F.D.A. Issues Alert on Chinese Seafood
The Food and Drug Administration today issued an alert challenging imports of five major types of farm-raised seafood from China, including shrimp and catfish, because testing found recurrent contamination from carcinogens and antibiotics.
"We are Americans and in our America, we do not torture, we do not imprison people without legal recourse, and we do not give any president unchecked power. Congress must act quickly to rein in this over-reaching president and overturn these un-American acts."
"We are Americans and in our America, we do not torture, we do not imprison people without legal recourse, and we do not give any president unchecked power. Congress must act quickly to rein in this over-reaching president and overturn these un-American acts."
It hasn't hit the news wires yet, but retired Generals Robert Gard and John Johns are going public today with something big. They're calling on Congress to ban the use of torture, restore the right to trial and shut down the disastrous prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.
You can be sure the blowback from the right wing will be serious. But there's a growing chorus of judges, scholars, military experts, and regular folks who believe that President Bush's abuse of our Constitution is making us less secure...
We'll deliver your comments directly to your senators and representative TOMORROW—along with thousands of other voices from the ACLU, True Majority and others as part of the biggest national day of action to restore law and justice in years.
Why now? Today, under the guise of the "war on terror," the White House is systematically dismantling the very core principles that have made America great...
We were hopeful that the new Congress would act quickly to right the wrongs of the last six years. But they haven't done it yet.
A lot of Democrats in Congress don't understand that there are millions of us who take our Constitution very seriously. They think that only elites worry about the Constitution and they're worried about being attacked for being "weak on security."
But preserving these core principles is essential to our security—we can't lead on freedom abroad when we condone torture in our own backyard.
And this is far from a partisan issue. Conservatives have a stake in preserving the integrity of our democracy too. In fact, head of the American Conservative Union, David Keene and former Republican congressman Bob Barr have signed on to a pledge very similar to this.
It's time to restate the simple, nonnegotiable truth about what it means to be an American. What it means be a democracy. The president operates under the law. We do not torture. We, like the founders of our country, believe that liberty is the foundation of our security, not a threat to our security.
June 15, 2007
Thomas the Tank Engine Toys Recalled Because of Lead Paint
By ANGEL JENNINGS
The toy maker RC2 Corporation pulled a number of its Thomas & Friends trains and accessory parts off the shelves yesterday after learning that the red and yellow paint used to decorate more than 1.5 million of the toys contained lead.
Lead, if ingested by children, can cause long-term neurological problems that affect learning and behavior.
“Parents should not delay in getting these toys away from their kids,” Scott Wolfson, spokesman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said yesterday.
An alert posted at a Web site devoted to the toy line, www.totallythomas.com, included a list of more than two dozen items affected by the recall. The company noted that toys that bear a code containing a “WJ” or “AZ” on the bottom of the toy or the inside of the battery door are not included in the recall.
