Cuba and Egypt: Spreading Democracy and Loving Dictatorship by Jacob G. Hornberger March 7, 2011 In yesterday’s blog post, I provided four possible reasons why President Obama is likely to refuse to open up U.S. files on the 1973 Pinochet coup, in response to a probable request from Chilean officials when Obama visits Chile next month. There’s actually another possible reason: The files might reveal CIA complicity in the murder of former Chilean official ...
Why the CIA Might Oppose Disclosing the Pinochet Files by Jacob G. Hornberger March 4, 2011 In yesterday’s blog post, I provided four possible reasons why President Obama is likely to refuse to open up U.S. files on the 1973 Pinochet coup, in response to a probable request from Chilean officials when Obama visits Chile next month. There’s actually another possible reason: The files might reveal CIA complicity in the murder of former Chilean official ...
U.S. Darkness in Chile by Jacob G. Hornberger March 3, 2011 When President Obama visits Chile next month, he is going to be hit with a request that is certain to make people in the Pentagon, the CIA, and the U.S. State Department uncomfortable. According to an article in today’s Washington Post, survivors of Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet’s reign of terror are going to request that Obama declassify hundreds of secret ...
Why Cops Love the Drug War by Jacob G. Hornberger March 2, 2011 After more than 30 years of death, destruction, and failure, the two primary advocates of the war on drugs are public officials and drug lords. The reason is obvious: these two groups are the biggest beneficiaries of the drug war. The drug lords make money off the war — big money. And government officials make money off the war ...
Have Americans Lost Their Consciences? by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2011 The U.S. government is now deliberating on whether to militarily intervene in Libya out of “shock” over the brutal behavior of 40-year Libyan dictator Muommar Gaddafi. Here we go again. If the U.S. government isn’t supporting dictatorships with money and armaments, it’s invading countries to oust them. Recall Saddam Hussein, one of the U.S. Empire’s favorite dictators during the 1980s ...
Hornberger’s Blog, March 2011 by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2011 Friday, March 18, 2011 American Dictatorship Would someone please tell me what limits constrain President Obama in foreign affairs? A dictator is a government ruler with omnipotent powers, one who has no constitutional or legislative constraints on his powers. Operating through his military, paramilitary, intelligence, and police forces, he can do whatever he chooses to do. He can use his forces, which ...
Jury Nullification Prosecutorial Abuse by Jacob G. Hornberger February 28, 2011 While the U.S. government was expressing outrage over attacks on freedom of speech at the hands of U.S.-supported dictators in the Middle East, the U.S. Justice Department was securing a federal grand jury indictment against a man named Julian Heicklen. The charge? The feds are charging Heicklen for handing out jury-nullification pamphlets to people who are entering ...
Padilla and Mubarak by Jacob G. Hornberger February 25, 2011 A federal judge in South Carolina has dismissed a civil suit brought by convicted terrorist Jose Padilla against Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and other U.S. officials. The judge held that Padilla had no right to recover for constitutional violations arising out of three years of military detention and torture. Why should this matter to the ...
Democratic Tyranny by Jacob G. Hornberger February 24, 2011 No doubt many American statists celebrated the ouster of Hosni Mubarak as dictator of Egypt in the belief that freedom had arrived for the Egyptian people, given that the country was now experiencing the “order and stability” provided by military rule. But the truth is that military dictatorship isn’t freedom at all; it’s as much tyranny as what the ...
Drug-War Idiocy in Oklahoma by Jacob G. Hornberger February 23, 2011 More proof that licensing of lawyers doesn’t guarantee that judges won’t engage in judicial idiocy comes out of the state of Oklahoma. Three days before Christmas, a state judge named Susie Pritchett, whose retirement would become effective on December 31, sentenced a 25-year-old mother of four named Patricia Marilyn Spottedcrow to ten years in the state penitentiary. Spottedcrow’s crime? She and ...
Standing Armies, Gun Control, and Middle East Tyranny by Jacob G. Hornberger February 22, 2011 America’s Founding Fathers would not be surprised by what is happening in places like Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Iran. They understood that the real value of a standing army, from the standpoint of dictatorial regimes, is that the military can usually be relied upon to do its duty and protect the regime by killing protestors or rounding ...
A Solution for Wisconsin by Jacob G. Hornberger February 21, 2011 The controversy with public schoolteachers in Wisconsin proves, once again, that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference in principle between Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. This time, the big battle between the statists is whether state schoolteachers should be allowed to collectively bargain. The conservatives say no. The liberals say yes. Yawn. Regardless of which way the issue ...
