The Powerful Pornography of the Gun Fetish

William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "Over the weekend, hundreds of gun-rights activists descended on the Alamo in Texas to lament how hard it is these days for gun-owners in America. Maybe I am desensitized at this point, but after another week of stories about dead children, I find myself most bothered by this thing at the Alamo."

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Are Politicians Who Cut Food Stamps and Deny Health Access Truly ‘Pro-Life?’

Joe Conason, Op-Ed:

The imperiled Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is only the latest instance of this drearily familiar anti-life syndrome. children saw their food stamp benefits cut as a temporary enhancement of the program expired. That was worse than bad enough. But next year, if the Republicans have their way, the government would cut money from the program over the next 10 years—immediately depriving many people of food assistance.

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Supply-Side Jesus and the Death of Shame

"These are the kind of people who get eaten by bears."

- Text from a White House official about the GOP Default Deniers in Congress

The single greatest political strength of the modern Republican Party is their utter and complete lack of shame. They will say anything - literally anything, no matter how delusional or self-contradictory - if it gets them what they want, or at least deranges the political debate in America enough to keep the other side from getting what it wants.

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Half the Republicans You Know Are Insane

William Rivers Pitt, Truthout

Those two-and-a-half Republicans you know are energetic voters, and they throw enormous weight in American politics; that's why the government is shut down and a disastrous default looms, in case you were wondering.

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Green Eggs and Derp

William Rivers Pitt, Truthout:

It is not every day that the troll under the bridge broaches the broad daylight and sprays his derangement into the air for all to see and hear, but there was Ted Cruz with his bare face hanging out, giving a clinic on just how preposterous the modern Republican Party has allowed itself to become.

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NY Times Op-Ed: Phony Fear Factor

We live in a golden age of economic debunkery; fallacious doctrines have been dropping like flies. No, monetary expansion needn’t cause hyperinflation. No, budget deficits in a depressed economy don’t cause soaring interest rates. No, slashing spending doesn’t create jobs. No, economic growth doesn’t collapse when debt exceeds 90 percent of G.D.P.

And now the latest myth bites the dust: No, “economic policy uncertainty” — created, it goes without saying, by That Man in the White House — isn’t holding back the recovery.

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Op-Ed: An American Reckoning

By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

Revenge is what we usually do in America, but we are still suffering here in Boston, and they are still suffering in New York City lo these many years later, and they are still suffering in Iraq and so many other places besides, and so I pray most devoutly that, this time, we have a reckoning instead. Let us know why, let it be hard, and let the million flowers bloom. We here have had a hot taste of what revenge and the wheel of violence has to offer. The time has come to find alternatives to vengeance

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The Eye of the Storm That Sees Us All

Despite Hurricane Sandy, climate change continues to be absent from the political conversation. The elephant blowing through the room remai.

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NY Times Op-Ed: The Deafness Before the Storm

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal.

On April 10, 2004, the Bush White House declassified that daily brief — and only that daily brief — in response to pressure from the 9/11 Commission, which was investigating the events leading to the attack. Administration officials dismissed the document’s significance, saying that, despite the jaw-dropping headline, it was only an assessment of Al Qaeda’s history, not a warning of the impending attack. While some critics considered that claim absurd, a close reading of the brief showed that the argument had some validity.

That is, unless it was read in conjunction with the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real. Read more

The Republican War on Elections

Thomas Magstadt, Op-Ed

So there it is, the Republican strategy for staging a quiet coup by first putting the right to buy votes and bribe politicians in the hands of billionaires (think Supreme Court and Citizens United), then using control of state legislatures thus gained to deny some citizens (the ones least likely to support a proto-fascist party) the right to vote.

Another fact that can’t be overemphasized: to target elections with the intention of predetermining the outcome it to strike at the very heart of the republic. Republics are not democracies in the strictest, purest sense. A true republic is always based on a “scheme of representation” to borrow a phrase from Madison’s Federal #10.

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Free markets vs. family values

We need a healthy market, of course. But we also have to understand that some of the policies said to free it can deeply hurt the very families free-marketeers claim to value.

It Is Enough: An Open Letter to the Sick at Heart

William Rivers Pitt, Truthout:

"I have lost count of the states in this union that are holding votes on who can get married, who can get birth control, who can get basic medical care and who can vote - or not - in this ongoing American experiment. It all boils down to some very simple questions: who is it legal to hate? Who can be banished from their basic American rights? Who is, and who is not? They call it being 'conservative,' which sounds nice and safe."

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How ALEC Is Creating Florida-Style Messes in Other States

John Nichols, Op-Ed:

“Wisconsin is a rod-and-gun state, with a hunting history that has fostered traditions of broad gun ownership and respect for the right to bear arms. So how did Wisconsin get saddled with a ‘Castle Doctrine’ law that mirrors some of the worst aspects of the Florida legislation that's now at the center of the controversy over the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

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NY Time Op-Ed: Don’t Tread on Us

By Maureen Dowd

Hillary Clinton has fought for women’s rights around the world. But who would have dreamed that she would have to fight for them at home?

“Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me,” she told an adoring crowd at the Women in the World Summit at Lincoln Center on Saturday. “But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies.

“Yes,” she continued to applause, “it is hard to believe that even here at home, we have to stand up for women’s rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America needs to set an example for the entire world.”

As secretary of state, Clinton is supposed to stay out of domestic politics. But this was a moment pregnant with possibility, a titanic clash of the Inevitable (Hillary) and the Indefensible (Republican cavemen).

The attempt by Republican men to wrestle American women back into chastity belts has not only breathed life into President Obama, it has roused and riled Hillary. And that could turn out to be the most dangerous thing the wildly self-destructive G.O.P. leaders have done.

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Kucinich Announces Constitutional Amendment to Publicly Finance Federal Elections

Dennis Kucinich, Op-Ed: On the eve of the second anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling known as Citizens United, which opened the floodgate of unlimited, shadowy corporate spending in public elections, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has introduced H. J. Res. 100, a constitutional amendment to rescue American democracy from corporate money’s corrupting influence.

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Obamacare May Save My Life

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Spike Dolomite Ward says she was recently diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer. An uninsured nonprofit employee, Ward had no idea how she would pay for treatment—until she discovered that she could get insurance coverage through a provision of “Obamacare.” Until recently, she believed that the president had abandoned the middle class. Now her tone has changed: “I’m sorry I didn’t realize that he really has stood up for me and my family, and for so many others like us.”

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The Choice Between Democracy and Autocracy

David Sirota, Op-Ed: “This might all sound like Medieval Europe, but it’s not. It’s America circa 2011, as these clashes are now taking place everywhere. Alas, it’s a predictable situation. Horrifying economic inequality has prompted the bottom 99 percent of income earners to finally exercise their constitutional rights to protest. In response, the nobles in the top 1 percent are demanding their political puppets make clear that such dissent will not be tolerated — and they expect their demands to be followed.”

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A Delicate Moment for the Occupy Wall Street Movement

William Rivers Pitt, Truthout

"Anyone who still thinks the 'Occupy Wall Street' protests are some kind of fluke, an exercise in ego inflation by spoiled college kids and aging hippies, needs to go back to bed. This thing is very much for real, is very large, and is growing exponentially. Similar protests have sprung up in dozens of cities all across the country, and with an 'Occupy the London Stock Exchange' action set to take place on Saturday, the movement is poised to become an international affair."

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Call Off the Global Drug War

By Jimmy Carter

IN an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

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