Juan Cole

“We’re NASA and we know it”, video to the tune of “Sexy and I Know It,” by the American duo LMFAO from their 2011 album, “Sorry for Party Rocking.”

Update: Ecuador granted Julian Assange diplomatic asylum on Thursday. The British government’s menacing of the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday morning, with its threat that its police might well come on to the embassy grounds to arrest wikileaks leader and fugitive Julian Assange, resembles nothing so much as the Iranian regime’s cavalier attitude to […]

Kim Barker writes at ProPublica Two conservative nonprofits, Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, have poured almost $60 million into TV ads to influence the presidential race so far, outgunning all super PACs put together, new spending estimates show. These nonprofits, also known as 501(c)(4)s or c4s for their section of the tax code, don’t […]

Alfred W. McCoy writes at Tomdispatch Impunity at Home, Rendition AbroadHow Two Administrations and Both Parties Made Illegality the American Way of Life  After a decade of fiery public debate and bare-knuckle partisan brawling, the United States has stumbled toward an ad hoc bipartisan compromise over the issue of torture that rests on two unsustainable policies: impunity […]

The Public Interest Group Education Fund and the NGO Demos released a study in early August on the financing of the presidential campaign. They found that nearly 60% of the almost quarter of a billion dollars raised by Super PACs from individuals derived from just 47 people, who gave at least $1 million each (obviously […]

Cenk Uygur of Current TV takes on Paul Ryan’s claims to be a deficit hawk and for small government, showing all the ways that Ryan’s votes helped create trillions in deficits: See also my infographic, which makes many of the same points.