Canadian government takes legal action against Alberta First Nation famous for battling oil sands

The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, a First Nation whose leadership has spoken out for years against oil sands pollution in northern Alberta, is among six First Nations being taken to court by the federal government for not complying with a new law requiring bands to post audited financial statements online.

The 5 Most Damning Revelations From The CIA’s Report On Bush-Era Torture

On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a summary of a 6,000 page report investigating the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Though former Bush administration officials — who officially approved the methods in August of 2002 — have argued that the revelations could endanger American security at home and abroad, the report completely discredits the former president’s long-standing claims that torture prevented attacks against America and helped capture high value terrorist targets. Below are its most damning revelations:

1. Torture didn’t stop a single terrorist attack. “At no time did the CIA’s coercive interrogation techniques lead to the collection of imminent threat intelligence, such as the hypothetical ‘ticking time bomb’ information that many believe was the justification for the use of these techniques.”

Why Dick Cheney Is Really Freaking Out About The New Torture Report

The Senate Intelligence Committee will release an executive summary of a long-awaited CIA report on the government’s use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT) on Tuesday, showing that the agency relied on sexual threats, water-boarding, sleep deprivation and other gruesome methods to interrogate terror suspects in the wake of the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks.

The document will also show that CIA officials misled the Bush administration about the effectiveness of the methods.

What happens when oil prices go down instead of up

Luck plays a part in any political career. Napoleon famously asked of a general recommended to him for his military prowess: "so he is good -- but is he lucky?"

A barrel of oil that was selling in the US$110 range last summer, now sells for less than US$70. That was not the future Stephen Harper and his ruling Conservatives expected when the party leader touted Canada as an energy superpower, based on massive petroleum reserves -- the world's third largest after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela -- locked away in the bitumen sands of Alberta.

Why the Founding Fathers Considered Banning Torture Foundational to the U.S. Constitution

I have argued on many occasions that the language of patriotism and appeal to the Founding Fathers and the constitution must not be allowed to be appropriated by the political right wing in contemporary America, since for the most part right wing principles (privileging religion, exaltation of ‘whiteness’ over universal humanity, and preference for property rights over human rights) are diametrically opposed to the Enlightenment and Deist values of most of the framers of the United States.

We will likely hear these false appeals to an imaginary history a great deal with the release of the Senate report on CIA torture.  It seems to me self-evident that most of the members of the Constitutional Convention would have voted to release the report and also would have been completely appalled at its contents.

California’s Drought Is So Bad That Some Communities Are Trucking In Their Water

On the eastern edge of the San Joaquin Valley, at 2,000 feet above sea level, the wells of Auberry, California, are among the first in the state to tap the perennial groundwater flowing out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The fresh supply of snowmelt, which accounts for more than 60 percent of California’s water supply and which, since the state’s drought began three years ago, has become one of the most precious commodities in the western United States, flows down the range’s granite bedrock slopes in subterranean streams dozens of feet beneath the houses, shops and farms of the tiny foothill community.

Scott Houston’s livelihood depends on those streams flowing, as well as on their not flowing. Several times a day, Houston, 49 years old and stout as a boulder, drives his eight-ton water truck to a parking lot two miles down the road from his home, connects a hose from the 2,035-gallon tank on the back of his rig to the valve of a fire hydrant atop a well, and fills it with groundwater purchased from the school district. Then he hauls the water to customers throughout northeastern Fresno County whose residential wells have run dry, for about $225 per delivery. With last winter’s Sierra snowpack at less than a fifth of what is considered normal, business this year is very good.

Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban Want to Be the Koch Brothers for Israel

One might have thought that the Israel lobby—i.e., the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its various associated organizations—had taken pro-Israel advocacy about as far as it could go. Congress routinely defers to the lobby on all matters relating to Israel (including, most notably at this moment, the Iran nuclear issue), while the White House strives to live up to Vice President Joe Biden’s rule that “no daylight, no daylight” (he repeats it) must ever shine between US and Israeli policies.

What more could a lobby want?

More. Just as billionaires keep coming up with ways to make more money, so do lobbies seek ever more power, whether they need it or not. The National Rifle Association proves that point.

One Of Nation’s Most Respected Constitutional Scholars Sells Out To Nation’s Largest Coal Company

Last week, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe sent out a broadside he wrote with the world’s largest privately-held coal company attacking the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule to regulate carbon pollution from existing power plants under the Clean Air Act. The document submitted by Tribe and coal behemoth Peabody Energy calls the proposed rule a “remarkable example of federal overreach,” that “lacks legal basis,” to regulate carbon, resting on a “fatally flawed interpretation of Section 111” of the Clean Air Act.

No projects yet approved for Ottawa manufacturing fund after 18 months

It was one of a clutch of spending programs rolled out in the Conservative government’s austerity budget of 2013 – $200-million to spark innovation in Ontario’s hard-hit manufacturing sector.

But 18 months later Ottawa has yet to approve a single project from its Advanced Manufacturing Fund, even as the government continues to credit its investments in manufacturing for creating jobs and growth in Ontario.

How Newt Gingrich’s Language Guru Helped Rebrand the Kochs' Message

For the Koch brothers' donor network, the 2012 elections were a keen disappointment. Not only did they lose what Charles Koch had famously billed as the "mother of all wars" to oust Barack Obama, but they poured some $400 million into electoral and advocacy efforts with, at best, lackluster results in federal and state races, leaving a number of their investors and operatives unhappy.

Fast-forward to 2014, and the Koch network seems to be riding high. Having budgeted nearly $300 million for advocacy and political drives, with a bigger field operation and better data to mobilize conservative voters, the network helped the GOP capture the Senate, expand the House majority, and reelect Koch-favored politicians like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Three of the new GOP senators—Arkansas' Tom Cotton, Colorado's Cory Gardner, and Iowa's Joni Ernst—recently attended Koch policy and fundraising retreats; at the network's Dana Point, California, confab this past June, all three heaped praise on the assembled donors and Koch operatives.