(Crossposted at dKos)

My day job is with Oceana, a non-profit group that works to protect the world's oceans (as you may have guessed from the name).

We have just released a pretty significant report. It concerns the growing problem of mercury contamination -- and identifies a major source of this contamination that you probably have never even heard of.

Poison Plants finds that mercury emissions from nine chlorine plants in the U.S. using an outdated process called "mercury-cell" chlorine production -- a process already abandoned by 90% of U.S. chlorine producers -- may approach the volume of emissions from all the power plants in the United States.

These plants are so bad, in fact, that in seven of the eight states where they operate, they are the number one source of mercury contamination in the state!

If you're interested in safer seafood and a healthier environment -- or just in learning how regulators and industry collude to keep dirty processes from being cleaned up -- you should check it out. We've also opened a thread on our blog where you can discuss the report, and our campaign for safe seafood.

Much has been written of late on the Democrats' need for a better approach to national security.  I agree -- it would be hard to come up with a worse approach than the "I'm like George Bush, but different, in certain ways that will remain unspecified" theme that Kerry articulated to these crucial issues during the campaign.

However, for all the noise, I have yet to hear any concrete suggestions for things Democrats could do right now to start building such a new approach -- other than "found think tanks" and the like, which doesn't seem particularly helpful.  Lord knows the world has plenty of think tanks already and things certainly don't seem to be getting better.

So I was reading a comment in an earlier post today, and I had an idea for one way we Democrats could strike out in a new direction, and maybe do some good at the same time -- we could adopt the National Guard and Reserves.

Details after the jump.