The challenge comes from a family in Charlotte who have actually challenged themselves to eat only whole foods for 100 days. A little past the midway mark, the Charlotte Observer reports, they feel great. Here's a peek at their story:

Just six months ago, the Matthews family ate white bread, took the kids to Chick-fil-A and rewarded the girls with candy. Lisa grew up eating Doritos and Kraft mac and cheese.

The 100-day diet has meant a huge attitude adjustment. Lisa spends hours in her kitchen whipping up dishes, reading food labels and doing Internet research. Jason and Lisa have become more sensitive to the environmental effects of Americanized food, opting for locally grown produce and grass-fed meats. The whole family has to be a team, working together in the garden and supporting each other when temptation strikes.

The Leakes admit the whole-foods lifestyle isn't easy, but it's one that more people are moving toward as the organic food market has grown, education has increased, and the economy has forced more people to eat at home, said Suzanne Havala Hobbs, a UNCChapel Hill associate professor who specializes in food, nutrition and health policy.

"It's just now becoming more mainstreamed," Hobbs said. "We've hit a critical mass that enough people are buying these products in volume. Products that used to be in health food stores are (now) in the big grocery chains."

The Leakes got on board after reading "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan, who assails the American diet for its processed foods. Horrified by the "junk" she was feeding her family, Lisa said she couldn't sleep at night. With an all-or-nothing personality, she plunged into the whole-foods movement.

"At first I was worried about what we would eat," Lisa said. "I went to all the grocery stores. I had to relearn how to shop and cook."

A budding blogger, Lisa launched The Food Illusion and sounded off about processed foods. She eliminated much of the processed food her family ate. In hopes of making a bigger impact on the public, the Leakes decided to go 100 days without processed foods and blog about it at www.100daysofrealfood.com. On the site, they challenge others to try it out for 10 days.

Read the rest of this article, by Jennifer Rothacker, here.

Here's a video with Michael Pollan, author of many books including, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, Food Rules: An Eater's Manual, and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. His books helped inspire the Leake's whole food challenge. He says, "The real food is not being advertised, and that's all you really need to know."

Afghanistan war logs: Story behind biggest leak in intelligence history. Here's a snippet, follow the link to watch a video of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' founder, discussing the latest leak broadcast on his website:

US authorities have known for weeks that they have suffered a haemorrhage of secret information on a scale which makes even the leaking of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war look limited by comparison.

The Afghan war logs, from which the Guardian reports today, consist of 92,201 internal records of actions by the US military in Afghanistan between January 2004 and December 2009 – threat reports from intelligence agencies, plans and accounts of coalition operations, descriptions of enemy attacks and roadside bombs, records of meetings with local politicians, most of them classified secret.

The Guardian's source for these is Wikileaks, the website which specialises in publishing untraceable material from whistleblowers, which is simultaneously publishing raw material from the logs.

Washington fears it may have lost even more highly sensitive material including an archive of tens of thousands of cable messages sent by US embassies around the world, reflecting arms deals, trade talks, secret meetings and uncensored opinion of other governments.

Wikileaks' founder, Julian Assange, says that in the last two months they have received yet another huge batch of "high-quality material" from military sources and that officers from the Pentagon's criminal investigations department have asked him to meet them on neutral territory to help them plug the sequence of leaks. He has not agreed to do so.

Behind today's revelations lie two distinct stories: first, of the Pentagon's attempts to trace the leaks with painful results for one young soldier; and second, a unique collaboration between the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel magazine in Germany to sift the huge trove of data for material of public interest and to distribute globally this secret record of the world's most powerful nation at war.

Of course, the WikiLeaks backstory was published in the British press, not in the American press ... just like the guy behind WikiLeaks is from Australia. What's my point? For some reason, Americans can't seem to look themselves in the eye about major things like the two massively pointless and expensive -- in dollars and human life — wars that continue to rage on in the global theater. We sit around like nothing's happening and then act dismayed when someone pushes a mirror in front of us.

What are we fighting for, anyway? What? We're fighting for pride at this point, and pride is worthless. We have no business in either Iraq or Afghanistan. We have no business spending trillions of dollars on two unwinnable wars while, at the same time, bitching about the national deficit. Stop funneling money into wars, complainers.

So, it should be no surprise that the Raleigh News and Observer is reporting that the WikiLeaks "scandal" — I hesitate to call it that since it's no scandal for people in a democracy to know what's going on in their government and in their military — has shaken people's view of the war in Afghanistan. Were we all sure about the war to begin with, way back in 2001 — a full nine years ago, when the war began? I wasn't.

If I remember correctly, the nation was high on the idea of hunting down Osama bin Laden and making him pay for the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers in New York City. We were going to hunt him down and make him pay. Then, we'd all be free to feel better about the 1,366 people who died on that horrible day in our nation's history.

Instead, however, we invaded an uninvolved country for oil like a bunch of addicts. Now, we've managed to multiply the number of dead bodies many fold. We are now in the business of killing civilians, so who's the terrorist now? And, where in the hell is our prize? Where is Osama bin Laden?

We are also now in the business of hiding the truth about the war — whether that be the budget, our secret armies, the faces of the dead or the fact that we do, in fact, bomb civilians. We should be ashamed of ourselves for allowing this happen at all, and even more so for allowing it to continue for a decade.

It's time to demand an end to both of these futile wars, once and for all. With that, I'll ask you again: What are we fighting for? What are America's and Iraq's and Afghanistan's children dying for? What? For no good goddamn reason is what. No good goddamn reason.

Now you see it, now you don't. What the hell happened to the climate change legislation our representatives promised us in exchange for our support? And, when will politicians stop playing politics with our planet?

What's really weird to me are all of the Republicans in Washington who promoted cap-and-trade legislation in 2008 but who don't seem to support any climate legislation now. They happily accepted environmentalists' votes and campaign contributions then, seemingly, turned their back on them. In fact, this whole cap and trade idea was their idea.

Though, the same could be said for the Obama administration where conversations about environmentalism, voter expectations and comprehensive climate legislation are concerned.

Then, of course, there's Republican S.C. Sen. Lindsey Graham who got his panties in a wad about the legislative calendar and pulled his support from the climate legislation he helped draft.

Of course, not everyone is upset. This may explain why, since the legislation's death knell officially sounded late last week, we haven't heard too much about it in the news. Here's a look behind the scenes:

“The reality is that the base didn’t have a lot at stake in the climate bill,” said Chamberlain.

“After the BP disaster, all we’ve heard from our members, the No. 1 issue is climate change and offshore oil drilling and oil,” he said. “But we polled our members about whether we should be fighting for the bill and it wasn’t even close. The answer was no.”

Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a liberal environmental advocacy group, said the Kerry-Lieberman bill was full of gifts to the oil, coal and nuclear industries.

“The way they were going to give away free emission permits instead of set up an auction system, which [President] Obama had campaigned on,” said O’Donnell. “That was massive giveaway.”

Kerry and Lieberman had also agreed to expand offshore oil and natural-gas drilling before the BP spill made such a concession politically unpalatable.

“They weren’t going to step up to big oil; they were in lockstep with big oil until the disaster hit,” O’Donnell said.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, criticized the Kerry-Lieberman as a policy cave-in to energy companies. He urged Senate Democrats to pass a strong bill regulating offshore drilling.

"Given that the energy bill was already a big capitulation to polluters, the failure to move it will not exacerbate the enthusiasm gap that was already there due to it's underlying lameness,” Green said. “If Democrats don't pass a gold-standard bill cracking down on polluters after the BP disaster, that's plain political malpractice.”

“The core reason I don't believe the death of the climate bill will dampen turnout in the fall is because no one outside of the enviro groups was ever invested in the bill in the first place, because it was a corporate bill,” said Ilyse Hogue, director of political advocacy and communications for MoveOn.org, a liberal grassroots advocacy group.

“And the enviros will turn out anyway,” she added.

Read the rest of this post, by Alexander Bolton at The Hill, here.

Further reading: Did Obama kill the climate bill? — Mother Jones

The Young Turks weigh in, "It never had a chance."

File this under shocking. (I kid. I kid.) After a month in the courtroom with the players in this drama, I can't imagine Judge Frank Whitney caving on the order he gave after the guilty verdict: Go directly to jail and stay there.

Bishop Anthony Jinwright, convicted in May on 13 counts related to federal tax evasion, will not be released on bond pending sentencing, U.S. District Judge Frank Whitney ruled Friday.

In an 11-page ruling, Whitney, who presided over Jinwright’s four-week trial, rejected the preacher’s request on all points.

...

In rejecting Jinwright's bond request, Whitney upheld his earlier ruling that the 56-year-old preacher poses "a danger to the economic safety of the community." Jinwright's proposed conditions for release, he said, were insufficient to overcome that burden.

“In convicting Defendant, the jury appeared to find Defendant not credible and rejected the majority of his testimony,” the judge wrote. “Additionally, Defendant absconded money from the IRS for years, which translates to experience in concealing financial resources that a periodic audit from the Probation Office might not uncover. Since Defendant is now in the position of having been found guilty of certain crimes, the Court is unpersuaded that Defendant’s offer to remove himself from financial dealings at (Greater Salem) provides clear and convincing evidence that he would no longer pose a danger to the economic safety of the community.”

The judge also rejected Jinwright’s contention that keeping him in jail prevented him from settling his financial affairs, including the sale of his funeral home business.

“While in Mecklenburg County Jail, Defendant has the ability to make periodic phone calls, receive periodic visitors, and send and receive mail,” Whitney wrote. “Defendant’s detention does not isolate him from communication with the outside world.”

The judge labeled as “disingenuous” Jinwright’s contention that allowing him out on bond would save taxpayers the cost of detention and allow him to more quickly pay off his tax debts. Jinwright’s petition for bond had stated that “The government obviously needs all the tax revenue it can get, since it is running at a substantial deficit.”

“While the amount owed by Defendant to the IRS is substantial," rhe judge wrote, "it will hardly make a dent in the national debt. This argument is meritless.”

Read the entire article at Qcitymetro.com.