I totally agree with this and when I first heard it I was outraged.

First, the comments about who the artist is. We had the same racist/bigot crap with the woman who designed/built the Vietnam War Memorial (she's Vietnamese!) and yet her idea has become the most powerful, most visited monument of its type in the world. (She has also designed/built a monument to MLK - it is another wall with water pouring over it and a comment from his speech "let justice flow down like water...") If this commission wanted an American or a black - they just had to limit the applications in that way. Oh, wait - that would be smart (in the first place) or illegal (in the second).

Second - the idea that King was not confrontational - have these people been under a rock? I know, King's legacy has been "whitewashed" (and I use that term deliberately) since we never hear his anti-war speach, or his speech about economic justice for small brown people all around the globe, or OMG - the speech he gave to the striking Memphis sanitation workers where he says "America is going to hell"!

Not confrontational - MLK would be saying things on the order of the Memphis speech right now if he was still here - and no doubt he would be in jail. Again.

And yes, that IS probably why he was assassinated. We whiteys just can't stand to hear the truth from one of them black people. And that would make MLK very sad to see.

Glenn Greenwald,

I realize this post is buried so far downlink you probably won't read it but here's hoping anyway.

I see on the blogroll here at Salon no link to Consortium News. If ever there was a site with good investigative journalism, that one is it. So with all your concern on this topic (rightfully so), why isn't Consortium News on the blogroll here?

Link in my signature.

Just asking.

I am uncomfortable with the author's dismissal of chemicals, antibiotics, etc in drinking water simply because 'the government is waiting to see if anything bad happens.'

I am a product of the government giving chemicals (DES) to women and have loads of health problems due to a chemical hormone that the government already KNEW caused problems.

While I don't purchase loads of those small bottles - I use/reuse a perrier glass bottle to carry water in my car, but I never drink tap water unless it has been run through a really good reverse osmosis filter.

The poster who says we are removing things we need for our health - there are not enough good minerals in water to make any difference if you eat property. As far as fluoride - it's rat poison so no thanks.

This whole thing about bad well water, bad old pipes, sewage co-mingling etc speaks to an infrastructure problem in this country that is the same as collapsing bridges. We are going to have to wake up and pay the piper - sooner or later.

As far as corporations owning water supplies - that scares the hell out of me and I think it is absolutely dangerous. Global climate change is a reality - no matter what the cause. Water is the stuff of life - and I don't want Nestle or Coke telling me I can't have water unless I buy it from them. We need new laws about ownership of water sources - that is the water sources need to remain in the public domain. No exceptions.

I also want to know if he is really guilty. I'm not convinced that he is. First - because he has been tortured. Second because we have kidnapped and disappeared his children - and possibly may have either tortured them, or told KSM that we were going to or did. Every time I think we've reached the bottom of the barrel - this administration proves me wrong.

Supposedly Zacharias Moussawe was the 20th hijacker. Now we hear that another guy there at Gitmo is.

We've captured and/or killed the #2 al Quaeda guy at least a half a dozen times now - most recently last week. Again.

One of the judges or prosecutors in this farce has already said publicly that they are all guilty and we just need to get on with it. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his companions are right. You cannot trust the US government to do the right thing. I don't, and these people have been held without charges, tortured, kept in solitary confinement, been the subject of rendition to other countries to be tortured, held in secret prisons, not allowed counsel, visits with family or any basic human rights.

So let's get on with it. Let's kill all these guys simply because we want revenge.

Never mind if they really are guilty or not. We can't even get that right when we DO have a legal trial (look at how many innocent defendants are being released from death rows all over the country now) And anyone who thinks these guys are ALL GUILTY really needs to look in the mirror and figure out where all that anger is coming from - because it is eating your soul.