Monday Links

• Last week we praised Missouri Governor Matt Blunt (R) for standing up for workers' rights. Unfortunately, Blunt has taken a few steps backwards, announcing that he will cut off all program funding to Planned Parenthood and redirect it to other health clinics. This despite the fact that fewer than one in ten clients comes for abortions, and less than 30% of 860 Planned Parenthood clinics in the U.S. actually provide abortions.

• As if it were 1984 and not 2004, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe for at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest the convention. And now, lawyers for the city, responding to a request to unseal records of police surveillance leading up to the 2004 Republican convention in New York, say that the documents should remain secret because the news media will “fixate upon and sensationalize them,” hurting the city’s ability to defend itself in lawsuits over mass arrests.

• In yet another sign of the increased interest in investment in alternative energy, the New York Mercantile Exchange will soon offer alternative energy index futures and options contracts on its Globex electronic trading platform.