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 It's almost as if a higher power is trying to say, "America, you should do something about your railroad situation :" A Norfolk Southern train derailed Saturday evening in Springfield, Ohio, sending 28 cars sliding diagonally across the tracks but injuring no one, according to several state and local agencies. The crash marks the rail line's second major derailment in just over a month and comes amid lingering questions about environmental and public health in nearby East Palestine, where a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed on Feb. 3. Officials stressed that the 212-car train that derailed this weekend was not carrying toxic materials and does not pose a threat to the community. Both the Clark County emergency management agency and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency examined the site and deemed it safe. "There is NO risk to the public," said Norfolk Southern spokesperson Connor Spielmaker on Twitter. "We're looking at clean air, clean s...

 The human rights and environmental lawyer who Chevron tried to put under a jail shows us why big polluting companies want him off the board : Earlier this month, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in eastern Ohio, exploding into flames and unleashing a spume of chemical smoke on the small town of East Palestine. The train’s freight included vinyl chloride, a chemical known to cause liver cancer and other sicknesses. In response, government and railway officials decided to “burn off” the vinyl chloride – effectively dumping 1.1m lbs of the chemical into the local community, according to a new lawsuit. Officials said that they did so to avert the vinyl chloride from exploding; in contrast, an attorney for the lawsuit has said that the decision was cheap, unsafe, and more interested in restoring train service and appeasing railway shareholders than protecting local residents. East Palestine residents are reporting headaches, sore throats, and burning eyes; dead pets and chicke...

So Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards signed a fetal heartbeat ( six weeks , BTW) bill into law. Normally, left-leaning Americans would go after Governor Edwards hard for this, as a majority of those who vote Democrat range from being pro-choice to supporting abortion under specific circumstances (rape, incest, health of the mother, etc.). But we live in the Age of Team Politics , where you can be as conservative as you want even if you're a Democrat, and other Democratic voters/supporters will bend over backwards to justify deviations from traditional positions. Websites that have been referenced here in the past are a good example of how Team Politics has shrouded ideological perspectives. The reactions/comments on  Daily Kos and Democratic Underground , for example, has mostly ranged from   this is the price we pay for being a big tent    and better a Democrat than a Republican (although DU has, to be fair, more willing to challenge the status quo )...