By David Swanson

Let me get this straight. The Senate will pass a public option if the House will. And the House will, because it already did. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t allow it. So the mortal enemy of public-option backers is . . . Dennis Kucinich.

Why? Because when Congressman Kucinich said he'd stand for a public option he stupidly thought he was supposed to mean it.

Let's review a brief history of the disease known as "health insurance reform."

By David Swanson

While new disclosure laws on corporate political spending are not needed to see the forest, they may be required for seeing the trees. Knowing which corporations funded what won't, on its own, end or reduce the corruption. And the big picture of corporate spending cannot easily be hidden. Already, pre-Citizens United, it dominated Washington. And the threat alone of massively increased spending is corrupting Washington further already. But those who, for various reasons, think we need to see the details, or would be helped by seeing the details, require new legislation.

By David Swanson

As long as we're going to dump most of our money into wars and the military and Wall Street and health insurance bailouts, students are going to have to go into debt to afford college. But it would cost the students less and the government less, if private companies were not permitted to act as middlemen profiting off public loans to students.

To the tune of Maggie's Farm

I ain't gonna buy mandated health insurance
No, I aint gonna buy mandated health insurance
Well, I wake up and I'm coughing
Feel my sides and moan in pain
I got declined for operations
And it's drivin' me insane
It's a shame the way we treat the working poor
I ain't gonna be insured no more.

I ain't gonna buy mandated health insurance
No, I aint gonna buy mandated health insurance
Well, it hands you a nickel
That costs you a dime
It'll charge you once
And then two or three more times
Then they fine you every time you slam the door
I ain't gonna be insured no more.

I ain't gonna buy mandated health insurance
No, I aint gonna buy mandated health insurance
The premiums double
While the co-payments rise
Coverage narrows

Click below to check 'em out and order a deck or two.  These are beautiful playing cards, a full deck of 52 plus a joker, information cards, and a box with directions for making a citizen's arrest inside.  You can play any card game and, at the same time, learn a little about the top 53 U.S. war criminals (and what you can do to hold them accountable). Click here:

https://codepink.myshopify.com/products/war-criminal-playing-cards

This project originated 22 months ago when AfterDowningStreet produced a list of the top 50 U.S. war criminals, a thousand voices proposed making a deck of cards, and CODE PINK volunteered to do it.  Some changes have been made to the line-up, however, and you'll have to buy the cards to see who made the final cut.  Below are links to related pages on AfterDowningStreet and CODE PINK:

http://afterdowningstreet.org/warcriminals

http://www.codepinkalert.org/section.php?id=414

By David Swanson

Congressman David Obey (D., Wis.) is the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. He's in charge of spending our money. For years he spent it on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without any resistance.  Until last October, Obey maintained that spending hundreds of billions of our dollars on wars was something he just had no choice about.

By David Swanson

Would the United States military lie about how four Marines were killed? Would abuse continue at Abu Ghraib after the scandal exploded? Any soldier you talk to has a story you may not want to hear. I recently had occasion to speak with two that were particularly troubling.

Part I: Snipers Dead in Ramadi:

Here's a military report from August 2006 on how four Marines died in Iraq in 2004. Christian Lowe, a Marine Corps Times staff writer, tells us:

"It was supposed to be a mission like many they had done in Iraq. Ride the Humvees to a position at a building abutting a busy street in Ramadi. Relieve the four Marines on the roof there. . . .

By David Swanson

Tom Hayden wants peace, but he's sincerely mistaken about how to get it. He claims that Wednesday's unsuccessful vote to end the war in Afghanistan makes ending the war less likely, and that the way to end the war is to pass a bill that would then have to pass the Senate and the President, a bill requiring an exit strategy, any exit strategy -- it could be "redeployment" to Iran in 2038 or anything else.

By David Swanson

Sixty-five congress members, including 60 Democrats and 5 Republicans, voted to end the occupation of Afghanistan on Wednesday. But 356 congress members, including 189 Democrats and 167 Republicans voted to keep the war going. The vote followed three hours of debate created by Congressman Dennis Kucinich's introduction of a privileged resolution.

Go here and join in:
http://afterdowningstreet.org/afghanliveblog

By David Swanson, FreeSpeechForPeople

The damage from the Supreme Court's decision in "Citizens United v. FEC" continues to spread as feared. Newly emboldened corporations are suing to overturn state laws that restrict corporate spending on politics:

"A pro-natural resource development group [how's that for spin?] and a Bozeman painting company asked a Helena District Court on Monday to strike down Montana’s 1912 ban on corporate donations and expenditures to political campaigns to comply with a January U.S. Supreme Court ruling."

By David Swanson

I haven't read Karl Rove's book and don't plan to, but this is what I gather from those who have.

Despite serving on the White House Iraq Group and lying about the war, Rove claims everyone was careful not to overstate or exaggerate.

Despite having routinely told Fox News what the news would be, Rove now blames himself for not being aggressive enough in pushing his lies into the media.

Despite having pushed WMD lies after settling on that as the best approach to creating an already determined war, Rove now pretends that without the WMDs (or belief in them) even Bush wouldn't have wanted to go to war.

Despite exposure of lies tying Iraq to 9-11, Rove is still claiming Iraq-Al Qaeda ties in the book.

By the way, how would you like to give $5 to RealNews.com without having to, you know, give up $5. In fact you can give somebody else's $5 to the Real News by texting the word 'news' to 85944. Try it!

By David Swanson

The tea and coffee parties have cornered the market on vacuous meanness and niceness, respectively.  But brownbagging is where the substance and sustenance are.  Every third Wednesday of the month, those who want war defunded and everything useful funded are bringing brown bag lunches to vigil at their congress member's local office.  This month that means March 17th, St. Patrick's Day.  And that means more than food: Kicking off the Green Beer Party.

By David Swanson
http://afterdowningstreet.org/letstatesdoit

The health insurance bill currently under consideration in Congress would forbid states from providing their residents with healthcare. An amendment correcting that problem was passed in committee last July and then quietly removed. A new campaign is asking the Democrats who voted for that amendment to withhold their votes on the bill until it is reinstated.

By David Swanson

David Cole of Georgetown University and formerly of the Center for Constitutional Rights has been doing some good writing, not only on our failure to enforce laws against powerful people, but also on our out-of-control epidemic of incarceration which has struck those too unimportant to gain immunity.

By David Swanson

At the first of the year, a story hit the news about US-led troops executing 8 handcuffed kids in Afghanistan. I blogged about it. The outrage was tremendous. How dare I comment on such atrocious reporting? Didn't I know the president was now a Democrat and wars were tools of peace? Surely I was just making it all up.

So, I blogged again, citing all the sources of information. Of course, I couldn't know what happened, but the grounds for an investigation were overwhelming. Now Dave Lindorff reports on his efforts to investigate further. And you know how many of those outraged liberals who wanted to better verify the facts have lifted their little finger to look into the matter at all? How many investigations have been conducted or reports produced? How many individuals subpoenaed or prosecuted?

The answer is a measure of what's left of our national decency: ZERO.