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How Congress Will End the Occupation

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By David Swanson

Public pressure on Congress to end the occupation of Iraq resulted in a fundamental breakthrough on July 19th when 70 congress members sent a letter to the president. The key sentence in the letter was the first one:

“We are writing to inform you that we will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of all our troops out of Iraq before you leave office.”

Now, read more

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More on Conyers from Mark Solomon

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By David Swanson

The Portside listserve, whose moderators have chosen to send out several articles over the past few weeks criticizing those activists who sat in at Congressman John Conyers’ office on July 23rd to demand impeachment, today sent out a lengthy article by Mark Solomon.

Three-quarters of the article simply recounted Conyers’ record of service in Congress, hitting only the positive notes. The rest of the article is quoted below with commentary:

More than a year ago, Conyers read more

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A Word from Congressman Nadler's Predecessor

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By David Swanson

Former members of the House Judiciary Committee often have excellent advice for current members. Former Congresswoman Liz Holtzman, who served on the committee when it passed articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, has published a book and spoken at numerous events arguing for the impeachment of President George W. Bush.

As far as I know, nobody has heard lately from former Congressman Don Edwards. He was the chair of the subcommittee on civil and constitutional read more

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It Really Is a Democratic Congress

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By David Swanson

Should it go without saying that the current Congress is Democratic? The Democrats have the majority, control the agenda, and chair and hold a majority on every committee. But does that make the Congress Democratic?

Liberal commentators averse to criticizing Speaker Nancy Pelosi have begun flailing around for a reasonable explanation for the behavior of her Congress. Matt Stoller has latched onto the idea that, even though there are more Democrats in the House than Republicans, read more

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Family Tradition

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By David Swanson

With thanks and a toast to Hank Williams Jr.

Compassionate conservatives have been a real close family,
But lately some of my kinfolks have disowned a few others and me.
I guess it’s because I kind of changed my direction.
Lord I guess I went and broke their family tradition.

They get on me and want to know, Dubya, why don’t you think? Why are you such a dope?
Why must you live out the plans that PNAC wrote?
Over and over everybody feels my inflictions.
read more

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Electoral, Media, and Family Traditions

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By David Swanson

If NPR, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox had provided the storyline for the 1808 U.S. presidential election, it would have looked something like this.

On the one hand you would have had a Southern, militaristic, tall, large, religious good old boy who would have been fun to have a beer with and would not have put on any high fallutin’ airs. On the other side of the stage you would have had a candidate who occasionally got off a good sound bite, but who had the freedom to do so because read more

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Resistance of One

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By David Swanson

There is something else we can try. If you’ve given up on staging marches and rallies, or if – like me – you haven’t but you want to try something else as well, and if you’ve given up on lobbying Congress as pointless, or if – like me – you haven’t but you want to try something else as well, and if educating your fellow citizens as to exactly how completely corrupt the whole system is seems like an incomplete answer, and if staging a general strike read more

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Chris Cillizza's Twisted Logic Does Triple Contortion in Today's Washington Post

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Cillizza lists Dennis Kucinich as one of the winners of the AFL-CIO debate and writes:

Give Kucinich his due: he was great last night. Of course, unlike the rest of the candidates on stage, Kucinich is not bound by concerns over saying something that might make him unelectable in a primary or general election. His miniscule chance of winning frees him to speak his mind on the war in Iraq, NAFTA, health care and anything else he is asked about. Kucinich continues to play the happy warrior in this read more

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