My, such irony here
by Doug Thompson
When it comes to cable TV news, hypocrisy knows no bounds and irony is often laid on so think you can cut it with a knife.That happened this week with an MSNBC followup to a Today Show story about teens and "sexting," the fad of sending out photos of nudes or teenagers engaged in sex acts to cell phones and over the Internet. |
America refuses to join anti-racism effort
by AFP
The United States "will not join" the UN conference on racism starting Monday in Geneva because its final declaration still includes language the US "is unable to support," the State Department said."Unfortunately, it now seems certain these remaining concerns will not be addressed in the document to be adopted by the conference next week. Therefore, with regret, the United States will not join the review conference," State Department spokesman Robert Wood said in a statement. |
Overlords of US Torture Must Be Punished
by Alex Carlile
The exposure of President Obama's order to release documents about violent interrogations could have a knock-on in BritainThe US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jay S Bybee presides with apparent comfortable authority over his high jurisdiction. The Ninth Circuit is the largest. The great cases of the West Coast states are argued out before him. His record as a lawyer is notable. He has to his name a distinguished volume on the Eighth Amendment: we can assume that seared in his mind are its words: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people". |
Just $6bn Will Save a Generation from Starvation, says UN
by Geoffrey Lean
G8 agriculture ministers try to halt 'spiral of hunger' created by drought, falling prices and credit crunchAgriculture ministers from the world's richest countries are holding an unprecedented meeting this weekend as the United Nations warns that hunger threatens to "spiral out of control" in the wake of the financial crisis. |
Presidents Thaw US-Venezuela Rift
by Matthew Walter
PORT of SPAIN - Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez has vowed to seek closer ties with the US and is considering taking steps to send an ambassador to Washington after the countries expelled each others' envoys last year.Mr Chavez said he spoke with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, marking a change from his approach to diplomacy with the administration of George Bush, whom Mr Chavez once likened to the devil. |
Report: FBI plans massive expansion of DNA database
by Stephen C. Webster
The Federal Bureau of Intelligence will expand its DNA database to include samples taken from individuals who have not been convicted of crimes, the New York Times reported Saturday afternoon.“Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts,” wrote reporter Solomon Moore. “But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will also collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants. |
It's official: No U.S. prosecution of Bush officials
by Jeremy Gantz
Bad news for anyone hoping that President Obama might still be open to the possibility of prosecution of high-level Bush officials: It ain't gonna happen.That much was close to being certain before the torture memos were released Thursday. But the statement from Obama released with those shocking memos included this sentence: "In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution." |
The Bigots’ Last Hurrah
by Frank Rich
WHAT would happen if you crossed that creepy 1960s horror classic “The Village of the Damned” with the Broadway staple “A Chorus Line”? You don’t need to use your imagination. It’s there waiting for you on YouTube under the title “Gathering Storm”: a 60-second ad presenting homosexuality as a national threat second only to terrorism. |
The Aura of Arugulance
by Maureen Dowd
The first thing I wanted to do in the Bay Area was go out to Skywalker Ranch and ask George Lucas about a disturbing conversation we’d had at an Obama inaugural party in Washington.Lucas, the creator of “Star Wars,” had told me that I had gotten Dick Cheney completely wrong, that Cheney was no Darth Vader. I felt awful. Had I been too hard on Vice? |
Columbine Questions We Still Don't Ponder
by David Sirota
We're coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the Columbine massacre, and once again, we've seen a spate of awful, inexplicably random shootings. Every time these Columbine-like massacres happen, we devolve into a discussion of gun control and video games -- and in my new newspaper column this week, I suggest that oversimplicity is part of the problem. |
Economic Recovery for Whom?
by Don Monkerud
Banks and financial institutions created a speculative bubble in the housing market and made huge profits selling exotic securities bought with borrowed money. Somehow, they lost control.Now people are discovering they aren't as rich as they thought they were. Home values fell precipitously; they lost their jobs and credit dried up. No one is to blame except perhaps the generic "bank," yet everyone is to blame because they spent money they didn't have. |
Let's Have a Real Tea Party
by Brent Budowsky
Progressives, workers, consumers, students and Middle Americans of all kinds should begin a real tea party to organize around this: Why are banks that were given trillions of dollars to increase lending raising credit card interest rates, cutting credit limits, increasing mortgage foreclosures and refusing to lend to tens of millions of credit-worthy consumers and businesses? |
The Shipping News
by Michael Winship
If you're looking for signs of the Apocalypse - and who isn't? - here's a good one. There's an uptick in ark building.You heard me. According to The Wall Street Journal, that Bible of the Financially Bilious, Hong Kong's billionaire Kwok brothers are in the final stages of constructing the world's first full-size replica of Noah's Ark - 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. "Just the answer," the Journal reports, "for the rising waters threatening the global economy." |
Notes from the Boondocks, With Responses
by Jaime O'Neill
Excerpted from the Paradise Post, Paradise, CaliforniaThat appearance by Michelle Obama at that girl's school in London during the G20 conference was inspiring. When our First Lady fought back emotion to tell those girls that they were "diamonds," and that the world was filled with "jewels" like them, it was a great moment. My daughter teaches kids the age of the girls Michelle was addressing, and she knows the struggles many of them face in one-parent homes, in a bad economy, in a divided world with a precarious future. |
Gun-related murders? Blame it on the gays
by Bill Berkowitz
There's a link between the epidemic of gun-related murders in the U.S. and the campaign for same-sex marriage, says Morality in Media's Robert Peters.Three days before the 1994 mid-term elections, Newt Gingrich decided the time was right to link the case of Susan Smith -- the South Carolina woman who had been accused of murdering her two sons -- to the upcoming election. As reported by journalist Norman Solomon, then Congressman Gingrich, responding to an Associated Press reporter who asked him to assess the campaign, stated: "Slightly more moving our way. I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things." Gingrich concluded, "The only way you get change is to vote Republican. That's the message for the last three days." |
