[Researchers for the non-profit watchdog Government Accountability Project say] it has identified hundreds of instances where White House-appointed officials interfered with government scientists' efforts to convey their research findings to the public, at the behest of top administration officials.
Take a minute to get over your shock.
Okay, then...
What's happening here?
A large increase in the number of dolphins stranded on beaches in the Galveston-Sabine Pass areas over the last two weeks is puzzling marine mammal experts.The bodies of at least 35 bottlenose dolphins, most of them newborns, have washed ashore during the last two weeks
[...]
The number is nearly double the dolphins stranded in the same period last year during the annual stranding season that runs from January through March [...]
Scientists are concerned because dolphin health can be a barometer for the health of the marine environment
[...]
Investigators suspect the dolphins may be dying off the Louisiana coast and being carried by currents to the Texas shore [...]
I myself haven't seen any beached dolphins, but I haven't been down to the west end of the island for a while. I did see a pickup truck parked along Seawall this weekend with a handprinted sign on its top reading "Free Dolphin Rescue Training". So far what has been found in these dolphins is lung infections and parasites. I read somewhere an opinion that it was simply the fact that the winter was more severe this year.
After a little commercial boat tour of the Galveston Bay harbor a couple of weeks ago, where I got to watch six or seven dolphins lazily following a shrimp boat, Cpt. Paris Price (great name, eh?) told me that before the EPA was created and mandated a clean-up of the bay, it had become terribly polluted - so much so that the native brown pelicans were becoming extinct due to pesticide exposure. (At the time I thought that may have been the subject of the movie The Pelican Brief -based on a John Grisham novel, set in New Orleans. But checking online, it appears that I am probably wrong about that. I'm reading the book to find out.)
Paris also told me that while the harbor is now clean in a non-polluted sense, in its pre-European settlement history, it was said to have been pristine and clear. What is now a muddy bottom was lined with oyster shells. They dredged the shells from the bottom of the harbor to make roads. You can still see some of the shells today embedded in chunks of concrete that I assume were the next version of pavement in Galveston.
And...what's happening here?
Cities are cracking down on charities that feed the homeless, adopting rules that restrict food giveaways to certain locations, require charities to get permits or limit the number of free meals they can provide.[...]
"The feedings were happening several times a week" in parking lots and sidewalks downtown, says Dewey Harris, director of Wilmington's Community Services Department. "A lot of the merchants said, 'We feel uncomfortable when you have all these homeless being fed downtown when we're trying to attract tourists.' "
Wasn't Mr. Compassion's rationale in gutting government programs for the poor that these things should be done by charities?
Feeding the hungry several times a week. Indeed!
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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