• Need to Know and the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute have obtained explosive video that casts doubt on the U.S. Border Patrol’s claims about the death of a 42-year-old migrant at the hands of Border Patrol agents. According to the official story, the father of five was Tased while he combative and out of control, but the video shows that he was tased after he was already handcuffed and immobilized on the ground. The preview segment, above, has already racked up nearly 80,000 hits on YouTube. The full program will air on PBS tonight. [HT: Talking Points Memo]
• Be sure to check out USA Today’s sweeping investigation of lead poisoning in children whose homes were built near long-shuttered lead smelters, which contaminate the soil to this day. The EPA knew the risks, but largely failed to act, or even to warn the residents. 
• The Pineapple and The Hare: Bizarre questions from the New York State English exam.

A 14-month USA Today investigation has found dozens of long-shuttered lead smelters that continue to contaminate the surrounding soil and endanger public health:

Ken Shefton is furious about what the government knew eight years ago and never told him — that the neighborhood where his five sons have been playing is contaminated with lead.

Their Cleveland home is a few blocks from a long-forgotten factory that spewed toxic lead dust for about 30 years.

The Environmental Protection Agency and state regulators clearly knew of the danger. They tested soil throughout the neighborhood and documented hazardous levels of contamination. They never did a cleanup. They didn’t warn people living nearby that the tainted soil endangers their children. [USA Today]

An environmental researcher compiled a list of over 400 suspected lead-contaminated sites and turned it over to the Environmental Protection Agency, but the agency largely failed to act on the information.

Most residents in lead-contaminated areas were shocked to learn that they were living near, or in some cases on top of, an old smelter site. Medical records supplied to USA Today show that some of their children had dangerously high lead levels. Lead is a potent neurotoxin, especially in young children.

This is a deeply researched, hard-hitting piece of old school investigative journalism. Read the whole thing.

Tonight on FRONTLINE, correspondent Lowell Bergman casts a critical eye on crime scene investigation techniques. Is bad science sending innocent people to jail and keeping murderers on the street? Watch the preview.

Here’s another recent FRONTLINE clip about the threat of cognitive bias in fingerprint analysis. A neuroscientist describes how he was able to make half of the fingerprint examiners he studied change their verdict on whether two prints matched by changing his description of the case. Examiners who declared two prints to be a match under one case description sometimes deemed the same two prints a non-match when they were presented with a different description.

(Aside: I’m amused by the ad for Goldman Sachs that runs before the fingerprint segment. Goldman is now calling itself “The Game-Changing Yes Network.”)

[Photo credit: Flick, Creative Commons.]

NEW YORK - Musician and activist Tom Morello will receive a special public service award at the annual 2012 Hillman Prizes ceremony on May 1 at The TimesCenter. The Board of Directors of the Sidney Hillman Foundation is honoring Morello with the Officers’ Award for his advocacy for and support of working people across the world.

Morello will receive the award at the ceremony and reception to honor this year’s Hillman Prize-winners for excellence in journalism in service of the common good. Previous Officers’ awards have gone to such figures as Eleanor Roosevelt, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Belafonte, and others.

Morello will be performing at this year’s ceremony.

In 2011, Tom Morello sang on the capitol steps in Madison, Wisconsin to support the public employees in their fight to protect collective bargaining. He visited and performed at Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver. He donated the proceeds from his Justice Tour concerts in Madison WI, Flint MI, and Cleveland OH to the Nation Institute.

“Tom Morello’s work in pursuing social and economic justice - and in telling the stories of working men and women - is exemplary and inspiring,” said Bruce Raynor, president of the Sidney Hillman Foundation. “Tom’s music, energy and leadership brings attention to causes that matter and inspires others to become more active on the public commons. In the words of another American songwriter, there’s a battle outside and it’s ragin’ - and almost any time we look, there’s Tom Morello right out in front.”

The awards ceremony will take place at 6pm Tuesday, May 1, 212, at The TimesCenter, in New York City.