Political Ideas

By David Swanson

If you’re paying attention, you know that no more evidence is needed to prosecute and convict our top national torturers, murderers, war mongers, eavesdroppers, and election riggers. If you want to protest our nation’s descent into open lawlessness, by no means delay. If you’re not planning on going to church on May 31st, for godsake don’t. But if you are planning to attend a church that day, and if more torture read more

By David Swanson

One of the best books published in Canada last year is one of the best books published in the United States thus far this year: “The Sun Climbs Slow: The International Criminal Court and the Struggle for Justice,” by Erna Paris.

It’s appropriate for this story to come to us from our northern neighbor. This is largely a history of the development of international law, culminating in the surprising success of the creation of an international criminal court (ICC). read more

By David Swanson

Philip Zelikow may be best known as the guy who oversaw the 9-11 Commission’s utter failure to investigate George W. Bush’s criminal negligence in the lead up to September 11, 2001. He also directed the Carter-Baker commission on elections that led to the Help America Vote Act, which in turn led to the most high-tech but least credible system of elections yet devised and the dubious and disastrous outcome of the 2004 presidential contest.

Zelikow served on Bush’s read more

Audio clips:

Main 41:54 22.3 meg . Q&A 21.5 meg

Amherst Women In Black and Progressive Democrats of America present a conversation with John Bonifaz and David Swanson.

Is it still a crime if a President does it? If Obama keeps the powers Bush seized, what powers do we have? If war criminals walk, what will prevent war crimes?

http://www.activeingredients.org

By David Swanson

While much of elite US punditry is backing away from torture, Jeff Jacoby is claiming to have opposed it but to now find it excusable. His Boston Globe column takes a very “balanced” approach. He both opposes torture under all circumstances AND excuses it given the current circumstances:

“I contended that the cruel abuse of terrorist detainees was something we could never countenance – not just because torture is illegal, unreliable, and a threat to the read more

By David Swanson

On August 1, 2002, then-Assistant Attorney General of the United States Jay Bybee sent an 18-page official memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel to the Acting General Counsel of the CIA John Rizzo. Such memos are treated as laws within our government, not opinions, not theories, not briefings, but laws. They are secret laws, but in many cases there’s not much risk of us ordinary schmucks who don’t know the laws violating them, at least not without also violating read more

By David Swanson

If you missed Tuesday’s press conference at the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs got himself into some trouble, and it all started with those two little syllables:

“Helen.”

Upon which Helen Thomas one again abandoned propriety and asked an actual question:

“Why is the President blocking habeas corpus from prisoners at Bagram? I thought he taught constitutional law. And these prisoners have been there –“

Here’s where Gibbs stepped in read more

UPDATE: Someone pointed out to me that the cartoon does not necessarily show deficits going down, so this is a better first paragraph than the original below:

You ran a cartoon on Tax Day April 15th depicting former president Ronald Reagan reducing spending by reducing taxes and President Obama increasing taxes by increasing spending. The latter might prove true, but is a prediction, and thus far Obama has proposed lowering taxes for 95 percent of us. The former is simply not true. Reagan cut read more

By David Swanson

Good news is being taken as bad. Vermont constituents of Senator Patrick Leahy report that he’s finding very little support for his proposed truth and reconciliation commission from Republicans or Democrats in the Senate. Numerous people have taken this as bad news and cause to despair. I disagree. Here are ten reasons why.

1. The idea was never reconciliation with Iraqis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, torture victims, spying victims, victims of political prosecutions, read more

Former U.S. Official Arrested in Italy
By P.V. Maro,

ROME ( ) – John C. Yoo, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States, was arrested on Tuesday in Milan, Italy, and is being held for possible extradition to Spain, where he and five other retired officials who served under former President George W. Bush are expected to be indicted by a Spanish court for violations of the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal read more

No, he’s NOT the president of Venezuela. 

Yes, he was the man who popularized the slogan "Yes, we can!"  Only he said "Si’ se puede!" 

Cesar Chavez, American young people should know, was an American who 40 years ago was inspiring young people to work long, hard hours for social justice.  And not only did they do so in great numbers, but they actually achieved social justice, they won victories that kept them going.  And many of them are read more

By David Swanson

President Obama has once again chosen neither to veto a bill nor to sign and execute it, but rather to imitate Bush by signing the bill and announcing that he will violate a portion of the new law:

Section 8203 of the Act provides that the Secretary of the Interior shall appoint certain members of the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor Commission “based on recommendations from each member of the House of Representatives, the district of which encompasses the Corridor.” read more

The Duke Law School Blog just coughed up this airball:

“Whatever else we might say about the signing statement that President Obama issued, each of its objections could be raised by a President who disagrees with [the] expansive theory of presidential power that the Bush Administration accepted.”

That shot is rejected by a review of the objections Obama raised. No doubt Obama describes his expansive theory of presidential power read more

By David Swanson

Obama’s Thursday “town hall” featuring questions submitted online produced some interesting comments from our president. In response to a question from college students he explained that making student loans directly from the government, without passing them through banks and giving profits to banks from public money, makes more sense. But he claimed that giving far more money than we’ve ever loaned to students to banks in hopes that they will loan it to read more

By David Swanson

Obama’s “town hall” featuring questions submitted online produced some interesting comments from our president. In response to a question from college students he explained that making student loans directly, without passing them through banks and giving profits to banks from public money, makes more sense. But he claimed that giving far more money than we’ve ever loaned to students to banks to loan to businesses is the only way to save our economy.

I missed read more

By David Swanson

It’s just spring, when the world is puddle-wonderful, and your representative and your two senators pack up their lingerie and come dancing from hop-scotch and toy soldiers to make the trek outside the Beltway for a well-earned vacation sponsored by corporations completely indifferent to legislative news and dedicated to appreciation of nature’s bounty in this season of new birth — er, I mean, to begin a District Work Period dedicated to discovering exactly read more

By David Swanson

(In which I scientifically prove the outcome of the NCAA tournament, sort of.)

Maybe they should call it ESP and drop the N. Apparently it’s possible — at least in basketball — to predict the future with significant, though far from perfect, accuracy, by being very familiar with the type of event being predicted, and without necessarily understanding how you do it. A recent study by neuroscientists, of which I have only read this read more