Bill of Rights

Torture, Wars of Aggression, Violations of Bill of Rights: Will there ever be accountability for America’s Orgy of War Crimes in the 21st Century

( Tomdispatch.com) – America has an accountability problem. In fact, if the Covid-19 disaster, the January 6th Capitol attack, and the Trump years are any indication, the American lexicon has essentially dispensed with the term “accountability.” This should come as no surprise. After all, there’s nothing particularly new about this. In the Bush years, those […]

Authoritarianism

How Florida’s Political “Survey” of Universities threatens Freedom of Speech

Jill Richardson

( Otherwords.org ) – Florida officials say they want to promote “intellectual freedom” — by using political surveys to target university funding. By Jill Richardson | June 30, 2021 The state of Florida just passed a law that — to put it mildly — grossly violates academic freedom. Under the new bill, recently signed by […]

Bill of Rights

The Declaration of Independence wasn’t really complaining about King George, and 5 other surprising facts for July Fourth

The Conversation

By Woody Holton | – Editor’s note: Americans may think they know a lot about the Declaration of Independence, but many of those ideas are elitist and wrong, as historian Woody Holton explains. His forthcoming book “Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution” shows how independence and the Revolutionary War were influenced […]

African-Americans

If we truly honored Juneteenth, we would end the exception in the 13th amendment

Waging Nonviolence

By Emma Jordan-Simpson | – (Waging Nonviolence ) – In my inbox this morning from a major nonprofit organization that should have known better was a Juneteenth celebratory greeting: “We proudly celebrate Juneteenth, the day slavery finally came to an end throughout the South — historically a monumental feat for American history and now a […]

al-Qaeda

Can Guantánamo Ever Be Shut Down? Dealing with the Forever Prison of America’s Forever Wars

Karen J. Greenberg

( Tomdispatch.com) – The Guantánamo conundrum never seems to end. Twelve years ago, I had other expectations. I envisioned a writing project that I had no doubt would be part of my future: an account of Guantánamo’s last 100 days. I expected to narrate in reverse, the episodes in a book I had just published, […]

Bill of Rights

Yes, Speech can Incite Violence: What Decades of Research Show about Trump’s Impeachment Trial

The Conversation

By Kurt Braddock | – Senators, acting in the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump that begins on Feb. 9, will soon have to decide whether to convict the former president for inciting a deadly, violent insurrection at the Capitol building on Jan. 6. A majority of House members, including 10 Republicans, took the […]

Bill of Rights

The Trump Administration’s Final Push to Make It Easier for Religious Employers to Discriminate

ProPublica

By Lydia DePillis | – ( ProPublica ) – It was the hectic week before Thanksgiving, and Amrith Kaur — the legal director of an advocacy group called the Sikh Coalition — was not prepared for a surprise update from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that could have dramatic consequences for her clients. With little […]

Bill of Rights

Constitution in Danger? Michael Flynn Wants Trump to Declare Martial Law

Everett Wohlers

Boise, Idaho (Special to Informed Comment) – On Tuesday, December 1, Michael Flynn, the beneficiary of President Trump’s recent pardon, published a manifesto calling on President Trump to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law so that the military could organize and run a new election for President to void the recent election which was […]

Bill of Rights

Trump Presses Georgia to overturn Election, but he should Remember what happened when Algeria, Iran, Kyrgyzstan and the other Georgia did That

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Kristen Holmes and Victoria Stracqualursi at CNN report that Trump called up Georgia governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special session of the Republican-dominated state legislature and have them elect an alternative slate of electors for the Electoral College, so as to overturn the results of the […]