Saturday, June 13, 2009

'Emergent Church' v. Fundamentalism

By the Rev. Howard Bess
June 13, 2009

Three weeks ago I wrote a column about the emergent churches in America. I wrote the column as a report, not as an opinion. I credited Professor Scott McKnight of North Park University in Chicago and cited his eight characteristics of the emergent church.

Read on.

The Silence About Guns

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
June 13, 2009

You know by now that in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, an elderly white supremacist and anti-Semite named James W. von Brunn allegedly walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with a .22-caliber rifle and killed a security guard before being brought down himself.

Read on.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Computer Piloting & Air France Crash

By William John Cox
June 12, 2009

How the Air France Flight 447’s Airbus A330 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean remains a mystery, but what is known is that Airbus’ heavy reliance on computerized piloting has a history of some bizarre or unexplained crashes when the technology failed, misread the circumstances, or complicated efforts by human pilots to react to an emergency.

Read on.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Two Key Health-Care Numbers

By Robert Parry
June 11, 2009

To understand the financial stakes involved in the battle over U.S. health-care reform, it’s useful to keep two numbers in mind: 50 million and 119 million.

Read on.

Obama Aids Bush's Torture Cover-up

By Jason Leopold
June 11, 2009

By opposing release of photographic and other evidence of prisoner abuse, President Barack Obama is furthering a long-running cover-up that has protected senior Bush administration officials who set the harsh interrogation policies that led to torture and other misconduct.

Read on.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

GOP's Civil Liberties Hypocrisy

By Nat Parry
June 10, 2009 (Originally posted April 20, 2009)

Editor's Note: Amid a surge of right-wing terrorism and intimidation -- including the murder of a Kansas abortion doctor and a fatal assault on Washington's Holocaust Museum -- we are re-posting an article from April that examined the Republican fury over a Homeland Security report that warned of exactly such possibilities:

Just as Republicans have refashioned themselves as fiscal conservatives in the age of Obama, apparently forgetting that they allowed a budget surplus to be transformed into a record deficit while George W. Bush was President, they now seem to be taking up the cause of civil liberties – at least as far as right-wing groups are concerned.

Read on.

Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess

By Robert Parry
June 10, 2009

Some people say that George W. Bush didn’t solve any national problems during his eight years in office, but that’s not exactly right.

Read on.

America's Toxic 'Innocence'

By Phil Rockstroh
June 10, 2009

Even as President Barrack Obama waxed eloquent in Cairo, Egypt, on the moral imperatives of the community of nations, public opinion polls released in the United States revealed that, by a substantial percentage, its citizens believe torture is an acceptable option for interrogation of suspects deemed terrorists by various U.S. governmental agencies.

Read on.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

CIA Shifts Reasons for Torture Secrets

By Jason Leopold
June 10, 2009

Last month, the CIA told a federal court judge it could not abide by a court order and turn over detailed documents about the destruction of 92 interrogation videotapes because it would compromise the integrity of a special prosecutor’s criminal investigation into the matter.

Read on.

Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed

By Robert Parry
June 9, 2009

An “era” used to last, but not so much anymore. We’ve already heard GOP Chairman Michael Steele proclaim that “the era of apologizing for Republican mistakes” was over (when many of us didn’t know it had begun), and now it appears that Barack Obama’s era of openness has closed, too.

Read on.

Monday, June 08, 2009

Al Qaeda Adjusts to Obama

By Ivan Eland
June 8, 2009

Fearing a new, more formidable opponent than the often buffoonish and macho cowboy George W. Bush, the two leaders of al Qaeda have tag teamed Barack Obama with twin audiotapes condemning him.

Read on.

Bush/Cheney Pushed Torture on DOJ

By Jason Leopold
June 8, 2009

In 2005, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales bent to demands from President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to push through new legal opinions sanctioning harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects, according to e-mails written by then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey.

Read on.

Two Colombian Generals Face Charges

By Sherwood Ross
June 8, 2009

Two Colombian generals, both of whom received training at the U.S. Army's "School of The Americas"(SOA) at Ft. Benning, Ga., have been accused by authorities there of crimes involving narcotics and collaborating with criminal paramilitary groups, according to a report in the June 15th issue of The Nation magazine.

Read on.