McClellan: Bush insiders planning to 'spin an alternative reality'
by David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Former President George W. Bush has been holding a reunion of his "old gang" in Texas this week to make plans for his presidential library and policy institute.According to Scott McClellan, one-time Bush White House press secretary, those plans can be expected to center on attempting to spin the history of the Bush administration rather than addressing it honesty. |
Right-wing extremist groups on the rise
by Jane Sutton
Right-wing extremists in the United States are gaining new recruits by exploiting fears about the economy and the election of the first black U.S. president, the Department of Homeland Security warned in a report to law enforcement officials.The April 7 report, which Reuters and other news media obtained on Tuesday, said such fears were driving a resurgence in "recruitment and radicalization activity" by white supremacist groups, antigovernment extremists and militia movements. It did not identify any by name. |
Pacifica Radio at 60: A Sanctuary of Dissent
by Amy Goodman
Pacifica Radio, the oldest independent media network in the United States, turns 60 years old this week as a deepening crisis engulfs mainstream media. Journalists are being laid off by the hundreds, even thousands. Venerable newspapers, some more than a century old, are being abruptly shuttered. Digital technology is changing the rules, disrupting whole industries, and blending and upending traditional roles of writer, filmmaker, publisher, consumer. Commercial media are losing audience and advertising. People are exploring new models for media, including nonprofit journalism. |
From Now on, Equality Needs to Be Our Organizing Principle
by Johann Hari
In the smoking rubble of market fundamentalism, we are all being forced to rethink the principles that order our societies - and one small, shining idea is rising from the wreckage. It is the idea of human equality.The need for us to return to this, our best and most basic instinct, is spelled out in a new book by Professor Richard Wilkinson and Dr. Kate Pickett called 'The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.' It is the culmination of twenty-five years of scientific research. The truths it contains provide us with a compass to rebuild our societies - and a reason to be profoundly optimistic. There is a way we can make our societies dramatically better - and the impulse to do it is hard-wired into each of our brains. |
Liberals Signal More Scrutiny on Afghan Policy
by Jonathan Allen
The silence of the doves is breaking.So far, President Obama has had the benefit of the doubt for his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan from liberal Democratic allies in Washington. In part, that's because the most strident Iraq War critics in Congress have not been able to come to an agreement on how to approach his Afghanistan policy. |
Dinosaur at the Gate
by Maureen Dowd
Eric Schmidt looks innocent enough, with his watercolor blue eyes and his tiny office full of toys and his Google campus stocked with volleyball courts and unlocked bikes and wheat-grass shots and cereal dispensers and Haribo Gummi Bears and heated toilet seats and herb gardens and parking lots with cords hanging to plug in electric cars. |
Conservatives outraged at DHS assessment warning of violent 'rightwing extremism'
by Stephen C. Webster
An April 7 report by the Department of Homeland Security is causing waves of indignation among conservatives for labeling "rightwing extremism" the "most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States."In its key findings, the 10 page document (PDF link) put forward by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis states that there is "no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence," but warns law enforcement agencies that the economic recession, coupled with the recent election of the first African-American President of the United States, is driving radical groups' recruitment. |
Libertarians say Republicans have hijacked tea party movement
by David Edwards and John Byrne
As conservatives coalesce in nationwide protests against rising taxes, government spending and what they call the "bailout mentality" of President Barack Obama's Administration, the ship appears to have sprung a leak.Speaking on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow show Tuesday evening, Rep. Ron Paul's (R-TX) media coordinator Steve Gordon decried what he characterized as an attempt by mainstream conservative Republicans to hijack a long-cherished libertarian cause. Paul was a longshot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination last year. |
Report: Obama may keep some CIA torture details secret
by Raw Story
President Barack Obama is "wavering" on whether to fully release details of the Bush administration's approved torture techniques, according to a report in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal based on statements by "people familiar with the discussions.""Among the details in the still-classified memos is approval for a technique in which a prisoner's head could be struck against a wall as long as the head was being held and the force of the blow was controlled by the interrogator, according to people familiar with the memos," the paper reported. |
Gingrich eyes presidential run in 2012: AP
by Shannon McCaffrey
More than a decade after he stepped down as speaker of the House into what seemed like almost certain political oblivion, Newt Gingrich is back and seemingly more relevant than ever. Gingrich seems to be everywhere these days, headlining an endless circuit of GOP dinners, popping up on TV news shows, authoring yet another best-selling book and acting as a policy guru to out-of-power congressional Republicans on how to do battle with the Democratic White House. |
Judge allows suit against Cheney's Secret Service detail to proceed
by Stephen C. Webster
A man who was arrested for allegedly harassing former Vice President Dick Cheney will see his lawsuit against the Secret Service proceed, a U.S. District Court Judge ruled today.The Denver Post has more: Steven Howards sued the four agents claiming they violated his civil rights after he was arrested for allegedly harassing Cheney in June 2006. |
Prosecution and Pharisaism: From Pinochet to Bush
by Raymond Budelman
Many Americans view Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón’s sending of the American torture case against six Bush administration officials: former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith; former Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff David Addington; Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee; and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes to the Spanish prosecutor’s office late last month as an international faux pas. But what makes so many Americans view Judge Garzón’s action as so off-base? After all, Garzón is known for pursuing investigations of high-profile human rights violators like Chilean-dictator Augusto Pinochet and Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Moreover, it is alleged that five Spanish detainees, formerly held at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, were subjected to torture and ill-treatment at the hands of American interrogators. This fact alone enables Spain to assert jurisdiction over those within the American government whom may have “legally” authorized such appalling actions. |
Blowback Amnesia
by Allison Kilkenny
It seems like only yesterday when Ron Paul was nearly guillotined on live television for suggesting that 9/11 was caused by this thing called "blowback." It was 2007, and the Republicans were jockeying for the position of frontrunner during the national debate season. Rudy "9/11" Guliani, never one to pass up reminding everyone of a national tragedy so we'll forget what a horrible, little human being he really is, lept for Paul's jugular. |
New York Times's American Blind Spot
by Robert Parry
On Tuesday, the New York Times ran two editorials that staked out sound positions – on the need for the American Bar Association to resist right-wing pressures in evaluating judicial nominees and on the value of holding tyrants accountable. But in both cases, the Times demonstrated blind spots about parallels to itself and the U.S. media. |
Goldman Sachs tries to shut down blogger
by Mike Whitney
Mike Morgan is a registered investment adviser and a scrappy shoot-from-the-hip guy who doesn't mince his words. Recently Morgan has come under fire from investment giant Goldman Sachs for his hard-hitting web site "Facts about Goldman Sachs". According to the U.K. Telegraph: |
Phil Spector and the Death of Madness Chic
by RJ Eskow
Phil Spector was immortalized by Tom Wolfe as the "tycoon of teen" when he was 25. He'll turn 70 this year as a convicted murderer. Time, the great equalizer, has done more than bring Phil Spector down. It has sent him straight to hell.Mick Brown described meeting Spector, who was wearing a talking wristwatch, in his biography Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: |
Thom Hartmann Talks to Harvey Kaye, Author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America
by Thom Hartmann
Thom and Harvey Kaye, author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, talk about Glen Beck's modern-day reimagining of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. |
Japan's Booming Sex Niche: Elder Porn
by Michiko Toyama
Besides his glowing complexion, Shigeo Tokuda looks like any other 74-year-old man in Japan. Despite suffering a heart attack three years ago, the lifelong salaryman now feels healthier, and lives happily with his wife and a daughter in downtown Tokyo. He is, of course, more physically active than most retirees, but that's because he's kept his part-time job — as a porn star. |
