The Hillary Waltz
by Maureen Dowd
Democrats getting jittery about the alienating effects of the endless soap opera they call their campaign should buck up. These “hand-wringers,” as the Hillary strategist Harold Ickes calls them, are not seeing the larger picture.Hillary is cruelly misunderstood, and she deserves more credit for her benevolence. Not only does she have a lot in common with Rocky, as she said Tuesday in Philadelphia, but she has a lot in common with another famous character — the Marschallin in Strauss’s bittersweet comic opera “Der Rosenkavalier.” |
Documents show Pentagon now using FBI to spy on Americans
by AP
The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans' Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, according to Pentagon documents.The American Civil Liberties Union expressed outrage at the new revelations, based its conclusion on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over by the Defense Department after it sued the agency last year for documents related to national security letters, or NSLs, investigative tools used to compel businesses to turn over customer information without a judge's order or grand jury subpoena. |
Philip Morris International Commences New Plans to Spread Death and Disease
by Robert Weissman
Philip Morris International today starts business as an independent company, no longer affiliated with Philip Morris USA or the parent company, Altria. Philip Morris USA will sell Marlboro and other cigarettes in the United States. Philip Morris International will trample over the rest of the world. |
Miami-Dade graduation rates among the worst
by Kathleen McGrory
Fewer than half of Miami-Dade's public school students graduate from high school on time, according to a national report released Tuesday.The local figures are in step with what experts say are abysmally low graduation rates in the country's 50 largest cities. Of the grouping, Miami ranked near the bottom, with the nation's 16th-lowest graduation rate. |
Privatization: The Key to the Coming Solar Age
by Ernest Partridge
How is industrial civilization to deal with the end of the petroleum age and the onset of global warming?The answer seems obvious to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. On Air America’s “Ring of Fire” radio program ten days ago, he remarked: “Solar energy is hitting the earth for free – the tides, the wind, the sun are all free. All we need is to implant the infrastructure to harvest those electrons, and in a few years we’ll be off of foreign oil.” |
The Democratic Campaign and Cognitive Dissonance
by Mary Ratcliff
As a passionate Democrat who is convinced if we do not rid ourselves of the toxic administration and the attendant authoritarian right-wing conservatives associated with it, we and the world are doomed, I find the current Democratic campaign simply intolerable. |
Things That Go Bump In My Night
by Bernard Weiner
In the hour of the wolf, we progressive activists are sometimes visited by nightmarish political scenarios. No doubt, dear reader, you have your own scary visitations. Here are ten of mine:1. MOVING CLOSER TO IRAN WARThat some major false-flag terrorist attack, perhaps arranged by our own black-op agencies, will be unloosed in an American city -- maybe a dirty nuke, or some virulent toxin, or a bomb -- and the planted "evidence" will seem to lead back to Iran. CheneyBush, perhaps in coordination with Israel, will finally get their wished-for aerial assault on that country. |
Anchors for Progressives
by Roy Eidelson
Imagine people randomly divided into two groups for a simple psychology experiment. Those assigned to one group are asked two questions. First, “Did Gandhi die before or after he reached the age of 140?” And then, “How old was Gandhi when he died?” Meanwhile, those in the other group are asked the same followup question, but their first question is “Did Gandhi die before or after he reached the age of 9?” |
We Can't Afford to Be This Dumb
by Jaime O'Neill
Stupidity is as easy to find on the internet as shady home loans or male enhancement nostrums, as in this example, posted on the Paradise Post website by a guy who hides his identity behind the sobriquet of "Patriot." If I were this "patriot," I'd want to hide my identity, too. |
How Would Hillary Handle the Next Cuban Missile Crisis?
by Cenk Uygur
Throughout the primaries there has been a credulous discussion about the different reasons why Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War authorization bill. Senator Clinton has said that she thought the president should have the authority to threaten force so he would have better negotiation leverage. Senator Obama has said she showed poor judgment in trusting President Bush to use that authority wisely. |
Successes Sneaking Up on Us
by David Swanson
Were you aware that...?A coffee cooperative in Minnesota makes money by creating fair trade and cutting out corporate middlemen.Family farmers in Vermont survive and prosper by going organic and cooperative.Health clinics in rural New Mexico are community supported and succeed in ways corporate health care and insurance cannot. |
A Lesson on Protest From the 1980 Olympics
by Michael A. Kroll
The hoopla in San Francisco surrounding the forthcoming Olympic torch runner and the promised demonstrations focused on China’s human rights abuses reminded me of an earlier Olympic protest against human rights abuses - except those abuses were far closer to home. |
Could the Republicans Pick the Democratic Nominee? — The Untold Story of How the GOP Rigged Florida and Michigan
by Wayne Barrett
Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean came out of hiding last week to announce that there is no reason to rush to resolve the fate of Florida and Michigan. He said he was confident that these delegations, disqualified in 2007 by Dean’s own Rules Committee, would be seated at the August convention — but, apparently, only after a nominee is chosen, which he predicted would occur by July 1. This modern-day Metternich, whose two-fisted handling of this two-state controversy has already had more impact on the 2008 race than his candidacy did on the race in 2004, is promising to mediate the dispute once it’s already settled. |
Sportswriters Swoon Over DC Ballpark
by Dave Zirin
So much for the house that Woodstein built. Rarely has the coverage of an event been so pandering, so utterly absent of objectivity than the Washington Post’s coverage of the debut of the Washington National’s new stadium.The Post reported on the ballpark’s grand opening with hard-hitting articles like, “Lapping Up a Major Victory, and Luxuries, at New Stadium.” Without irony, the article quoted people from the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia, about how much fun they were having playing Guitar Hero and eating authentic DC half-smokes before the big game. It should have come with coupons for the Make Your Own Teddy Bear booth. |
The fraud named Hillary Rodham Clinton
by CapitolHillBlue.com
Hillary Clinton is a fraud, a liar, a cheat and a disgrace to the Senate, her party and the United States of America.There's no other way to put it. The woman who would be President inflated her resume, lied outright about being "under fire" in an attempt to bolster her national security credentials, plotted to overturn the will of pledged delegates at the Democratic National Convention in August and lobbied to change the rules after she signed a pledge to honor her party's decision on voting in Michigan and Florida. |
An Unreported Scandal
by Robert Scheer
A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you're talking real money. But when it comes to reporting on what the Bush war legacy has cost American taxpayers, the media have been shockingly indifferent to the highest run-up in military spending since World War II. Even the devastating defense spending audit released Monday by the Government Accountability Office documenting the enormous waste in every single US advanced weapons system failed to provoke the outrage it, and five equally scathing previous annual audits, deserved. |
Mukasey hints US had attack warning before 9/11
by David Edwards and Muriel Kane
When Attorney General Mukasey delivered a speech last week demanding that Congress grant the president warrantless eavesdropping powers and telecom immunity, the question and answer session afterwards included one extraordinary but little-noticed claim. |
Red-faced Clinton tirade stuns superdelegates behind closed doors
by Raw Story
A private meeting between Bill Clinton and California superdelegates erupted when the former president was reminded of Bill Richardson's decision to endorse Barack Obama."It was like someone pulled the pin from a grenade," according to San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross. |
