Daily Articles

I Was Fooled by the War-Makers

by Thomas E. Woods Jr. June 24, 2012

Twenty years ago, as I was completing my freshman year in college, I was a full-blown neoconservative. Except I didn’t know it. Having concluded that I was not a leftist, I simply decided by process of elimination that I must be a Rush Limbaughian. Like most people, I was unaware that any alternative to those two choices existed, or that ...

Book Review: Unequal Justice

by Matthew Harwood June 23, 2012

With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful by Glenn Greenwald (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2011), 304 pages. In August, something incredible happened: a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in a split decision, allowed a lawsuit seeking monetary damages to proceed against former Defense ...

A Tilting Domino

by Rich Schwartzman June 22, 2012

In the 1960s and ‘70s, the war hawks screeched that there was a domino effect in Southeast Asia, that if Vietnam fell to the communists, so too would Thailand, the Philippines, and other countries in the region. North Vietnam won — despite the 58,000 American lives and the untold Vietnamese lives lost in that fiasco — but South Vietnam ...

Still No Accountability for Torture

by Andy Worthington June 22, 2012

Last week, the bad news from the Supreme Court was not manifested only in the Court’s decision to abdicate its responsibilities towards the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by turning down appeals submitted by 7 of the 169 men still held. That dreadful decision established that the D.C. Circuit Court could continue in its mission to

Will Supreme Court’s Ignorance Torpedo Americans’ Freedom?

by James Bovard June 21, 2012

Americans have never had reliable protection against the ignorance of the Supreme Court. During the past 80 years, Supreme Court justices have routinely rubber-stamped government policies that they grossly failed to understand. Black-robed economic illiteracy is perhaps the Obama administration’s best hope in the Court’s pending decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare. At the oral arguments in late March, neither ...

The Continuing Economic Crisis

by Tim Kelly June 20, 2012

President Obama has been rightfully criticized for his observation that “the private sector is doing fine.” The statement was a glaring indication that the president has no understanding of the country’s economic problems and therefore has no idea how to solve them.   The Romney campaign was quick to make use of the president’s gaffe, running ads accusing ...

Twelve Victims of the Drug War

by Laurence M. Vance June 18, 2012

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 37,792 people died from drug overdoses in 2010. That exceeds the number of Americans killed in car accidents (35,080). It was the second year in a row that drug deaths outnumbered traffic fatalities. The majority of those deaths were caused, not by heroin or cocaine, but by prescription opioid painkillers such ...

The Supreme Court Abandons the Guantánamo Prisoners

by Andy Worthington June 15, 2012

On Monday June 11, when the Supreme Court decided to turn down seven appeals submitted by prisoners held at Guantánamo without providing any explanation, a particularly low point was reached in the prison’s history. The decision came just one day before the fourth anniversary of Boumediene v. Bush, the hugely significant 2008 ruling recognizing the prisoners constitutionally guaranteed ...

Slow, Predictable Hearing on Fast and Furious

by Wendy McElroy June 14, 2012

The show trial of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on a citation of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena is scheduled to climax on June 20. That's when the investigating Oversight Committee has called for a vote on whether to move forward with a criminal contempt citation. Holder may be guilty, but the hearing is ...

Bloomberg’s Soda Policy: The End Doesn’t Justify the Means

by Sheldon Richman June 13, 2012

The debate incited by Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to outlaw supersized sodas in New York misses an important point. In the mayor’s words, “We’re not taking away anybody’s right to do things. We’re simply forcing you to understand that you have to make the conscious decision to go from one cup to another cup” (emphasis added). There it is. He wants ...

The Constitution versus the Executive-Branch Departments

by Laurence M. Vance June 12, 2012

The U.S. federal government contains a myriad of agencies, bureaus, corporations, commissions, administrations, authorities, and boards organized under 15 cabinet-level, executive-branch departments headed by a secretary (or, in the case of the Justice Department, an attorney general). Although Republicans created the latest, most bloated, and most hated department (Homeland Security), they sometimes talk about eliminating or consolidating various other ...

The Wisconsin Union Fight Reconsidered

by Sheldon Richman June 8, 2012

The failed gubernatorial recall effort in Wisconsin has generated a degree of political hostility that is extraordinary even by today’s standards. Many people interpret Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to limit collective bargaining by government-employee unions as a general attack on workers and their right to organize. That may be the case, but it’s not the only interpretation available. According to ...