For chemo effects, Etheridge says marijuana 'amazing' medicine
by David Edwards and Stephen Webster
Grammy Award-winning musician Melissa Etheridge told CNN that when she underwent chemotherapy following breast cancer surgery, it was not the cocktail of pharmaceutical drugs that helped her recover, but rather medical marijuana, the effects of which she called 'amazing.' |
Carter says Palestinians being treated 'like animals'
by Raw Story
Former US president Jimmy Carter on Tuesday met Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in the Gaza Strip, where he called for a lifting of Israel’s blockade, saying Palestinians are being treated 'like animals.'Following the talks, Carter called for an end of 'all violence' against both Israelis and Palestinians. |
GOP 2012 hopeful Sen. Ensign admits extramarital affair
by Stephen C. Webster
Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign, considered a possible contender for the GOP’s presidential ticket in 2012, has confessed to an extramarital affair.'The affair took place between December 2007 and August 2008 with a campaign staffer who was married to an employee in Ensign’s Senate office,' reported the Associated Press, citing an anonymous aide in Ensign’s office. 'Neither have worked for the senator since May 2008.' |
Obama plan would 'cut number of regulators,' empower Fed to supervise firms
by Raw Story
President Barack Obama will announce Wednesday the White House’s proposal for reforming the U.S. financial system. The plan will call for the closure of the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), the creation of a new consumer credit protection agency and greater powers for the Federal Reserve to supervise major financial firms. |
Montreal woman humiliated by border tattoo search
by Jim Bronskill
MONTREAL - A Montreal woman says Canadian border agents made her strip to see if she had a pink tattoo on her buttocks after mixing her up with an alleged criminal.Sylvie Menard, who has no history of trouble with the law, returned home from a relaxing Mexico vacation in April to a stressful and humiliating airport encounter with authorities. |
Tattoo gone wrong: Stars and gripes forever?
by Reuters
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian teenager has told police how she emerged from a tattoo parlor with 56 stars over one side of her face, rather than the three she had asked for, prosecutors said on Tuesday.'I said this part, the top, is ok, but not the rest,' Kimberley Vlaeminck from the city of Kortrijk, 90 km (56 miles) northwest of Brussels, told Belgian broadcaster VRT. |
The AMA Does Not Represent Us
by Dr. Margaret Flowers & Dr. Carol Paris
As the American Medical Association begins its annual convention in Chicago, we want to take this opportunity to make it clear to the American public, to the media, and to the president and members of Congress, that the AMA does not represent us. It is a common misconception that this organization speaks on behalf of most American physicians but that is a misconception with very serious consequences at such a critical time in the health care reform debate. So long as the public, the media and our elected officials lump all physicians together as “the AMA,” then we are guilty by association of a failure of our Hippocratic oath to “first, do no harm.” |
A Movement to Make Obama Bring an End to War
by Jane Hamsher & Robert Greenwal
In 2007, 82 Democratic members of Congress signed a pledge. They would never again vote to fund the war in Iraq without plans for troop withdrawal.Republican critics accused them of demagoguing the war. Of using our soldiers as a political pawns, of not meaning what they said. |
Number of People Driven From Homes by Conflict at All-Time High
by Haroon Siddique
Report by UN's refugee agency shows more than 28 million people displaced within own countriesThe number of people internally displaced within their own countries has reached a historical high of more than 28 million, the UN's refugee agency said today, as conflicts in Pakistan's Swat valley and Sri Lanka compound a growing global problem. |
Congress Approves $106 Bln for War, Swine Flu
by Agence France Presse
WASHINGTON - Congress on Tuesday gave final approval to a 106 billion dollar emergency bill to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, shore up efforts to fight swine flu, and fund US participation in the IMF.By a vote of 226 to 202, lawmakers in the US House of Representatives approved a compromise version of legislation, to reconcile differing House and Senate versions. |
Putting pressure on Fox News through their sponsors
by Matthew Hubbard
Eleven months ago, it was a disgruntled unemployed 58 year old man shooting up a Unitarian church, hoping to kill as many liberals as he could, since killing all the people in Bernard Goldberg's 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America wasn't feasible.Then it was a 51 year old man shooting Dr. George Tiller, known as 'Tiller the Baby Killer' to the anti-abortion crowd, a title repeated on Bill O'Reilly's show dozens of times in the past few years. |
Open Letter To Stephen Colbert
by Danny Schechter
Dear Stephen Strong:Welcome home, soldier. Your week in Iraq is all over, but the war, of course, isn't. At least your presence there reminded us that Americans troops are still there. I am sure your presence gave them something fun to do, but hey, Nation, shouldn't we think a little deeper about this fused exercise in military promotion and self-promotion? |
Could Doctors Go the Way of Record Companies?
by RJ Eskow
Those of us who follow health care may be overlooking the big picture. Most of the profound (and sometimes disruptive) changes of the last half century -- computers, the Internet, social networks -- weren't initiated by the political process. They arose at the intersection of technology, economics, and mass social change. So here's something to think about: |
What If Ahmadinejad Really Won?
by Robert Parry
It’s fast congealing into conventional wisdom that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole re-election through fraud and that the so-called 'green revolution' of Mir-Hossein Mousavi – which was based in the country’s intelligentsia and middle class – got robbed. |
Satisfaction at GM dealership - irony, spiders and all
by Pierre Tristam
Last week, GM went bankrupt. Naturally, my wife, Cheryl, and I went to a GM dealership and bought a car.Her Buick was acting up. Strange sounds, twittery squeaks, leaks all over. We took it to the dealership for a look. It turned into a $2,700 sentence, before tax. I couldn't tell you why. Mechanics speak one of those rare, extinction-proof languages few people on Earth speak or understand, a kind of awesome gibberish you don't question because doing so makes you look awesomely car-dumb. |
Eternal Culture War: Pat Buchanan on Notre Dame and Sotomayor
by Bill Berkowitz
In August 1992, Pat Buchanan, fresh from a spirited, but unsuccessful attempt to win the Republican Party's presidential nomination away from President George H.W. Bush, addressed the GOP convention. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America. |
Is Fox News big enough for Shep Smith and Glenn Beck?
by Eric Boehlert
It must have been an awkward elevator ride for Shep Smith over at Fox News headquarters last Friday, heading up to the 12th-floor studio where his Fox Report program originates. I'm just imagining the nasty looks he must have gotten from co-workers -- if any of them even agreed to ride between floors with him -- on the day that liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman praised Smith in print. Krugman actually referenced him by name as somebody inside Fox News who refused to go along with the 'big hate': the right wing's anti-Obama rhetoric -- almost bloodlust -- that now dominates conservative discourse. |
On Behalf of Young Sluts
by Stacie Adams
'So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the Governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I'm sorry about it and I'll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much.” |
Elmer Fudd Nation
by Mark Ames
Angelo Mozilo and His 300 Million Slapstick FoilsIf I was an oligarch and I wanted to buy my spoiled little shit of a son a toy that would make him laugh and laugh for hours, I'd buy him a middle-class American. Because Americans are funny the way all dupes and chumps are funny. You can trick today's Americans time and again, and they always fall for it. And when you trick them, they stomp around dramatically and make a lot of blustery noise about 'the people' who allegedly 'aren't going to stand much more of this' because 'our founding forefathers bla bla bla' and of course the ol' 'you can fool some of the people some of the time, buttcha can't fool bla bla bla...' Basically, if you've seen your Elmer Fudd, then you've seen your American sucker in all of his cartoon comic-foil glory: a sentimental buffoon, a harmless chump whose guns don't fool anyone but himself. |
Behind the hate bawl
by Ed Naha
A note to all Republican politicians who are GOPing all over microphones as if they were urinal cakes: the election was last year. You lost. How about getting off the endless campaign cycle? The country is in trouble. It might be nice if you did something except sniping from the sidelines. |
A Bad Call on Gay Rights
by New York Times
The Obama administration, which came to office promising to protect gay rights but so far has not done much, actually struck a blow for the other side last week. It submitted a disturbing brief in support of the Defense of Marriage Act, which is the law that protects the right of states to not recognize same-sex marriages and denies same-sex married couples federal benefits. The administration needs a new direction on gay rights. |
