Cutting: With small spills, cleanup crews would sometimes slice out oiled vegetation and take it to a landfill...But if too much vegetation has to be removed, water from the gulf would roll in and turn wetlands to open water.

Fire: Where conditions are right, crews could set fire to oil-coated plants. Other experts, though, warn it's tricky. If the marsh is too wet, the oil won't burn. Too dry, the roots burn and the marsh can be ruined.

Microbial action: Over time, experts say weather and natural microbes will break down most of the oil. However, the crude will surely poison plants and wildlife in the months -- even years -- it will take for the syrupy muck to dissipate. Andy Nyman, with Louisiana State University, said the dispersants could slow the microbes from breaking down the oil.

Berms: To keep oil from pushing deeper into Louisiana's marshes, Gov. Bobby Jindal and officials from several coastal parishes want permission to erect a $350 million network of sand berms linking the state's barrier islands and headlands.

A fruit held by a satyr in the bottom right of the painting has been identified as belonging to Datura stramonium, a plant with a history of sending people mad and making them want to strip off their clothes. Its hallucinogenic effects were recorded in Ancient Greek texts and it has since been used as an aphrodisiac and a poison....

The plant is highly poisonous. Guy Barter, of the Royal Horticultural Society, said that it became notorious in the late 17th century when it was eaten by British soldiers visiting Jamestown, Virginia. "They went off their heads for a few days," he said....

I can't help but recall all the 'social studies' I had in high school, where differing societies were examined as to their values,  government, etc. We were constantly reminded of the difference between 'free' societies' such as ours and the Communist world. The idea was to warn the present and future generations of what happens when extremists get their hands on the levers and buttons of power.

But it appears that some people never 'got it'. Or, worse, some did.

For example, the NeoCons deliberately set out to make 'liberal' a swear word, in order to cause a disconnect between the ideals of classic liberalism (rights, freedoms, and government being a  protector of them, etc.) and political action, and instead conflate liberalism with with libertinism and licentiousness.

By causing that break, by establishing that meme in the minds of those who are not aware of the fact that they were being manipulated this way, it created the environment where to proclaim yourself a liberal is to invite the worst calumnies and innuendos...whereas, a 'conservative' (as these NeoCons define the concept) who favors 'law and order' authoritarianism always gets a free pass, for they are improperly seen (especially after the Bush Too years) as the 'conservators' of social integrity and mores.

The Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg reports that, this week, yet another federal judge has ordered the Obama administration to release yet another Guantanamo detainee on the ground that there is no persuasive evidence to justify his detention.  The latest detainee to win his habeas hearing, Mohammed Hassen, is a 27-year old Yemeni imprisoned by the U.S. without charges for 8 years, since he was 19 years old.  He has "long claimed he was captured in Pakistan studying the Quran and had no ties to al Qaida," and that "he had been unjustly rounded up in a March 2002 dragnet by Pakistani security forces in the city of Faisalabad that targeted Arabs."  Hassen is now the third consecutive detainee ordered freed who was rounded up in that same raid.  The Obama DOJ opposed his petition even though the Bush administration had cleared him for release in 2007.  He has now spent roughly 30% of his life in a cage at Guantanamo.

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What's most significant about this is that Hassen is now the 36th detainee who has won his habeas hearing since the Supreme Court in 2008 ruled they have the right to such hearings -- out of 50 whose petitions have been heard.  In other words, 72% of Guantanamo detainees who finally were able to obtain just minimal due process (which is what a habeas hearing is) -- after years of being in a cage without charges -- have been found by federal judges to be wrongfully detained.  These are people who are part of what the U.S. Government continues to insist are "the worst of the worst" who remain, and whose release is being vehemently contested by the Obama DOJ.

The real disgrace here is that the U.S. Congress, in 2006, enacted the Military Commissions Act, which explicitly denied all Guantanamo detainees any rights to habeas review.  The widely loved Lindsey Graham -- along with the profoundly noble Joe Lieberman and John McCain -- were the prime sponsors of that provision.  Think about what that means, what the people who voted for that (including 12 Democratic Senators) tried to do:  had the Supreme Court not struck down that provision by a 5-4 vote in Boumediene, all of these innocent people would continue to be denied any rights of judicial review, and would unjustly languish in prison indefinitely.  The people who voted for the Military Commissions Act, and the 4 Supreme Court Justices who sought to uphold it, knowingly acted to deny scores of innocent prisoners any opportunity for judicial review.  That's as warped and as evil as it gets.

Gotta be close to some sort of record right there.

Link

"Swiss federal law states that public nudity is not a crime."

But get this... the area where he was fined for his naked hiking:

"is traditionally a rather devout and conservative region, which only gave women the vote in 1990. "