VOTE Action Committee

November 9, 2005
CIA v. Cheney
Allegations keep cropping up in the press that CIA professionals are undermining the administration. In at least one sense, I suppose, this is true.
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November 9, 2005
Why Paris is Burning
Americans should be very concerned about the violence that has swept across France the last two weeks.
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November 2, 2005
Forging the Case for War
From the beginning, there has been little doubt in the intelligence community that the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame was part of a bigger story.
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November 1, 2005
What the 'Shield' Covered Up
Has anyone noticed that the coverup worked?
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November 1, 2005
Democrats Fiddling as the World Burns
The top three political leaders in America are in the legal hot seat.
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November 1, 2005
New Cheney aide tied to false Iraq reports
Vice President Dick Cheney replaced I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby as his national-security adviser on Monday with an aide identified by a former Iraqi exile group as the White House official to whom it fed information on Iraq that turned out to be erroneous.
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November 1, 2005
The White House Criminal Conspiracy
Legally, there are no significant differences between the investor fraud perpetrated by Enron CEO Ken Lay and the prewar intelligence fraud perpetrated by George W. Bush.
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October 31, 2005
Ending the Fraudulence
Let me be frank: it has been a long political nightmare.
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October 31, 2005
American democracy is in the hands of hired guns
American democracy has acquired some odd conventions. Candidates and office holders appear no longer to formulate independent thought.
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October 31, 2005
Milwaukee Paper Apologizes for Accepting 'Cooked' WMD Evidence
The most important newspaper in its region finally apologized to readers for accepting "cooked" evidence about WMD in Iraq that helped lead to war in 2003. No, it was not The New York Times.
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October 27, 2005
America is in trouble--and our elites are merely resigned
It is not so hard and can be a pleasure to tell people what you see. It's harder to speak of what you think you see, what you think is going on and can't prove or defend with data or numbers. That can get tricky. It involves hunches. But here goes.
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October 27, 2005
9-11 Theologian Says Controlled Demolition of World Trade Center is Now a Fact, Not a Theory
In two speeches to overflow crowds in New York last weekend, notable theologian David Ray Griffin argued that recently revealed evidence seals the case that the Twin Towers and WTC-7 were destroyed by controlled demolition with explosives.
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October 24, 2005
Money for Nothing
The United States invaded Iraq with a high-minded mission: destroy dangerous weapons, bring democracy, and trigger a wave of reform across the Middle East. None of these have happened.
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October 21, 2005
White House Defense Shaky in CIA Leak Case
Even if White House aides leaked a covert CIA officer's identity, they were simply passing along information they'd already heard from the news media, the administration's supporters maintain in a defense that looks increasing shaky as new evidence accumulates.
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October 21, 2005
Incompetence, Deception and the Defense Budget
As the Fitzgerald inquiry into the events surrounding the march to war winds down, the economic impact of America's adventure in Iraq is just becoming clear.
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October 21, 2005
Cover-Up Issue Is Seen as Focus in Leak Inquiry
As he weighs whether to bring criminal charges in the C.I.A. leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel, is focusing on whether Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, sought to conceal their actions and mislead prosecutors, lawyers involved in the case said Thursday.
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October 21, 2005
A Long Overdue Frog-March
Indictments are expected to come down shortly as special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald completes the investigation originally precipitated by the outing of a C.I.A. officer under deep cover.
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October 20, 2005
Arctic Map Vanishes, and Oil Area Expands
Maps matter. They chronicle the struggles of empires and zoning boards. They chart political compromise. So it was natural for Republican Congressional aides, doing due diligence for what may be the last battle in the fight over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to ask for the legally binding 1978 map of the refuge and its coastal plain.
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October 20, 2005
The spreading bird-flu menace reaches Europe
European countries are taking emergency measures to contain the spread of a deadly strain of bird flu—which has already led to the deaths of millions of birds and over 60 people in Asia—after its arrival in Russia, Romania, Turkey and possibly Greece.
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October 20, 2005
The failed war on pot users
In 2004, law enforcement officials arrested 771,605 people for marijuana violations, according to federal statistics.
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October 18, 2005
'Environmental Conscience' Urges Canadians to Tread Softly
When Prince Charles asked David Suzuki a few years ago about the state of the environment, Dr. Suzuki told him, "We are in a big car heading at a brick wall at 100 miles an hour."
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October 12, 2005
On message
In 1938 the word "fascism" hadn't yet been transferred into an abridged metaphor for all the world's unspeakable evil and monstrous crime.
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October 12, 2005
Nature works better with us
You've seen the ads: Some eco-celebrity urges you to make a donation to save one of the earth's last special places. Your generous gift will help protect this place so it remains healthy and pristine forever.
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October 7, 2005
How About Focusing on the Real Issues?
Want to know one reason why the CIA has been unable to recruit spies? Just reflect on how a potential recruit would react to the outing of Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operations officer.
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October 5, 2005
Senate votes to restrict treatment of detainees
The Republican-controlled Senate voted Wednesday to impose restrictions on the treatment of terrorism suspects, delivering a rare wartime rebuke to President Bush.
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October 5, 2005
All the President's Women
I hope President Bush doesn't have any more office wives tucked away in the White House.
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October 4, 2005
Ike Was Right About War Machine
I'm not really clear how much a billion dollars is but the United States — our United States — is spending $5.6 billion a month fighting this war in Iraq that we never should have gotten into.
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October 3, 2005
Condoleezza the Gun Slinger
Capitol Hill Blue, the Washington DC publication that cultivates relationships with White House staffers, reports (September 28) one White House aide saying: “It’s like working in an insane asylum.
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October 3, 2005
Healthcare Crisis Goes Untreated, but the Cancer Is Spreading
Ethical tempests often expose problems that extend beyond the individuals involved. Whether or not Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) is convicted of conspiring to evade Texas campaign finance laws, for instance, his indictment highlights the Sisyphean difficulty of controlling the flow of money into politics.
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October 2, 2005
Melting Planet: Species are Dying Out Faster Than We Have Dared Recognize, Scientists Will Warn This Week
The polar bear is one of the natural world's most famous predators - the king of the Arctic wastelands. But, like its vast Arctic home, the polar bear is under unprecedented threat.
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October 2, 2005
Something Stinks in America
The most important political event last week for Britain did not take place at the Labour party conference in Brighton, but in Travis County, Texas.
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October 2, 2005
Gutless, Spineless and Clueless
You would think that with all the troubles surrounding George W. Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress from the life-costing bungling of Hurricane responses to the deepening quagmire in Iraq to the front page stories of corruption, self-dealing and national security leaks you would think the Democrats would be in the ascendancy.
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October 2, 2005
Climate change becomes serious business
Political debate over climate change rages on, but for some businesses, the issue is settled: Increasingly violent storms are here to stay, along with other weather-induced changes.
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September 27, 2005
It's better to cry wolf now than to
Are global oil supplies about to peak? Are they, in other words, about to reach their maximum and then go into decline? There is a simple answer to this question: no one has the faintest idea.
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September 22, 2005
Preparing for a pandemic
It is hard to imagine that the aches and pains that most people know as flu could mutate into a superflu that might kill tens of millions of people within two years.
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September 15, 2005
EPA rule loopholes allow pesticide testing on kids
The Environmental Protection Agency's new rules on human testing, which the agency said last week would categorically protect children and pregnant women from pesticide testing, include numerous exemptions, such as one that specifically allows testing of children who have been "abused and neglected."
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September 15, 2005
U.S. losing 'world leader' luster
There is something troublingly self-indulgent and slothful about America today -- something that Katrina highlighted and that people who live in countries where the laws of gravity still apply really noticed. It has rattled them -- like watching a parent melt down.
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September 14, 2005
News from Behind the Facade
When I lived in the United States in the late 1960s, my home was often New Orleans, in a friend's rambling gray clapboard house that stood in a section of the city where civil rights campaigners had taken refuge from the violence of the Deep South.
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September 13, 2005
Arctic Folly
Congress is about to make one of those big decisions that marks an era. Unless wiser heads prevail, it may do it badly - making the wrong decision in the wrong way and about the wrong place.
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September 12, 2005
Telling the Truth About Chief Justice Rehnquist
My mother always told me that when a person dies, one should not say anything bad about him. My mother was wrong.
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September 12, 2005
The George Bush White House has presided over three national debacles: 9/11, the war in Iraq, and now Katrina's destruction
After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington four years ago today, U.S. President George Bush insisted "there was no way we knew they were coming." Just before the attacks, the White House cut spending on anti-terrorism.
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September 12, 2005
Pentagon Drafts Preemptive Nuke Policy
The U.S. Defense Department has written a draft revision of its nuclear operations doctrine that outlines the use of nuclear weapons to pre-empt an enemy's attack with weapons of mass destruction, according to a copy of the document available online on Saturday.
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September 12, 2005
All the President's Friends
The lethally inept response to Hurricane Katrina revealed to everyone that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which earned universal praise during the Clinton years, is a shell of its former self.
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September 12, 2005
Power Grab in New Orleans
The New Orleans catastrophe is inexplicable.
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September 11, 2005
Cover-Up: Toxic Waters 'Will Make New Orleans Unsafe for a Decade'
Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger.
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September 10, 2005
Old-Line Families Escape Worst of Flood And Plot the Future
On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline for his neighbor's pool.
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September 9, 2005
9/11 and the Sport of God
This article is adapted from Bill Moyer's address this week at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where Judith and Bill Moyers received the seminary's highest award, the Union Medal, for their contributions to faith and reason in America.
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September 8, 2005
The Political Forces Behind the Flood
The calamity was enormous, the toll in lives and ruin like nothing the country knew. Yet the ultimate disaster was in the staggering negligence of the government and its oblivious leader.
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September 7, 2005
Regulation Adrift
Every year, illegally used pesticides sicken thousands of farm workers laboring long hours to harvest California's agricultural bounty.
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September 7, 2005
The world press weighs in on Katrina and its aftermath
Don't think the rest of the world -- not just stunned Americans and even some conservative American reporters and commentators who have long served as George W. Bush's loyal mouthpieces -- failed to notice the president's inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina's devastation.
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September 7, 2005
Sucker's Bets for the New Century
If the images of skyscrapers collapsed in heaps of ash were the end of one story -- the U.S. safe on its isolated continent from the turmoil of the world -- then the picture of the sodden Superdome with its peeling roof marks the beginning of the next story, the one that will dominate our politics in the coming decades of this century: America befuddled about how to cope with a planet suddenly turned unstable and unpredictable.
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September 6, 2005
Precaution for Breast Cancer Means Research Into Causes
Despite widespread adherence among the scientific community to the commonsense precautionary principle 'An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' studies that look for links between breast cancer incidence and environmental factors are not commonplace.
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September 6, 2005
FEMA Chief Waited Until After Storm Hit
The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region - and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.
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September 3, 2005
Going Organic Can Shield Children From Pesticides
A study finds benefits are 'immediate' and suggests that youths are exposed to the chemicals primarily through food, not spraying of homes.
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September 1, 2005
Extraordinary Problems, Difficult Solutions
There is not enough money in the gross national product of the United States to dispose of the amount of hazardous material in the area.
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September 1, 2005
Why New Orleans is in deep water
Like many of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they are now. ad
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August 31, 2005
Bush is the real threat
Now that the US president has announced that he has not ruled out an attack on Iran, if it does not abandon its nuclear programme, the Middle East faces a crisis that could dwarf even the dangers arising from the war in Iraq.
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August 31, 2005
Estate's Rites
As early as next month, some Democrats seem ready to go along with most Republicans and implement a permanent repeal to the estate tax, a change that would reward the wealthy and drag down the economy by increasing the deficit. But it doesn't have to be this way.
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August 31, 2005
White People's Burden
The United States is a white country. By that I don't just mean that the majority of its citizens are white, though they are (for now but not forever).
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August 31, 2005
What these hurricanes are telling us
We are riveted to images of the hurricane's victims hauled by choppers from rooftops because we are as amazed by the ways life carries us away as we are by salvation. Hurricanes are never just about hurricanes.
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August 31, 2005
U.S. Poverty Rate Was Up Last Year
Even as the economy grew, incomes stagnated last year and the poverty rate rose, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.
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August 31, 2005
Evil? Yes; Spineless? No
Standard fare in the mainstream media as well as in both Left and Libertarian blogs, web sites and magazines, is that the Democrats are spineless.
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August 30, 2005
Bush Unbalanced As Polls Plummet
With George W. Bush, a certifiable madman, in power, it shouldn't be surprising that the rest of our republic is going bonkers. Bush, our commander in sleep, has spread the virus of neo-fascist fever and the bug is gripping our nation like the flu in February. The evidence is compelling.
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August 29, 2005
Breast Milk of Oregon Women Contaminated
The breast milk of Oregon women is contaminated with a high level of toxic flame retardants known as PBDEs, researchers say.
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August 29, 2005
The Vietnamization of Bush's Vacation
Even though their own poll numbers are in a race to the bottom with the president's, don't expect the Democrats to make a peep.
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August 29, 2005
Gov. Leans Toward a Paler Shade of Green
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who enthused activists and unnerved business leaders with many of his early appointments to top environmental slots, is increasingly favoring industry officials for key jobs protecting California's forests, air and water.
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August 29, 2005
Now Showing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Americans
When Benjamin Franklin went to France in 1776, his assignment was to manipulate the French into supporting the American war for independence.
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August 29, 2005
Greenspan and the Bubble
Most of what Alan Greenspan said at last week's conference in his honor made very good sense. But his words of wisdom come too late.
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August 29, 2005
Left Behind, Way Behind
First the bad news: Only about two-thirds of American teenagers (and just half of all black, Latino and Native American teens) graduate with a regular diploma four years after they enter high school.
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August 28, 2005
Rove's Role
Some White House sympathizers have attempted to portray Karl Rove's role in the Valerie Plame scandal as that of a statesman, seeking to provide President Bush with the best information possible on Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions so that Bush could set policy based on facts.
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August 28, 2005
Equity Is Altering Spending Habits and View of Debt
As they happily watch their houses swell in value, Americans are changing their attitudes toward mortgage debt.
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August 28, 2005
A Tale of Two Wars
I went to Vietnam a hawk. It was July 1967; I was an ex-Marine and a reporter for the Associated Press.
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August 25, 2005
The oiloholics
The price of oil affects the cost of almost everything. It helps determine not just the cost of driving to work or flying off on holiday, but also the cost of furniture, food and anything else which has to be transported from factory to shop floor. The past three global recessions were all triggered by a jump in oil prices.
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August 23, 2005
The Breaking Point
The largest oil terminal in the world, Ras Tanura, is located on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, along the Persian Gulf.
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August 5, 2005
Globalisation is an anomaly and its time is running out
The big yammer these days in the United States is to the effect that globalisation is here to stay: it's wonderful, get used to it.
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August 3, 2005
California Air Is Cleaner, but Troubles Remain
On many days, a hiker on the Temescal Ridge trail above the Pacific Ocean, 30 to 50 miles west of the San Gabriel Mountains, can trace the snowy ridges and the thin, brown lines of canyons with the naked eye. Three decades ago, an entire summer could pass before homeowners just five miles from the mountains could see the peaks.
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August 2, 2005
World Turning Its Back on Brand America
The US is increasingly viewed as a "culture-free zone" inhabited by arrogant and unfriendly people, according to study of 25 countries' brand reputations.
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August 1, 2005
Triumph of the Machine
The campaign for Social Security privatization has degenerated into farce. The "global war on terrorism" has been downgraded to the "global struggle against violent extremism" (pronounced gee-save), which is just embarrassing. Baghdad is a nightmare, Basra is a militia-run theocracy, and officials are talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq next year (just in time for the U.S. midterm elections).
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August 1, 2005
Something to Choke On, Again
There have been two bad moments looming over the horizon for the last couple of weeks. One is still in the offing, and a lot of people who have been watching and working the details should prepare themselves for the ram. The other went down this morning, and a lot of good folks are choking on their own rage right now.
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August 1, 2005
Is America's War Winding Up?
Are we ready to leave that war-ravaged land without any assurance a free, democratic, pro-Western Iraq will survive? Is President Bush willing to settle for less than we all thought?
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August 1, 2005
How Wall Street Wrecked United's Pension
Had anyone listened to Doug Wilsman, tens of thousands of United Airlines employees would not be facing big cuts in their pensions.
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July 29, 2005
Stop, Thief!
When I was young, one of the Philadelphia papers used to run ads for itself in which some poor sap would be hanging from, say, a window ledge over a street and no one in the crowd below would notice because all of them were absorbed in reading the paper.
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July 28, 2005
Oil and Blood
It is now generally understood that the U.S.-led war in Iraq has become a debacle.
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July 25, 2005
Eight Days in July
President Bush's new Supreme Court nominee was a historic first after all: the first to be announced on TV dead center in prime time, smack in the cross hairs of "I Want to Be a Hilton."
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July 22, 2005
TreasonGate - What Did Bush Know, And When Did He Know It?
Political smears by right-wingers are nothing new. In the election of 1800, John Adams had a surrogate newspaper publisher write an article about "Dusky Sally," the half-sister of Thomas Jefferson's deceased wife, who was also one of the Jefferson family slaves.
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July 22, 2005
China Unpegs Itself
Thursday's statement from the People's Bank of China, announcing that the yuan is no longer pegged to the dollar, was terse and uninformative - you might say inscrutable.
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July 22, 2005
A Bid to Chill Thinking
In today's partisan political climate, science has inevitably become a political football. But I can't remember anything quite as nasty -- or as politically skewed -- as Rep. Joe Barton's recent attack on scientists whose views on global warming he doesn't like.
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July 22, 2005
Ecocide
Ecocide means destroying our ecosystem by actions of the human species. Human activity like war and the profligate use of our ecosystem’s resources is ecocidal.
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July 22, 2005
Bush's Soviet State
It's funny in an awful sort of way. The defining events of the last fifty years all centered around the Cold War and the eventual demise of the Soviet system.
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July 21, 2005
Traditional Culture Strikes Back
The war of civilizations, as Samuel Huntington unfortunately phrased it, takes place in time rather than space.
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July 19, 2005
The Framing Wars
After last November's defeat, Democrats were like aviation investigators sifting through twisted metal in a cornfield, struggling to posit theories about the disaster all around them.
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July 19, 2005
Central Asian nations rethink US presence
The Great Game, historically played between the Western powers and Russia, got a shot in the arm in early July when the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), a security alliance dominated by Russia and China, urged the US and its allies to set a timetable for troop withdrawal from Central Asian republics.
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July 19, 2005
New Film Exposes Plight of 9/11 Rescuers
While Washington continues to spend billions of dollars on its global "war on terror," thousands of ordinary people who took part in cleaning up the World Trade Center site after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks are left wondering if they will ever receive a single penny from the government for medical treatment.
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July 19, 2005
Public Tiff Over Probe of Study Highlights Divide on Issue
House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.) has demanded that another senior Republican, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (Tex.), call off his investigation of three scientists who have charted Earth's rapid warming in recent decades.
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July 19, 2005
Did Washington Try to Manipulate Iraq's Election?
The January 30th election in Iraq was publicly perceived as a political triumph for George W. Bush and a vindication of his decision to overturn the regime of Saddam Hussein.
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July 19, 2005
The Dropout Puzzle
Many seemingly authoritative figures, not all of them partisan shills, say that the American economy has fully recovered from the recession that began in 2001.
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July 18, 2005
FBI monitors activists, court documents show
The FBI has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and anti-war protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration.
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July 17, 2005
In Plame Leaks, Long Shadows
In public, he was masterminding President Bush's reelection and brushing off suggestions he had played any part in an unfolding drama: the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
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July 17, 2005
Follow the Uranium
Well, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame.
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July 15, 2005
Chinese General Threatens Use of A-Bombs if US Intrudes
China should use nuclear weapons against the United States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over Taiwan, a senior Chinese military official said Thursday.
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July 6, 2005
Immoral Relativism and Other Distractions of the Age of Bush
"At a breakfast meeting with reporters, Wolfowitz said he hasn't read the [Downing Street] memos because he doesn't want to be 'distracted' by 'history' from his new job as head of the world's leading development bank.
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July 5, 2005
Karl Rove: Worse Than Osama bin Laden
In war collaborators are more dangerous than enemy forces, for they betray with intimate knowledge in painful detail and demoralize by their cynical example.
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July 5, 2005
The Two Wars of the Worlds
On the morning after George W. Bush spoke to the nation from Fort Bragg, Americans started marching off to Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds."
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July 5, 2005
Bush Insider Claim WTC Collapse Bogus Gets 'Huge Response' And Read By Millions Worldwide
When Morgan Reynolds called the official story about 9/11 bogus, it seemed like the whole world stopped for a moment to listen.
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July 5, 2005
Supreme Court - Media Ignore Possible "Fascist" Play
The Bush administration is spectacularly good at sleight-of-hand tricks, directing public attention in one direction while they're working diligently in another.
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July 5, 2005
Rove named in row over CIA leak
President George Bush's right hand man, Karl Rove, yesterday found himself at the centre of the controversy over who revealed the name of a secret CIA agent, after Newsweek revealed that he was a source for a story that appeared in Time magazine and for which two reporters are facing prison.
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July 3, 2005
Profiles in Cowardice
In the glow after last fall's election victory, Grover Norquist, ringmaster for the right's tax-cutting circus, mischievously compared minority Democrats in Congress to a bunch of neutered farm animals. Once snipped, he said, they can be counted on to accept comfortably "the finality of their powerlessness."
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June 30, 2005
When China Owns Our Utilities
It is a great irony that on the day President Bush called for a thorough review of China's proposed acquisition of a California-based oil company, Unocal, the United States Senate voted 85-12 to send an energy bill to conference that would allow China to own local US public utilities, without a murmur from the administration, lawmakers or the media.
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June 28, 2005
Hemp for Victory
Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian from Texas and an obstetrician who has delivered over 6000 babies, is trying to deliver our farmers from a bureaucratic medievalism in Washington that keeps saying "No" to growing industrial hemp.
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June 28, 2005
The party's over for betrayed Republican
As of today, after 25 years, I am no longer a Republican.
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June 27, 2005
The Supreme Court's Jackboot Liberals
So much for the right to die in your own home, smoking a joint to take your mind off the pain.
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June 8, 2005
Arms Fiascoes Lead to Alarm Inside Pentagon
Nine years ago, the Navy set out to build a new guided missile for its 21st-century ships. Fiascoes followed. In a test firing, the missile melted its on-board guidance system. "Incredibly," an Army review said, "the Navy ruled the test a success."
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June 8, 2005
Non, Neen, Angelene!
Since French-bashing is more fashionable than Dutch-bashing, the Dutch "neen" has not come in for such furious denunciation as the French "non".
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June 8, 2005
Watergate coup was harmful for media
All week, the U.S. media have been consumed with Deep Throat.
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June 8, 2005
Dean's Democrats Remain Pathetic
Is there anything more depressing than watching the Democratic Party lie down in front of the Bush administration's public-relations and political steamroller?
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June 8, 2005
Longevity Crisis? Kill Grandma
A specter is stalking the Western world, and it looks a lot like Grandma. As President Bush has repeatedly put it, the problem with Social Security is that "baby boomers will be living longer."
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June 8, 2005
Growing Problem for Military Recruiters: Parents
Rachel Rogers, a single mother of four in upstate New York, did not worry about the presence of National Guard recruiters at her son's high school until she learned that they taught students how to throw hand grenades, using baseballs as stand-ins.
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June 8, 2005
World split on nuclear arms despite danger
The danger of a nuclear holocaust may never have been greater, yet the 188 signatories to the global pact against nuclear weapons have rarely been more divided, arms experts and diplomats said.
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June 2, 2005
Homeland eyes, right and left
Besides worrying about Al Qaeda, the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for sorting through terrorist threats posed by the motley array of aggrieved and violent homegrown groups stewing out in the United States.
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June 1, 2005
From Watergate to the Downing Street Memo
Tuesday's revelation that W. Mark Felt, the former number two man at the FBI, was the anonymous source known as Deep Throat, who helped Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein unravel the Watergate scandal in the pages of the Washington Post 30 years ago should be seen as an important reminder that even the leader of the free world can be devious, corrupt and dishonest.
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May 31, 2005
RAF Bombing Raids Tried to Goad Saddam into War
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May 31, 2005
Whigged Out
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May 31, 2005
Too Few, Yet Too Many
One of the more bizarre aspects of the Iraq war has been President Bush's repeated insistence that his generals tell him they have enough troops.
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May 31, 2005
Unceremonious End to Army Career
John Riggs spent 39 years in the Army, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery during the Vietnam War and working his way up to become a three-star general entrusted with creating a high-tech Army for the 21st century.
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May 31, 2005
The Answer Is Fear
One benefit of the new AM progressive talk radio in cities around the United States is that the call-in shows have opened a window onto the concerns - and confusion - felt by millions of Americans trying to figure out how their country went from a democratic republic to a modern-day empire based on a cult of personality and a faith-based rejection of reason.
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May 31, 2005
The 'I' word
The impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, should be part of mainstream political discourse.
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May 31, 2005
One-Fifth of Earth's Bird Species in Danger
More than a fifth of the planet's bird species face extinction as humans venture further into their habitats and introduce alien predators, an environmental group said on Wednesday.
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May 28, 2005
Interview with British MP George Galloway
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May 27, 2005
Running Out of Bubbles
Remember the stock market bubble? With everything that's happened since 2000, it feels like ancient history. But a few pessimists, notably Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley, argue that we have not yet paid the price for our past excesses.
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May 5, 2005
It's not easy being America's friend
An American embrace can be a kiss of death these days. In the latest example, the Organization of American States has rejected not one but two American candidates to elect as its secretary-general a socialist who is friendly with Cuba and Venezuela, the two states the Bush administration hates.
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May 5, 2005
Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran
At the outset of Bush's second term, Vice President Dick Cheney dropped a bombshell. He hinted, in no uncertain terms, that Iran was "right at the top of the list" of the rogue enemies of America, and that Israel would, so to speak, "be doing the bombing for us", without US military involvement and without us putting pressure on them "to do it":
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April 28, 2005
Ozone hits record low in 2005
A combination of climate change and pollution is chewing through Europe's ozone, researchers say.
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April 28, 2005
Paying on the Highway to Get Out of First Gear
It is a California still life. In this land of mobile ambition and instant communities, life is on hold in the parking lot that is the Riverside Freeway, 10 miles or more going nowhere at all hours of the day on one of the most congested auto corridors in the world.
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April 28, 2005
A Society That Throws the Sick Away
Most countries are proud to have a healthcare system. It's an organized way of helping the sick and infirm - a mark of genuine civilization.
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April 28, 2005
Secretly, tiny nations hold much wealth
Although they have only 1 percent of the world's inhabitants, they hold a quarter of United States stocks and nearly a third of all the globe's assets.
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April 28, 2005
Not in my name
With the clash of two state funerals and a wedding, unreason is in full flood this week. Yet again, rationalists who thought they understood this secular, sceptical age have been shocked at the coverage from Rome.
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April 27, 2005
The revolt of the center
If you were to prepare a list of the top 10 stories you will never, ever read in a newspaper, one of them would surely include a sentence beginning: "Thousands of angry, screaming moderates took to the streets yesterday demanding ... "
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April 27, 2005
This Is Our Guernica
Robert Zoellick is the archetypal US government insider, a man with a brilliant technical mind but zero experience of any coalface or war front.
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April 27, 2005
The Draft
After two years of intensive fighting in Iraq, the Pentagon is feeling the strain in every military muscle and has been looking for relief in just about every direction but one -- the draft.
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April 13, 2005
A Cornucopia of Death
Paint the last month black. It's been an orgy of mourning; a cornucopia of death.
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April 13, 2005
US Takes the Lead in Trashing Planet
For more than four years, President Bush has told us he needs to see the ''sound science" on global warming before joining the rest of the world in combating it. In June 2001, he brushed off criticism of his pullout from the Kyoto Protocol, saying: ''It was not based upon science. The stated mandates in the Kyoto treaty would affect our economy in a negative way."
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April 8, 2005
Coming Sooner Than You Think
It seems that there are a growing number of people who believe as I do, that the economic tsunami planned by the Bush administration is probably only months away.
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April 8, 2005
Under CEO Lee Raymond, Exxon Mobil Gushes Money
Exxon Mobil Corp. is gushing money. Amid soaring crude-oil prices, it recently reported a fourth-quarter profit that amounted to the fattest quarterly take for a publicly traded U.S. company ever: $8.4 billion. That translated into $3.8 million an hour.
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April 8, 2005
ChevronTexaco's CEO banking on peak oil situation
There's been a lot of ink spilled this week about the risk ChevronTexaco's chief exec, David O'Reilly, has taken in paying about $16.4 billion for rival Unocal and its oil resources.
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April 8, 2005
Republicans Splinter On Bush Agenda
Almost three months into President Bush's second term, a raft of economic and social issues -- Social Security, immigration, gay marriage and the recent national debate over Terri Schiavo -- is splintering the Republican base.
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April 8, 2005
The Job Arbitragers
In March the US economy created a paltry 111,000 private sector jobs, half the expected amount.
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April 8, 2005
They're Talking Up Arms
Marine Sgt. Rick Carloss is as familiar to students as some teachers at Downey High School.
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April 8, 2005
Poll: Bush Standing With Public Weakening
President Bush's standing with the public is slumping just three months into his final term, but Americans have an even lower regard for the job being done by Congress.
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April 7, 2005
A Man or a Mouse? Or Both?
What happens when you cross a human and a mouse? Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke but, in fact, it's a serious experiment recently carried out by a research team headed by a distinguished molecular biologist, Irving Weissman, at Stanford University.
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April 5, 2005
An Academic Question
It's a fact, documented by two recent studies, that registered Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives make up only a small minority of professors at elite universities. But what should we conclude from that?
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April 5, 2005
I'm with Wolfowitz
It's about as close to consensus as the left is ever likely to come. Everyone this side of Atilla the Hun and the Wall Street Journal agrees that Paul Wolfowitz's appointment as president of the World Bank is a catastrophe. Except me.
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April 5, 2005
Pension Agency Braces for Car Trouble
The steel and airline industries have dumped underfunded pension plans on the federal government's Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. Is the auto industry next?
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April 1, 2005
Pension Funds and the Price of Oil
OPEC's acting Secretary General Adnan Shihab-Eldin has called the high price of oil "unjustified." Former OPEC master Zaki Yamani has reemerged to say that $50-a-barrel oil is "unsustainable," and he's predicted another cycle like the late '70s/early '80s (which led to a price collapse), because consumer spending and the US trade balance are being affected. Meanwhile, Qatar's oil minister Abdullah Al-Attiyah insists the price of oil is out of OPEC's control.
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March 22, 2005
The Energy Crunch to Come
Data released annually at this time by the major oil companies on their prior-year performances rarely generates much interest outside the business world. With oil prices at an all-time high and Big Oil reporting record profits, however, this year has been exceptional.
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March 22, 2005
How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age
While global warming is being officially ignored by the political arm of the Bush administration, and Al Gore's recent conference on the topic during one of the coldest days of recent years provided joke fodder for conservative talk show hosts, the citizens of Europe and the Pentagon are taking a new look at the greatest danger such climate change could produce for the northern hemisphere - a sudden shift into a new ice age. What they're finding is not at all comforting.
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March 21, 2005
A Threat Greater Than Terrorism
Delusion has settled over America. Washington cannot tell fact from fantasy. Neither can sycophantic media nor nothink economists.
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March 20, 2005
Pharisee Nation
Last September, I spoke to some 2,000 students during their annual lecture at a Baptist college in Pennsylvania. After a short prayer service for peace centered on the Beatitudes, I took the stage and got right to the point.
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March 20, 2005
Washington's Fiscal Meltdown
Before leaving town for a two-week spring break, Congress indulged in its own form of March Madness.
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March 19, 2005
A world built on corrupt foundations
As the Commission for Africa, led by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, calls for a huge increase in aid to Africa, and the World Bank prepares to increase its infrastructure lending from $5.4 billion to $7 billion this year, more needs to be done to eliminate opportunities for corruption in the sector.
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March 18, 2005
The Ugly American Bank
You can say this about Paul Wolfowitz's qualifications to lead the World Bank: He has been closely associated with America's largest foreign aid and economic development project since the Marshall Plan.
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March 17, 2005
The Stench of Rotting Ethics
The John Wesley Hardin Died for You Society has a theme song that goes: "He wasn't really bad. He was just a victim of his times." I sometimes find this useful in trying to explain Texas political ethics to outsiders.
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March 17, 2005
Catastrophic success
The problem with Paul Wolfowitz isn't that he's an evil genius--it's that he has been consistently wrong about foreign policy for 30 years.
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March 17, 2005
Secret U.S. Plans for Iraq's Oil
The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.
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March 14, 2005
In bad faith
Today Tony Blair will try to force a law against incitement to religious hatred through parliament. Beware, says Salman Rushdie - the rising power of religion could end up destroying the western alliance.
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March 7, 2005
Bush accused of 'fiddling while world burns' by ignoring climate change
One of Britain's most eminent scientists has attacked President Bush for acting like a latter-day Nero who fiddles while the world burns because of global warming.
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March 7, 2005
The D.A. and Tom DeLay
Ronnie Earle is the local district attorney in Austin, Texas. During his 28 years in office, he's prosecuted his share of robberies, rapes and murders.
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March 7, 2005
In Need of Thompson's Savage Take
Two weeks ago Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide. This week Dan Rather commits ritual suicide, leaving the anchor chair at CBS prematurely as penance for his toxic National Guard story.
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March 7, 2005
Scripps, the 30-year Treasury bond and global warming
Managing risk is the job of mothers and fathers, who hope their children will learn well and move forward productively into a challenging world.
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March 7, 2005
Is America going broke?
David Walker can see the future, and it scares the hell out of him.
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March 4, 2005
Bush has trouble selling snake oil
Surprise! President Bush's radical but maddeningly incomplete proposal to bolster Republican Party ideology by destroying our most successful federal government program -- Social Security -- isn't selling.
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March 4, 2005
When Democrats Join the Dark Side
Not long ago, I was listening to Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) being interviewed, and I was struck at how intelligent and morally serious he was.
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February 22, 2005
Just the Facts
The first important fact about the Social Security "crisis" is that there is no crisis.
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February 14, 2005
Hunger for Dictatorship
Students of history inevitably think in terms of periods: the New Deal, McCarthyism, "the Sixties" (1964-1973), the NEP, the purge trials-all have their dates.
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February 13, 2005
The Meathead Proposition
Try to forgive my obsession, but here is another proof that President Bush's designs for Social Security cannot work.
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February 13, 2005
As Things Fall Apart, Lie and Lie Again
Suppose you are the party responsible for invading a country under totally false pretenses. Suppose you had totally unrealistic expectations about the consequences of your gratuitous aggression.
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February 13, 2005
Nobles Need Not Pay Taxes
A new aristocracy is taking over not just the United States of America but also the world. Proof of how far along it has come was in an article by Glenn R. Simpson in the January 28, 2005 edition of The Wall Street Journal.
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February 13, 2005
If Not Now, When?
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. - Thomas Mann (1875-1955) President Bush's rhetorical flourishes against tyranny, both in his state of the union speech and his inaugural address, have left Britain, the rest of the EU and much of America wondering if Iran will be the next target of US military might.
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February 13, 2005
How the New York Times Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Almost as astonishing as the likelihood that President Bush cheated and wore a device--most likely a wireless magnetic induction hearing device--during his three presidential debate appearances-and definitely lied about what was under his jacket--is the fact that the nation's two leading newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, had the story but failed to report it in any serious way.
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February 13, 2005
Progressives and Democrats: Assert Your Brand!
Politics is all about branding. And brands are not about issues or details - they're about identity.
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February 13, 2005
The cheers were all ours
Iran is a "totalitarian state", and that's official, according to the logic of Condoleezza Rice this week.
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February 13, 2005
War on Tyrants: What Will Bush Do Next?
While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assures allies that an American military attack on Iran "is simply not on the agenda at this point in time," President Bush continues to push his newly expanded crusade to free the world from tyrants as well as terrorists.
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February 13, 2005
Paranoia Grips the U.S. Capital
The film Seven Days In May is one of my all-time favourites. The gripping 1964 drama, starring Burt Lancaster, depicts an attempted coup by far rightists in Washington using a top-secret Pentagon anti-terrorist unit called something like "Contelinpro."
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February 2, 2005
So, Exactly What's Changed?
Quick, before the conventional wisdom hardens, it needs to be said: The Iraqi election was not the second coming of the Constitutional Convention.
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February 2, 2005
There is no tomorrow
One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal.
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January 26, 2005
Meeting the Climate Challenge
There can be few greater challenges in the twenty-first century than addressing the threat of climate change. Left unmitigated, the impacts are expected to be devastating. Urgent action is needed.
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January 26, 2005
How America became the world's dispensable nation
In a second inaugural address tinged with evangelical zeal, George W. Bush declared: "Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world." The peoples of the world, however, do not seem to be listening.
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January 26, 2005
Dream On America
The U.S. Model: For years, much of the world did aspire to the American way of life. But today countries are finding more appealing systems in their own backyards.
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January 26, 2005
Changing the Climate-Change Climate
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January 24, 2005
Transition to Nowhere
President Bush's notion - it is not yet a plan - of partly privatizing Social Security has three large flaws. First, it is a cure in search of a disease.
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January 24, 2005
Countdown to global catastrophe
The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.
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January 24, 2005
Nations Ranked as Protectors of the Environment
Countries from Northern and Central Europe and South America dominated the top spots in the 2005 index of environmental sustainability, which ranks nations on their success at such tasks as maintaining or improving air and water quality, maximizing biodiversity and cooperating with other countries on environmental problems.
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January 24, 2005
Why Dean should take charge
With his passion and populist appeal, Howard Dean is exactly the leader the Democratic Party needs right now.
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January 23, 2005
Global warming approaching point of no return, warns leading climate expert
Global warning has already hit the danger point that international attempts to curb it are designed to avoid, according to the world's top climate watchdog.
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January 23, 2005
Iraqi Insurgency Growing Larger, More Effective
The United States is steadily losing ground to the Iraqi insurgency, according to every key military yardstick.
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January 12, 2005
The Imminent Demise of the Republican Party
Following the election of 2004, much has been made of the weaknesses of the Democratic Party, even its possible end. But it has escaped the notice of our blow-dry television pundits and political observers alike that the Republican Party, in the full blush of triumph in control of all the branches of government and large sections of the media, stands on the edge of certain extinction.
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January 6, 2005
Did voters really count in U.S. election?
In three national elections over the past 13 months, the official count was sharply at odds with an independent national exit poll.
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January 6, 2005
Democrats to Force Debate on Ohio Results
A small group of Democrats agreed Thursday to force House and Senate debates on Election Day problems in Ohio before letting Congress certify President Bush's win over Sen. John Kerry in November.
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January 5, 2005
Chisholm's example for Democrats
Shirley Chisholm died Saturday just before Newsweek hit the stands with the first hint that John Kerry might run again for president. The coincidence was a stark reminder of the buckling Democratic Party.
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January 5, 2005
Slide into disaster is man-made
Welcome to the future. Low-lying islands, from the Maldives to the Nicobar Islands, are half-drowned. More than 140,000 people are dead. The number of environmental refugees could run into the millions. No, this isn't just a news report from the end of 2004. It's the story of the 21st century, as predicted by the world's most distinguished climatologists.
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January 4, 2005
When Worlds Die With Them
I'd been wondering about the Andamans and Nicobars. These are hundreds of small islands that rise out of the Andaman Basin northwest of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
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January 4, 2005
The victims of the tsunami pay the price of war on Iraq
There has never been a moment like it on British television.
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December 30, 2004
Conyers to Object to Ohio Electors, Requests Senate Allies
Representative John Conyers, ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, will object to the counting of the Ohio Electors from the 2004 Presidential election when Congress convenes to ratify those votes on January 6th.
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December 29, 2004
Current Situation & 2005 Projections
This past year we have seen how volatile the oil market has become as the world approaches peak oil production. But the recent softening of oil prices demonstrates that we have not yet peaked.
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December 28, 2004
How to succeed in history
Why did once flourishing societies collapse and disappear? Jared Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize-winning geographer at UCLA, has spent much of his career wrestling with this profound question.
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December 21, 2004
America's war on itself
I have a persistent mental image of US foreign policy, which haunts me even in my sleep.
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December 20, 2004
Westerner Beheaded on Mosul Street as American Forces Lose Control of Key City
Gunmen raked a car with machine-gun fire in the northern city of Mosul yesterday, killing three foreigners and their driver. They then cut off the head of one of their victims.
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December 20, 2004
The New Military Life: Heading Back to the War
Earlier this year, as Sgt. Alexander Garcia's plane took off for home after his tense year of duty in Iraq, he remembered watching the receding desert sand and thinking, I will never see this place again.
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December 20, 2004
EPA bends rules for polluters, keeps public out of the loop
The federal government quietly has allowed oil refineries nationwide to miss court-mandated deadlines to reduce air emissions, prolonging the exposure of hundreds of thousands of people to dangerous pollutants.
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December 19, 2004
Bush's Capital, And Its Costs
President Bush could have used other metaphors to describe the opportunity his reelection gave him to pursue his agenda.
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December 18, 2004
Iraq's Election is Seen as a 'Jungle of Ambiguity'
With the candidates' lists closed and Iraq seemingly set on an irreversible course toward elections on Jan. 30, a senior Western official with decades of Middle East experience cast about Friday for the kind of optimistic forecast that the United States and its allies have offered at every important juncture in 20 turbulent months since the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
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December 17, 2004
Getting the Chills
Dear citizens, are you feeling the chill?
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December 17, 2004
The Environment in Serious Trouble
The journalist who truly deserves this award is Bill McKibben. He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic heroes for his pioneer writing about the environment.
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December 17, 2004
Yes, the Problem will Go Away...When the Fish Become Extinct
At a meeting in Sacramento this fall, Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, jokingly renamed NOAA Fisheries as "No Fisheries" to describe the damage done to this federal agency by the Bush administration.
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December 16, 2004
A Flood of Troubled Soldiers Is in the Offing, Experts Predict
The nation's hard-pressed health care system for veterans is facing a potential deluge of tens of thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq with serious mental health problems brought on by the stress and carnage of war, veterans' advocates and military doctors say.
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December 16, 2004
An Interview with Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader ran as an independent candidate in 2004 for US President. Unlike both John Kerry and George W. Bush, Nader unequivocally opposed the US invasion of Iraq.
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December 16, 2004
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Terrorist
People can get astonishingly sensitive when they discuss moral issues.
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December 15, 2004
Proof of Ohio Election Fraud Exposed
Among activists and investigators looking into allegations of vote fraud in the 2004 Presidential election, the company always mentioned was Diebold and its suspicious electronic touch-screen voting machines.
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December 15, 2004
Lawmaker Seeks Inquiry Into Ohio Vote
The ranking Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, plans to ask the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a county prosecutor in Ohio today to explore "inappropriate and likely illegal election tampering" in at least one and perhaps several Ohio counties.
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December 15, 2004
American democracy hangs by a thread in Ohio
As the whole world watches, American democracy may be hanging by a thread in Ohio.
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December 15, 2004
An Ode to Celebrate Mark Merin and the Notorious WalMart 8
This is an ode to celebrate Mark and the notorious WalMart 8.
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December 15, 2004
Conyers "prepared" to contest Ohio Electoral Vote
The ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee told us tonight on Countdown that he and others in Congress are considering formally challenging the slate of electors who cast Ohio’s votes, when those votes are opened and counted
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December 14, 2004
Global alarm over 'disappearing dollar'
What's up with the "disappearing dollar"?
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December 14, 2004
Startling new revelations highlight rare Congressional hearings on Ohio
Startling new revelations about Ohio's presidential vote have been uncovered as Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee join Rev. Jesse Jackson in Columbus, the state capital, on Monday, Dec. 13, to hold a rare field hearing into election malfeasance and manipulation in the 2004 vote.
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December 14, 2004
Ohio Recount: County Election Board Chair Disputes comments from spokesperson for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell
Yesterday, I reported on a phone interview with Carlo LoParo, a spokesperson for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.
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December 13, 2004
Way to Go, Ohio
On Monday, December 6, my wife Carrie and I, accompanied by a local ABC cameraman and a local radio talk show host, attempted to deliver a letter to the Secretary of State of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell.
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December 13, 2004
The Greene County Lockdown
There are people out there who think we are crazy, who think we are bitter-enders, sore losermen, conspiracy theorists and tinfoil hatters.
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December 13, 2004
Gary Webb: a Great Reporter
News came over the weekend that Gary Webb had died Friday from a gunshot wound to the head in his home in Sacramento, California.
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December 13, 2004
Xenia-phobia
SECAUCUS - If the subject weren’t so serious, the clunky maneuverings of John Kerry and Kenneth Blackwell would make for a nice modernized version of the Keystone Kops, or maybe Gilbert & Sullivan.
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December 13, 2004
Ohio Secretary of State's Office Responds
Carlo LoParo, a spokesperson for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, contacted this reporter to address comments made in my article from yesterday 12/12/04, 'Strange and suspicious behavior regarding the election and recounts from Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell'.
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December 12, 2004
For Some, the Race Remains Far from Over
Most have moved on since Nov. 2. But thousands continue to contest the presidential election results, with efforts focused on Ohio.
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December 12, 2004
GOP Strongholds Saw Increase in Voting Machines
At first, Eric Davies didn't mind waiting more than four hours to vote on Nov. 2. It was encouraging to see such strong voter turnout, he says.
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December 12, 2004
U.S. Soldiers' Grilling Fields
WASHINGTON - David Qualls reluctantly returned to Iraq yesterday, but not before he made a louder statement about the state of U.S. troop morale than any of the pointed questions from soldiers to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld this week.
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December 12, 2004
Fear and Loathing in Iraq 12 Dec 04
Hello everyone! Sorry for the long delay in writing, but things here have been very, very hectic and I didn’t have quality time to sit down and write. And even when I did have a spare few minutes, I actually didn’t feel like writing.
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December 10, 2004
Doubts Persist about Election Results
As the Electoral College prepares to certify President Bush's re-election on Monday, concerns persist about the integrity of the nation's voting system - particularly in Ohio, where details continue to emerge of technology failures, voter confusion and overcrowded polling stations in minority and poor neighborhoods.
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December 10, 2004
Was The 2004 Election Legitimate?
Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee host a public hearing on the 2004 elections addressing allegations of widespread problems, irregularities and, possibly, tampering with the voting process, in the key state of Ohio. We speak with one John Bonifaz of the National Voting Institute who testified at the hearing.
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December 10, 2004
Don't Be Left Behind
Have you heard of the Left Behind books?
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December 10, 2004
Discontent Plaguing Military
Washington - Soldiers always gripe. But confronting the defense secretary, filing a lawsuit over extended tours and refusing to go on a mission because it's too dangerous elevate complaining to a new level.
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December 8, 2004
Deserters: We Won't Go to Iraq
The Pentagon says more than 5,500 servicemen have deserted since the war started in Iraq.
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December 7, 2004
Timid Kerry Stopped Counting Too Soon
I'm sorry I didn't vote for Ralph Nader.
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December 7, 2004
People vs. Empire
In India, the word public is now a Hindi word. It means people. In Hindi, we have sarkar and public, the government and the people.
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December 7, 2004
Hyping Terror For Fun, Profit - And Power
What if there really was no need for much - or even most - of the Cold War? What if, in fact, the Cold War had been kept alive for two decades based on phony WMD threats?
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December 6, 2004
Going Down
Americans long ago became accustomed to the pleasing notion that there is nothing quite so sound as the dollar.
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November 12, 2004
Worst Voter Error Is Apathy toward Irregularities
Is anyone surprised that accusations of voter disenfranchisement and irregularities abound after the most passionately contested presidential campaign in memory? Is anybody stunned that the mainstream media appear largely unconcerned?
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November 12, 2004
CIA Critic of U.S. War on Terror Resigns
A CIA analyst who wrote a book that criticized the U.S. war on terror has resigned from the spy agency after it effectively banned him from publicly discussing his views, his publicist said on Thursday.
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November 11, 2004
Recounts and Retractions
John Kerry or no John Kerry, there could still be recounts in Ohio and New Hampshire— courtesy of the two candidates who got far more grief than votes during the presidential campaign.
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November 11, 2004
Green & Libertarian Presidential Candidates To Demand Ohio Recount
David Cobb and Michael Badnarik, the 2004 presidential candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties, today announced their intentions to file a formal demand for a recount of the presidential ballots cast in Ohio.
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November 8, 2004
Hell to Pay
Whoever wins, the road ahead in Iraq is rough. Both Bush and Kerry have plans that depend on newly trained Iraqis. But insurgents are killing recruits, and infiltrating the forces. A report from the front.
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November 1, 2004
FBI Investigates Halliburton's No-Bid Contracts
The FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co., seeking an interview with a top Army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices.
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October 31, 2004
Decision 2004: Fear Fatigue vs. Sheer Fatigue
John Kerry is a flip-flopper. He's "French." Whether he's asserting his non-girlie-boy bona fides by riding a Harley onto Jay Leno's set, "reporting for duty" at the Democratic convention or hunting geese in Ohio, he comes off like a second-rung James Brolin auditioning for a Levitra ad.
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October 31, 2004
Colin Powell Believes U.S. is Losing Iraq War
Secretary of State Colin Powell has privately confided to friends in recent weeks that the Iraqi insurgents are winning the war, according to Newsweek.
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October 31, 2004
Resolution by election? Don't count on it
Fear and loathing are so intense in this campaign, one almost expects the "blood-red moon" of the Apocalypse to rise over the Republic on election eve.
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October 31, 2004
It goes deeper than Bush
What better time than the eve of the American presidential election to wonder whether those of us who have been critical of George W. Bush have not missed a larger issue: The problem may not be him alone but America itself.
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October 31, 2004
Fear and Loathing in Iraq
Hello everyone, Happy Halloween! and welcome to another week of Fear and Loathing in Iraq.
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October 31, 2004
Here's Hoping for Chaos on Tuesday
Part of me perversely hopes that Tuesday's election is a replay of 2000.
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October 30, 2004
Experts expect the Northwest to feel the heat as Earth warms
Nearly four dozen experts on global warming and its effects say the Pacific Northwest is likely to be hard-hit by a changing climate over the next few decades.
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October 29, 2004
Video shows cache of explosives
A video made by a television crew that was with U.S. troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
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October 28, 2004
Jon Stewart vs. the Political Pundits
We're supposed to live in a "beacon of democracy," with a highly developed political system that makes us the envy of the world.
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October 28, 2004
White House of Horrors
Dick Cheney peaked too soon. We've still got a few days left until Halloween.
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October 28, 2004
"It Will Be Worse Than in 2000"
Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has devoted his life to civil rights and voting rights issues.
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October 28, 2004
African America to the Rescue
Well here we are again, broke down and miles from nowhere. Every day eventually turns into night and we're in the dark part of it now. I often wonder, if it were not for African Americans would we have any civil rights at all?
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October 27, 2004
Will There Be A War Against The World After November 2?
There is a surreal quality about visiting the United States in the last days of the presidential campaign.
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October 27, 2004
New Florida Vote Scandal Feared
A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.
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October 27, 2004
Seymour Hersh: Man On Fire
An interview with Seymour Hersh is never dull – to put it mildly. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist can be contentious, just as willing to challenge a question as answer it.
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October 27, 2004
Postal Experts Hunt for Missing Ballots in Florida
U.S. Postal Service investigators on Wednesday were trying to find thousands of absentee ballots that should have been delivered to voters in one of Florida's most populous counties, officials said.
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October 27, 2004
The GOP's Shameful Vote Strategy
With Election Day almost upon us, it's not clear whether President Bush is running a campaign or plotting a coup d'etat.
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October 26, 2004
The Specter of '94
If John Kerry is elected president on Nov. 2, he will face an obstacle just down the street that could prove as formidable as Iraq: the United States House of Representatives.
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October 26, 2004
Karl Rove: America's Mullah
This election is about Rovism, and the outcome threatens to transform the U.S. into an ironfisted theocracy.
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October 26, 2004
Bush’s War Against the Military
George W. Bush so often invokes his nominal title of “commander in chief” at veterans’ rallies, on military bases and during presidential debates that he now appears like some latter-day caudillo. But his claims to be a commander of any kind in any serious way are a figment of his imagination.
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October 26, 2004
The Man Behind the Oval Office Curtain
Can this nation survive four more years of Dick Cheney running the show? Probably, but it is a risk that few thoughtful Americans, conservatives included, should want to take.
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October 26, 2004
The White House Wasn't Always God's House
The founding fathers did not mention God in the Constitution, and the faithful often regarded our early presidents as insufficiently pious.
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October 26, 2004
Students poised to flock to the polls
America's college kids are digging politics again, eager to turn the country on its head.
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October 26, 2004
The Coming Post-Election Chaos
This next presidential election, on November 2, may be followed by post-election chaos unlike any we've ever known.
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October 24, 2004
Beyond the Call of Duty
In February 2003, less than a month before the U.S. invaded Iraq, Bunnatine (Bunny) Greenhouse walked into a Pentagon meeting and with a quiet comment started what could be the end of her career.
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October 24, 2004
Fear and Loathing in Iraq
Here is part II of my trip to Kenya, followed by the happenings here in Failureland.
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October 22, 2004
The Democratic Party: an Advanced State of Decay
Let's hedge this with all the usual qualifiers. Kerry could pull it out. The spread's within the margin of error.
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October 21, 2004
Compromise, Hell!
We are destroying our country -- I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction.
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October 18, 2004
Fiscal Ruin on the Horizon
It's not true that people in Washington can't agree about anything. Across the policy spectrum, there's a clear recognition that the present path of budget-making is unsustainable -- in fact, ruinous.
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October 18, 2004
A Republican Declares His Independence
When in the course of a lifetime, it becomes necessary for a born Republican to refuse to support the re-election of the party's incumbent president, to exercise his discretion, and in all good conscience, to vote for an opponent (even a Democrat), a decent respect to the opinions of his fellows requires that he declare the causes that impel him to switch.
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October 17, 2004
Fear and Loathing in Iraq
Hello everyone, long time no write! I have been away for about a month on R&R in Kenya, and now that I have returned to the Babylon desert of Hell I figured it was time to get back to letting everyone know how I am doing and what is going on.
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September 14, 2004
The Dead End of ABB