US politics

By Frida Berrigan | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Okay, I’ll admit it. Sometimes I can’t take the bad news. It’s too much. It’s so extra, as the kids like to say. When I hit that wall of hopelessness and anxiety so many of us have become familiar with, I take what I think of […]

Campaign Finance

Trump’s Ukraine Ask was Criminal; but it Was SCOTUS’ Citizens United that Invited Foreign Interference in US Elections

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump is accused of soliciting the help of a foreign government to dig dirt on, essentially to do opposition research for him, on his Democratic rival, Joe Biden. It should be underlined, though, that the possibilities for foreign interference in US elections is a much bigger phenomenon than simply this […]

Constitution

Dry Impeachment alone won’t Save our Democracy: The Public has to Get Fired Up

Yes! Magazine

Congress is officially moving toward impeaching the president. But even then, it’s up to the people to keep our republic.

Donald Trump

Trump’s Assault on the Constitution: Politics as World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.

Jill Richardson

(Otherwords.org ) -Either our system is going to break, or Trump’s finally going to fail. It’s an exhausting drama. Does Trump understand democracy? I’m really asking. His approach to politics is combative — kill-or-be-killed. If you hit him, he will hit you back harder, no matter what the rules of the game are. That might […]

Education

Trump v. Duke U.-UNC: Why the Study of Cultures is Essential to our National Security

The Conversation

By Nicholas Tampio | After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a commission formed to figure out why the attacks occurred. One of the culprits, according to the commission’s 9/11 report, was “lack of imagination.” With few exceptions, the report stated, government officials could not imagine that Osama bin Laden and his affiliates, hidden in […]

Donald Trump

Pompeo, Complicit in Ukraine Call, hides behind the State Department he Persecuted in Benghazi Conspiracy Theory

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a Kansas oil man in the back pocket of Koch Industries and a mealy-mouthed convert to High Trumpism, issued a shot across the bow of Congress on Tuesday. He sent a letter, which he also tweeted, in which he tried to take cover behind the […]

censorship

On Khashoggi Murder Anniversary: Trump’s other Dangerous Conversations besides Ukraine, with Saudi Bin Salman

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – CNN reports that, in addition to Trump’s Ukraine conversation last July, the transcripts of his telephone calls with Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Russian president Vladimir Putin were also stored in a super highly classified server. The implication is that his staff heard him commit crimes in the […]

CIA

Trump isn’t the First: the Government has often Persecuted Whistleblowers

The Conversation

By Jennifer M. Pacella | – When President Donald Trump likened a whistleblower’s White House sources to spies and made a lightly veiled reference to execution, he highlighted a longstanding peril facing those who come forward to alert the public to governmental wrongdoing. Blowing the whistle carries major risks. BlueSkyImage/Shutterstock.com In many instances, whistleblowers find […]

Constitution

Impeach Trump for his Crimes against the People, not just Against the Bidens & Dems

Peter Certo

(Afterwords.org) – Democrats need to take Trump’s crimes against people and the planet as seriously as those against Joe Biden. “Has Trump finally gone too far?” There’s a headline you’ve seen a thousand times. At last, Speaker Nancy Pelosi says he has. A whistleblower says Trump withheld foreign aid to Ukraine to pressure the country’s […]