The Farm Depression was extremely severe. Families that had recently expected to create long-lasting prosperity for themselves were soon faced with starvation. No region of the country was spared. But, because of a quirk of fate, some regions were given a way to ease the pain and to even achieve prosperity for a few years — though at the price of learning a contempt for the law and societal structures. One of these regions was Minnesota’s Stearns County. The quirk of fate: Prohibition.

While the grindingly slow process of working an initiative through the congress, funding it and getting the agencies at state and local levels into action seems like stasis, eventually the program the administration has worked long and hard for does arrive.

That big government can take so long that it seems impossible, but what it can accomplish with public service from those elected by the taxpayers is a very good use of the taxes we pay.

All of the news stories that we hear about this medical study and that medical study, all of which seem to eventually be at odds with each other or that tell us “eating rutabagas appears to lessen your chance of getting eyebrow cancer by 0.4%” First of all, I’m not going to rag on the people who do the studies. They work hard and are generally intelligent people (maybe not the whiny, cry baby pre-meds who used to take my non-calculus physics classes, but most of them). They do good work and uncover interesting things.

The problem lies in the P.R. people and the media people who grab hold of their results and plaster them (National Enquirer style) all over the papers, magazines and TV, misrepresenting the actual research findings.

A new proposed “casebook” on psychologist ethics in national security settings, written by the Ethics Committee of the American Psychological Association (APA), tells psychologists that when assessing whether an interrogation technique is abusive or not, they should consider, among other factors, whether there are “data to support that the technique is effective in gathering accurate information.” This determination, which places the needs of the military or intelligence gathering entity above that of the person the psychologist is examining, demonstrates how blatantly unethical it is for psychologists to participate in these interrogations.

While it’s shocking that APA would call upon psychologists to weigh an interrogation technique’s “effectiveness” with other ethical standards, it’s even crazier when one considers it took them six years to write this up, having been originally tasked with writing an “ethics casebook” for interrogations back in 2005.

We need a full investigation of the criminal lawbreaking of the banks, and a process that holds them accountable for it. And that doesn’t just include a payoff. That appears to be the commitment of Schneiderman.

In this segment, I emphasize the importance of having a real vision of the world we wish to see; if we don’t have an answer to the question “If you don’t like capitalism, and you don’t like state socialism, then what do you want?”, then there’s no reason to take what we’re saying seriously.

There’s a growing threat a hostage-taking situation over the transportation funding bill, which expires September 30. That and related non-funding Congress could shut down thousands of jobs in transportation-related construction.

I assumed the hundreds of protesters who’ve come to D.C. to protest against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline weren’t out there because they thought the Administration was on their side. They meant to pressure the Administration over the environmental and political consequences of their imminent actions. Indeed, we now learn that at least one imminent actions may be a day away.

Yesterday Ryan and I were making (and taking) calls on the livestream. I was calling FDL members to thank them for signing up, and also following up on requests that many had made to get more involved as volunteers. We tried to clone the fabulous Brian, but that didn’t work (though we did wind up with some rather singular sheep). So I’m calling people today who indicated they have graphics skills to see if we can get Brian some help doing graphics and layouts for our campaigns.

If you’d like to volunteer but can’t afford a membership, we have some really generous members who have offered to donate scholarships. So if you’re interested, give Ryan a call at (202) 506-3917.

The California based organization, Consumer Watchdog, is looking to put a measure on the 2012 November ballot in California that would create a public health insurance option in the state and provide state regulators more control of premiums.