Sen. Cornyn Sends Letter To President Obama About "Fishy" Activities Program At White House

Sen. Cornyn appeared on Fox News today to discuss his letter to President Obama regarding the collection of emails and other communications opposing the President's health care policies.  Click here to watch the interview. 

In a letter to President Obama,  Sen. Cornyn expressed serious concern about the White House's new program requesting Americans to forward email chains and other communications opposing the President's health care policies. Sen. Cornyn is seeking assurances that the program is being carried out in a manner consistent with the First Amendment and America's tradition of free speech and public discourse.

• How do you intend to use the names, email addresses, IP addresses, and identities of citizens who are reported to have engaged in "fishy" speech?
• How do you intend to notify citizens who have been reported for "fishy" speech?
• What action do you intend to take against citizens who have been reported for engaging in "fishy" speech?
• Do your own past statements qualify as "disinformation"? For example, is it "disinformation" to note that in 2003 you said:"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan"?

United States Senator

George Bush's Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, could face criminal prosecution at home and abroad for authorizing torture. So why did Texas Tech University just give him a job?

Tell Texas Tech: Fire Alberto Gonzales!

Bob Fertik

Tell Chancellor Kent Hance to fire Alberto Gonzales immediately.

Texas Tech University recently announced it is hiring disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to teach classes and help with student recruitment.

In response, 45 faculty members have sent a letter to the Chancellor calling Gonzales' hiring "objectionable." In the letter they reject the idea that there's a place at the university for a man who enabled some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration.

Can you take one minute to join with the Texas Tech University faculty members and tell Chancellor Kent Hance to fire Alberto Gonzales?

The faculty letter to Chancellor Hance reminds us that Alberto Gonzales:

• Frequently misled or lied to Congress and the American people;
• Rejected the Geneva Conventions;
• Denied the Constitutional right of habeas corpus; and
• Appeared to be more loyal to the President than to the Constitution.

Despite this horrible record, Chancellor Hance has hired Alberto Gonzales -- a man the Chancellor describes as a "good friend"-- for $100,000 a year. What's more, Texas Tech has announced that Alberto Gonzales will teach a class called "Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch" where he will talk about the "accomplishments" of his tenure at the Department of Justice.

Alberto Gonzales should be disbarred and put on trial for torture, not given a fat salary, a professor's title and a soap box.

Send an email to Texas Tech Chancellor Kent Hance today -- tell him to fire Alberto Gonzales immediately.

Thank you for working to build a better world.

Matt Lockshin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

Texas AgriLife Extension economists reported last week that this year’s crop losses in Texas are already estimated at $2.6 billion, and livestock losses are close to $1 billion since November 2008. The U.S. Drought Monitor indicated Texas has the most land in the worst stage of drought in nearly a decade.

 In some parts of central Texas, half of the cotton, corn and sorghum crops—Texas’s primary exports—have already been wiped out by the drought. Grazing pastures are too dry for livestock, and many Texas ranchers are being forced to sell their cattle because they cannot feed them.

Please sign my petition

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/3-billion-in-emergency-drought-relief-funding

• Alert of the Week: Don't Let Obama Put Monsanto Cheerleaders in Charge of Food Safety
• Alert Update of the Week: Why OCA and Fair Trade Advocates Are Pressuring Whole Foods and UNFI
• Organic News of the Week: Organic Dairy Farmers Tell Vilsack to Crack Down on Aurora & Horizon's Factory Farm Dairy Feedlots
• Related Quote of the Week: Senator Calls for Investigation of Dean Foods/Horizon Monopoly Practices
• Consumer Tip of the Week: Food Toxins 101: An Intro to Hexane
• Headlines and Articles of the Week

Subscribe | Unsubscribe | Read Past Issues | OCA Homepage | Donate

The Obama Administration is putting two notorious biotech bullies in charge of food safety. Former Monsanto lobbyist Michael Taylor has been appointed as a senior advisor to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner on food safety. And, rBGH-using dairy farmer and Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff, is rumored to be President Obama's choice for Under-Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety. Wolfe spearheaded anti-consumer legislation in Pennsylvania that would have taken away the rights of consumers to know whether their milk and dairy products were contaminated with Monsanto's (now Eli Lilly's) genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH).

Learn more and take action

In response to OCA's recent alerts on Whole Foods Market (WFM) and United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI), WFM posted out a form letter to many of our readers. Below is a summary of OCA's response, which you can read in greater detail here http://organicconsumers.org/unfi.cfm

OCA Finds WFM and UNFI Guilty of the Following:

* Corporate takeovers and monopolistic practices undermining organics.
* Pushing so-called "natural" foods at the expense of organic.
* Excluding small and family-scale organic farms.
* Marginalizing local and regional producers and brands.
* Organic monopolies and the "Whole Paycheck" phenomena.
* Selling personal care products misleadingly labeled as "organic."
* Selling vitamins and supplements spiked with synthetic chemicals as "natural," "all natural" or "Whole Foods."
* Violating labor rights and Domestic Fair Trade principles.

Learn more about each of these points here

Last week, USDA Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack spoke at the La Crosse, Wisconsin County Fair. Nearly 200 organic farmers showed up to protest. The farmers, organized by the Cornucopia Institute, rallied to convince Vilsack to take action against factory farms that are saturating the market with fake organic milk, like Aurora and Horizon (Dean Foods). One farmer shouted a question to the Agriculture Secretary, asking when the USDA will take action against organic lawbreakers. "I commit to you that we will enforce the rules," Vilsack responded. The OCA is working hard to make sure this is true.

Learn more

"Farmers have seen the price for their milk drop from $19.50 per hundred pounds a year ago to less than $11 in June. Meanwhile, Dean Foods' profits climbed from $30 million in the first quarter of 2008 to $76.2 million for the first quarter of 2009."

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont spoke out on the dairy crisis this week. He has called on the Justice Department to investigate the dairy giant Dean Foods as a monopolist.

Learn more

At seven cents per pound, hexane is currently the dominant extraction solvent for soy products. Whether you're eating Boca burgers, firm tofu, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, granola crumbs for texture, or Silk soy milk, hexane likely played a role in the extraction process. Hexane was formerly used as a cleaning agent for removing grease in the printing industry as well as a solvent for rubber cement, but now it's showing up in many so-called "natural" and even "made with organic" soy foods.

Learn more

The Organic Consumers Association is partnering with http://www.MyYogaOnline.com to provide OCA donors with a month's worth of instructional web fitness videos at no cost with any size donation. Your donations help us continue to do the important work that you read about each week in Organic Bytes and each day on our website (http://www.organicconsumers.org). Just put "yoga offer" in the comments of your donation here:

Donate

1) Book of the Week:
Recipe for America
"Americans are more obese than ever, our current agriculture system is dependent on oil, our waterways and air are polluted by factory farming, and sustainable agriculture continues to be marginalized. But change is possible, as Jill Richardson writes in her new book, which breaks down many of the issues facing the food system and provides approximately 70 pages of solutions..."
Learn more

2) Webcast of the Week:
House Committee Approves Measure to Keep Single-Payer Option Alive
Democracy Now speaks with progressive Democrat, Rep. Dennis Kucinich on a new measure that would create a government-run public insurance option.
Listen

3) Web Video of the Week:
What's on your Plate?
Filmed over the course of one year, the film follows two eleven-year-old African-American city kids as they explore their place in the food chain.
Watch

4) Study of the Week:
Research Shows Children are Critically Susceptible to Pesticides
A new study indicates that young children are dangerously vulnerable to the effects of toxic pesticides, routinely used on non-organic farms in the U.S..
Learn more

5) Health News of the Week:
Vitamin Poisoning
Are We Destroying Our Health with Hi-Potency Synthetic Vitamins?
Learn more

• Learn more about OCA related action alerts and other news in TX here.
• Join TX discussion groups in our forum.
• Post events in TX on our community calendar.

5 Generations and 150 Years of Soapmaking Excellence

Marking the 60th Anniversary of the company, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps is pleased to announce that all classic liquid & bar soaps are now not only certified under the USDA National Organic Program, but also certified Fair Trade!

In addition, we are pleased to introduce a revolutionary new range of high-quality organic products, from hair rinses to shaving gels - all certified under the same USDA program that certifies organic foods.

Learn more

This Month's Special: 15% off Select Peppermint Products!

Send a letter to the following decision maker(s):
Docket No. APHIS-2008-0059

Below is the sample letter:

Instructions:
Click here to take action on this issue or choose the "Reply to Sender" option on your email program.

Tell-A-Friend:
Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
 Tell-a-Friend!

What's At Stake:

For more information on genetically engineered trees, links to reports, and more, visit the Stop GE Trees Campaign, a project of the Global Justice Ecology Project

Campaign Expiration Date:
July 7, 2009

Donate Now

Join PCRM

Renew Your Membership

Emily Deschanel, star of FOX's Bones, just contacted Congress to lend her voice to PCRM’s campaign to support the Great Ape Protection Act.

Please join her and contact your representative today.

“It can be easy to forget these animals who are locked away and out of sight,” writes Deschanel. “The Great Ape Protection Act is the best chance we have to ease their pain and suffering.”

PCRM
info@pcrm.org

Emily Deschanel joins PCRM campaign to save great apes

Join the “Help End Chimpanzee Experiments” Facebook Cause

Subscribe to future PCRM e-mail communications

Dear Kay,

One thousand chimpanzees in the United States need your help! The Great Ape Protection Act, HR 1326, would finally prohibit invasive research on chimpanzees. But the bill needs more support—and your federal representative has not yet joined the 58 representatives co-sponsoring the bill.

Click here to ask your representative to co-sponsor HR 1326.

Under the language of HR 1326, which is supported by Democrats and Republicans, chimpanzees could no longer be subjected to “death, bodily injury, pain, distress, fear, injury, or trauma [,]… isolation, social deprivation, or other experimental manipulations…” Chimpanzees owned by the federal government would be released to sanctuaries to live out the remainder of their lives, just as they have been in several other countries.
 
Chimpanzees suffer from stress and trauma remarkably much like humans. Their needs cannot be met in a laboratory environment. Most chimpanzees in research are kept in isolation, but chimpanzees are naturally social. Their psychological well-being requires group coordination, kinship structure (families being together), and cultural development.

Although chimpanzees are our closest genetic relatives, there are significant differences in how those genes are expressed. And differences between chimpanzees and humans significantly influence responses to drugs and pathogens like viruses and bacteria.

After over two decades of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) research in chimpanzees, there should be no doubt that chimpanzee research has failed to produce an HIV vaccine for humans. Physiological differences between humans and chimpanzees also confound research on human diseases like hepatitis C.

Research funding should be spent on modern testing methods, such as ethical human-centered studies, computer simulation and mathematical modeling, microchip technology, microdosing, in vitro testing, and tissue engineering.

Please call or e-mail your representative and ask her or him to co-sponsor HR 1326!

Best regards,
 
Hope Ferdowsian, M.D., M.P.H.
Director of Research Policy

Hello My friends, I am a member of Change.org I have a fundraiser for Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans of America. Click the link and you can see what we do
http://www.change.org/iava/projects/fundraising/americas_heros

Many of our soldiers come back from war and they have to wait over a year to get the medical attention the need. This is for The Soldiers has a petition that is going to go to congress to help our soldiers get the medical attention they need. It doesn't cost anything to watch the video and sign the petition and it will help so many of our veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan get the medical care they need so badly. Please click the link below to take you to This is for The Soldiers. Please forward this to your friends. Thank you and God Bless you!!!

http://www.thisisforthesoldiers.org/thankYou.htm?key=27668934&message=Successfully+updated+Supporter+information