition to Free the UC is occupying a redwood tree in the center of campus to challenge the university on its involvement with the military and what the group calls "unethical corporations and regimes." UC Berkeley's pending biofuels research deal with oil industry giant BP sparked members of various activist groups on campus to work together, said Matthew Taylor, a spokesman for the coalition. "Every generation goes through a loss of innocence, recognizing this huge gap between the ideal...

Few things in Berkeley are as sacred as a coast live oak. The gnarled Berkeley natives are protected by city law, supported by a council resolution and are a favorite of environmentalists. But that might not be enough to save 38 coast live oaks from UC's plan to clear part of a grove next to Memorial Stadium to make way for an athletic training center promised to football coach Jeff Tedford. "Those trees are far more valuable than this passing fancy for a high-priced football coach who may be gone in a season or two," said Joanna Dwyer, who lives...

Nov. 3, 2006 - Take a look at the newspaper business these days, and you’d think it’s headed for the trash heap. Stock prices are in the tank. Staffs are being slashed. Circulation is plummeting: just this week, the newspaper industry reported that the average daily circulation of 770 newspapers across the country fell 2.8 percent for the six months ended Sept. 30—one of the steepest drops for any comparable period in the last 15 years. Almost every major newspaper in the country lost readers, among them the Los Angeles Times, which reported a wrenching 8 percent drop in weekday...

Arnold pledges to save trees Governor says California's roadless areas will be safe from Bush policy Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed Thursday that the Bush administration's attempt to open a third of national forests to logging, mining and development will not diminish protections for California's remote forestlands. Announcing an agreement with the U.S. Forest Service to protect about 4.4 million California acres left vulnerable to construction under the new Bush administration rules, Schwarzenegger said those largely undeveloped areas will remain untouched. "I am committed to protecting the vibrant health and sustainable future of our forests," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "Roadless...

It is probably no surprise that the New York Times is less than pleased with the results of the 2004 election. The newspaper, and its sister the Boston Globe, both publicly endorsed John Kerry. But what was more unusual was the way the newspaper conducted itself on Election Day and on Nov. 3. During Election Day, the Times, as well as many other news organizations, conducted exit polling. Those polls query voters as to their choices when they leave polling stations. As is well known today, the ad-hoc exit polls turned out to be wrong. What is not as well...