Mississippi

Update: Shinseki Slated to Head VA, Obama Confirms

Over 100,000 American troops in the 1990-1991 Gulf War came back and suffered an array of debilitating ailments known collectively as "Gulf War illness."

Amputations, brain and central nervous damage are among the results.

Gulf War veterans are in a word: Pissed.

A report released last month, 17 years after the first Iraq war (published under a Congressional mandate), entitled "Gulf War Illness and the Health of Gulf War Veterans," was researched in response to the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs' (VA) inaction as 10,000s of veterans sought treatment and benefits.

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Folk Bum has a post displaying the American Family Association’s (AFA) promotion of a Christmas-lighted cross that appears precisely like the image of a burning cross.

And the AFA is drawing howls.

“The American Family Association--they of the our-morality-for-all bent--is offering a sweet new Xmas gift,” laughs Folk Bum.

"The American Family Association has really topped themselves," observes John Cole.

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The City of Waukesha revealed a key element in its plan to divert drinking water from Lake Michigan - - discharging its treated wastewater back to the lake by sending it down Underwood Creek in Wauwatosa.

From there, the wastewater will flow into the Menomonee River and into the lake, and while the Great Lakes Compact requires that diverted water be returned, it is not clear whether Waukesha's preference for Lake Michigan water as its long-term supply solution is superior to finding additional underground supplies in Waukesha County's clean, shallow aquifers.

That will be up to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources; the other Great Lakes states would have to agree to the Waukesha diversion plan, and one element of the Waukesha proposal is sure to raise objections in the other states: Waukesha's belief that it can discharge a portion of the diverted water after treatment into the Fox River, which flows into the Mississippi River, not towards Lake Michigan, if the return flow might cause flooding.

The Great Lakes Compact is an eight-state regional agreement designed to establish uniform procedures and standards.

It does not allow for a partial return of diverted water. The Compact requires a return of all water, minus a reasonable portion that is consumed.

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