Saturday, July 25, 2009

Obama's Health-Care 'Waterloo'

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
July 25, 2009

Push finally came to shove in Washington this week as the battle for health care escalated from scattered sniper fire into all-out combat. If it all seems to be getting more and more confusing, join the club. It's hard to see what's happening through all the gun smoke.

Read on.

US Has New Plan to Hold Afghan Youth

By Jason Leopold
July 25, 2009

Faced with impending defeat in a U.S. District Court habeas corpus case, the Obama administration devised a new strategy for continuing the detention of Mohammed Jawad, an Afghani who may have been as young as 12 in 2002 when he allegedly wounded two U.S. soldiers with a grenade.

Read on.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Recalling the Downing Street Minutes

By Ray McGovern
July 24, 2009

Seven years ago this week, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair gathered his top national security advisers at 10 Downing St. to hear a report from U.K. intelligence chief Richard Dearlove, just back in London from face-to-face talks with then-CIA Director George Tenet in Washington.

Read on.

Spinning Health Reform to Death

By Norman Solomon
July 24, 2009

"I want to cover everybody," President Obama said at his news conference Wednesday night. "Now, the truth is that unless you have a - what's called a single-payer system, in which everybody's automatically covered, then you're probably not going to reach every single individual ..."

Read on.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

WPost Writer Weeps Again for the CIA

By Melvin A. Goodman
July 24, 2009

David Ignatius, the mainstream media’s leading apologist for the Central Intelligence Agency, has written another exculpatory brief for the CIA.

Read on.

Dallas: Into the Belly of the Beast

Ray McGovern
July 23, 2009

The hellish-hot weather persuaded me that I was wise to ignore the caution expressed by a close friend who grew up in Dallas, as I set off to give talks there. Better wear a bulletproof vest, he told me.

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The Censored Health-Care Option

By David Swanson
July 23, 2009

President Obama said on Tuesday night:

Read on.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Obama Lawyers Shield Cheney on Leak

By Jason Leopold
July 22, 2009

The Obama administration asserted a legal argument that a federal judge called the Jon Stewart “Daily Show exemption,” as the Justice Department continued a court fight to protect ex-Vice President Dick Cheney from disclosures about his role in the leak of a CIA officer’s identity six years ago.

Read on.

Christ's Teachings v. US Health Care

By The Rev. Howard Bess
July 21, 2009

In the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John, the writer tells the story of a man that had been crippled for 38 years. Jesus asked him a simple question: “Do you want to be healed?” Jesus told him to stand up and walk, and so he did.

Read on.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Making Sense of Cheney's Madness

By Ivan Eland
July 21, 2009

The seeming irrationality behind the George W. Bush administration’s “against the grain” (and the law) policies on torture, warrantless domestic surveillance, and now notification of Congress about CIA covert operations was not irrational at all.

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GOP & KAL007: 'The Key Is to Lie First'

By Robert Parry
July 20, 2009 (Originally posted in 1998)

It's not entirely clear when the Republican Party made disinformation a political weapon of choice.

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To Save the Republic, Tax the Rich?

By Robert Parry
July 20, 2009

For all the laid-off “Joe the Plumbers” who share the Right’s fury about the “class warfare” of imposing higher taxes on millionaires, there is this hard truth: the rich don’t need as many of you as they once did – and taxing the rich may be the only way to make the economic system work for you.

Read on.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Cronkite's Unintended Legacy

By Robert Parry
July 19, 2009

With his measured calm and seriousness of purpose, Walter Cronkite set a high standard for television journalism that has rarely been met since his retirement in 1981. But the legendary CBS anchorman who died Friday also may have unintentionally contributed to the American Left’s dangerous complacency about media.

Read on.