Following last month’s 8-1 Supreme Court decision favoring the First Amendment rights of the Westboro Baptist Church members to picket military funerals, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is now sponsoring legislation that would help stop such disruptions.

The Sanctity of Eternal Rest for Veterans Act would increase quiet time before and after military funerals from one to two hours, increase the distance buffer around military funeral services from 150 to 300 feet, and increase the buffer around routes to a funeral service area from 300 to 500 feet. (Albany Times Union)

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By Patrick Morrison, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

While the Fukushima nuclear disaster has gotten plenty of attention on network programming, the debate has consistently overlooked the most fundamental question of whether nuclear power can be harnessed safely (FAIR Blog, 3/14/11). In asking why this question remains muted, a look at their boards of directors reveals that all three major broadcast networks share at least two members with companies that produce or transmit nuclear energy.

With nuclear powerhouse General Electric as co-owner of NBC, it’s not surprising that GE‘s CEO Jeffery Immelt and CFO Keith Sherin both sit as directors on the network’s board. But it’s not the only network whose board has nuclear energy connections: ABC‘s directors include a representative from Halliburton as well as from Edison Mission Energy. Not to be outdone, CBS, a former subsidiary of the energy giant Westinghouse, seats three board members from the nuclear energy industry’s Southern Company, NSTAR and Consolidated Edison.

Can nuclear power be harnessed safely? The livelihood of these network board members depends on answering the question in the affirmative.

Interview by Austin Allen, Big Think

Question: What is love?

Eliot Spitzer: You know, I don’t know. It’s one of these feelings that you sense when you meet somebody and there is a response that is different and is unique, and is palpable. And it then changes over time. In other words, the sort of exaltation of first meeting and falling in love is, I think everybody would admit, is different than the feelings that you might have after 25 years. When my wife is watching this, she may say, “What are you talking about?” But it is. After 25 years, it becomes almost a dependence. And a sense of knowing somebody so well that you have merged as personalities, and know each other’s thoughts and there’s a comfort that is there, which is part of it, and equally important.

Question: What does it take to redeem oneself in public or private life?

Eliot Spitzer: I don’t know if there are either prescribed paths to redemption, or if there is such a thing. I have no illusion that I can ever get this piece of my life to fade significantly to the background. It was too much of a media hysteria about it. And I’m not saying improperly. It’s there. You come to grips with that. All you can do is step back and say, “Okay, move forward and try to continue to do something useful.” And over time, perhaps that will cause people to say, the other piece of his life is one aspect, but there are other aspects as well. But you can’t live or die every day thinking about redemption, you have to move forward and try to do things that are useful and worthwhile and learn.

by Daniel Schuman, The Sunlight Foundation

Details emerging last night on the FY 2011 budget agreement indicate that the electronic government fund will be cut to $8m from the $34 million appropriated in FY 2010, a reduction to 1/4 of its previous funding. As I explained previously, some projects facing defunding include the information repository data.gov, the government-spending reporting site USASpending.gov, the recently-launched cloud computing initiative, citizen engagement tools, and online collaboration tools. Altogether, six project areas apparently will be affected by the cuts. By comparison, other programs in the “financial services and government sector,” which includes the e-gov fund,  were cut by a (comparatively slight) 10% from their FY2010 levels.

Last week, House Republicans had proposed a reduction of the electronic government fund by 1/2 to $17m for the duration of the short term continuing budget resolution. This was a change from a House Republican proposal in February and Senate Democratic proposal in March to virtually eliminate the fund, which would have reducing it to $2m.

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