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Montana Sen. Jon Tester says that “prostate cancer impacts men across the country, especially in rural America.” We did not know that prostate cancer was skewed rural.

Sen. Tester has introduced the Prostate Cancer Act to help organize and fund prostate cancer research. 

• This has nothing to do with rural, except that it has something to do with humanity, so… We read in the Boston Globe that the Boston Commons is seeking corporate support. Yes, ’tis a tragedy that the public sphere doesn’t have the funds to fix the commons’ cracked concrete, missing bricks and bald spot on the law. (See above.) 

Central Park in New York got some private money, so why not the Commons? The idea is to get some corporate money to help spruce up the place where this country’s independence began.

• Coal miners rallied on the steps of the U.S. Capitol where they protested the Obama Administration’s efforts to curb mountaintop removal mining. “This administration is trying to shut down coal and fire all of you,” claimed Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., adding that the EPA was practicing “strangulation by regulation.” 

The industry group Faces of Coal paid for most of the travel for the miners. Coal state senators, Ds and Rs alike, came out to support a suspension of the EPA’s proposal that it regulate greenhouse gases, a step that would make coal a less attractive fuel.

• Lexington, Kentucky, is gearing up for the World Equestrian Games, attracting horses and people from around the world. The Lexington paper reports today on the wide-bodied Fed Ex jets hauling horseflesh from Europe and the Middle East.

Some 500 to 600 horses are flying to Kentucky. 

• Former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton looks back fondly on the good old days in a column by David Ignatius. The Washington Post columnist writes:

“The decline of governance has coincided with the rise of interest groups. Hamilton takes the example of agriculture policy: When he came to Congress, there were three big lobbying groups — the Farm Bureau, the Grange and the National Farmers Union. Today, it seems every commodity has its own aggressive advocacy group. And business groups, while denouncing government in general, all want their own particular breaks.” 

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