Constitution

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 […]

Bill of Rights

Trump’s attack on UCLA Athletes’ right to Dissent an Attack on America

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – So Trump intervened with Chinese authorities to release three UCLA basketball players guilty of shoplifting from a mall in Hangzhou while playing in China. They thanked him, he told them to change their ways. Then Levar Ball, the father of LiAngelo Ball–one of the three freed […]

Constitution

Will Congress ever be brave enough to End War Authorization?

contributors

By Danny Sjursen | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – On September 1, 1970, soon after President Nixon expanded the Vietnam War by invading neighboring Cambodia, Democratic Senator George McGovern, a decorated World War II veteran and future presidential candidate, took to the floor of the Senate and said, “Every Senator [here] is partly responsible for sending […]

Bill of Rights

Is Israel trying to Occupy the US 1st Amendment?

contributors

By Ramzy Baroud | (TeleSur) | – – Israeli footprints are becoming more apparent in the U.S. security apparatus. Such a fact does not bode well for ordinary people from the United States. U.S. Senate Bill S.720 should have been a wake-up call. The bill, drafted by the Israel lobby group, U.S. Israel Public Affairs […]

al-Qaeda

Is Bin Laden Shaping America more than our Founding Fathers?

Juan Cole

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – Honestly, if there’s an afterlife, then the soul of Osama bin Laden, whose body was consigned to the waves by the U.S. Navy back in 2011, must be swimming happily with the dolphins and sharks. At the cost of the sort of spare change that Donald […]

Constitution

Did George W. Bush commit War Crimes & should he get Awards?

contributors

By Erik Edstrom | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – In George W. Bush’s home state of Texas, if you are an ordinary citizen found guilty of capital murder, the mandatory sentence is either life in prison or the death penalty. If, however, you are a former president of the United States responsible for initiating two […]

Bill of Rights

Under Trump, Gitmo continues to Gnaw away at tattered US Rule of Law

Juan Cole

By Karen J. Greenberg | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – Eight years ago, when I wrote a book on the first days of Guantanamo, The Least Worst Place: Guantánamo’s First 100 Days, I assumed that Gitmo would prove a grim anomaly in our history. Today, it seems as if that “detention facility” will have a […]

Bill of Rights

Trump’s national anthem outrage ignores decades of Supreme Court rulings

Juan Cole

By Emma Long | (The Conversation) | – – When San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick chose to remain seated during a pre-game national anthem in protest against racial injustice and police brutality last year, his action caused widespread controversy. Now Donald Trump has reignited that controversy by suggesting at a rally that National Football […]