A stinking trainload of human waste from New York City is stranded in a tiny Alabama town, spreading a stench like a giant backed-up toilet — and the "poop train" is just the latest example of the South being used as a dumping ground for other states' waste.
In Parrish, Alabama, population 982, the sludge-hauling train cars have sat idle near the little league ball fields for more than two months, Mayor Heather Hall said. The smell is unbearable, especially around dusk after the atmosphere has become heated, she said. "Oh my goodness, it's just a nightmare here," she said. "It smells like rotting corpses, or carcasses. It smells like death."
This is not a new problem:
Alabama and other Southern states have a long history accepting waste from around the U.S. A former state attorney general once described a giant west Alabama landfill as "America's Pay Toilet." It was among the nation's largest hazardous waste dumps when it opened in 1977. At its peak, the landfill took in nearly 800,000 tons of hazardous waste annually.
Where was Jefferson Sessions on this issue? I wish he'd stayed in Alabama to help those living in stink rather than move to DC where he only cares about creating shortages of pain medicine. More on that here. Jefferson Sessions is not our doctor.
It's not a good time to need surgery. Hospitals are experiencing shortages of IV drugs for pain. I'm far more concerned about the shortage of opioid drugs at hospitals and hospices for pain management than I am about someone abusing pain pills. The former is the real opioid crisis. Jefferson Sessions' and the DEA's crisis is just political bait. Just like the FBI's announcement last week it is offering $20 million for the arrest of Raphael Caro-Quintero. Caro-Quintero, now over 65, served 28 years in a Mexican prison for the murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena in 1985. He was released in 2013 when the court ruled his conviction was invalid for having been brought in state rather than federal court in Mexico. But the global holy warriors of the DEA say that's not enough time.
In New York, the judge presiding over El Chapo's impending trial, set for September, if he's still alive and mentally competent, intends to call 800 to 1000 jurors. Only 500 potential jurors were called for the OKC bombing trial of Timothy McVeigh. But 1,350 were called for Dzhokhar Tsarnev's Boston Marathon bombing trial. Whatever happened to Tsarnaev's appeal? I just checked the docket and his brief isn't due until August, 2018. The Government will then have 6 months to respond.
This is an open thread, all topics welcome.
