"The Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York"

• Via Mercury Rising, "Republican IRS Witch Hunt Cost $14 Million and Counting" (at Politicus USA) has shall we say a familiar name attached:

  We only know because Representatives Sander Levin and Elijah Cummings, the Ranking Members of the House Ways and Means Committee and Oversight and Government Reform Committee, asked the IRS on February 7 in a letter. Today they released a letter from IRS Commissioner John Koskinen regarding the money and resources spent on the Republican witch hunt.
  
  The costs, which are explained as the “conservative approach”, detailed in Koskinen’s letter are $8 million in direct costs like salaries, benefits, and travel, plus an additional $6 million to $8 million to “add capacity to information technology systems to process materials to investigators.”
  
  All of this was spent when Darrell Issa knew from the beginning that there was nothing to see.

  Mmmmm-hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
• Mills River Progressive reposts from OpEd News an article by Alan Grayson on China and the Keystone XL pipeline.    

  There are plenty of reasons to be against the Keystone XL pipeline. Environmentalists recognize it as the ultimate "bonfire of the vanities" - planet-wide carbon bonfires. The pipeline passes through an active earthquake zone. One bad spill could permanently poison the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides drinking water to millions of people, and 30% of our irrigation.
  
  Here is another reason, perhaps the best reason of all: It doesn't do us any good. China, yes. The Koch Brothers (who own the refining capacity that would be used), yes. Us, no.

• Also via Mills River Progressive from OpEd News:  Roundup is not good for you or the food chain.  

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