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Author: Leslie Eastman

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Leslie Eastman

I am an Environmental Health and Safety Professional, as well as a science/technical writer for a variety of news and professional publications. I have been a citizen activist since 2009, and am one of the co-founders of the San Diego-based group, Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 22, 2016 6 Comments
Recently, I noted that climate change skeptics who also acted as their states' attorneys general warned their environmental activist counterparts that plans were being made to "fight fire with fire." Afterall, if the government's environmental activists begin targeting businesses and private organizations under racketeering statutes for denying progressive environmental science theories, then skeptics surely can go after eco-activists for their climate exaggerations and alarmist tactics. Goose, meet gander! In a way, the pushback has already begun. About one month ago, thirteen Republican members of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee Republicans sent letters to 17 state attorneys general and eight environmental groups requesting documents related to the groups’ coordinated efforts to deprive companies, nonprofit organizations, scientists and scholars of their First Amendment rights and their ability to fund and conduct scientific research free from intimidation and threats of prosecution. This congressional committee has turned up the heat even more. It is now delving into eco-activism at the federal level by requesting records of the communications between employees for the state attorneys general and the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, or the White House.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 21, 2016 69 Comments
On Memorial Day weekend, we covered the accident with Harambe that led to the shooting of a rare gorilla to protect a boy who fell into the Cincinnati's zoo enclosure. Now, in time for Father's Day, there is troubling news related to the awful death of Lane Graves. The 2-year old was attacked by an alligator at the man-made Seven Seas Lagoon located across the lake from the Magic Kingdom in Disneyworld.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 20, 2016 11 Comments
Truly, the 21st century is not turning out as I envisioned. We have been closely following the #FlintWatercrisis. After relying on science, technology, and public policy for decades to guarantee safe drinking water, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency head Gina McCarthy just wrote a letter to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and Flint Mayor Karen Weaver explaining why the region's water woes are going to continue into the foreseeable future.
...Among the problem areas identified by McCarthy:
  • Flint's water system is oversized for its current and projected water demand, leading to water not moving through the system as designed. This standing water in pipes can erode the residual chlorine that protects against pathogens.
  • "The water treatment plant is not adequately staffed, operated or administered to reliably deliver safe drinking water for years into the future," McCarthy stated. Additional "experienced and expert operators" and improved standard operating procedures and preventive and corrective maintenance programs are needed.
  • The EPA administrator also was critical of city leadership. "Flint needs a city administration that can provide stable, reliable and quick administrative support essential to a well-functioning drinking water system," she stated in her letter....
So while the EPA is struggling to deal with the lead in Flint's water system, another government agency has issued a troubling report on an aquatic contaminant that has become ubiquitous in the public water system: Synthetic estrogen from contraceptives.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 19, 2016 9 Comments
I have been following the antics of 17 state attorney generals who formed (AGs United for Clean Power), which intends to promote the progressive climate change agenda by targeting the fossil fuel industry using racketeering statutes. Recently, thirteen Republican members of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee Republicans sent letters to 17 state attorneys general and eight environmental groups requesting documents related to the groups’ coordinated efforts to deprive companies, nonprofit organizations, scientists and scholars of their First Amendment rights and their ability to fund and conduct scientific research free from intimidation and threats of prosecution. Now, a coalition of Republican AGs, headed up by Alabama's top cop, Luther Strange, issued a letter promising retaliation in kind, directed at "AGs for Clean Power. Call this rebuke fighting fire with fire!

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 17, 2016 12 Comments
The ISIS-inspired terror attack in Florida has impacted the entire nation. From the American political outback called California, one of the most unexpected responses came from West Hollywood. The community woke up to find images of posters of "Gay Pride" flag (designed with a new, conservative twist) plastered along the streets.
Stickers and posters featuring a rainbow-colored version of the Gadsden flag and the hashtag #ShootBack were raising eyebrows in West Hollywood on Thursday morning in the wake of the massacre at a gay nightclub in Florida. The signage was affixed to electric boxes, light poles, trash cans and other fixtures near West Hollywood City Hall, the Pacific Design Center and along Santa Monica Boulevard. Several were hung near the Abbey Food & Bar, a well-known gay lounge. The posters featured a coiled, striking rattlesnake, similar to the yellow Gadsden flag that reads “Don’t Tread On Me” and often is used by the Tea Party movement. The West Hollywood signs were rainbow-colored, like the gay pride flag.
Welcome to the Tea Party, home of constitutionally inspired activism since 2009!

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 15, 2016 28 Comments
June is normally a time of joyous celebration, especially since many young people are graduating from high school or college and beginning the next phase of their lives. However, our country is in deepest mourning, for it has lost 49 of these promising, beautiful young men and women to terror. The youngest, Akyra Murray (18), was celebrating her high school graduation with her cousin and a friend Saturday night when ISIS-inspired gunman Omar Mateen struck. LI #56 b Akyra Murray
Murray's mother, Natalie Murray, said she received a text message from her daughter around 2am, saying she had been shot and to come pick her up.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 13, 2016 11 Comments
In April, a 2-member California parole board authorized the release of former Manson Family killer Leslie Van Houten. The decision to go forward with this recommendation now rests with Governor Jerry Brown. Now Debra Tate, sister of Sharon Tate (who was butchered in another Manson Family attack) is seeking around 12,000 more signatures for a petition to stop this miscarriage of justice by appealing to Brown.
Charles Manson's deranged "family," including Ms. Van Houten, broke into the home of Leno & Rosemary LaBianca on August 10, 1969. Manson had gone into their home and tied the couple up. Van Houten placed a pillowcase over Mrs. LaBianca's head, tied it with a lamp cord, and held Mrs. LaBianca down so Patricia Krenwinkel could stab the innocent woman to death.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 12, 2016 16 Comments
California's Santa Monica police may have prevented West Coast mass shooting today, by arresting a armed man with explosives heading to the areas's gay pride parade.
Authorities in Santa Monica found possible explosives as well as a cache of weapons and ammunition Sunday in the car of a man who told them he planned to look for a friend at the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood, a law enforcement source said. Federal and local law enforcement decided against canceling the annual parade, which went forward Sunday morning under tightened security. Investigators are now trying to piece together what happened but said they don’t believe there is any connection between the incident and the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that killed at least 50 people overnight. Early Sunday, Santa Monica police received a call about a suspected prowler near Olympic Boulevard and 11th Street. Patrol officers responded and encountered an individual who told officers he was waiting for a friend, according to a law enforcement source familiar with details of the arrest. That led officers to inspect the car and find several weapons – including three rifles, one of them an “assault rifle” -- and a lot of ammunition as well as tannerite, an ingredient that could be used to create a pipe bomb, said the source. The car had Indiana plates.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 12, 2016 12 Comments
California is now beginning to implement its new right-to-die law, so terminally ill patients with six months or less to live can ask their doctor for life-ending medication.
The law requires terminally ill patients to submit three requests to their doctor for life-ending drugs. Two of them are verbal requests and must be at least 15 days apart. Patients must submit the third request in writing. Doctors and pharmacists can refuse to issue lethal medications without any fear of consequences. Patients can also opt out at any time. California will become the fifth state to allow medical aid in dying, and it's estimated that some 1,500 lethal prescriptions will be written in the state each year.
When Californians passed a medical marijuana measure, marijuana dispensaries began opening. In the wake of the new physician assisted suicide law, the first "right to die" clinic has been created.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 11, 2016 2 Comments
In the past few weeks, concerns about the Zika virus have caused Today host Savannah Guthrie and U.S. cyclist Tejay van Garderen to cancel their plans to go to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. A new study may cause other athletes to reconsider their sports ambitions.
Scientists have found dangerous drug-resistant "super bacteria" off beaches in Rio de Janeiro that will host Olympic swimming events and in a lagoon where rowing and canoe athletes will compete when the Games start on Aug. 5. The findings from two unpublished academic studies seen by Reuters concern Rio's most popular spots for tourists and greatly increase the areas known to be infected by the microbes normally found only in hospitals. They also heighten concerns that Rio's sewage-infested waterways are unsafe.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 11, 2016 13 Comments
Last week, I noticed the elite media actually looking under the hood at the real "new jobs" numbers for the first time in over 7 years. Now, Gallup has released a poll confirming the fears that many of us had in 2008: Obama was the second coming of Jimmy Carter.
According to Gallup, Americans' satisfaction levels with the way things are going in the U.S. are low and President Obama will be leaving office with a lower overall satisfaction average of any president since Jimmy Carter. Only 29% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. according to the Gallup poll conducted during the first week of June. The Gallup poll asked, “In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 09, 2016 19 Comments
In February, President Obama said we should not "panic over Zika." At the same time, he asked Congress for $1.8 billion in funding for the resources to combat the Zika virus, the pathogen spreading rapidly through the Americas that can cause birth defects and neurological problems. In a rare display of fiscal restraint, Congress granted $622 million (mainly from unused Ebola response money). However, as negotiations continue for even more Zika funding between these two branches of government, it seems that $500 million of those taxpayer dollars initially allotted now sits in the coffers of the United Nations.
The Obama administration siphoned $500 million that could have gone toward combating the Zika virus into a United Nations effort aimed at mitigating climate change. Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.) wrote in an op-ed published in the Daily Signal that the Senate last year granted Obama the authority to pay for a response to Zika, but his administration chose instead to allocate those funds toward the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund.
As a reminder, that $500 million is the first installment of $3 billion that Obama agreed to turn over as part of the UN Paris climate conference deal.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 08, 2016 19 Comments
As I noted in my post on the AP announcing that Hillary Clinton has clinched the nomination ahead of the California election, the November 2016 battle is ultimately between the elite media and average Americans. As predicted by many, the American press has started pressuring Bernie Sanders to stop his campaign entirely. This gem from the San Diego Union Tribune is just one example of many attempts to cajole Sanders voters into supporting Clinton.
This is why we urge Bernie Sanders to drop his now-futile challenge to Clinton for the Democratic nomination after the final primary next Tuesday in Washington D.C. At this stage, after a historic speech as a major party’s first presumptive female presidential nominee, Clinton shouldn’t have to spend her time and resources defending herself from Sanders and his allies.
But the California media has not mentioned that Clinton has not experienced smooth sailing they portray in their coverage.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 07, 2016 11 Comments
I have been following the progressive legal exploits in using racketeering statutes against Big Oil, making the analogy that gasoline producers hid climate data they collected the same way tobacco companies repressed carcinogenicity data. Of course, the eco-activists extraordinaire of Greenpeace were major cheerleaders:
Greenpeace media officer Cassady Sharp called upon the Justice Department to undertake a “broad” investigation to “look into the role of [ExxonMobil and] other fossil fuel companies, trade associations, and think tanks in sowing doubt about the risks of climate change.”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 05, 2016 13 Comments
I am taking a few moments from my "Crazy California" and science coverage today to hit a topic that will be critically important in November: Jobs. Yesterday, the media coverage I followed was focused on San Jose. Interestingly, for those of us who have been following the Facebook trending news saga, San Jose completely failed to appear in the trending items. In fact, here is today's list: LI #53 Facebook Tredning And while I am grateful to see news about the Great Pyramid, I also noticed that another critical story is also absent:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 04, 2016 21 Comments
As a proponent of serious scientific review of environmental policies, I have been blessed to share news related to climate change with Legal Insurrection readers. Little did I realize this might have made me a criminal in my home state! Fortunately, it looks like I have dodged a bullet...legally. California Senate just sidelined a bill to prosecute climate change skeptics.
Senate Bill 1161, or the California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act of 2016, would have authorized prosecutors to sue fossil fuel companies, think tanks and others that have “deceived or misled the public on the risks of climate change.” The measure, which cleared two Senate committees, provided a four-year window in the statute of limitations on violations of the state’s Unfair Competition Law, allowing legal action to be brought until Jan. 1 on charges of climate change “fraud” extending back indefinitely. “This bill explicitly authorizes district attorneys and the Attorney General to pursue UCL claims alleging that a business or organization has directly or indirectly engaged in unfair competition with respect to scientific evidence regarding the existence, extent, or current or future impacts of anthropogenic induced climate change,” said the state Senate Rules Committee’s floor analysis of the bill.
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