When Woolsey Met Harman

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As I sit waiting to fly out of LAX, secure in the knowledge that while most of our money is going into the greatest effort the world has ever seen to make most of its people hate a particular nation, everyone around me has had to take off their coats and shoes and display their toothpaste, except for the people living on the streets of Los Angeles who aren’t part of the airport traveling world, and — this ought to help things — Lynn Woolsey came to this city yesterday to support read more

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Movement Music

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By David Swanson

“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution,” said Emma Goldman, who might also have said “If we don’t dance, not enough people will work long and hard enough in our revolution.” This is one of the two most useful quotes for Americans right now, the other being another remark by Emma Goldman: “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”

But when people ask you, as they tend to ask you, “Shouldn’t read more

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MLK vs War Funding

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Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr.

We do remember that you said this:

"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift read more

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What Trumka SHOULD Threaten

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Every election cycle, the labor movement alone dumps enough money into the corporate media through the campaigns and PACs that it could have instead created a new television network that would actually report the news all year long through every future election cycle.  Rather than threatening to possibly not succeed in persuading working people to vote for corporate candidates, Trumka should threaten to defund the corporate media election bonanza and give us real news.

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A Fable for Our Time

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By David Swanson

Several years ago we started a community garden where I live. We worked at it quite energetically. We got more and more people involved. Much of the hardest work involved digging irrigation ditches to bring water to the soil.

We made progress slowly. We brought water to little corners of the garden. But the work was exhausting, and some people burned out and needed to take a break. Usually they’d be back within a year and working shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of read more

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AUDIO: The Peter B Collins Show With David Swanson

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David Swanson on the imperial presidency, Kate Hanni on flyers’ rights. Swanson is the tireless activist whose resume includes ACORN, Kucinich for President 2004, Democrats.com, AfterDowningStreet.org, impeachpac.org and the latest, defundwar.org His new book, Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union details the expansion of executive power advance by Bush and maintained by Obama, and singles out Congress for failing to assert read more

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Jobs Available Selling Progressive Books

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From Sullivan Street Press

We received lots of responses to our Jobs for Book Lovers

January 12, 2010 by Deborah Emin  
Filed under On The Road

But we are not finished yet. We want to encourage as many as possible to see the value in becoming a Bookie. Selling books in your community is not just a job but a way to keep this very fragile democracy alive. While the right wing tries to dumb everything down, we need to make sure the independent presses and the voices they support are able to survive.

After a couple of weeks of blogging here about our read more

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Good News: Will We Hear It?

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By David Swanson

Whenever I write about U.S. politics, people ask me “Don’t you have any good news?” (Unless the Republicans are in power, in which case people ask me “Who are you going to vote for?”) But I do have good news, boatloads of good news, if Americans want to hear it.

If a city or state next to yours were to achieve a dramatic breakthrough for democratic representation, environmental sustainability, healthcare, education, peace, or justice, wouldn’t read more

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End the Filibuster

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YouTube Doubler

It’s time for the Senate to abolish the filibuster.

The filibuster is undemocratic and contradicts the core principle that legislation should become law by majority vote. The mere threat of a filibuster can bring the business of the Senate and the American people to a halt.

The filibuster allows a minority of 41 Senators to block the will of 59 Senators. Even when 60 Senators support a bill, the 60th Senator can hold the bill hostage to individual demands that can warp important legislation.

We read more

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Bring Back the Signing Statement

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By David Swanson

Having denounced for years the presidential practice of altering laws with signing statements, I now want the practice restored, because the current president has created something even worse.

When Bush and Cheney left the White House, they left in place five general ways to make laws: instruct Congress what to do, rewrite what Congress does with a signing statement, by-pass Congress with an executive order (or executive decree, or unratified treaty), by-pass everybody with a secret read more

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Voices and Vision

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By John Starkey, Host of “Voices and Vision”

On “Voices and Vision” at 6 pm Tuesday, Jan. 12, KOWS 107.3 FM, I will be talking with David Swanson, about his exciting new book, Daybreak, and his appearance in Santa Rosa Wednesday, described below. At about 7pm I’ll be joined by KOWS’ favorite singer-songwriter, Teresa Tudury to discuss her life in music and her hot new CD, “Such Fine Things.” Teresa is West County’s witty, articulate host read more

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FOIA Request Filed for OPR Report on Bush's Lawyers

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An organization of attorneys, journalists, and advocates today filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act requesting the long-suppressed report from the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) regarding the conduct of President Bush’s top lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel who authored memos purporting to authorize torture and aggressive war.

The request, reproduced below along with a transmittal letter, asks for the OPR report that has long read more

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