Visual source: Newseum
NY Times:
As the crisis seemed to deepen, Japan’s nuclear safety agency raised the assessment of its severity from 4 to 5 on a 7-level international scale, news reports said. Level 4 is for incidents with local consequences while level 5 denotes broader consequences. It was not immediately clear why the action had been taken. The partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 was rated 5 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 was rated 7.
Eugene Robinson:
The most urgent focus of Japan’s worsening nuclear crisis is the threat from radioactive fuel that has already been used in the Fukushima Daiichi reactors and awaits disposal. In the United States, the nuclear industry has amassed about 70,000 tons of such potentially deadly waste material — and we have nowhere to put it.
Paul Krugman:
More than three years after we entered the worst economic slump since the 1930s, a strange and disturbing thing has happened to our political discourse: Washington has lost interest in the unemployed.
Greg Dworkin (that's me):
Jobs, jobs, jobs. Jobs. Oh, wait... It’s the GOP. Social issues and straw men dominate (except just before elections when it’s only straw men.) New GOP motto: “Jobs can wait”. That’ll go over very well with moderates, centrists and independents, eh, Mr. Speaker? After all, they elected you to Do Important Things.
Michael Gerson:
It is now clear that O’Keefe’s editing of the raw video from his interview with NPR’s top fundraiser, Ron Schiller, was selective and deceptive. The full extent of this distortion was exposed by a rising conservative Web site, the Blaze. O’Keefe’s final product excludes explanatory context, exaggerates Schiller’s tolerance for Islamist radicalism and attributes sentiments to Schiller that are actually quotes by others — all the hallmarks of a hit piece. Schiller’s comments were damaging enough without O’Keefe reshaping them into a caricature. Both Ron Schiller and NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, who is not related, resigned.
But the controversy also raises deeper issues about the ethics of undercover journalism. In this case, O’Keefe did not merely leave a false impression; he manufactured an elaborate, alluring lie.
Not on every issue, and in any case it's a short list, but Gerson is one of my favorite conservatives.
JSOnline:
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state's largest pro-business group, fired back Thursday at a union-organized boycott of targeted businesses, urging its members to "stand up to government union boss intimidation" and buy goods and services to save jobs.
When you see the term "union boss", you know the script was written in DC.
Jennifer Clark:
Collective bargaining allows for workers to negotiate more effectively for things like higher wages and better benefits. Wisconsin's bill limits collective bargaining over wages and eliminates the power to collectively bargain over benefits and pensions. Without collective bargaining, workers have fewer options for recourse against unfair wages or low benefits, issues women are more likely to face. As has been noted elsewhere, state and local public sector workers are actually paid less than their private sector counterparts, once their qualifications are taken into account, and as we pointed out last week, the majority of public sector workers at the state and local level are women.
Added: Guardian:
4.08pm: My colleague Simon Jeffery writes that since the problems began at Fukushima many in comments on the live blogs and elsewhere have offered their suggestions for how the reactors could be tackled.
For example, one email from a scientist asked why ice or snow was not being dropped on the Fukushima reactors. It would, he said, deliver more heat absorbing power than water alone and would at least drop straight down from a helicopter.
Simon has set up a blog inviting readers to leave their suggestions. As he says, "not everyone will be a nuclear scientist – but some might".
Leave your suggestions on Simon's blog here.