Policy Differences or Crimes?
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Fantasy Finance and Real Fixes
By David Swanson
If you’re like me you find it at least a bit disturbing that we’re giving trillions of dollars to save the economy to the very people who wrecked it, and more disturbing that we’re doing so without any solid basis for expecting to get much of it back and without making fundamental changes to prevent a repetition. But if you’re like me, you also aren’t 100 percent certain how a credit default swap works with a cubed collateralized debt obligation,
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The Cheney Channel
By David Swanson
An association representing top advertisers on broadcast and cable television has proposed the creation of a new Cheney Channel dedicated exclusively to the Cheney family, the primary motivation apparently being to get Dick and Liz off all the other channels where their presence seems to be hurting the sales of advertised products.
OK, not really, but it wouldn’t surprise me. One of the products that Liz Cheney seems to be hurting is in fact Dick. Ray McGovern just pointed
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Does Cheney Make Obama Look Good Enough?
By David Swanson
Dick Cheney could make anyone look decent, honorable, and law-abiding by comparison. But is the existence of someone worse, no matter how many hours our media monopoly gives him, enough to make Obama’s decisions acceptable? Let’s look at their pair of speeches given on Thursday in Washington, D.C., and depicted as a debate by the media.
President Obama began speaking at 10:28 a.m., 18 minutes late, and spoke until 35 minutes after Cheney’s scheduled start, but
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Priorities
By David Swanson
Is it important to counter the CIA’s lies about what it told a handful of congress members when? Of course it is. It’s important to expose every bit of the secrecy imposed by all agencies and departments of what we still rather goofily call the “executive” branch. This is a branch of government that has openly flouted subpoenas for years, and assisted others in doing so. The chairman of the senate judiciary committee is now afraid to subpoena Jay Bybee,
Too Slow Zelikow: UVA Backs Torture
By David Swanson
If I could feel more shame over my country’s torture it would be over my university’s support for torture. The University of Virginia, which has long paid its employees poverty wages while increasingly becoming a major partner of the U.S. military and its “intelligence” operations, nonetheless still holds for me an image of individual honor and principle. I still imagine that UVA students and professors, staff and alumni, can be expected not to stoop to
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George and the Water Board
By David Swanson
George W. Bush has been compared to Curious George the monkey for many years, but the comparison didn’t quite fit until now. Every Curious George story must include these plot elements:
1. The man with the yellow hat shows George something irresistible, asks him to leave it alone, and then wanders off.
2. George resists everything except temptation and causes all kinds of trouble.
3. Someone makes the bizarre claim that George has done more good than harm, gives
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Holder's Plans As Clear As Gonzales' Memory
"I don’t recall" is now "that would depend." While then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, when testifying before Congress, was oddly unable to remember anything prior to that morning’s breakfast, now Attorney General Eric Holder is oddly unable to forecast what, if anything, he will do to hold government officials accountable to the rule of law.
On Thursday, Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Congressman Brad Sherman asked Holder what he would
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76 Members of Congress Oppose Staying in Afghanistan Forever
By David Swanson
Imagine if Spain indicts Gonzales, Bybee, Haynes, Yoo, Addington, and Feith, but the United States fails to extradite them and in fact appears guilty of having harbored and possibly even employed them at good salaries. Then suppose — use your imagination! — that Spain invades and occupies the United States. Now, imagine that seven years later we still aren’t happy with being occupied by Spain, and the people of Spain oppose their own government’s crimes
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Dear Media, Now That You're Connecting Torture to War, Can We Talk?
By David Swanson
Dear Producers and Editors,
Now that you’re beginning to talk about the fact that our country tortured people in order to elicit war rationales, can we talk for a minute? I’d like to point a few things out that you can verify without spending a dime on investigative reporting. First, we now know that we tortured in hopes of producing justifications for a war. Let’s suppose that this was done in “good faith” and that the lies al Libi told to stop
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