The Military’s Exalted Position in American Life by Jacob G. Hornberger May 3, 2012 The Ninth Circuit’s decision holding John Yoo immune from liability in Jose Padilla’s lawsuit against him pretty much confirms what I recently wrote about the exalted position that the U.S. military and the CIA hold in American society. See here and here. The Court confirmed that when the cops are dealing with a criminal defendant, they are prohibited ...
Conservatives Are Socialists Too by Jacob G. Hornberger May 2, 2012 Conservatives are having a heyday calling President Obama a socialist. What they block out of their minds is that by their own measure, they are socialists too. In its purest sense, socialism refers to a situation in which the state owns all the means of production. Obviously, Obama doesn’t favor doing that. Thus, when conservatives call him a socialist, they ...
Obama Is Right — It’s Time for Reflection by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2012 President Obama says that the one-year anniversary of the U.S. military’s killing of Osama bin Laden should be a time of reflection rather than a time of celebration. Indeed. Let’s do some reflecting. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials claimed that the attackers had been motivated by hatred for America’s “freedom and values.” That was a crock, as I pointed ...
Joy Gordon’s Lecture at George Washington University by Jacob G. Hornberger April 30, 2012 Last Thursday I attended a great lecture by Joy Gordon, professor of philosophy at Fairfield University in Connecticut. The talk was based on her book Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions. It was sponsored by The Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Gordon described the horrifying sanctions ...
The Military Exception to the Bill of Rights by Jacob G. Hornberger April 26, 2012 Consider the following hypothetical. DEA agents in Columbus, Georgia, suspect that Joe Blow is selling cocaine and heroin to city youths. They’re sure he’s guilty but have been unable to come up with any evidence of his guilt. Under a formal policy established by the DEA, they take Joe into custody without a warrant, take him to a secret ...
Good for the ACLU and Jose Padilla! by Jacob G. Hornberger April 25, 2012 Good for the ACLU! It is taking Jose Padilla’s civil suit to the U.S. Supreme Court for what will hopefully be an adjudication by the highest court in the land as to the power of the U.S. military and the CIA in modern-day American life. Of course, the chances that Padilla will prevail are extremely slim, but it is great ...
Loving Sweatshops by Jacob G. Hornberger April 24, 2012 “I love sweatshops.” That was how economics professor Benjamin Powell, our Economic Liberty Lecture Series speaker last night, wrapped up his excellent talk on the benefits of sweatshops. An overflow crowd, mostly composed of George Mason University students, was treated to an eloquent exposition of why and how sweatshops help the poor. This is one of the things that liberals, who ...
Americans Should Watch Egypt by Jacob G. Hornberger April 23, 2012 Egypt is developing into a fascinating situation, one that involves the United States. It’s worth paying attention to in the coming months. Egypt has been ruled by a brutal military dictatorship for the past 30 years. The regime has been operating under a “state of emergency” during that entire time, one that has enabled the regime to wield and exercise ...
Ten Rules of the “War on Terrorism” by Jacob G. Hornberger April 20, 2012 I confess that I have trouble sometimes figuring out the nature and logic of the so-called war on terrorism. The following are what seem to be the principles of this “war”: 1. Since the “war on terrorism,” according to U.S. officials, is a real war, the president has all the powers of a military commander in a real war, and ...
Drug War Interventionism by Jacob G. Hornberger April 19, 2012 Ludwig von Mises pointed out that one government intervention into economic activity inevitably leads to more interventions. The reason? Each intervention brings with it more crises and more chaos, which then cause public officials to enact new interventions to address the new crises and chaos. As each new intervention is enacted, the government moves inexorably toward more government control ...
Don’t Attack Argentina by Jacob G. Hornberger April 18, 2012 Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, had better watch her back. She could conceivably be the target of a regime-change operation, compliments of the CIA. Given all the other things the CIA is currently engaged in, why would it target Argentina for one of its regime-change operations? Argentina’s government, under Kirchner’s direction, has just seized majority control in YPF, the nation’s largest ...
What Tarek Mehanna Might Have Told the Judge by Jacob G. Hornberger April 17, 2012 Both Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges have excellent analyses of the federal terrorism conviction of American citizen named Tarek Mehanna. At his sentencing hearing last week in federal court, Mehanna delivered a scathing condemnation of U.S. foreign policy, a statement that Greenwald incorporates in full in his blog. U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole stated, “I am ...
