Don't Test on Me
Do you remember the ill-fated "nuclear option" that would have ended filibustering as we knew it? A while back, I wrote that the greatest defense of the nuclear option was its own name. Republicans were going to have to defeat "nuclear option" before they could actually get rid of it. And they couldn't, and so we never even had to engage in a serious debate about ending the filibuster. Of course, there were some other things that saved it, but... "nuclear" figured into it heavily.
The same phenomenon applies to "human pesticide tests." Try all the Bush administration might, even as the executive branch rises to the "zenith" of its powers, I'll still take anyone to Las Vegas on a bet over the possibility of using results from human pesticide tests to establish public health standards. California Public Interest Research Group is leading the fight on this one, and it shall win. Clinton's EPA banned this in 1998, and the Bushies are seeking to restore it.
Here's a dose of the argument against it:
Pesticide companies like Amvac Chemical have paid “volunteers� to drink or otherwise expose themselves to doses of toxic pesticides, including one derived from World War II nerve gases ....If only all our battles were this easy.
