Stars In Her Eyes Politics for consumer-unit television viewers. Thank you Lord Jesus for the exceptional leadership provided by The Republican Party.
Donald Trump gathered one of the largest crowds of his presidential campaign so far on Friday night when he held a rally in Mobile, Alabama in front of thousands of people. The numbers aren’t clear but the campaign switched locations twice to end up in a stadium that can hold up to 40,000 people. ABC News says the stadium was “about half full” when Trump began speaking. The campaign said there were about 30,000 people.
Numbers aside, the Washington Postpoints out that the speech “was about more than showmanship,” describing the location as “coolly strategic” since it involves “an increasingly important early battleground in the Republican nominating contest.” Plus, it was Trump's way of showing there is support for his candidacy across the country.
Not surprisingly, Trump centered much of his speech on illegal immigration and the need to build a wall. Trump fans expressed support for the real estate mogul’s push to eliminate birthright citizenship in order to do away with so-called “anchor babies.” "It's not right that they are just coming in free will and having babies and they stay here,"one supporter told AL.com. "It's not right." Other supporters had other ideas:
Mobile resident Jim Sherota, clutching a vaporizer in one hand and wearing a t-shirt of conservative musician Ted Nugent, took it one step further.
"The way I see it they ought to make it a vacation spot," Sherota said. "OK, you want to come to the border, $25 for a permit, you can shoot all the people you want that cross illegally."
He later clarified that his remarks were "in jest."
As Trump spoke one man in the crowd could be heard yelling out “white power!” A Daily Kos contributor said this was not an isolated incident and that the phrase was yelled out multiple times by members of the crowd throughout the event.
America's vanishing bees may be the "canary in the coal mine" signaling the degradation of the natural world at the hands of man. Illustration by Jason Holley
There was a moment last year when beekeeper Jim Doan was ready to concede defeat. He stood in the kitchen of his rural New York home, holding the phone to his ear. Through the window, he could see the frigid January evening settling on the 112-acre farm he'd just been forced to sell two weeks earlier. On the other end of the line, his wife's voice was matter-of-fact: "Jimmy, I just want to say I'm sorry, but the bees are dead."
By then, Doan was used to taking in bad news. After all, this was long after the summer of 2006, when he had first started noticing that his bees were acting oddly: not laying eggs or going queenless or inexplicably trying to make multiple queens. It was long after the day when he'd gone out to check his bee yard and discovered that of the 5,600 hives he kept at the time, all but 600 were empty. And it was long after he'd learned back in 2007 that he was not alone, that beekeepers all around the country, and even the world, were finding that their bees had not just died but had actually vanished, a phenomenon that was eventually named colony collapse disorder and heralded as proof of the fast-approaching End of Days by evangelicals and environmentalists alike. Theories abounded about what was causing CCD. Were bees, the most hardworking and selfless of creatures, being called up to heaven before the rest of us? Were they victims of a Russian plot? Of cellphone interference? Of UV light? Were they the "canary in the coal mine," as the Obama administration suggested, signaling the degradation of the natural world at the hands of man? Possibly. Probably. No one knew.
Even to Doan, at the epicenter of the crisis, none of it had made a lick of sense. As a third-generation beekeeper, he and his family had been running bees since the 1950s, and it had been good money; in the 1980s, a thousand hives could earn a beekeeper between $65,000 and $70,000 a year in honey sales alone, not to mention the cash coming in from leasing hives out to farmers to help pollinate their fields. But more than that, it was a way of life that suited Doan. He'd gotten his first hive in 1968, at the age of five, with $15 he'd borrowed from his parents. He paid his way through college with the 150 hives he owned by then, coming home to tend them on the weekends. He was fascinated by the industrious insects. "It's just that they are such interesting creatures to watch on a daily basis," he says. "If you spend any time with bees, you develop a passion for them."
In fact, humans have felt this way about honeybees for millennia. In ancient times, they were thought to be prophetic. Honey gathering is depicted in cave paintings that date back to the Paleolithic Age. The ancient Egyptians floated bees on rafts down the Nile to get them from one crop to another. While honeybees are not native to North America, they were deemed important enough to be packed up by the Pilgrims, and crossed the Atlantic around 1622 (according to Thomas Jefferson, the Native Americans referred to them as "white man's flies"). Today, bees are responsible for one out of every three bites of food you eat and are an agricultural commodity that's been valued at $15 billion annually in the U.S. alone. They are a major workforce with a dogged work ethic — bees from one hive can collect pollen from up to 100,000 flowering plants in a single day, pollinating many of them in the process. Americans wouldn't necessarily starve without them, but our diets would be a lot more bland and a lot less nutritious.
By the time Doan got that call from his wife in January 2014, his hives had dwindled from 5,600 in 2006 to 2,300 in 2008 to a mere 275, most of which he now feared were dead. Even the hives that did survive had to be coaxed and coddled. Rather than finding their own food, they needed to be fed. Instead of averaging 124 pounds of honey per hive, they averaged nine.
At first, Doan blamed himself. "Before 2006, basically you couldn't do anything wrong," he says. "Very seldom did you lose bees unless you were a really bad beekeeper. If you lost one hive a yard, that was a lot." He racked his brain, trying to figure out what mistakes he might be making. He worried that he was letting his father and grandfather down, that he was letting his son down — even though he knew that other beekeepers were struggling too. Every time a major die-off happened, he tried to regroup, taking the remaining healthy hives, dividing them in two and buying new queens to stock them, but the constant splitting meant that the new colonies were weaker and less established than the ones before. Doan grew more and more depressed. "I was just mentally exhausted," he tells me. "I mean, you have to have bees to be a beekeeper. At that point, I truly thought, 'What's the point of living?' "
A third-generation beekeeper, Jim Doan has seen his hives dwindle from 5,600 to a mere 275. Rob Howard/Corbis
Doan never really considered the possibility that the fault might not be his own until scientists at Penn State who had been testing his bees told him of news coming out of France that pointed the finger at a relatively new class of insecticides called neonicotinoids, or neonics. The first commercially successful neonicotinoid compound was synthesized by agrochemical giant Bayer CropScience in 1985, but it wasn't until the early 2000s that they began to be used extensively. Compared to older, more toxic insecticides, neonics certainly seemed to be a win-win: Though neurotoxins, they mess with insect brains far more than those of mammals, and their application is a breeze. All a farmer need do is sow a seed coated in neonics and the water-soluble chemicals get drawn back up into the plant as it grows. Referred to as systemic insecticides, they spread through the plant, making it resistant to predators. Neonics don't require repeated applications in a hazmat suit. Rain can't wash them away — but then again, neither can your kitchen faucet (unless you're eating strictly organic, you're eating neonicotinoids all the time).
Doan knew his hives had tested positive for the neonicotinoid clothianidin, but the results had seemed dubious because clothianidin wasn't even registered for use in New York state. That's when he learned that neonic-coated seeds weren't subject to the same regulations as sprayed pesticides, meaning that seeds couldn't be treated in New York, but they could be purchased elsewhere and then planted there, with no one the wiser. Furthermore, studies demonstrated that bees exposed to sublethal amounts of these neonicotinoids showed a loss in cognitive functions, including their ability to navigate home.
To Doan, this seemed like a breakthrough — a perfect explanation for why his bees hadn't just been dying, but disappearing altogether. He testified at the Environmental Protection Agency. He testified in front of Congress. He was interviewed for a Time magazine article on neonics in 2013, the very same year a report by the European Food Safety Authority showed "high acute risks" to bees from neonics and the European Union issued a ban on the three that are most widely used. Meanwhile, the Saving America's Pollinators Act, a congressional bill introduced in 2013 by Reps. John Conyers and Earl Blumenauer that would have taken neonics off the market until their safety was more definitively proven, never made it out of committee. (The bill was reintroduced this spring, but its fate remains uncertain.)
Doan waited expectantly for the EPA to step in and address the situation: "When I first started learning about this, I'm like, 'Well, the EPA's there to protect us. We don't have to worry about this, because the EPA's here to help.'"But as the years passed and the use of neonics spread, it started to seem that maybe the EPA wasn't there to help beekeepers after all. To Doan, the mystery of colony collapse disorder deepened. He no longer wondered what was killing his bees; he wondered why steps weren't being taken to save them.
In the past decade, neonicotinoid insecticides have gone from little-known chemical compounds to the most commonly used insecticides in the world. Virtually every genetically modified corn seed and at least a third of soybeans that are planted in this country are coated in these toxins. According to conservative estimates, neonics are used on 100 million acres of American farmland, though the real number is probably much higher. More than 90 percent of corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. are genetically modified; they cover an estimated 89 million and 85 million acres, respectively. A 2012 U.S. Department of Agriculture survey found neonics in 30 percent of cauliflower, 22 percent of cherry tomatoes and in more than a fourth of bell peppers. In 2011, the Food and Drug Administration found them in 29 percent of baby food.
Neonics may have come on the scene rapidly, but their adoption is due to forces that have been at play for decades, starting with the Dust Bowl, which cleared the Midwest of many small family farms and left massive tracts of land available to be bought up cheaply. For large farms and corporations, it made the most economic sense to plant huge expanses of only one crop and to maximize the space by clearing the land of any other vegetation, a system known as monoculture. While good for business, monoculture is disastrous for biodiversity, wiping out beneficial species that need more varied habitats and diets, and also creating a smorgasbord for pests that prey on a single crop. (If every plant for miles blooms only two weeks a year, bees have nothing to eat for the other 50.)
Some of these monocultural crops rely on migratory beekeeping, a system in which hives are trucked in to pollinate a crop as it blooms and then hauled over to the next crop when the blooms are gone. Of the roughly 2,000 American beekeepers who own 300 hives or more, about two-thirds are migratory. ("Everybody knows everybody, because there aren't a whole lot of us," Doan says.) It's not a perfect system — an 18-wheeler isn't exactly a bee's natural habitat, after all, and beekeepers expect to lose a handful of their hives due to the stress of all that travel — but it's a system that's been in place in this country for decades, long before colony collapse disorder struck. Up until recently, the bees were all right.
What weren't all right were the crops. Monoculture not only provides a feast for pests, necessitating the use of a whole lot of insecticide, but it is also a perfect petri dish for insects to grow resistance. Genetically modified crops were meant to be less harmful than chemical applications, changing the plant itself to ward off predators. But altering genes can only protect a plant so much. Where modifications were found to be inadequate, neonics were adopted to pick up the slack.
In the face of mass die-offs, Doan waited for the EPA to step in and address the situation. When it didn't, he sued. Ropi/Zuma
Chemical companies have always faced a conundrum: How do you kill the plants you don't want without killing the ones you do, and how do you kill harmful insects without killing beneficial ones? That neonic insecticides can kill honeybees is not up for debate. If an unlucky bee flies into a cloud of dust kicked up when coated seeds are planted, she'll die on the spot. What is contested, however, is the severity of the effects that might arise from tiny, sublethal exposures to neonics over the course of a worker bee's six-week lifespan as she gathers pollen and nectar that is laced with trace amounts — and what happens when she brings this pollen and nectar back to the hive. A 2014 study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistryfound that 90 percent of honey tested positive for at least one neonic, and 50 percent contained at least two. It's true that honeybees can metabolize these toxins quickly, but that also makes them difficult to detect. According to a report released in April by the European Academies Science Advisory Council, the effects are cumulative. Like an allergy, the response could get worse with repeated exposure. "It's the perfect crime," says Jeff Anderson, a beekeeper who is on the board of directors of the Pollinator Stewardship Council. "Neonics don't necessarily kill on first exposure — they can kill many months later."
Which has been a hard concept for many beekeepers to wrap their heads around. Doan says that only about 30 percent agree with him that neonics are specifically to blame. "These beekeepers grew up with pesticides where you'd see the damage right away, and they still expect that sort of cause-and-effect relationship," Doan tells me. "People don't look at what happened two months ago as affecting them today."
And the truth of the matter is that the world right now isn't the friendliest place for bees, even with pesticides out of the picture. Since the 1980s, honeybees have been preyed on by a nasty little blood-sucking, disease-spreading mite known as the varroa destructor, and thus have to contend with the miticides beekeepers apply to hives (miticides, mind you, that have the tricky task of killing one bug that literally lives on another). Meanwhile, there's a plethora of new bee pathogens emerging at warp speed, plus ever-shrinking habitats and the aforementioned stresses of a migratory lifestyle. All of which is why entomologists like Dennis vanEngelsdorp, who was part of the group that gave colony collapse disorder its name, caution against assigning just one cause to what is no doubt a complex problem. Certainly, each of these issues exacerbates the others: A hungry, stressed-out bee will be more susceptible to toxins, and eating neonics has been shown to cause bees to eat less. (In fact, a recent study published in Nature showed that rather than avoiding neonics, as had been hypothesized, bees actually prefer them — they are related to nicotine, after all.)
"Bees are tanking, and this has all kinds of consequences for the ecosystem," says one advocate. "And we're doing more studies?"
Despite all these factors, Doan and many others feel strongly that neonicotinoids were the final stressor in a cascade of them, and the one that tipped the scales — and that discussion of other potential causes deflects attention away from neonics, which chemical companies are at pains to do. At the very least, the industry — particularly Bayer and Syngenta, the major manufacturers of neonics — doesn't dispel the confusion. They argue that there are more hives in America now than there were five years ago (which is true, but only because beekeepers constantly have to divide their colonies to make up for losses); that bees are thriving in a sea of neonic-infused canola in Canada ("If someone's pointing you to a study and saying, 'Look, it shows no harm,' you might want to see if it's a canola field," says Lori Ann Burd, the environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "For whatever reason, honeybees seem to experience significantly less harm in canola fields than in other fields"); and that any study that sees significant harm to bees after neonic dosing had methodological errors or used too high a dose. "The basic principle of toxicology and risk assessment is 'the dose makes the poison,'"says David Fischer, the chief bee researcher at Bayer CropScience. "Or to put it another way, all substances are toxic, but what differentiates a poison from a remedy is the dose."
Industry scientists emphasize that no one cause can explain the bee die-offs. "I don't think that we can deny that if a bee is exposed to a pesticide, there's not stress there," says Jay Overmyer, technical lead of Syngenta's Ecological Risk Assessment. "But it all goes back to the fact that there are multiple stressors, and they all have to be taken into consideration."
To assess how, or how much, neonics affect bees, many look to Europe, where the neonic ban has been in place for almost two years; yet the ban's outcome is still inconclusive, in part because of the persistence of the chemicals. Studies have shown that neonics can persist in the ground for years and that some neonic compounds break down into substances even more toxic than the parent product.
This past January, a task force of 29 independent scientists reported that they had reviewed more than 800 recent, peer-reviewed studies on systemic insecticides and determined that sublethal effects of neonics are very, very bad for bees indeed. But Fischer, the scientist at Bayer — which reportedly made $262 million in sales of the neonic clothianidin in 2009 alone — says that he doesn't see the study as being objective and that Bayer's research shows the opposite. "This is an inherent problem because it's very easy to spin these things in a million directions," says Greg Loarie, a staff attorney for Earthjustice. "There are ways in which you can downplay the negative and prejudice the outcome." In fact, the greatest indication of what a study will find is often who is conducting or financing it. (A press contact at Syngenta sent me studies that ostensibly showed that neonics were not harming bees: The first was conducted by Syngenta employees; the second was funded by Bayer.)
Through it all, the loss of honeybees has continued apace, with an average of 30 percent of hives dying every year. Classic cases of CCD — in which the bees literally vanish — are now relatively uncommon. These days, beekeepers often find dead bees in or near the hive, implying that whatever is killing them is doing so acutely — or the colonies slowly dwindle until there is nothing left.
Scientists studying the bee deaths point to a number of factors, but many agree that the rise of neonicotinoid-coated seeds, like the corn kernels above, has contributed to the steep decline in bee populations. Courtesy of Syngenta
Supposedly standing guard between the tiny pollinators and the agrochemical giants is the EPA. It's the EPA's job to parse all this, and if not to fully protect the environment, per se, then at least to make sure that one particular industry doesn't ruin nature to such an extent that it too drastically hurts the bottom line of others. In 1972, revisions to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act placed the responsibility on manufacturers to provide the safety data for the products they make, the idea being that American taxpayers should not cover the bill for tests done to products that financially benefit private companies. In practice, what this means is that the studies provided to the EPA when a product is up for approval are, by law, generated and submitted by the manufacturer of that product. Jim Jones, the assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention at the EPA, maintains that compliance monitoring is designed to keep companies honest: "They have to generate the data according to good laboratory practices, and our scientists review this." Loarie, the attorney for Earthjustice, isn't so sure. "I think there are many, many opportunities for the data to be played with," he says.
Also of concern then is the fact that agrochemical companies are not only responsible for reporting how much environmental exposure a pesticide might have, they're likewise responsible for submitting to the EPA's review the lethal dose for non-target organisms — what amount it would take to kill 50 percent of a population. "It's the fox guarding the henhouse," says Ramon Seidler, a former senior research scientist in charge of the GMO Biosafety Research Program at the EPA. "And the fox is the one collecting the eggs and bringing them to the regulators."
Even if the EPA wanted to test a product itself, the agency isn't set up that way. EPA scientists are meant to review studies conducted by others (including independent research), not to conduct studies themselves. It can take the agency two to three years to do a full review of a commercial product. "And with 80,000-some-odd of these chemicals to do?" says Seidler. "My God, it's an impossible task."
For this reason, regulators mainly consider a compound's active ingredient, which, as the entomologist vanEngelsdorp explains, can be problematic. "There is data that the inert ingredients may be having a negative effect on colonies on their own," he says. "Or that in combination with the active ingredient, they're much more toxic than they were before." Nor are regulators generally considering the combinations of multiple insecticides and herbicides sometimes coated on a single seed or how any of this might interact with the other agrochemicals applied to crops, a chemical bath that the program director for the Pollinator Stewardship Council, Michele Colopy, calls "meth in the field."
"It's the fox guarding the henhouse," says a former EPA research scientist. "It's corporate greed over environmental safety."
"We do look for some obvious interactions, but you can't test for every possible combination of chemicals that might occur out in the real world," says Fischer. Yet it's unclear what the agrochemical companies are testing: Because they contain "proprietary information," the insecticides' nonactive ingredients are not publicly disclosed.
Despite these limitations, many feel that the body of evidence against neonics is strong enough that the EPA should be taking a stand. Which raises certain questions. "Why did the Europeans put a hold on the use of neonicotinoids?" Seidler asks. "And why did the EPA look at that and stare it right in the face and say, 'No'?" Why is the EPA not restricting neonics when another government agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, announced that it would phase them out on national wildlife refuges by 2016?
In fact, just three days after the European ban was announced, the USDA/EPA National Stakeholders Conference on Honey Bee Health issued its report in which the potential harm posed by neonics was not mentioned at all in the executive summary. "That really got to me," says Dr. Eric Chivian, founder and former director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. "There was huge international press attention that the EU banned the most widely used insecticides in the world because of concern about honeybees, and the part of the report most people read doesn't even mention them?" At the EPA/USDA Pollinator Summit in March 2013, less than two months after the EU issued its initial neonic warnings, "Half the speakers were from industry," says Chivian. "It would be as if the Surgeon General held a conference on the dangers of smoking and half the speakers were from Big Tobacco."
No one is saying that what the EPA is tasked with comes easy. "Go after Congress," Seidler says. "They are the ones who are not providing a sufficient budget for the EPA and other regulatory scientists to stay up with industry discoveries." Indeed, the number of laboratories serving the office of the pesticide program at the EPA has dropped from a reported dozen in 1971 to two today, which means it's very difficult for the EPA to keep pace with industry. "It's always a challenge," says the EPA's Jones, who maintains that despite the difficulties, the agency is resourced and operating adequately. But according to Loarie, "They're using 20th-century methodologies to test 21st-century pesticides. The EPA still doesn't appreciate the extent to which systemic pesticides are different."
With their livelihoods in the balance, beekeepers have grown frustrated with the EPA's lack of action. "I've been going to Washington for years working on these issues, basically asking them to do their job, and my experience has been that generally the agencies don't understand, and their approach doesn't get to the heart of the problem," says Zac Browning, a fourth-generation Idaho beekeeper who lost 50 percent of his hives in 2009. "On the ground, we're not seeing results."
What beekeepers are seeing, however, is that chemical companies — and their lobbyists — seem effective at fighting off tougher standards. "The problem is that industry knocks on the door and walks in," says Doan. "Beekeepers knock on the door, and it's like, 'Hold on, we'll see you in a while.' Industry has an open door into the EPA and beekeepers do not."
There has been some effort to address bee mortality. This past May, President Obama unveiled a strategy to promote honeybee health that did not call for a restriction on insecticides, but did request that pollinator habitat be improved by restoring 7 million acres of land and water. "The president is ordering specific action on a bug, you know? This is the first time anything like this has happened," says Burd of the Center for Biological Diversity.
An Oregon State University bee researcher extracts hemolymph, or "bee blood," from a bee at a laboratory in Corvallis, Oregon, on August 5th, 2014. Natalie Behring/Getty
And in April, the EPA announced that it would not approve new outdoor uses of neonicotinoids "until the data on pollinator health have been received and appropriate risk assessments completed." This data involves not just looking at how neonic exposure affects individual bees, but how it affects the whole hive. "To evaluate this, we had to create a completely new test," says Jones. "It just did not exist when these chemicals were first put on the market." But beekeepers and activists question why the agency would continue to allow any use at all if the data they have is, by their own admission, incomplete. "We wouldn't be doing the work if I knew what the answer was," Jones says of the new hive studies.
Then again, the EPA doesn't have to have all the answers. Through its process of "conditional registration," new chemicals can in certain circumstances enter the market before a company has submitted all the tests requested by the EPA. Jones maintains that a conditional approval would never be granted without "reasonable certainty of no harm." Unlike in Europe — which operates under the precautionary principle — chemicals in America are often given the benefit of the doubt. While Seidler is quick to say that the EPA scientists he worked with were "good people, hardworking, rigorous," he did not feel like the work they passed on to the regulatory arm of the agency was appropriately heeded. "They supported our research, they supported us within the agency, they made it very clear that we were doing the right kinds of things that would help the regulators," he says. "But although we provided a lot of documentation, I never became aware that our regulators ever required industry to do any of the things we thought would be relevant for them to do." As to why the industry seems to be running roughshod over regulators, he's more blunt: "It's corporate greed over environmental safety — and I have to live with this knowledge every day."
As Jim Doan delved deeper into the mystery of why his bees were dying, he wasn't surprised to learn of the lengths big conglomerates might go to protect their bottom line and manipulate the system; he was surprised to learn how easily it seemed that the system could be manipulated. After all, bees themselves are an important commodity. It takes 60 percent of all the commercial honeybees in this country just to pollinate the almond crop in California. Pesticides may cut down on losses, but it's pollination that increases yields. And without bees, crops would be devastated — in one province of China where wild bees were eradicated, farmers have been forced to hand-pollinate their apple orchards, a painstaking, highly labor-intensive process. The USDA reports that 10 million beehives have been lost since 2006, at a $2 billion cost to beekeepers (by contrast, in 2009 alone, the sale of neonics brought in $2.6 billion globally). In the past year's tally, hive losses were up to 42 percent, and for the first time ever, more losses were reported in the summer, when bees typically thrive, than the winter. No one knows exactly why.
What is known is that the prophylactic use of pesticides is leading to more insect resistance. Instead of applying insecticides periodically, systemics are present from the moment the plant starts to grow to the moment it's harvested. "It's no different than the repeated use of antibiotics," says Seidler, the former biosafety researcher at the EPA. "If you use the same antibiotic every time you sneeze, you are going to select for a population of antibiotic-resistant bacteria." GMO supporters may claim that fewer insecticides are being used, but seed coatings aren't included in that tally. "When you count that in, along with other pesticides sprayed at the time of planting, the industry is not using less insecticide," Seidler says. "It's using more. Industry is trying to make the point that our farmers would be in a crisis without using those neonic-coated seeds"— or that they would have to resort to using more toxic chemicals — but the EPA's own recent study showed that growing soybeans without neonics had little or no effect on yields. "Our farmers are paying for something that's not of any benefit," says Seidler.
It's not in the interest of agrochemical companies to modify crops so that they don't require insecticides: These companies make the GM seeds, and they make the chemicals to treat the GM plants once bugs and weeds develop resistance. "These are not purveyors of seeds, per se," says Seidler. "They are chemical companies, and chemical companies get profits by selling chemicals. So they have an internal conflict of interest. Don't expect them to be using less and less chemicals — that does not fit their business plan."
Of course, any ideology, whether it's capitalism or environmentalism, has the potential to be biased, and when it comes to the plight of the bees, it's tempting to have someone or something to blame. It's possible that in time, neonics could prove to be a limited factor in bee die-offs, a single leak in a sinking ship, as entomologist May Berenbaum has put it. But right now, the best that can be said of these chemicals is that we are pumping toxins into our environment without understanding exactly what implications they have. "If you take your car to 10 mechanics, and eight tell you that you urgently need to replace your brakes, are you really going to wait for two more to call you back?" asks Burd. "Our pollinators are tanking, and this has all kinds of consequences for humans and the ecosystem. And we're going to do more studies?"
Indeed, bees are not the only stakeholders in determining the non-target effects of neonics. They are what's referred to as an "indicator species": They provide a glimpse into broader environmental impacts, and because commercial honeybees are economic commodities, we pay attention to them in a way we don't to other insects. Yet if honeybees are suffering, native pollinators are suffering too. In a study published in Nature this past April, honeybee populations exposed to field-realistic doses of neonics were not harmed in the short term, but wild-bee density was reduced by half, indicating that they are especially vulnerable. Other studies show that neonics are affecting earthworms, amphibians and a plethora of species at the bottom of the food chain. The chemicals have also shown up in water sources throughout the Midwest, and at levels known to be toxic to aquatic organisms if exposed over an extended time. A 2013 report done by the American Bird Conservancy found that a single neonic corn kernel can kill a songbird.
What harm, if any, they may pose to humans in the long term is unknown. "We don't have data on neonicotinoids in our bodies because they're not included in the panel of pesticides that the CDC's biomonitoring program evaluates," says Melissa Perry, president of the American College of Epidemiology and chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. "These compounds have come on the market so rapidly that they've outstripped scientific readiness."
Perry's research team recently completed a review of all the studies published in English globally on the health effects of neonics on humans and found, to its surprise, that there were only seven. Four looked at acute effects — poisonings — and only three at chronic exposure. Of those three, all of them found adverse effects on children. "There were cases of congenital abnormality, associations with suggestion of autism, associations with suggestion of heart defects, birth defects," says Perry. Nevertheless, she counsels against using three studies to draw any major conclusions. "The status of the literature is so deficient that we know practically nothing," she says. What we do know is that some neonics have been shown in rodents to cross the placenta, which has raised concerns that if a pregnant woman ingests the toxins, the developing fetus' brain could be exposed. "I certainly have spent well over 20 years of my career having to play catch-up on the next chemical," says Perry. "Do we have to allow decades to elapse before we come to the conclusion that this is the wrong decision?" And if it is, will it be too late to repair the damage? Destroy the bottom of the food chain, and what eventually happens at the top?
When Jim Doan got down to Florida, where his wife had taken their 275 hives to wait out the cold New York winter, he surveyed the colonies she had given up for dead and found that some of them could be salvaged. Sure, they were ailing, but there was enough life left in them that he thought he'd give beekeeping one last shot. He made a pact with himself that from that moment, his bees would never return home, that he'd keep them away from neonicotinoid pesticides no matter what. He researched places where he could put them, places away from corn and other major GM crops, places where his bees could roam freely and mainly encounter crops that were neonic-free or organic. He leased some land in Amish country, found some safe havens in Florida. "We're never going to get 100 percent away from chemicals, because they're out here. They're in the water," Doan says. "But we can at least reduce the amount of susceptibility." Since making this plan, he says, he has been able to grow his hives up to 1,100 and has not yet experienced a serious die-off.
In 2013, he joined a collection of beekeepers who are suing the EPA, not for money, but for regulation. "When you go to the EPA and talk to them, they say, 'Well, if you don't like our decisions, then sue us.' So you have to sue them," he says. In questioning the EPA's conditional registration of the neonic clothianidin, the suit not only alleges that the agency has not met its own criteria for granting approval, but also challenges its approval process overall. Two years in, it's still in its initial stages of litigation and may not be decided for years.
Meanwhile, plans are being made for a time when perhaps bees won't be around. Scientists at Harvard have tried to make a robotic bee, while agrochemical companies are trying to develop a GM one, resistant to pesticides in the same way GM crops are meant to be resistant to herbicides. They are also touting the benefits of flupyradifurone, a new systemic pesticide that's supposed to be safer for bees because it's even more toxic, the idea being that if it kills a bee on the spot, then that bee won't transport the toxin back to the hive. But, as Doan sees it, it's not bees that will go extinct first, it's commercial beekeepers.
"I didn't want to be the person that failed three generations of Doans keeping bees. I didn't want it to end with me," Doan says. But he knows that he may not have a choice in the matter. "I mean, we want something to pass on, but I'm not sure there's going to be anything to pass on in another year or two. Just empty boxes."
Excerpt:"Life for two bags of weed," Winslow writes. "People kill people and get five years."
Editor's note: In the next few weeks, President Obama is expected to commute the sentences of dozens of federal inmates behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses, according to the New York Times.
It's just after 9 p.m. near the corner of Fourth and Marshall, a poor part of Shreveport, Louisiana. A homeless man approaches a guy on the street and asks him what he's looking for. That guy, an undercover cop, says he wants "two dimes" and promises a $5 commission. And Fate Vincent Winslow, knowing that $5 buys a meal, if not a great one, agrees. Minutes after he returns carrying two crumpled bags of marijuana, worth $10 each, he's in the backseat of a squad car. Three months later, Winslow is found guilty of selling a Schedule I Controlled Dangerous Substance. Another three months and the sentence lands: life imprisonment at hard labor with no chance for parole.
Winslow's punishment—to die behind bars, for a transaction involving a minuscule quantity of pot—is hard to believe. But it's not unique. Every year, more people are arrested for pot possession than violent crimes. Around 40,000 people are currently serving time for offenses involving a drug that has been decriminalized or legalized in 27 states and Washington, DC. Even as Americans' attitudes toward pot have mellowed, the law has yet to catch up, leaving pot offenders subject to draconian sentences born out of the war on drugs. As David Holland, a criminal-defense attorney in New York City who filed a presidential clemency petition for marijuana lifers in 2012, puts it: "The world has changed, but these poor bastards are still sitting in jail."
"Life for two bags of weed," Winslow writes. "People kill people and get five years."
Writing from the notorious maximum-securityLouisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Winslow told me how he'd come to face "the great injustice that is upon me." As a kid, he dropped out of high school and landed on the streets, "hanging with the wrong crowd." At 17 he was convicted of simple burglary; he later got eight and a half years for rifling through an unlocked car. A decade later, he was caught with some coke. "I always had a job," he writes—working in chicken plants, building houses. Yet his encounter with the undercover cop in 2008 branded him a habitual offender under Louisiana law, triggering an automatic life sentence. "Life for two bags of weed," he writes. "People kill people and get five years."
How many prisoners are serving life sentences for pot? At least 69, based on data collected by the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations. But that figure probably is low, particularly if you count older inmates serving lengthy sentences who will likely die in prison. Federal judges have sentenced 54 people to life without parole for marijuana crimes since 1996, according to the Clemency Report. Solid numbers are hard to find. "Incarceration data for cannabis-only-related offenses is the holy grail of criminal-justice data for cannabis law reformers," saysAllen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, who has filed dozens of requests for this information. "All the time it seems like I learn of another one that I'd never heard of before," says Cheri Sicard, vice president of the CAN-DO Foundation, an advocacy group for nonviolent drug offenders.
Among those serving life for pot are two more Angola inmates: Dale Wayne Green, who acted as a middleman selling $20 worth of weed to an undercover cop in 1999, and Terrance Mosley, who was riding with an acquaintance when police searched the car and uncovered two pounds of marijuana. Craig Cesal has served 13 years of a federal life sentence. He once repaired freight trucks, and served a company involved in high-volume marijuana trafficking. He says he never saw or handled the drugs, but was convicted of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute thousands of pounds of marijuana. Like other lifers accused of similar crimes, he took his case to trial. "I had no idea I had done anything illegal," the soft-spoken 55-year-old says on the phone from the Federal Correctional Institution in Greenville, Illinois.
Obama has granted 43 petitions for commutation, including one for a man serving life for growing more than 18,000 pot plants.
Many pot offenders are casualties of drug laws that may treat marijuana like hard drugs, as well as "three strikes" laws that do not distinguish between armed robbery and selling a dime bag. Even as then-Attorney General Eric Holder called for a move away from mandatory minimum drug sentences and once tough-on-crime lawmakers have come to embrace criminal-justice reform, these pot prisoners currently have few legal remedies. While some federal prisoners serving time for crack cocaine offenses can have their sentences shortened thanks to the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, there's been no similar retroactive reform of pot sentences. "Unless a law is created that specifically looks back in time, a person is stuck with whatever sentence they were given based on the laws that existed at that time," explains Chris Lindsey, a legislative analyst at the Marijuana Policy Project. He has seen only one proposal to address pot prisoners whose crimes might result in lesser punishments today. "By default," he explains, "we don't rewind the clock and reevaluate existing sentences."
For now, the sole hope of the marijuana lifers is clemency. But clemency, which generally may be granted only by the president or a governor, is rare. President Obama has granted just 43 petitions for commutation, including one for a manserving a life sentence for growing more than 18,000 pot plants.(This could change soon: President Obama is reportedly set to free dozens of nonviolent drug offenders locked up in federal prisons, potentially reducing more sentences in one stroke than any other president in recent memory.) Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has granted just 47 clemencies.
"There is no life in prison," Winslow writes. "Just living day by day waiting to die in prison." So far, his handwritten appeals have gone nowhere. In the meantime, he says he spends "every day" praying and going to Angola's law library, "doing everything I can to get out."
Alan: Chesterton observed that "The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all." To those with eyes to see, it is no surprise that American conservatism -- like Christian conservatism -- would behave with such ruggedly individualistic arrogance that they would destroy their own movements.
Chesterton Viewed The Rich As "Oppressive""Scum" And Failures
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/chesterton-considered-rich-oppressive.html "You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists." G.K. Chesterton, 1874-1936
The 2016 Republican presidential primary field is unusually large and unusually unsettled, and the first debate earlier this month didn’t do much to change either of those things. So we gathered FiveThirtyEight’s political writers in Slack to talk about the state of the race. This is an edited transcript of the conversation.
micah (Micah Cohen, senior editor): Harry and Nate, a Fox News poll released Sunday found Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz leading the Republican primary race, and a lotof people are saying the outsider/angry wing of the GOP is ascendant. Is something going on? The Republican Party’s last two nominees came from its establishment wing. Is that wing losing its grip?
hjenten-heynawl (Harry Enten, senior political writer): I think it really depends on the definition of what is an outsider and an insider. We can look back to the 2012 cycle and see where things were in November of 2011. We had Newt Gingrich taking the lead from Herman Cain. Gingrich, Cain, Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann added up to greater than 50 percent of the vote, and Mitt Romney became the nominee. If I’m the GOP’s establishment wing, I’m far more concerned not with what the outsiders added up to, but that there is no insidery candidate who is doing particularly well.
natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Well, Harry, you just pre-empted the disagreement we were supposed to have. One thing Republicans had going for them in 2012 is that there weren’t a lot of establishment choices to pick from. Romney, obviously, then Tim Pawlenty, then (if you’re going by endorsements) the pre-“oops” Rick Perry might count. This time around, the establishment vote might be split five or six different ways. Of course, it will probably consolidate around one or two candidates. But it could take some time.
hjenten-heynawl: Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Is it merely delayed and not denied? We already see some of that going on in theIpsos polling where Trump gains when the contest is down to just him, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, but Bush and Walker gain a lot more ground.
natesilver: Harry, I think we’re both bearish on Trump, in part, because as the field consolidates, he isn’t likely to pick up that much second-choice support.
micah: Wait a second — Trump has a quarter of the vote. Carson and Cruz together have another 20 percent or so, and not a single establishment candidate is in double digits (Bush has 9.9 percent in the Huffington Post’s Pollster average). Doesn’t that say something about the mood of the GOP electorate?
natesilver: Well, all the usual caveats apply to looking at polls in August. There’s a lot of window-shopping going on. And also — I’m sure Harry can expound on this point — Republican voters might not divide the field into “establishment” and “anti-establishment” camps as neatly as people like us might.
hjenten-heynawl: Right. Look back at 2011. You would have thought Romney was in trouble because every so often a new alternative would pop up — someone against the establishment. But the polling clearly showed that Romney was going to pick up his fair share of the support once the alternatives started falling away.
natesilver: Still, one thing that’s unambiguously different this year is that you have so many candidates running.
micah: Here’s an argument: Trump is such an unusual candidate — he’s crazier than a Gingrich or a Cain — that his leading the polls right now is indicative of something unusual brewing among Republican voters. And the GOP establishment might have a tougher time reining that energy in this election than in past cycles. And the post-debate Carson bump, even if it’s temporary, backs that up
natesilver: Maybe Trump belongs in a third category.
Moderate/establishment
Very conservative
Trump
micah: So add to that the fact that, as Harry said, there’s no establishment candidate looking too good at the moment. If you’re Reince Priebus, aren’t you sweating a little?
hjenten-heynawl: I think 1996 can be instructive here. No candidate got into the 30s in either Iowa or New Hampshire. Eventually Dole emerged. But I think the difference again is that Dole was in a class by himself among the more “establishment” candidates. Walker, Rubio, Bush, Kasich and even Christie are going to divide a lot of this vote, and none of them look all that strong right now.
natesilver: We keep coming back to the fact that there are 17 [expletive deleted] candidates, including eight or 10 who could be plausible establishment nominees.
micah: Couldn’t that mess up the normal consolidating process we expect to happen?
natesilver: You could draw some parallels to the 1972 Democratic race, when George McGovern won with establishment support split between Muskie, Humphrey, etc.
You could also point toward a lot of differences from 1972.
micah: Like?
natesilver: Well, first of all, both parties learned a lot from 1972 and the disaster that was the McGovern nomination. Secondly, McGovern was very, very good at understanding the delegate rules — he made the rules, in fact! I wouldn’t expect Trump to have mastery of those, I guess. Third, McGovern was at least a Democrat, whereas it’s not clear that Trump is a Republican at all.
micah: It doesn’t have to be Trump. Isn’t Ted Cruz basically the George McGovern of 2016? Or couldn’t he be?
hjenten-heynawl: But what makes us think that Ted Cruz is going to win?
micah: I don’t think he’s going to win. I think it’s more likely this year than in past elections that the establishment could lose hold of the process. Certainly they don’t have much control right now.
natesilver: Betting markets give Cruz 25-1 odds against winning the nomination. That seems — about right?
micah: That seems fair.
hjenten-heynawl: I mean there is no reason for them to go after someone like Ben Carson who is a smart, nice guy … and who happens to be black in a party that desperately needs to do minority outreach. But you think for a second that most party actors think Carson and his politically incorrect statements will get near the nomination? There isn’t a reason for people to be taken down yet.
micah: But my argument is that the party actors may not have as much power.
natesilver: My concern, if I’m Reince Priebus, isn’t necessarily that Ted Cruz or Donald Trump is going to win the nomination. It’s that an establishment candidate eventually does, but it gets ugly.
micah: What does “ugly” look like?
natesilver: OK, let’s posit three degrees of ugliness.
An actual brokered convention.
The nomination is decided before the convention, but there’s genuine uncertainty about who the nominee will be after the last primaries.
No candidate has technically clinched the nomination as of the date of the last primary, but the writing’s on the wall.
hjenten-heynawl: (If there’s a brokered convention, I’ll eat dinner in Brooklyn for a month.)
micah: [Editor’s note: Harry hates Brooklyn.]
natesilver: Harry, what chance would you assign to each of those outcomes?
hjenten-heynawl:
5 percent
10 percent
25 percent
natesilver: So, we do have some disagreement. I think the chances are about twice that at each stage.
hjenten-heynawl: So you think we head into June 2016, and there’s still a centipede running around with its head chopped off?
micah: That’s a … metaphor. A chicken?
natesilver: I’d say there’s a 20 or 25 percent chance that there’s genuine doubt about the identity of the nominee in June. Yeah. But it’s category Nos. 1 and 2 that I’d be concerned about. Where, in essence, the party hasn’t been able to reach consensus until it gets in to the smoke-filled rooms.
micah: And how does that hurt the GOP? It makes it harder to rally behind the eventual nominee?
natesilver: First of all, if you look at the correlation between the share of the primary vote that the nominee gets and how the party does in the general election, it’s pretty strong. Though it could absolutely be a correlation without a causation. But I don’t think it should just be brushed off as an empirical finding.
natesilver: But if you reach the stage where there’s genuine doubt about the identity of the nominee in June, it means that some major constituencies within the Republican Party are going to feel dealt out of the process. And also, you have less time for the sort of healing that parties usually get in June, July, etc. Probably some big fights at the convention, which if nothing else harms the GOP’s ability to control the message.
micah: And I think the chances of that happening — whether 20 percent or 5 percent — are unusually high this year.
natesilver: Yeah, I figure the baseline probability is 10 percent or something, if you had enough of a sample size. So it’s got to be considerably higher than that.
micah: All right, then what’s causing that, Harry? Is it:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the media in the spin room after the first Republican presidential debate, held Thursday in Cleveland.
JOHN MINCHILLO / AP
hjenten-heynawl: I think you have two things going on here: First, this is a nomination that a Republican wants. There is no incumbent running. The president’s approval rating is stuck in the mid-40s, which more often than not means that a Republican should win the presidency. And you look at the generic presidential ballot, and it’s — at best — a tie for Democrats. So you have a reason for a Republican to run. Second, there’s no natural next in line — no one establishment figure who did well in 2012 like you had with Romney in 2008. Third, there isn’t any establishment figure out there who is a current governor and moderately conservative like George W. Bush in 2000. All are a little too hot or too cold. One might imagine Rubio with an extra electoral win under his belt being the perfect candidate.
But at the same time, you have the issue of all these nontraditional candidates. Republicans are very upset with Washington. Very, very upset. We see more people not wanting traditional Washington experience. They see that their party did well in 2014, so they think they don’t need to worry about electability. They don’t recognize that the president isn’t all that unpopular. So it’s a mixture of all of the above in my opinion.
natesilver: I agree that this is a very desirable nomination for Republicans to have.
Not a case like 1972, when Democrats were in pretty bad shape anyway. Or 1964 on the Republican side. And that will make the establishment even more insistent that it chooses someone electable.
Still, there’s a world in which the establishment is weakened, but not obliterated. In that world, I still don’t think Trump can get the nomination. But maybe it gets messy or (less likely) someone like Cruz gets pretty close.
hjenten-heynawl: Can I just say that it was no more than a year ago that the GOP was getting the establishment choices in Senate primaries. So I think it’d be wise to wait.
micah: But in the messy world you’re describing, eventually the GOP establishment has to settle on someone. Jeb! hasn’t exactly rocketed out of the gate. Walker’s faltered a bit. Rubio remains somewhat of a background presence.
natesilver: Yeah, maybe we’re being too abstract here.
micah: It’s a choice, not a referendum
natesilver: I wonder if the consequence of a weakened party establishment is that it can veto candidates, but not choose them. Do we think Jeb’s campaign is off to a bad start?
hjenten-heynawl: He hasn’t spent any money yet. Or not a lot anyway
natesilver: Yeah, that’s important. We saw that Kasich was able to rocket up from ninth to third in the New Hampshire polls or whatever just by spending a token sum there.
In the abstract, there’s no particular reason to lead the polls in August. Unless you’re worried about losing potential support from donors and staffers because they see you as nonviable. Which is a risk for, say, Kasich or Christie. But probably not for Bush/Rubio/Walker?
hjenten-heynawl: Bush and Rubio have more than enough dough to survive for a while. And again, here’s the thing: No one has a huge lead. Even Mr. Trump is mostly in the 20s. All it takes is one strong debate, one ad blitz, and I think you can find yourself at the top of the polls.
micah: To go back to this idea that maybe the establishment can veto candidates but maybe not pick them — who does that benefit?
hjenten-heynawl: It depends on what anti-establishment means.
natesilver: Rubio still seems like the most broadly acceptable candidate in the field. He seems underpriced at 15 percent in the betting markets.
hjenten-heynawl: One could argue that Kasich is anti-establishment in a sense.
natesilver: In a Huntsmanian way, Harry?
hjenten-heynawl: Right. Or a McCain 2000 way.
micah: That’s a stretch.
hjenten-heynawl: Why? Because you are an Acela corridor guy who thinks Kasich is the perfect Republican?
micah: No, because I think he’s a fairly mainstream Republican. Establishment even.
hjenten-heynawl: Look, when I think “establishment,” I think John Weaver.
natesilver: Didn’t you write that article, Harry? He’s weirdly adopting the stance of appearing more moderate than he really is. You’re supposed to do the opposite in the primaries. But maybe Kasich believes at differentiation at all costs. Which arguably is an OK near-term strategy. Then he’ll pivot, once it looks like he’s getting enough traction, and come after Jeb.
hjenten-heynawl: Trump is actually pretty moderate on health care, which is where Kasich has his biggest problem. A lot of this is attitude, not policy.
micah: Last question: When will we start to see the establishment really exert some pressure?
hjenten-heynawl: Look if I’m Reince, I get on that Acela first-class car, kick back with a corn-crusted cod, a little wine and see where things are in a month. I wouldn’t expect a lot of pressure until November or December.
natesilver: Yeah, I think Thanksgiving is a pretty good dividing point.
And part of what all these campaigns have to remind themselves is that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, even though the media horde treats it as a series of sprints.
More than half a century before Oliver, another enchantress of the human spirit — the French philosopher Simone Weil (February 3, 1909–August 24, 1943), a mind of unparalleled intellectual elegance and a sort of modern saintwhom Albert Camus described as “the only great spirit of our times” — wrote beautifully of attention as contemplative practice through which we reap the deepest rewards of our humanity.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
This piercing thought comes fully abloom in Gravity and Grace (public library) — a posthumous 1952 collection of Weil’s enduring ideas, culled from her notebooks by Gustave Thibon, the farmer whom she entrusted with her writings before her untimely death.
Weil considers the superiority of attention over the will as the ultimate tool of self-transformation:
We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.
The will only controls a few movements of a few muscles, and these movements are associated with the idea of the change of position of nearby objects. I can will to put my hand flat on the table. If inner purity, inspiration or truth of thought were necessarily associated with attitudes of this kind, they might be the object of will. As this is not the case, we can only beg for them… Or should we cease to desire them? What could be worse? Inner supplication is the only reasonable way, for it avoids stiffening muscles which have nothing to do with the matter. What could be more stupid than to tighten up our muscles and set our jaws about virtue, or poetry, or the solution of a problem. Attention is something quite different.
Pride is a tightening up of this kind. There is a lack of grace (we can give the word its double meaning here) in the proud man. It is the result of a mistake.
Weil turns to attention as the counterpoint to this graceless will — where the will contracts the spirit, she argues, attention expands it:
Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
If we turn our mind toward the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.
Monarch butterfly populations hit rock bottom in the winter of 2013-2014 when they occupied an area of just 2.8 acres of an oyamel fir forest on a central Mexican mountaintop. According to a report by Monarch Joint Venture, a Minnesota-based conservation group, the population was estimated to be 33 million monarchs. That may seem like a lot of butterflies, but in 1996-97 the population peaked at 1 billion monarchs occupying 44.5 acres of winter habitat.
Last year I saw just one monarch and I received very few reports from readers. So I’m not surprised that I’ve gotten lots of mail asking how monarchs are doing this year.
In the winter of 2014-15, the population rebounded to 56 million. This summer I saw my first monarch Aug. 1. Since then, however, I’ve seen more every day. My own observations coupled with reports I’ve received from readers suggest that monarchs have made an encouraging comeback this year.
Chip Taylor of the education, conservation and research group MonarchWatch.org, reports that there have been “lots of eggs in the upper Midwest, from Michigan to the Dakotas.” This is critically important because more than 90 percent of the monarchs that winter in Mexico originate here.
On the other hand, Virginia-based Lincoln Brower, who has studied monarchs for decades, is less optimistic.
“I’ve only seen four monarch this summer — so far,” he said, last week.
Here’s what you can do to help monarch butterflies.
1. Plant milkweed. It’s the only plant monarchs lay their eggs on.
2. Report any monarchs seen nectaring, roosting, flying or breeding to Journey North, a wildlife migration research organization (www.journeynorth.org).
3. Plant more milkweed.
***
Help bring monarchs back from the brink
Sign the Monarch Manifesto and help build safe havens for monarch butterflies and other pollinators.
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There's a growing movement to bring monarch butterflies back from the brink and help other important pollinators.
By:David SuzukiPublished on Sat Aug 22 2015
Jode Roberts has spent a lot of the summer checking out ditches and fields along the sides of roads, railways and trails. At first, he didn’t like what he was seeing. Roberts, who is leading the David Suzuki Foundation’s effort to bring monarchs back from the brink, was searching for signs that the butterflies had visited patches of milkweed plants. Despite the bleak start, he recently hit the jackpot: a half-dozen eggs and a couple of monarch caterpillars, calmly munching on milkweed leaves.
Over the past millennium, eastern monarch butterflies have migrated northward from Mexico in spring, arriving in southern Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes in early summer, where they lay eggs on the undersides of milkweed leaves. In the following weeks, their caterpillars hatch and eat a steady milkweed diet. In late summer, they form chrysalises and undergo the amazing transformation into butterflies. They then begin fattening themselves for the arduous return to the Mexican alpine forests where they overwinter.
Concerned citizens, scientists and conservation groups were starting to think monarchs might largely be a no-show in Canada this summer. The eastern monarch population has plummeted from more than a billion butterflies in the 1990s to an estimated 35 million in 2014 — a drop of more than 95 per cent. They bounced back to about 55 million in Mexico this past winter, but a cool start to their journey northward coupled with the virtual eradication of milkweed plants — mainly through widespread use of the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup) over the past two decades — left monarch experts wondering whether the butterflies would make it across the border this year.
The good news is that citizen scientists and backyard butterfly lovers from across the northeastern U.S. and southern Canada have reported through social media that monarch butterflies are arriving and laying a remarkable number of eggs. But it’s too early to gauge whether the numbers will meet already low expectations.
While monarch enthusiasts are breathing a momentary sigh of relief, Roberts and colleagues have launched the Monarch Manifesto, encouraging people throughout the monarchs’ path to pledge to do their part to ensure the butterflies continue to recover. Visit davidsuzuki.org/monarchs to sign.
Participants are asked to commit to do three simple things this summer: grow milkweed, report monarch sightings, and avoid using pesticides on their properties. They also commit to two simple tasks for the fall: reach out to at least one neighbourhood school, faith group, business or other institution about planting a butterfly garden and call local garden centres or nurseries to ask them to order native milkweed plants for next spring. Manifesto signatories will receive information and tips on how to begin these conversations.
The Monarch Manifesto is part of a growing movement to bring back monarch butterflies and help other important pollinators, like honeybees and wild bees. If all goes well, we’ll see thousands of participants, hundreds of new butterfly gardens and more local milkweed sources next spring.
The backyard and urban-focused campaign is bolstered by research by University of Delaware entomologist Douglas Tallamy, who found that monarchs lay more eggs on garden plants than on milkweed in meadows. The campaign also complements a research project the David Suzuki Foundation will launch this fall, in partnership with University of Guelph researchers Tyler Flockhart and Ryan Norris, examining best practices for cultivating milkweed and encouraging monarch populations along rail and hydro lines, roadways and trails.
What can you do to help? An easy first step is to sign the Monarch Manifesto. If you already have milkweed in your garden or on your balcony, consider collecting seeds this fall and sharing them with friends and neighbours. If you don’t have a garden or balcony, you can look for places where you live, work and play that could become new butterfly garden patches.
While Roberts continues his hopeful hunt for signs of monarchs this summer, I hope you’ll join thousands of people who are taking action, adding pollinator-friendly plants to their yards, spurring butterfly gardens in their neighbourhoods and transforming a multitude of spaces into safe havens for bees and butterflies. Together, we can bring monarch butterflies back from the brink.
Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from Jode Roberts, manager of the David Suzuki Foundation’s Homegrown National Park Project.
Parishioners raise hands in prayer during the Spanish-language Mass at the Church of St. Rosalie in Hampton Bays on Aug. 2, 2015. About 24 percent of the hamlet's 12,680 residents reported speaking Spanish at home for the 2013 American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Immigrants attending Mass at the Church of St. Rosalie in Hampton Bays know they can hear the Word of God in Spanish every Sunday at 4 p.m. in this part of the Hamptons, crowded with the season's beachgoers and vineyard tourists.
On a recent afternoon, they listened as the Rev. Marvin Navas told of Pope Francis' trip to South America in July and the work the pope is doing to guide and heal the faithful. The pontiff, he noted, asked for forgiveness for the sins the church had committed against the immigrants' ancestors in their native lands.
"I don't know if you saw when the pope spoke, the masses who followed him, how he said with humility, 'Yes, we have sinned,'" Navas marveled. Despite history's failings, he told them, "the Lord is our justice" in the church.
Francis will shower attention upon immigrants such as those at St. Rosalie's when he comes to the United States next month -- and will speak directly, and most often in Spanish, to this growing constituency in the American church. He is expected to raise the issue of migration during his travels from the nation's capital to New York City and Philadelphia, as he has in pronouncements since rising to the papacy in 2013.
His interest in the issue is more than a gesture for a church with not only a significant following in immigrant communities, but also a history and doctrine rooted in migration, said Donald Kerwin Jr., executive director of the Center for Migration Studies of New York. The Manhattan think tank with Catholic roots was founded by the Scalabrinian Fathers, a congregation that arrived in New York as Italians settled here in the late 1800s.
The stories of the Jews' exile and Exodus of the Old Testament, of the Holy Family's flight to Egypt and of Jesus' mission for the Apostles to spread the faith build a narrative of "core migration," Kerwin said. The church in the United States grew into a major institution, he added, from being a minority faith in the colonies as waves of immigrants -- among them Poles, Irish, Germans, Italians and, currently, Latin Americans -- joined the worship.
"Migration is a sacred thing in this tradition," Kerwin said. "Jesus identified in a very radical way with the stranger when he said, 'I was a stranger and you welcomed me.' Catholics are taught their salvation depends in part on how they treat newcomers."
Clergy and churchgoers doing the church's advocacy work on the issue are optimistic that in putting immigrants front and center, the pope will make their plight relevant to more Catholics, striking a merciful tone that will temper political discord on the matter.A 2014 national survey by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., found that four in 10 Catholics are from immigrant households -- either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants.
"The pope has come to unify us as a people," Miguel Flores, 43, a Salvadoran immigrant at the Mass in Hampton Bays, said in Spanish. Acting as proclaimer of the Word during the service, he led the prayer for el Papa Francisco y nuestro obispo William -- the pope and Long Island's Bishop William Murphy.
Flores came to the United States illegally about 15 years ago and has since gained temporary protected status, allowing him to work without fear of deportation. He makes a living trimming trees and caring for hedges in the Hamptons. As someone hoping to earn full legal residency, he is enthusiastic about the pope speaking for his rights.
Pope's welcoming stance
"When we migrate here, one of the few things we bring across the border is our faith," Flores said. "Thanks to his strength as a Latin American pope, we feel closer to the church, we feel more welcome in the church . . . I would like for him to be emphatic about us needing full immigration reform and not temporary fixes."
Francis has given no indication of what he will say, but the matter is on his agenda and in previous statements he has sided with welcoming immigrants.
Kevin Appleby, migration policy director for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C., said, "What we do know from his record is that it's an issue close to his heart" and "one of the issues central to his papacy."
In a message issued in August 2013 for last year's World Day of Migrants and Refugees, the pope staked his claim in the debate: "Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity," he said, and should be accorded "their human dignity" in the countries where they reside.
"A change of attitude towards migrants and refugees is needed on the part of everyone," Francis said then, "moving away from attitudes of defensiveness and fear, indifference and marginalization -- all typical of a throwaway culture -- towards attitudes based on a culture of encounter, the only culture capable of building a better, more just and fraternal world."
The pope echoed that message for the same occasion last September in a message that said, "It is necessary to respond to the globalization of migration with the globalization of charity and cooperation."
Though Latinos make up the majority of immigrants in the country -- and in the church -- parishes on Long Island and elsewhere have learned to speak in the diversity of voices in which their adherents pray. The Pew national survey shows small percentages of European and Asian population groups among Catholics with immigrant roots.
Advocacy on LI, nationwide
On Long Island, Spanish-language Masses abound from western Nassau County congregations such as the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Valley Stream to the easternmost Church of St. Therese of Lisieux in Montauk. The roster of Mass times on the Diocese of Rockville Centre's website includes services in Haitian Creole, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Vietnamese.
The church's immigration focus is at the root of its identity, said Msgr. Kevin Sullivan, executive director of the Archdiocese of New York's Catholic Charities, which is involved in coordinating one of the pope's events in New York City.
"The church in the United States for centuries has been an immigrant church," Sullivan said. "At present it is an immigrant church. In the future it will be an immigrant church."
Accordingly, the church in the United States has continued its national advocacy for reforms that would protect immigrants and open up legal avenues to live and work in the country.
The bishops' conference has advocated, among other policies, an earned legalization program leading to eventual citizenship for immigrants here illegally, a worker visa program allowing more immigrants to enter legally and an increase in family visas for relatives of those granted permanent residency or citizenship.
Francis "will likely pull no punches on the issue," Appleby said, and his message "could help reignite the immigration debate in this country in a positive way. At a minimum, it will help change the atmosphere."
There will be several opportunities for Francis to speak out, in addition to his Sept. 23 meeting with President Barack Obama and the first lady and his speech in front of Congress the following day.
Papal itinerary
While in Washington, the pope will visit a Catholic Charities program that serves poor and homeless people and also assists immigrants. He will meet with recent immigrants at Our Lady Queen of Angels School in East Harlem on Sept. 25. The next day, he will speak at Independence Mall in Philadelphia in front of a crowd that will include an immigrant contingent, with Francis addressing religious liberty and immigration.
The gathering in East Harlem, a largely Hispanic neighborhood, will be his main event with immigrants, Sullivan said.
Francis will meet with about 150 immigrants, among them refugees from various nations, day laborers who seek work in city streets, Central American children who came to the United States illegally as unaccompanied minors, Dreamers brought to this country illegally as children, and immigrant mothers.
The pope will "informally just greet and talk" with them, pray with them and bless them, Sullivan said.
"My hope and my prayer is that Pope Francis' presence and his meeting and blessing of immigrants and refugees will renew the conversation about how good immigration reform is in the best interests of all of the people of the United States, including but not limited to the newcomers," Sullivan said.
Long Island advocates hope the pope's intervention will get more parishes in Nassau and Suffolk to put the issue on their agenda.
"The state of immigration in terms of the church's involvement on Long Island is very subtle," said Sister Rosalie Carven, social justice coordinator for the Sisters of St. Joseph in Brentwood. "I'd like to think that in addition to helping individuals regularize their status, and finding ways to support their human needs, I would like to see more effort to let the Catholic community at large become involved in immigration reform and legislative issues."
She hopes that congregations, energized over the pope's recent "Laudato Si" encyclical on the environment, will consider social issues part of their mandate. In the document, Francis speaks of "a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation."
"We shouldn't be afraid to welcome immigrants, because they are a gift to us," Carven said. "If we could get over our xenophobic attitudes, we would start seeing immigrants as a resource for our communities and our country."
The Rev. Bill Brisotti, pastor of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Roman Catholic Church in Wyandanch, which holds Masses in Spanish and Haitian Creole, hopes the pope's message reaches people who haven't seen their connection to immigration.
"For someone like Pope Francis, it's a moment to maybe contextualize it all, say that these are not disjointed activities" that lead to immigration, but to see that "the United States is very much behind the reasons why there are poor people" in underdeveloped nations, Brisotti said.
"We have to look at the global effects of all of our actions -- the way why people are poor and the way why people have to leave their places and come here," he said.
Hopes for feeling 'peace'
Outside of the policy debate, area churches have adapted to embrace immigrants.
Ministries including Centro Corazón de María, which serves Latino immigrants in Hampton Bays, have sprouted to offer English classes, build literacy skills and host workshops on issues ranging from nutrition to financial planning.
Knowing they have Pope Francis on their side could give immigrants a stronger sense of belonging in their parishes, said Sister Mary Beth Moore, assistant coordinator at the Hampton Bays ministry.
"It brings the immigrant community hope and it validates their claim to dignity," she said, despite a "very harsh" discourse in which "the legitimacy of immigrants in the United States has been called into question by the children and grandchildren of immigrants."
Just having the pope speak to them fills them with hope, said immigrants at the Hampton Bays church service.
"We give thanks to God that we have this messenger of the Lord . . . so that most of us immigrants could feel that peace he brings," said Manuel Jarrín, 55, a Southampton resident who works as a chef's assistant.
Lupe Orellana, 49, coordinates the Spanish-language charismatic prayer group in Hampton Bays. The Southampton hair stylist said she plans to take a bus to attend the pope's Mass in Philadelphia -- to see and hear him for herself.
"It will be a great source of joy," Orellana said, calling Pope Francis' words "like a message direct to our hearts."
In two weeks, Stephen Colbert will be on network television every night and he will have to be funny. During his time off between the end of “The Colbert Report” and the beginning of “The Late Show,” he’s been honing his comedic skills, including hosting a public access show in Michigan and showing up in random YouTube videos from a bunker.
But as Colbert hits the press circuit this week with a vengeance, one theme has been emerging: His much more serious side. Presumably, this will not be on display all that much when he takes over “The Late Show” on Sept. 8. But after a decade of playing a character on Comedy Central, Colbert isn’t concerned about sharing the most personal details of his real life — if anything, he seems relieved to finally be himself. Unlike most celebrity interviews that gloss over the tough subjects, his honesty is refreshing, even startling at times.
During both a GQ cover story released this week and a Howard Stern interview, Colbert talked in-depth about the traumatic incident of his childhood, when his father and two brothers were killed in a plane crash. Colbert, the youngest of 11 children, described how he grappled with the traumatic event when he was just 10-years-old — and at the same time, it formed who he would become as a person.
“It’s built into me the way marble is built into a statue. It’s kind of, at a certain age, what I was made of,” Colbert told Stern on Tuesday.
As usual, Stern poked and prodded and asked even more difficult questions, including if Colbert ever listened to the final cockpit recording before the plane crashed. Colbert confirmed that he started looking into the accident a few years ago and, during a Google search, found the transcript — though he could never bring himself to listen to the recording. At the same time, Colbert balked when Stern kept talking about his traumatic experiences.
“There’s a tough event,” he conceded. “But my life has been beautiful.”
Colbert elaborated on this during a lengthy GQ profile written by Joel Lovell; Colbert said that decades later he was able to accept and be grateful about everything he had gone through, summing it up by saying: “I love the thing that I most wish had not happened”:
“Tolkien says…‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn’t mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”
Colbert also described his thoughts on religion (he’s a practicing Catholic who has taught Sunday school) and how it helped his mother grieve. “The church is flawed — boy, that’s an understatement,” he told Stern. “But it was a beautiful gift to my family and my mother and me.”
Both interviews were fascinating, simply for the fact that Colbert allowed himself to be a real person, as he weaved in comedy between devastating anecdotes. So many stars are so guarded that interviews consist almost exclusively of dull material.
Such unguarded behavior is purely by choice. Did Colbert also have to tell Stern about how he was once medicated when he had an anxiety attack over his career path once he got married? Not at all. But offering humanizing details not only makes for an intriguing interview, it makes a much stronger connection between him and his audience. And given the delight viewers had whenever the notoriously private David Letterman offered any bit of his personal life on TV, it’s a bond that the “Late Show” audience craves.
Founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales recalls how he assembled "a ragtag band of volunteers," gave them tools for collaborating to create a self-organizing, self-correcting, never-finished online encyclopedia.
About Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales is one of the founders of Wikipedia, the self-organizing, self-correcting online encyclopedia anyone can edit. After Wikipedia's launch in 2001, it became one of the most used repositories of knowledge on the planet, with more than one million articles in English and hundreds of thousands in dozens of other languages, all freely available.
In a historic graduation ceremony today, 96 soldiers, including two women, earned the revered Army Ranger tab following a course described by many top military brass as “the most challenging” in all the armed services.
The grueling course is spread out over three phases in 62 days, though the first female graduates, 1st Lt. Kristen Griest and Capt. Shaye Haver, spent nearly four months in the training after recycling through two of the phases.
The Army estimates approximately 34 percent of students recycle at least one phase of the course.
Soldiers navigate swamps and mountain ridges as instructors bark orders, denying them sleep and food in an attempt to push their limits of mental and physical toughness.
Griest and Haver gave their first public remarks on the course alongside eight of their peers on Thursday.
Watch the ABC News digital original video above to hear their first-hand account of the experience.
Inside "Ashley's War," Story Of A Special Ops Program That Put Women In Afghanistan War Zones
Today's second reading is taken from Paul's Letter to the Ephesians.
It is a reading that "no one" believes any more, not even devout, church-going Catholics.
Its content is akin to Timothy's verse above although -- on the surface -- not as appalling.
I would venture that few priests (having become heavily reliant on women pastoral administrators) approve Paul's passage from Ephesians and similarly imagine that Catholic nuns (who rightly despise Timothy's silencing of women) shun Paul's insistence of the subordination of women.
In an "ideal world," there might be "something" to recommend Paul's view of heterosexual relationship. But don't bet the farm!
Brothers and sisters: Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.
The core issue in this passage is authority. Reading Paul's words in cultural context, men are "the authorities" -- the Christlike "head" -- and, given the impossibility of mutual subordination, Paul is either naive or mendacious when he enjoins "brothers and sisters" to "be subordinate to one another."
"Sub" means below and two people cannot be below one another.
Nor does Paul want men to be subordinate. He wants them to be superior... as "the head" is superior to the body.
Paul enjoins men to "cleanse" women, to make them "without blemish," to "sanctify" them. In Paul's view, women -- but not men -- are "unclean, blemished" and in need of "sanctification." Furthermore, it is men who are charged with the accomplishment of this goal.
Thus constellating the heterosexual "dominance-submission hierarchy," Paul, a Jew (who, prior to conversion, hunted Christians to kill them) clings to the primary importance of Jewish purificatory rites and sees women -- partly due to monthly menstruation -- as necessarily "unclean." http://www.openbible.info/topics/menstruation
In Jewish culture, uncleanness (real or perceived) is a condition that invokes moral contempt.
Revealingly, some exegetes argue that the bedrock reason for Yeshua's crucifixion was a widespread observation among contemporary Jews -- especially priests, lawyers and elders -- that he and his apostles were unclean and therefore an abomination before the Lord. (It is a notable characteristic of all three Abrahamic religions that if someone is "unclean," scripture provides ready justification for the execution of that person.)
Mark 7
New International Version (NIV)
That Which Defiles
7 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus2 and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed.3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders.4 When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.[a])
5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”
6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
“‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 7 They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’[b]
8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”
(Alan: Mark is the oldest of the gospels, written less than 30 years after Jesus' crucifixion.)
For me, the "meat" of Paul's reading today is the juxtaposition of the requirement that women be "docile" as made transparently clear in the Spanish language translation: "Por lo tanto, así como la Iglesia es dócil a Cristo, así también las mujeres sean dóciles a sus maridos en todo.""Therefore, as the church is docile to Christ, so also should women be docile to their husbands in everything."
Increasingly, I ponder the difference between Christians who are primarily motivated by "discipline" (in the ascetic, "willful" sense) and those who are motivated by love in the Augustinian sense: "Love and do what you will."
It is not surprising that institutionalists are disproportionately fond of discipline, whereas "enthusiasts" (literally those who are "en theos" "in God,") rely on the movement of the spirit and see The Law (as, in other epistles, Paul himself sees it) as an anachronism in need of abolition.
Abolition Of The Law. The First In A Series of Catholic Lectionary Reflections
Notably, within institutions, iit is the institutionalists who "win the day." But the institutional pre-eminence of disciplines like "docility" and "subordination" do not -- in any way -- trump the primacy of Love, whatever the institutional hierarchs proclaim.
Institutionalists -- both leaders and "rank-and-file" -- pretend that dogmatic, doctrinal and legal disciplines are primary and they occupy positions of pomp and circumstance that make institutional grandeur "look like" it is central. But in the end we either "love our enemies" and prioritize the physical needs of "the least of our brethren," or, we are abject failures.
"They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules." Jesus of Nazareth
“The work of heaven alone is material; the making of a material world.
An aside: I often wonder what became of the apostles' wives whose husbands essentially deserted them in order to wander, hippy-like, with an itinerant preacher for three years.
We began our 2015 Best Towns competition with a bracket of 64 favorites, then let you vote until one dream burg emerged. Here, we present the 16 finalists—the places you say are the top spots in the country to work, run, eat, sail, paddle, drink, ride, and climb. The winner? A southern gem that surprised us once again.
Site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Games, Lake Placid still feels like an Olympic village. It’s tiny—population 2,500—but it’s an amazing place for all kinds of athletes to call home. Just ask 29-year-old U.S. Ski Team member and two-time Olympian Andrew Weibrecht, a Lake Placid native. He walked us through his favorite spots. —Megan Michelson
Morning: My day starts with coffee and breakfast at the Olympic Training Center, then a workout. I train in the basement of the former Olympic ice rink, which has everything I need, from free weights to physio balls. If I’ve got a day off, I get eggs Benedict at the Breakfast Clubon Main Street. Midday: On Saturdays, I’ll go out on my mountain bike. I can put together a two-hour ride on Logger’s Loop right in town, or I’ll head to Whiteface Mountain for something longer. For lunch I’ll grab a Buffalo chicken sandwich from Saranac Sourdough. Afternoon: I like to spend the day on my boat, fishing for bass or pike on Saranac Lake. You’re never that far from town, but you feel like you’re deep in the wilderness. Evening: In the summer, I’ll hit up the free concerts on the bandstand on Main Street. I’ll end the day at the Cottage, a lakeside restaurant that’s part of the Mirror Lake Inn, which my parents have owned since the 1970s. I’ll sit on the deck with tacos and a beer while the sun sets over the Adirondacks’ Great Range.
15. Bar Harbor, Maine
Fuel at Morning Glory; headed for a ride in Acadia; making a clip above the Atlantic. Photo: Wylde Photography; Tim Kemple; Michael Hanson/Aurora
From June to August, Bar Harbor’s population swells, with docked cruise ships on the water, some two million visitors pouring into Acadia National Park, and second-home owners summering in beachside cottages. But come January, the only folks eating fried pickles and clam chowder at the Thirsty Whale Tavern are the 2,600 hardy year-round locals, who wouldn’t want to be anyplace else. Perched on Mount Desert Island, the town is right next door to Acadia’s 127 miles of hiking trails and 1,530-foot Cadillac Mountain, the highest peak on the Atlantic seaboard. The summit offers an ocean panorama of lighthouses and humpback whales. Get onto the water in a sailboat or kayak and you’ll be joined by seals, porpoises, and osprey.
Bar Harbor’s vacation status does have its downsides. Home prices are about 70 percent higher than elsewhere in Maine—$292,000, with plenty of listings cracking seven figures—and many of the jobs are seasonal, like working on lobster boats or for the National Park Service. Local Eli Simon, who owns Bar Harbor’s Atlantic Climbing School, says sticking it out full-time is worth it. He starts his day at Morning Glory Bakery, and in a matter of minutes he’s in Acadia, climbing cliffs hanging over the ocean. For Simon’s 31st birthday, he planned a multi-sport expedition that involved loading bikes onto a canoe, paddling down a creek, then biking to a three-pitch climb. After lunch on a clifftop, he continued with a trail run and an ocean paddle, ending eight hours later at a potluck dinner with friends. “Few places on the planet offer as many activities in such a small area,” he says. “The people who live here year-round know it’s a gift.” —M.M.
14. Rochester, Minnesota
In 1978, six inches of rain in six hours produced a flood that decimated this southern Minnesota town of 111,000. But the resulting flood-control project, which took nearly 20 years to complete and created a series of channels through downtown, yielded ten miles of bike and pedestrian trails. Those trails are now the epicenter of an 85-mile paved system that radiates out from the world-renowned Mayo Clinic downtown to lakes, green spaces, concert venues, restaurants, and bars. Here are the spots to hit in the spiderweb-like network. —Stephanie Pearson
2. Quarry Hill Nature Center: A 320-acre preserve with five miles of hiking trails through woods and meadows.
3. Mayo Civic Center: Bands play all summer long in the green space along the Zumbro River out back.
4. Mayowood Mansion: The former home of a Mayo Clinic cofounder is open for tours four days a week.
5. Zzest Café and Bar: A neighborhood bistro with a patio on the Zumbro River.
13. Annapolis, Maryland
Clockwise from left: SUP session; full sail in Annapolis harbor; Maryland blue crab; Chesapeake Bay rush hour. Photo: Lacey Ann Johnson
To see Annapolis shine, come on a Wednesday evening in the summer, when the weekly sailboat race draws more than 100 boats to the harbor. After the race, the locals party like, well, sailors. You’ll find crews talking smack over the night’s race footage at the Boatyard Bar and Grill. But you don’t have to sail to get on the water: in the spring, kayakers and paddleboarders float Spa Creek. On land, runners tackle the three-mile trail to the old Navy radio transmission towers on Greenbury Point. With some 39,000 residents, Annapolis is a manageable city. Downtown, you’ll run into midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy and students from St. John’s College discussing Kant at City Dock Coffee.
While it’s not cheap, you can buy a home with bay views for under $400,000, and jobs—many in tourism and the military—are plentiful. It can get touristy on peak weekends, but locals know to head for Wild Country Seafood, in an alley behind a maritime museum. They’ll share picnic tables and tuck into platters of Maryland blue crab, freshly caught that morning by the father-son duo who run the joint. —M.M.
12. Spearfish, South Dakota
The Black Hills around this town of 11,000 are the exception in pancake-flat South Dakota—there are cliff walls for cragging and streams teeming with fat browns just down the road. In town there’s an Old West vibe, but bikes are the preferred steeds. Locals can roll to the Cycle Farm for vegetables, partake in the bar-hopping Poker Ride, or saddle up for one of these three awesome annual events. —S.P.
September 6, 2015: Dakota Five-O A 48-mile, mostly singletrack jaunt that starts downtown on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. Look for the bacon and PBR station around mile 35.
March 19, 2016: 28 Below Fat Bike Race Each March, come rain, snow, or mud, this 28-mile lollypop loop climbs 2,700 feet toward the Cement Ridge Fire Lookout on a groomed snowmobile trail.
June 11, 2016: Gold Rush Gravel Grinder What’s better than a long ride through the Black Hills? An even longer one. Organizers say the 210-mile option takes you “deeper into the darkness.”
11. Middlebury, Vermont
Clockwise from top left: Kodak courage on the New Haven River; Green Mountain rock garden; New England autumn. Photo: Corey Hendrickson/Gallery stock (top left and bottom); Bear Cieri/Tandem
In Middlebury, you’re either a townie or a Middkid—one of the 2,500 students who attend Middlebury College, the liberal-arts school that makes this town of 8,500 a crunchy utopia. The nerds are the ones speaking Chinese and Arabic or turning cow manure into natural gas, but the locals live an equally charmed existence. They’re busy with the 37-mile Tour de Farms bike ride, which includes pit stops at 18 agricultural spreads for donuts and apple cider, or sending the 15-foot waterfall downtown in a kayak.
You can get a three-bedroom house, complete with a chicken coop out back, for under $300,000, and jobs are relatively abundant. Woodchuck Hard Cider, for example, recently opened a new $30 million headquarters. Yet it remains very much a rural town—the closest city, Burlington, is an hour to the north—which means you’re never farther than a couple of blocks from your next adventure. So pluck trout from the New Haven River, or take a road ride over Middlebury Gap, a legs-shredding mountain pass that gains 1,800 feet right out of downtown. In the summer, row Lake Dunmore or run the Trail Around Middlebury, 16 miles of singletrack that loop the town. In the winter, catch the bus to the college-owned Middlebury Snow Bowl to race in Friday afternoon’s Ski Bum League.
The college kids graduate and move away, but a surprising number of them boomerang. “When I graduated, I never expected to come back,” says Garrott Kuzzy, a 32-year-old grad and 2010 Olympian in nordic skiing. “But where else can you go log rolling, play pond hockey in the back of a maple farm, and then hear the Dalai Lama speak?” —M.M.
10. Boone, North Carolina
Clockwise from top left: Climbing Beech Mountain; Boone delicacies; zip line; sending; the Appalachian Trail. Photo: Jimmy Williams (top left and right); C2 Photography; Tommy Penick/Aurora; Dave Allen
“There’s a saying around here, ‘Our life is your vacation,’” says Mike Thomas, a local trail builder. That sounds awful smug, but visit and it’s easy to see his point. Tucked into the southern Appalachians, this college town has an embarrassment of outdoor riches. Down the road, you can find Class V boating on Wilson’s Creek, and 45 minutes outside town is Linville Gorge, one of the most dramatic canyons east of the Rocky Mountains, with more than 11,000 acres of wilderness backpacking and endless walls for trad climbing. Nearby Beech Mountain offers some of the only lift-served mountain biking in the South. A choice section of the Appalachian Trail runs across a series of above-tree-line peaks just 40 minutes from downtown. And you can’t beat the cycling on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Roadies salivate over the closest section, which travels the Linn Cove Viaduct, a quarter-mile bridge that winds around the rocky slopes of Grandfather Mountain.
The challenge is piecing together a sustainable life here: high-paying jobs are scarce. (The largest employer is Appalachian State University.) Meanwhile, the popularity of vacation homes drives the median house price up to $281,000. This is probably one reason Boone trends so young, with a median age of just 22. The population is dominated by students and other young people making the most of the lifestyle. “People here are getting into something rad every single day,” Thomas says. Afterward, many of them opt for a Long Leaf IPA at Appalachian Mountain Brewery, one of the fastest-growing breweries in the South. —Graham Averill
9. Pagosa Springs, Colorado
From left: Pagosa relaxation; wilderness outside Pagosa Springs; downtown Pagosa brewery. Photo: Franz-Marc Frei/Corbis; Quang-Tuan Luong; Michael Pierce
In the shadow of the San Juan Mountains, tiny Pagosa Springs is a microcosm of authentic Colorado. In the downtown district, historic storefronts house a brewery, restaurants, and an old movie theater supported by a crowdfunding campaign.
The namesake springs—the deepest in the world—attract 500,000 annual visitors to this remote corner of the state. The springs aren’t just for soaking: hot water runs beneath sidewalks, melting snow in the winter. Most residents live outside town, which has a population of just 1,700. (The county is home to 12,000.) “You have to be OK with that low-key rural aspect,” says Sandy Kobrock, owner of the Pass Creek Yurt and Wolf Creek Avalanche School. “Don’t come here if you want nightlife.”
Jobs are concentrated in tourism, but home prices are reasonable, with a median of $227,000, and the recreation opportunities are unparalleled. You can backpack, hike, and fish in the 500,000-acre Weminuche Wilderness, kayak on the San Juan River, or ski at nearby powder destination Wolf Creek, all with the confidence that you’ll never have to battle crowds. —K.S.
8. Beaufort, South Carolina
From left: Beaufort waterfront; Beaufort food groups. Photo: Peter Frank Edwards/Redux
Half the county surrounding Beaufort is water. Which means anglers and paddlers have the better part of a million acres to explore, from brackish inland rivers to Jurassic Park–looking salt marshes that separate the mainland from the barrier islands. That’s not counting the Atlantic Ocean, where sea kayakers can play with dolphins before beaching on the white sands of Hunting Island State Park.
As for the city itself, think of a coastal Gone with the Wind. Giant live oaks, thick with Spanish moss, surround antebellum homes. Consider it a smaller, less expensive Charleston, with the same historic charm but a tenth of the population and slightly more affordable digs. (The median home value in Beaufort is $253,000.) Locals and visitors alike eat plenty of seafood, either fresh catch from markets like the Gay Fish Company or in the form of a shrimp burger from the Shrimp Shack. The oyster industry is picking up, too; get some of the super-briny gems from Lady’s Island Oyster Company. —G.A.
7. Flagstaff, Arizona
From left: Downtown; loaves at Pizzicletta; bouldering outside Flagstaff. Photo: Michael Benanau/Getty; Cameron Kelley; John Burcham/National Geographic Creative
Don’t go to Flagstaff expecting scorching heat and snowbirds. This railroad town of 69,000 is flanked by 12,000-foot mountains and the largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest in the world, defying all the state’s stereotypes. “People think of Arizona as a hot desert, but we’re at 7,000 feet,” says Caleb Schiff, owner of Pizzicletta, a beloved local pizzeria. “Flagstaff is an oasis.”
The high desert is prized by athletes, including marathoners Ryan and Sara Hall and ultrarunner Rob Krar, who come for the combination of sunny but cool weather, elevation, and a strong community of professional coaches. “At any given time in Buffalo Park”—a scenic mesa with a two-mile running loop—“super tall skinny people are blowing by you at a million miles a minute,” says Allie Stender, a program manager for the county public-health district. The climate also benefits the fat-tire set, which has built an impressive array of trails. “We have the best mountain biking imaginable,” says Robert Hamilton, inventory manager for Absolute Bikes, “and you can access dirt in ten minutes from anywhere in town.” Trails range from the mellow, flowing singletrack of the Schultz Creek Trail to the technical rock gardens on Secret and Upper Moto. There’s skiing outside town, and the Grand Canyon is just 90 miles away.
The median home price is reasonable— $266,000—and there are plenty of jobs in tourism, higher education, and manufacturing. Nestlé Purina PetCare has a plant here, and W. L. Gore has major offices. And it’s not like you have to be an elite athlete to enjoy cool, sunny days, as everyone from weathered Grand Canyon guides to fresh-faced Northern Arizona University students will tell you. —K.S.
6. Athens, Georgia
From left: Downtown Athens; White Tiger's to-go window; charred okra and chickpeas at the National. Photo: Jen Causey (2); Rinne Allen
Athens is known for its SEC football, robust party scene, and cycling on endless farm roads. But the city of 121,000 has also become an outpost of world-class eateries that combine the best of the South with an adventurous, farm-fresh ethos. White Tiger Gourmet, a barbecue joint where vegetarian dishes get equal billing with pulled pork, is a good example of that. We asked chef-owner Ken Manring to walk us through his perfect day chowing down. —G.A.
Breakfast: Down a fluffy, buttery biscuit from the Bread Basket, hidden in a gas station off Boulevard. This may be the world’s best hangover cure. Lunch: Cali-N-Tito’s is a Peruvian joint with an infusion of Caribbean flair. Bring your own beer and order the arroz chaufa, stir-fried rice with plantains and hot sauce. Happy hour: Local brewery Creature Comforts offers a huge range of beers in an airy space downtown. Try an Athena, a Berliner Weisse that’s slightly sour and incredibly refreshing. Dinner: You can find a grown-up meal at the the National. It’s Mediterranean-inspired cuisine with lots of tapas and a great steak. Cocktails: The Old Pal has a bunch of signature drinks, but I love a simple Bulleit bourbon with Blenheim’s ginger ale. Bourbon and ginger is kind of a thing in Athens. Late night: The Hi-Lo Lounge has great late-night food. Get the salchipapas—French fries with sliced fried hot dogs, topped with salsa.
5. Glenwood Springs, Colorado
From left: A bluebird day downtown; rowing the Colorado River. Photo: Pascal Shirley/Gallery Stock; VisitGlenwood.com
Subarus topped with kayaks. Trailers stacked with rafts. Teenagers toting inner tubes. The streets of Glenwood Springs are a dead giveaway: this is a river town. The Colorado and the Roaring Fork meet here, and on any given evening in the spring and summer, locals gather with coolers of beer at put-ins like Grizzly Creek and Shoshone to raft Class III rapids and mellow flatwater through a 1,700-foot canyon. Paddleboarders and kayakers hit the whitewater park, and anglers cast for trout on the Roaring Fork in town and on smaller creeks up in the mountains.
A laid-back outpost of 10,000 some 160 miles west of Denver along I-70, downvalley from pricier burgs Aspen and Carbondale, Glenwood’s claim to fame has always been water: its hot springs have attracted visitors for over a century. But it has the chops of any Colorado adventure capital. Trails for running and biking lead to Glenwood Canyon and up Lookout Mountain, and in winter, skiers choose from five resorts, including Aspen and Snowmass. A downside to the tourist economy is that rents are on the high side—as much as $1,000 for a one-bedroom apartment. But the median home price of $396,000 is much gentler than Aspen’s half a million.
The upside to the strong tourism: new restaurants keep popping up in the historic downtown, which boasts a thriving patio scene. And there’s a notable lack of jadedness and hostility toward newcomers that can plague other outdoor meccas. “People become a part of the community right away.” says Annie Rector, a property manager. “There is truly no attitude here.” —K.S.
*A previous version of this article showed someone walking across the log at Hanging Lake. That's against the rules—don't do it!
4. Eau Claire, Wisconsin
From left: Sufjan Stevens; Eau Claire's Red Flint Firecracker. Photo: Tony Nelson/Min/Voice Media Group via Getty; Jereme Rauckman
Stop at this riverside city of 68,000 on a summer Saturday and you’ll see families lazily tubing and cyclists tackling the 30-mile rail-trail system. But what sets Eau Claire apart is its music scene, which was going strong long before native son Justin Vernon’s group Bon Iver won a Best New Artist Grammy in 2012. Things got louder this July, when Vernon debuted his Eaux Claires Festival, with acts like Sufjan Stevens and the National joining his band. We checked in with Vernon to find out what makes Eau Claire so special. —S.P.
OUTSIDE: What’s your favorite local activity? VERNON: Canoeing the Flambeau River and jumping in the lakes up by New Auburn. No question.
Did the town play a role in your musical education, or are you just a talented guy who happened to grow up there? The public-education system in our great state was really and truly unmatched when I was in high school. I honestly feel as if I was receiving master’s-level music education.
Is the festival your way of giving back? It isn’t just me. It’s the whole squad, from the sheriff’s department to town hall to the security guards keeping us safe. It’s a gift, but everyone’s giving it to each other.
I read that you moved to North Carolina for a while but returned to Eau Claire. How come? The way the water tastes. The way the spring thaws and smells. The fact that it gets so cold in the winter. I was homesick.
3. Iowa City, Iowa
From top left: Post-ride happy hour; a bike-building class at the University of Iowa; Iowa City brunch. Photo: Ryan Donnell
“It’s like Boulder with an Iowa-nice twist,” is how one 20-year resident of Iowa City describes this bucolic river town of 72,000. No, there aren’t any mountains. No legal pot, either. But the city does have a pedestrian mall to rival Pearl Street, a university with more than 30,000 students, and a bike-crazy culture. Unlike Boulder, it’s affordable. The median home price of $178,000 will get you a midcentury bungalow. Yet the local economy is extremely healthy, with an unemployment rate of just 2.3 percent, thanks to the University of Iowa and corporate employers like Oral-B Labs and Procter and Gamble.
With no mountain climbs, cyclists here have turned to the state’s tens of thousands of miles of unpaved roads. “Iowa is ground zero for gravel riding,” says Steve McGuire, the director of the university’s School of Art and Art History, who’s been riding here for 34 years. Since there’s almost no traffic once you leave the tarmac, the only real obstacle is the occasional farm dog. But don’t be fooled into thinking it’s flat. The original grinder, the Trans Iowa, climbs 10,000 feet over 320 miles. “It makes the Dirty Kanza”—a notorious Kansas gravel ride—“look like a pussycat,” says McGuire. To support the obsession, the city has six bike shops, including a bicycle “library” that fixes old clunkers, and a bar called Ride, which has a dish named after Gary Fisher on the breakfast menu (scrambled eggs with ham and sausage, topped with gravy). For competitive types, there’s even a gravel time-trial state championship. Being that this is Iowa, there’s also a friendly ride every Thursday night. —Stephanie Pearson
2. Port Angeles, Washington
Clockwise from top left: Next Door Gastropub; camping in Olympic National Park; Port Angeles traffic jam; fog over Lake Crescent. Photo: Courtesy of Next Door Gastropub; Ethan Welty/Aurora (bottom left and center); Jordan Siemens/Aurora
In the final throes of this year’s contest, Port Angeles (population 19,000) staged an impressive fight. Homeowners put placards in their yards reminding passersby to vote, businesses made pleas on sandwich boards, and locals stood on street corners with signs. The town ended up coming in second to Chattanooga—which has almost ten times the population—by just 2 percent of the vote.
The message was clear. “We love this town, and this community can really pull together,” says Jacob Oppelt, owner of Next Door Gastropub.
Situated on the northern shore of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles is a gateway to Olympic National Park. Because of the dramatic relief—the peaks rise to over 5,000 feet within a few miles of the coast—the area hosts diverse ecosystems, including alpine environments studded with lakes, ultragreen old-growth forests threaded with whitewater rivers, and bays that harbor orcas and steelhead. “I call it the holy land,” says John Gussman, a local photographer. “We don’t have smog or traffic, and we have this beautiful million-acre wilderness in the backyard.”
Not surprisingly, the local culture is built on an appreciation of the outdoors, and the economy is boosted by adventure travelers. It’s not uncommon to see surfers toting boards through town or cars stuffed with gear for forays into the park. More recently, mountain bikers have arrived to ride the burly downhill trails in the 600,000-acre national forest.
But Port Angeles isn’t your typical bro experience. There’s a healthy population of retirees—the town’s average age is 42—and a strong blue-collar flavor. The town lumberyard sits near the sea-kayak put-in, there’s an active boat-building industry, and commercial fishing for halibut and Dungeness crab is a mainstay. These industries infuse the town with a grittier feel than artsy neighbor Port Townsend and sleepy nearby retirement community Sequim. But they also help keep home prices reasonable—the median is $201,000—and engender a live-and-let-live ethos. Longtime residents and progressive newcomers manage not only to get along, but also to come together. Take the recent Elwha River restoration: the largest dam removal in the country’s history took place just upstream from town and gained strong local support. Now, for the first time in 100 years, trout and salmon are migrating past old dam sites, and greenery is sprouting in empty reservoirs.
Port Angeles isn’t big, but as this year’s Best Towns showing demonstrates, it can compete with just about anyplace. “In high school, I couldn’t get away from here fast enough,” says fifth-generation resident Sara Gagnon, owner of Harbinger Winery. “But once I got out and saw the world, I couldn’t wait to get back.” —Kate Siber
1. Chattanooga, Tennessee
Clockwise from top left: Hunter Museum of American Art; in flight over Chattanooga; The Farmer's Daughter; deepwater solo near downtown. Photo: Dianne Blankenbaker; Ben Lehman; Hollis Bennett
When I was growing up an hour south of Chattanooga in the eighties and nineties, the city was best known for MoonPies, those sinfully delicious chocolate, graham cracker, and marshmallow hockey pucks. Fast-forward a couple of decades and I’m standing in a juice bar on the edge of downtown, wondering what happened to the corny place I once knew. Now it’s all nitro cold brew and tech startups, like the love child of Nashville and Silicon Valley, but with more singletrack.
The city of 173,000, built in the belly of the rocky Tennessee River Gorge, always had the potential to be a great adventure town. Climbers have been sending routes on the nearby sandstone cliffs for more than 30 years. A decade ago, the local mountain-bike club set out to build 100 miles of singletrack within ten miles of the city. They’re up to 120 miles, and there’s a midweek enduro series where you can rip dirt after work and be home in time for dinner. Competition is fierce, and the winner takes a growler of home brew.
So Chattanooga’s outdoor cred isn’t really news. The quantity and quality of adventure playgrounds—including the Tennessee River, which wraps around the city, and a bevy of Class IV–V rapids on the nearby Ocoee—helped it win our Best Towns contest four years ago. But now the city itself has caught up with the surrounding action. Neighborhoods are filling up with record stores, coffeehouses, and restaurants, and breweries are opening that offer the perfect nightcaps to days spent on the trails, creeks, and crags.
Here's your 48-hour plan to get the perfect taste of Chattanooga.
Locals tell me that the transformation started in 2010, when Chattanooga got the Gig—one-gigabit-per-second fiber-optic Internet service that’s tax-payer owned and available to every home and business at affordable rates. That’s around 50 times faster than most of the rest of the Western Hemisphere. (A feature-length movie downloads in about 30 seconds.) But it’s not just for surfing. “The Gig showed that Chattanooga was committed to developing business,” says Joda Thongnopnua, communications director of Lamp Post, a venture fund that invests in local startups. He estimates that some $50 million has been pumped into new businesses over the past five years, funding companies like Roots Rated, which developed an app that recommends adventures.
It might be too early to start calling it Silicon Gorge, but people are relocating to Chattanooga because it has something that many other recreation meccas don’t: opportunity. Take brothers Kelsey and Conner Scott, who moved down from Nashville two years ago to climb and to grow Granola, their small backpack company. “There’s a huge startup scene and a great outdoor community,” Kelsey says. Add to the mix reasonably priced homes—the median price is $138,000—and you get a uniquely diverse adventure hub where you can have a rising career and a comfortable, balanced life. “We were already driving down here every weekend to climb,” says Kelsey. “Moving to Chattanooga just made sense.” —G.A.
Alan: American conservatives can't stand the thought that somebody might be getting something they don't deserve. And so they ignore every real issue in favor of logorrhea over ideals that have never been realized - and never will be. "The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.” "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton More Merton Quoteshttp://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/merton-best-imposed-as-norm-becomes.html
Scott Walker takes yet another stance on birthright citizenship: Don't change the Constitution
GOP presidential hopeful Scott Walker appears to have again shifted his stance on allowing the children of illegal immigrants to automatically gain U.S. citizenship.
In an interview on Sunday morning on ABC's "This Week," the Wisconsin governor said he does not want to alter the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States." Nearly a week before, Walker said he wanted to end birthright citizenship and would not say then whether he agreed with the 14th Amendment.
"This Week" host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked Walker on Sunday about birthright citizenship, eventually asking, "You're not seeking to repeal or alter the 14th Amendment?"
"No," Walker said. "My point is, any discussion that goes beyond securing the border and enforcing laws are things that should be a red flag to voters out there who for years have heard lip service from politicians and are understandably angry."
A national debate over birthright citizenship erupted last weekend when GOP front-runner Donald Trump proposed ending it. Many GOP candidates have taken a firm position on the issue, but Walker has given various answers that appear to show a changing stance.
Walker said Monday that he supported ending birthright citizenship, then said later in the day that the problem could be addressed by enforcing other laws. On Friday, Walker said he didn't have a position on the issue. On Sunday, Walker said he did not want to alter the 14th Amendment.
Walker's campaign staff says that the candidate's position has not changed this past week. Here's what Walker has said — or not said — on the issue:
Last Monday, early morning: Walker says his immigration stances are "very similar" to those of Trump. In the interview on Fox News, he does not specifically address birthright citizenship.
Monday, mid-morning: At the Iowa State Fair, Walker is repeatedly asked by reporters whether he wants to end birthright citizenship and he repeatedly says that the United States must first address other immigration issues, including securing the border and enforcing labor laws. But he says that he has concerns about birthright citizenship, including in this answer to a swarm of reporters: "I think in terms of changing it, even [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid said that it's not right for a country to Americanize birthright for people who have not — for families who have not come in legally. But in terms of going forward, I'm going to support a legal immigration system that puts a priority on the impact on American working families and their wages."
Reporters continue to push Walker for specifics and ask whether he would deport the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. He responds: "I've talked about how going forward I believe we should change the rules, the law, but I think in terms of deporting, the best thing we can do is enforce the law. If we enforce the law and require employers across America to uphold the law — which means an effective e-verify system — I think that ultimately puts us in a good place."
Monday, late morning: Walker, roaming at the fair, tells MSNBC's Kasie Hunt that birthright citizenship should "yeah, absolutely, going forward," be ended.
Monday, early afternoon: Walker won't say whether he wants to change the Constitution. While continuing to tour the fair, I ask Walker: "The Constitution says that if you're born here, you're an American citizen. Do you believe in that? Would you be up for changing that?" He responds: "Well, again, I think before we start talking about anything else beyond securing the border, enforcing the laws and having a legal immigration system that works and gives priority for American working families, Americans aren't going to trust politicians to talk about other things until they feel confident they're going to do those things. So I think we need to reform that first."
Monday, mid-afternoon: A Walker spokeswoman says that he wants to "end the birthright citizenship problem." Throughout the morning, Walker's campaign staff pushes back against Hunt's account, which was first reported on Twitter. Once video of the exchange is posted online, spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski writes in an e-mail: "We have to enforce the laws, keep people from coming here illegally, enforce e-verify to stop the jobs magnet and by addressing the root problems we will end the birthright citizenship problem." She won't say what the governor's position is on the issue.
Monday evening: During a campaign stop at a Maid-Rite restaurant in Webster City, Iowa, Walker will not say where he stands on birthright citizenship. I ask him to explain his comments to Hunt: Is that what he truly believes? Or did he misspeak? Walker responds: "We had a three-hour roving gaggle there, and so you answer part of a question, somebody turns and asks you something. And my point is: Yeah, I empathize with people who have concerns about that, but until we fundamentally secure the border and enforce the law _" Another reporter jumps in and asks whether changing birthright citizenship will be on the table once the border is secure. Walker responds, "We will talk about things in the future."
Tuesday: Stanley Hubbard, a conservative billionaire who oversees a Minnesota broadcasting company and has donated to Walker's campaign, confronts Walker on the issue during a lunch in Minnesota. Hubbard strongly opposes ending birthright citizenship, and he tells The Washington Post that he "might really quickly change my allegiance" if Walker pushs for such a repeal. Hubbard says he "did not get a real straight answer" from the candidate, but he comes away ready to write more checks to help Walker, adding, "I got the feeling that he is not at all anxious to talk about taking away those rights."
Friday: In an interview with CNBC's John Harwood, Walker says he has no position on birthright citizenship: "I'm not taking a position on it one way or the other. I'm saying that until you secure the border and enforce the laws, any discussion of about anything else is really looking past the very things we have to do."
Sunday: On ABC, Walker tells Stephanopoulos he does not support repealing or altering the 14th Amendment.
Sunday afternoon: In an email to AshLee Strong, a campaign spokeswoman, I ask whether Walker wants to end birthright citizenship, requesting a yes-or-no answer. She responds: "His position is very firm: We have to secure the border and enforce the laws first. He has been saying this all week long. You have heard him say that countless times. I know what you're asking for, but just because you're not satisfied with his answer doesn't make his any less worthy."
Alan: Why do so many people work harder when they're not getting paid?
Most people endowed with eye-popping salaries are paid to promote their employer's lies, an endless stream of falsehood that is directly delivered to the desks of sell-out profiteers by the automata in "central casting."
Really hard workers, on the other hand, are rarely linked to anyone's gravy train so that before they can even begin, it is necessary to sift the bafflegab of sell-outs just to glimpse how an honest "product" might be crafted. 90% of everything is crud... and in the halls of "power" the percentage is rising.
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