by Jacob G. Hornberger
President Bush and his neoconservative supporters were practically teary-eyed on election day in Iraq. No longer did it matter that the weapons of mass destruction that had been used to scare the American people into supporting the war didn’t exist. Or that thousands of U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis were now dead or maimed. Or that ... [click for more]
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
One of the strangest aspects of the investigation into John Kennedys murder was the reaction of federal officials.
Whenever government officials are assassinated, the normal reaction of law enforcement is to pull out all the stops in an attempt to ensure that no one who was involved in the crime escapes punishment.
Yet ... [click for more]
by James Bovard
Many Americans assumed that the Bush administration’s peril to their freedom ended when George Bush exited the White House on January 20, 2009. Unfortunately, the precedents the administration established continue to threaten Americans’ rights and liberties. This is stark on government secrecy.
Shortly after the 2000 election, Vice President-elect Richard Cheney convened a task force on energy policy. After he ... [click for more]
by Jim Powell
Amidst a multitrillion dollar spending spree, President Obama apparently believes it’s inconceivable that a mighty nation such as the United States could go broke.
Yet France, once the most powerful nation in Europe, went broke and was plunged into a revolution that consumed the king and queen. Germany was bankrupted by reparations following World War I as well as the ... [click for more]
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Part 1 | Part 2
Liberals say that they love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. Unfortunately, however, the economic philosophy that liberals favor constitutes a direct assault on the economic well-being of the poor, along with nearly everyone else in society.
Liberals claim to combat poverty in two principal ways.
First, they use the force of government (e.g., income taxes) to ... [click for more]
by Scott Shields
Throughout Barack Obamas campaign for president, he expressed his desire to increase community service in America. He outlined his plan, called America Serves, on change.gov, the website that provided details of his presidential agenda and transition. A screen-shot of America Serves is still available at www.politicallore. com/images/change.jpg.
President Obamas plan for community service is now described as a part of ... [click for more]
by Sheldon Richman
Listening to the leading voices of conservatism and progressivism, one gets the feeling they are not quite listening to themselves. On any given day you are likely to hear each side make arguments against the other that fully apply to itself in some area of public policy.
Progressives, for example, tend to be critical (though imperfectly so) of the military ... [click for more]
by Jacob G. Hornberger
To combat the town-hall protests that sprang up around the nation against President Obama’s health-care plan, one of the favorite tactics employed by liberals was to question the sanity of the protesters. Anyone who showed up at such meetings angrily protesting Obama’s plan to socialize medicine was termed a crazy.
That was especially true if a protester happened to be ... [click for more]
by James Bovard
Former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge has a new book out that reveals that he almost resigned because the Bush administration was hustling bogus terror alerts before the 2004 election. Ridge’s revelation was not surprising to people who had closely followed the tactics Bush used to snare a second term.
During the 2004 campaign, residents of swing states were under ... [click for more]
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Last Friday, October 16, the New York Times, for the first time, shined a light onto the JFK-CIA-Joannides scandal with a story entitled “C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery.” The story soon began appearing in other mainstream newspapers and on Internet websites.
Never mind that the scandal has been brewing since 1998, ... [click for more]
by Sheldon Richman
If you want to know how representative government works not in airy theory but on the ground, contemplate these facts: (1) Except perhaps for the rarest exception, no member of Congress will have read the entire final 1,000-plus-page bill that seeks, in the New York Times’s words, to “reinvent the nation’s health care system”; and (2) in July the ... [click for more]
by Jacob G. Hornberger
While we’re discussing whether a special prosecutor should be named to investigate and prosecute CIA officials for violations of federal laws against murder, kidnapping, and torture, why not use the occasion to do the same in the matter of George Joannides? For it would be difficult to find a better example of obstruction of justice and fraud on the ... [click for more]