Truthout: 11 March 2012

American Is Held After Shooting at Least 16 Civilians in Afghanistan
Taimoor Shah and Graham Bowley, The New York Times News Service: "A United States service member walked out of a military base in a rural district of southern Afghanistan on Sunday and opened fire on three nearby houses, killing at least 16 civilians, including several children, local villagers and provincial officials said. The shooting risks further inciting anti-American sentiment in Afghanistan and troubling a relationship that had already been brought to a new low by the burning of Korans at an American military base last month."
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The Border Wall: The Last Stand at Making the US a White Gated Community
Mark Karlin, Truthout: "The construction of the 'barrier' wall - accompanying large-scale militarization (the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI, the military etc) - is on America's southern border, and there is meaning in that. Its location is prima facie evidence that the 'immigration issue' is really a euphemism for keeping poor brown-skinned people out of the US - as well as creating a 'practice' zone for protecting American economic and political interests in Mexico and Central America."
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How Public Sector Layoffs Are Holding Back the Recovery
Heather Boushey, ThinkProgress: "The current economic recovery is going well if one looks at private sector job creation. The pace of private sector job creation is slower than in the recovery from the early 1990s recession .. Since early 2009, governments at all levels have shed nearly 700,000 jobs, most of them at the state and local level. Since August of 2008 state and local governments have shed a total of 647,000 workers, of which 64 percent were women workers."
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Canadian Government Targeting Opponents of New Oil Sands Pipeline
Lisa Song, InsideClimate News: "As US environmental groups renew their battle against the resurrected Keystone XL oil pipeline, their counterparts in Canada are facing a deeper problem - a government campaign to limit their influence over Canada's Northern Gateway pipeline.... As environmental groups have stepped up their campaigns against the project, key figures in the Harper administration have publicly denounced them as extremists, and a federal finance committee has announced plans to audit all of Canada's charities."
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Why Can't You Smoke Pot? Because Lobbyists Are Getting Rich Off of the War on Drugs
Lee Fang, Republic Report: "John Lovell is a lobbyist who makes a lot of money from making sure you can't smoke a joint. That's his job. He's a lobbyist for the police unions in Sacramento, and he is a driving force behind grabbing Federal dollars to shut down the California marijuana industry.... Why do we still put hundreds of thousands of people in steel cages for pot-related offenses? Well, there are many reasons, but one of them is, of course, money in politics."
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In "Open Government Data," What's Really Open?
Emily Badger, Miller-McCune: "In parsing the meaning of 'open government,' citizens weigh the availability of information against the transparency of creating it. It's a rare grammar debate that affects the course of democracy.... Does 'open government,' in the traditional context of transparency and accountability, modify 'data'? Put another way, are we talking about real-time transit information (data collected by a government and freely given to the public), or White House visitor logs (data about government itself that creates true transparency)?"
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"I'm Getting Arrested" App Aims to Help Drivers
Valeria Fernández, New America Media: "A group of pro-immigrant rights activists in Arizona aim to develop a smartphone application that would help immigrants notify friends, family and their attorney if they are detained and arrested during a traffic stop.... A recent Department of Justice investigation on racial profiling of Latinos by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office found that Latinos were four to nine times more likely to be pulled over in a traffic stop than non-Latinos."
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Environmental Protection Agency Puts Greenhouse Gas Rules for Oil Refineries on Backburner
Elizabeth McGowan, InsideClimate News: "Election-year politics, $4-a-gallon gasoline and an anti-regulatory fervor on Capitol Hill have aligned to thwart EPA's vow to issue final carbon emissions standards for oil refineries this year.... The pullback on refineries - combined with an earlier and separate delay on regulating greenhouse gases from fossil fuel power plants - means EPA has yet to control emissions from a pair of sizable industrial sources."
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New Federal Statistics Reveal Harsh Discipline for Minority Students
Susan Ferriss, iWatch News: "Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan unveiled a vast collection of school data Tuesday, calling attention to alarmingly high discipline rates for minority students in comparison to their white counterparts. The trend lines applied to suspensions and expulsions, as well as referrals to law enforcement agencies.... 'The sad fact is that minority students across America face much harsher discipline than non-minorities, even within the same school,' Duncan said."
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Working Moms: The Kids Are All Right
Tom Jacobs, Miller-McCune: "Working mothers tend to be happier and healthier than mothers who stay at home caring for young children, according to recent research. But many of those who work are often haunted by the question: 'Am I screwing up my kids?' A new study provides a reassuring answer. Writing in the journal Social Science Research, sociologists Jeremiah Wills and Jonathan Brauer conclude - with one important caveat - that 'maternal employment largely is inconsequential to child well-being.'"
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Heroic Activists in Louisiana Fight Back Against Corporate Greed
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