Daily Articles

National Security: The Big Fraud

by Sheldon Richman January 12, 2010

The handwringing about the would-be Christmas Day airplane bomber and the politicians’ tiresome declarations that it will never happen again miss the point: As long as the U.S. government pursues its imperial program of invasion, regime change, occupation, and sponsorship of corrupt governments in the Muslim world, Americans will be targets for avengers. This does not excuse the killing ...

Appeals Court Extends President’s Wartime Powers, Limits Guantánamo Prisoners’ Rights

by Andy Worthington January 11, 2010

On the eighth anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the implications of a ruling ( PDF.) last week in the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia have added another layer of uncertainty to the prisoners’ future, in a week that was notorious for a barrage of 

Guantánamo and Yemen: Obama Capitulates to Critics and Suspends Prisoner Transfers

by Andy Worthington January 7, 2010

For the last 12 days, since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab slipped through every security net going, and allegedly tried and failed to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, Republican critics of Barack Obama have tried every trick in the book to undermine the president’s authority, with former Vice President Dick Cheney claiming that the incident demonstrated ...

Not So Strange Health-Care Bedfellows

by Sheldon Richman January 6, 2010

One thing can be said in behalf of the health-insurance overhaul currently shaping up in Washington: it has revealed the curious bedfellows that politics creates. Congress almost certainly will pass a bill that compels every American to have medical insurance. If his employer doesn’t offer it, he’ll have to buy it himself or be fined. This justifiably offends everyone who ...

The Liberal Assault on the Poor, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 When it comes to economic policy, liberals suffer from two major weaknesses. One, they believe that all that matters with respect to policy are good intentions. As long as liberals mean well, they think that the policies they implement, especially with respect to the poor, are justified. Two, they have a woeful lack of understanding of ...

The Phony Radicalism of Michael Moore

by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2010

With phony radicals like Michael Moore around, the ruling elites have nothing to worry about. The filmmaker likes to pose as a radical critic of the status quo, but he isnt. All the evidence you need is in his latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story. Sure, he rails against home foreclosures, bank bailouts, low wages, and other real and imagined ...

The Bush Secrecy Legacy

by James Bovard January 1, 2010

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 ...

How a Rich and Proud Nation Went Broke

by Jim Powell January 1, 2010

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 ...

A Lesson in the (Re)distribution of Wealth

by Edmund Contoski January 1, 2010

Through the company where I worked more than 35 years ago, I had an opportunity to meet an unusual man. I had not seen him since, but his recent obituary caught my eye. His name was Wayne Field, a name I’m sure few, if any, of you will recognize. In his 87 years he accomplished a great deal. He founded ...

New Deal Charades

by George Leef January 1, 2010

New Deal or Raw Deal? by Burton Folsom Jr. (Threshold Editions, 2008); 318 pages. The New Deal rescued the United States from the terrible depression caused by the instability of our capitalist economy. Thats the standard line peddled to gullible Americans by most history books, historians, and politicians. It was not surprising when Republican Speaker of the House Newt ...

Serious Problems with Obama’s Plan to Move Guantánamo to Illinois

by Andy Worthington December 21, 2009

Last Tuesday, in a letter to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, five senior Obama administration officials — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano —announced. that “the president has directed, with our unanimous support, that the ...

What Does It Take to Get Out of Obama’s Guantánamo?

by Andy Worthington December 14, 2009

On August 21, District Court Judge Gladys Kessler granted the habeas corpus petition of Mohammed al-Adahi, a Yemeni prisoner in Guantánamo who was 39 years old when he was seized on a bus in Pakistan. I described the broad outline of al-Adahi’s story in my book The Guantánamo Files as follows: Married with two children, al-Adahi had never left ...