It's a new tax year, so you've missed the chance to contribute to your favorite tax-exempt charity for the 2009 tax year. Fortunately, that's no problem with ThisCantBeHappening.net, because TCBH is not tax-exempt (I don't have the money to hire a fancy lawyer).That means if you value this site, if you come regularly to read the articles, you can make 2010 the year you start supporting it. The articles that run here don't appear magically. They have to be researched, reported and written. Your friendly journalist/webmaster has to be paid (and feed his family!). So screw the tax break! Give free media a break! Donate to ThisCantBeHappening! All I'm looking for is a microdonation: $5 or $10 a year from each regular reader. That's just 43 cents or 86 cents a month! If you value this site, send a check to me at POB 846, Ambler, PA 19002 or go to the Paypal button.
Keeping a Lid on a Hot Story? NASA Scientists Challenge Security Rules
(From The Nation magazine online)
Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center are up in arms over a new requirement by NASA that they submit to detailed FBI scrutiny of their backgrounds in order to obtain clearance to go to work. They are claiming that the agency may be trying to control or silence them about issues like global warming.
The new security clearance requirement, which involves interviews of neighbors and checks into the distant background activities of scientists, many of whom have worked at JPL and Goddard for as long as thirty years, is puzzling because both locations have little or no involvement in secret or national security research. Indeed, by law, NASA's activities and the research its scientists engage in are required to be publicly available.
"Almost nobody at NASA does classified work," says Robert Nelson, a veteran scientist at JPL who heads up the photo analysis unit on the Cassini-Huygens space probe project exploring Saturn and its moons. "I think this is really all about NASA director [Michael] Griffin putting a security wrap around us."
Nelson and 26 other JPL scientists and other employees have retained a Pasadena civil rights law firm to file suit in federal court in California to block the security program.
For the rest of this story, please go to The Nation Online.
RSS Feed
Subscribe or Support This Site
Do your bit to stimulate not just the economy, but needed progressive journalism! When you get that "economic stimulus" check from the IRS, consider sending a portion to This Can't Be Happening!
A number of readers of this page have already responded generously to my call for support, raising over $2000 this year to support the site. In order for me to be able to devote the time it takes to do stories, like my series looking into the Minot nuclear weapons incident, or my reporting on the bailout fiasco, I need your backing.
If you are a regular reader, consider making a donation or, if you prefer to call it that, becoming a subscriber to ThisCantBeHappening.com. To become a backer, just go to the Support this Website link. Contributions can be made via Paypal or by mail.
dave's Weekly Podcast at "A Nation Deceived"
Click here for Dave Lindorff's Weekly Podcast hosted by the website ANationDeceived.org
Weekly Impeachment Podcast: http://www.anationdeceived.org/category/lindorff/
Get "The Case for Impeachment"
Dave Sings "Iraq Rag"
Get your hardbound signed copy of "The Case for Impeachment" direct from the author by sending a check for $15.00 made out to Dave Lindorff to: PO Box 846, Ambler, PA 19002. The price includes postage, is $9 below list price, and supports this website.