Gambling deal reached in Florida Legislature by Mary Ellen Klas TALLAHASSEE -- In a dramatic end to one of the toughest negotiations of the legislative session, House and Senate leaders agreed to a gambling compromise late Wednesday that allows the Seminole Tribe to keep the games they are are playing and helps its competitors better compete against them.
Hate Speech, Media Activism and the First Amendment by Candice O'Grady In just over a month last winter, two Latino men were beaten to death in New York state while their attackers shouted racial slurs and epithets (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/25/09). Such hate crimes, motivated by anti-immigrant prejudice and other bigotries, have spurred a media justice campaign to reveal the potential human costs of hate speech.
Arlen Specter Checked A Card by Thom Hartmann The irony was hard to miss. Senator Arlen Specter, checking a card changing his party affiliation from Republican to Democratic, saying that he won't support the right of working people to check a card to change from unaffiliated to affiliated with a union.
Who Will Stop the AIPAC Jews Before it is Too Late? by Medea Benjamin While I was being tackled by security guards at Washington's Convention Center during the AIPAC conference for unfurling a banner that asked "What about Gaza?," my heart was aching. I wasn't bothered so much by the burly guards who were yanking my arms behind by back and dragging me-along with 5 other CODEPINK members-out of the hall. They were doing their job.
We Need a Green New Deal by Norman Solomon In the Arctic, sea ice is melting. In the United States, houses are foreclosing.And in Washington, the Senate is becoming a real-life Bermuda Triangle for progressive agendas.Proposals for major limits on carbon emissions aren't getting far in the Senate, where the corporate war on the environment has an abundance of powerful allies.
Justice Dept. Finds Many Flaws in FBI Terror Watch List by Eric Lichtblau WASHINGTON - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has improperly kept nearly 24,000 people on a terrorist watch list based on outdated or sometimes irrelevant information, while it missed others with legitimate terror ties who should have been on the list, according to a Justice Department report released Wednesday.
A Complicated Question by Maureen Dowd WASHINGTON I had dinner once with John and Elizabeth Edwards, when he first burst onto the national scene.Looking across the booth at her grinning, boyish husband, she told me that it was irritating to be married to someone so comely who looked so much younger.
Michael Moore Takes On The "Beast" Of Capitalism by Bill Gallagher Michael Moore, the Academy Award winning filmmaker and disturber of the peace for the powerful, is preparing a scathing assault on America's economic system with his new film set for release in October. As usual, Moore pulls no punches proclaiming the three things wrong with capitalism: "It's anti-Jesus, it's anti-democratic and it just doesn't work."
Babes in TortureLand by Rory O'Connor On April 6, 1977, David Frost was having a particularly difficult time interviewing former President Richard Nixon. Frost's colleague James Reston, Jr. suggested a new line of questioning, one used earlier in the trial of former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman: Were there no limits to what a president can do, even if it's plainly illegal? Could he do anything despite the law?
In Congress We Trust...Not by Sibel Edmonds I have been known to quote long-dead men in my past writings. Whether eloquently expressed thoughts by our founding fathers, or those artfully expressed by ancient Greek thinkers, these quotes have always done a better job starting or ending my thoughts - that tend to be expressed in long winding sentences. For this piece I am going to break with tradition and start with an appropriate quote from a living current senator, John Kerry: "It's a sad day when you have members of congress who are literally criminals go undisciplined by their colleagues. No wonder people look at Washington and know this city is broken."
Bad Trouble in Pakistan by William Rivers Pitt America's attention has for several years been focused on the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for good reason. Thousands upon thousands of American troops, along with tens of thousands of civilians, have been killed and maimed. The consequences for the world from these ongoing wars weigh heavily upon everything from global foreign policy to international economics to energy. A butterfly can flap its wings in Baghdad or Kabul, and half the planet will feel the breeze.
The Christian Right's Worldwide Anti-Gay Crusade by Bill Berkowitz Scott Lively, the founder of Abiding Truth Ministries and the author of the Holocaust revisionist anti-gay book, 'The Pink Swastika,' is taking his anti-gay crusade overseas and declaring war against the Southern Poverty Law Center.In between battling the homosexual menace in the U.S., hawking his notorious holocaust revisionist book "The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party," and declaring war against the Southern Poverty Law Center for refusing to remove his Abiding Truth Ministries (http://www.abidingtruth.com) from its list of hate groups, Scott Lively president of "Defend the Family" -- a service of Abiding Truth Ministries - has again taken his anti-gay crusade on the road.
Limbaugh's living large while radio boss Clear Channel implodes by Eric Boehlert Even for a pancaked industry like radio broadcasting, which has become somewhat numb to years' worth of mass layoffs triggered by hyper, corporate consolidation, and more recently by an over-the-cliff advertising recession, last week's HR wave of mutilation unleashed by industry giant Clear Channel Communications must have felt like a pile-on.
Stop Whining About Populist Anger! by Matt Taibbi "Is there any business in the United States more vilified than credit card lending? The card companies stand accused by Congress and the Federal Reserve of gouging customers with impenetrable fees, enticing innocents to borrow themselves into bankruptcy, and blowing off cardholders who try to correct errors in their accounts.
Shulamit Aloni: Sadly, Israel is no longer democratic by Raw Story Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin and philosopher Asa Kasher, two respected men around here, published an article entitled: "A just war of a democratic state," (Haaretz, April 24, Hebrew).A remark about the first part: There are wars that are necessary for self-defense or to fight injustice and evil. But the expression "just" is problematic when speaking of war itself - which involves killing and destruction and leaves women, children and old people homeless, and sometimes even kills them.
James Dobson crusades against hate crimes legislation by Raw Story From Right-Wing Watch:"As I'm recording this video greeting, there's a so-called hate crimes bill that's working its way through the congress that contains no adequate safeguards to protect the preaching of God's word. Because the liberals in Congress would not define sexual orientation, we have to assume that protection under the law will be extended to the 30 sexual disorders identified as such by the American Psychiatric Association. Let me read just a few of them: bisexuality, exhibitionism, fetishism, incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, prostitution, sexual masochism, urophilia, voyeurism, and bestiality. Those are just a few. And I have to ask, have we gone completely mad?"
Margaret Carlson: Rove ‘really rattled’ by Obama by David Edwards Former White House adviser Karl Rove admitted during a debate about “the partisan divide” in Washington on Monday that the atmosphere is “poisonous,” but he refused to take any personal responsibility for the situation.“The atmosphere in Washington D.C. is too poisonous and has been for the last 16 years,” Rove stated. However, when asked about his own role in creating this divisiveness, he responded, “I’m a myth.”
Ex-boyfriend of Palin daughter says her abstinence campaign ‘unrealistic’ by John Byrne After comments made early Wednesday on Good Morning America in which the daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin, Bristol Palin, said her campaign to reduce teen pregnancy through abstinence was a good idea, her ex-boyfriend Levi Johnston went off.“Abstinence is a great idea,” he said, “but I also think you need to enforce, you know, condoms and birth control and other things like that to have safe sex. I don’t just think telling young kids, you can’t have sex, it’s not going to work. It’s not realistic.
US interrogators may have killed dozens, human rights researcher and rights group say by John Byrne United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and followup investigations.In all, 98 detainees have died while in US hands. Thirty-four homicides have been identified, with at least eight detainees — and as many as 12 — having been tortured to death, according to a 2006 Human Rights First report that underwrites the researcher’s posting. The causes of 48 more deaths remain uncertain.
Rice lawyer says he believes Cheney tried to have anti-torture memo destroyed by John Byrne Philip Zelikow, lawyer for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the Bush administration, revealed in April that he wrote a memo in 2005 disclaiming the Justice Department’s decision to argue that torture was legal. He said then that someone in the White House “attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo.”
400,000 still on terror watchlist, including author of book on Rove by Larisa Alexandrovna Over 1 million records on government’s combined watch listThe US government’s consolidated terrorist watch list has exceeded an estimated 400,000 “unique” records of “known or suspected terrorist identities,” according to a Justice Department report released today.
