Daily Articles

How the Enemy Combatant Label Is Being Used, Part 2

by Jesslyn Radack February 1, 2005

Part 1 | Part 2 On Monday, October 4, the Supreme Court declined to consider a petition filed by Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. Al-Marri is perhaps the least well known of the three persons who have been held in the United States as enemy combatants. The decision was unsurprising yet still disappointing. Al-Marri, who has been waiting for nearly three ...

Book Review: The Bush Betrayal

by Brigid ONeill February 1, 2005

The Bush Betrayal by James Bovard (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); 336 pages; $26.95. The reelection of George Walker Bush rubs too much like the gruesome aftermath of a hit and run — made bearable only by our instinctual ability to self-medicate in numbness. For a first-stage coping mechanism — just ask the Sopranos psychiatrist — it ...

An Anti-Democracy Foreign Policy: Iran

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 31, 2005

When Iranians took U.S. officials hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, Americans were mystified and angry, not being able to comprehend how Iranians could be so hateful toward U.S. officials, especially since the U.S. government had been so supportive of the shah of Iran for some ...

A Whopper of an Inaugural Address

by Sheldon Richman January 31, 2005

2005 We have come to understand that when the typical politician speaks, he ought not to be believed. Nevertheless, in his inaugural address last week President Bush achieved depths of incredibility deserving of a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Leave aside that his speech was preceded by his ...

A Balanced Budget Is Not Enough

by Sheldon Richman January 24, 2005

Conservatives must be easy to please. Case in point: The other day columnist Lawrence Kudlow excitedly let us in on the well-kept secret that the federal budget deficit is getting smaller. “Last week’s Treasury report on U.S. finances for December shows a year-to-date fiscal 2005 deficit already $11 ...

Will Bush Side with the Property Thieves?

by Sheldon Richman January 19, 2005

Susette Kelo’s story is becoming tragically familiar. She and her neighbors are at risk of losing their homes and businesses because the local government has conspired with a corporation to condemn their land under the power of eminent domain. This is happening in New London, Connecticut, the latest ...

Let’s Look within Ourselves for Iraq’s WMD

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 17, 2005

Last Wednesday, some two months after the U.S. presidential election, U.S. officials formally ended their two-year search for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Perhaps this will finally put an end to the hopes of many supporters of the Iraq War that a modern, air-conditioned facility would be ...

The Tax Path Away from Liberty

by George Amberg January 15, 2005

The path away from liberty is paved with bad taxes, and we trip over them, frequently. The liberty Americans had in 1900 has been seriously eroded by a taking of our earnings that continually increases. Back then, little of that was done. Read the following ...

Augusto Pinochet and the Conservative Threat to America

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 12, 2005

While some people might believe that those on the Left wing of the political spectrum pose the bigger threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people, nothing could be further from the truth. Today, the much bigger threat (Readhere and here) comes instead from the Right wing or conservative side ...

Liberate Us from the Educators

by Scott McPherson January 10, 2005

The state’s monopoly on education is perhaps the worst thing that has ever happened to children in America. From the earliest days of the republic, education was provided by parents, churches, and local communities. The first proposals for state-supported schools were merely calls to address an absence of ...

Tsunami Aid: Not Theirs to Give

by Sheldon Richman January 7, 2005

The devastating earthquake-induced tidal waves in Asia are the latest reminders that Mother Nature can be a mass killer. It’s worth contemplating that the societies that interfere most with nature — the rich, market-oriented industrial societies — are the least vulnerable to her ravages. That’s not what the environmentalists ...

Why Trust in Social Security?

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 3, 2005

Isn’t a central argument among those who argue for the continuation of America’s premier socialist program, Social Security, that Americans cannot be trusted to voluntarily take care of the needs of their elderly parents? Let’s set aside all the nonsense about “I put it in and therefore I have a right to ...