By David Swanson Andrew Bacevich’s new book, “Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War,” is a good summary of the past 65 years’ worth of war thinking in Washington, D.C. “Prior to World War II,” he writes, “Americans by and large viewed military power and institutions with skepticism, if not outright hostility. In the wake [...]
There are few subjects that I really know a lot about, but one is definitely the Cult of the Lost Cause, or the fetishization of the old Confederacy and all its supposed glory. Thanks to Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who recently decided it was a good idea again to declare April Confederate History Month, now [...]
By David Swanson While new disclosure laws on corporate political spending are not needed to see the forest, they may be required for seeing the trees. Knowing which corporations funded what won’t, on its own, end or reduce the corruption. And the big picture of corporate spending cannot easily be hidden. Already, pre-Citizens United, it [...]
Previous Letters… Email a Friend… Printer Friendly Version… March 06, 2010 03/05/10 – A U.S. Army Veteran Says The Iron Curtain Shows A Fence Can Work A Former ACU Intern Confirms Its Anti-Amnesty Fund-Raising Scam; etc. From: John Robert [...]
New York has a state flower (rose), a state beverage (milk), a state insect (ladybug), and a state muffin (apple). It also has, if the past few weeks are any indication, a menagerie of politicians whose sole interest seems to be avoiding—and thus exacerbating—the plight of the three hundred and fifty-three thousand New Yorkers who [...]
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been hospitalized with chest pains, Fox News confirms. The 69-year-old Republican, who served as Vice President from 2001 to 2009 in the administration of George W. Bush, was said to be resting comfortably Monday at George Washington Hospital, Washington D.C. “His doctors are evaluating the situation,” a [...]
Barry Mills, the president of Bowdoin College, was justifiably proud of Bowdoin’s efforts to recruit minority students. Since 2003 the small, elite liberal-arts school in Brunswick, Maine, has boosted the proportion of so-called underrepresented minority students (blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans, about 30 percent of the U.S. population) in entering freshman classes from 8 percent [...]
On December 5th, several hundred people gathered in Foley Square, in lower Manhattan, and withstood a drenching rainstorm for two hours in order to send a message to Attorney General Eric Holder. A JumboTron, set up by the protesters, played clips of Holder’s recent testimony before Congress, in which he explained his decision to hold [...]
Nowadays when people think Henry Louis Gates Jr., they think of the Beer Summit. But Gates is so much more than that—the Alphonse Fletcher University professor at Harvard University and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Editor and author of countless books, including the African American National Biography, [...]
My cousin Maxo has died. The house that I called home during my visits to Haiti collapsed on top of him. Maxo was born on November 4, 1948, after three days of agonizing labor. “I felt,” my Aunt Denise used to say, “as though I spent all three days pushing him out of my eyes.” [...]