Constitution

(Informed Comment) – In response to the furor that arose this fall over the disciplining of Professor John Cheney-Lippold for declining to write a letter of recommendation for a student to do summer study at Tel Aviv University, the administration of the university has appointed a faculty commission (which is light on humanists) to consider […]

Bill of Rights

#NottheEnemy: Ben Franklin warned that attack on Free Press Turns Liberty to Tyranny

Juan Cole

Informed Comment is pleased to respond to the call of the Boston Globe for the press to fight back, on August 16, 2018, against Trump’s savage attacks on journalists and the free press. This column is dedicated to James Wright Foley, whom I met in Egypt in 2012, and who was fearless and level-headed in […]

Constitution

In growing Constitutional Crisis, Trump attacks CIA, FBI over Investigations

Paul Handley

Washington (AFP) – President Donald Trump attacked the probe into possible collusion between his campaign and Russia as a “political hit job” on Monday, as a part of a mounting White House effort to paint the probe as politically motivated. In the latest salvo from Trump’s administration and his Republican Party, the president assailed former […]

Constitution

Trump, McCabe and our Permanent Constitutional Crisis

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump’s conviction that being president means never having to say you are sorry, and being able to do whatever the hell you please, is likely to cause him legal trouble sooner or later. His vindictive firing of deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, just before McCabe could […]

Bill of Rights

US university demands Palestinian academic not criticise Israel in speech

contributors

Middle East Monitor Palestinian academic Hatem Bazian says Arizona State University asked him to sign a contract in which he pledges not to criticise Israel at a university event. Arizona State University is reported to have asked Palestinian academic Hatem Bazian to sign a contract in which he pledges not to criticise Israel at an […]

Bernie Sanders

Yemen War: Bernie Sanders et al. Try to get US Out

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Wednesday proposed a bipartisan resolution to take the US Pentagon back out of the Yemen War. The war was declared by Saudi Arabia and its allies in 2015 when Zaydi Shiites of the Helpers of God […]

African-Americans

Thousands of US Citizens Jailed Over Debts as Small as US$28

Juan Cole

TeleSur | – – One in three Americans has been reported to a private collection agency with the majority of cases affecting Latin American and African-American communities. The United States, where the streets are paved with gold and US$28 can send a young single mother or an 80-year-old grandmother to jail for a week or […]

Bill of Rights

A Crisis of Democracy: Trump’s block of Dem Response to Nunes

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Trump’s refusal to release the response of the Democratic minority on the House Intelligence Committee to the declassified Nunes memo cherry-picking intelligence reports has been decried as a politicization of intelligence. It has been pointed out by legal scholar Laurence Tribe that Congress could in any […]

Constitution

The Art of Keeping Guantanamo Open: The Uncharged, Untried and their Paintings

Juan Cole

By Erin L. Thompson | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – We spent the day at a beach in Brooklyn. Skyscrapers floated in the distance and my toddler kept handing me cigarette filters she had dug out of the sand. When we got home, I checked my email. I had been sent a picture of a […]