Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu Drops Bid For Congress After Fallout From Campaign Volunteer Scandal

What's coming up on Sunday Kos Big-thinking Cato Institute: 400ppm haz got what plants crave, by Hunter The next biggest scandal ever, until the next one, by Hunter Republican outreach report card: graded "F" for Fail, by Denise Oliver Velez Climate change isn't AN issue, it's THE issue, by Laurence Lewis Welcome to the Darrell Issa Hall of Shame, by Jon Perr The Hard Lessons of the Post Partisan Unity Schtick, by Armando The most vulnerable House members in 2014, in two charts, by David Jarman An array of present day activities to an ancient life in the canopy, by DarkSyde

MIT professor Noam Chomsky criticized the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Friday, saying President Barack Obama could have provoked a nuclear war. “We were very close to war with Pakistan, which easily could have turned into a nuclear war, which could have destroyed all of us,” he told Jason Liosatos of Global Peace Radio. “The Obama administration was willing to take that chance, though there were other ways of finding and apprehending bin Laden.” Chomsky explained that U.S. Navy SEAL special forces were secretly sent into a heavily fortified mansion in Pakistan, with orders to “fight their way out” of the compound if Pakistani forces arived. Pakistan had mobilized its air force to respond to the 2011 attack, according to Chomsky, but only reached the compound after the SEALs had left. The leftist intellectual also criticized the use of a fake vaccination campaign to discover the location of bin Laden. Chomsky said the CIA operation cast doubt on legitimate vaccinators, hurting efforts to eliminate polio. “Polio has been almost eradicated in the world,” he said. “It could go the way of smallpox. Totally eliminated, and its a dreadful disease. Pakistan is one of the few places where polio is still [in existence.] There were UN vaccination teams working in Pakistan to try to overcome and eliminate this dreaded disease. Well, as soon as the fake vaccination campaign was exposed, the fears that people already had were given a solid basis, and pretty soon UN health officials were abducted, some of them killed. The UN had to pull out the whole vaccination team.” Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below:

Ana Alliegro, the Miami woman at the center of the federal corruption investigation involving former congressman David Rivera, is living in a small town outside of Managua.

2012 Republican presidential nominee pans Obama administration's handling of IRS scandal, Benghazi attack

After a massive monthlong investigation, the cause of the West, Texas, fertilizer plant explosion is still a mystery, authorities announced Thursday. They've narrowed it down to three possibilities: a golf cart, electrical problems and arson. Unless arson is ultimately found to have been the cause of the fire that led to the explosion, the answer may never be known despite investigators having sifted through 300,000 pounds of corn looking for evidence. The fire started at 7:29 in the "seed room," and firefighters arrived at 7:38. At 7:41 p.m., firefighters called for assistance. Ten minutes later, two explosions erupted milliseconds apart—one small and the other large. The plant was enveloped in a ball of fire and black smoke. As fire had engulfed the plant, ammonium nitrate fertilizer stored in wooden bins had heated up and become less stable. Falling debris had hit the chemical, by then sensitive to shock, and caused the first blast, said Assistant State Fire Marshal Kelly Kistner. Investigators said the 28 to 34 tons of ammonium nitrate that blew up was equivalent to 15,000 to 20,000 pounds of TNT. About 120 additional tons of the chemical did not explode. Even if the cause of the fire is never known, we can know this: If you're storing hundreds of tons of explosive chemicals, safety precautions are important. Government inspections of facilities storing hundreds of tons of explosive chemicals are important. Not locating facilities storing hundreds of tons of explosive chemicals near schools and homes is important. Having more than $1 million in liability insurance at facilities storing hundreds of tons of explosive chemicals is important. The West Fertilizer Co. and the state of Texas ignored all that, and instead of a fire, there was a fire followed by a massive explosion.