The confirmation hearing in the Senate for Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, was painful to watch because it displayed the tomfoolery, pretense, self-righteous know-nothingism, and embarrassing lack of contact with reality that dominate the landscape of America’s broken democracy. It was like watching a Nebraska ordinary Joe set upon by circus […]
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US politics
Why the Senate should Confirm Chuck Hagel as SecDef
Reprint edn.: this appeared earlier, but is a propos of today’s Senate confirmation hearings. A future column will treat that process: I doubt Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, and I would agree about almost anything with regard to domestic US politics . . . But he isn’t being nominated for secretary of […]
Immigration and the Future of America (Chart)
Immigration to the US is if anything accelerating. The 1924-1965 immigration law had been racist and set strict quotas for everyone but northern Europeans. Since 1965, up to 25,000 immigrants can come from each country in the world. Increasingly, immigrants come not from Europe but from Latin America & the Caribbean, from Asia, and from […]
Top Ten Ways President Obama has Expanded our Rights, in Rev. King’s Footsteps
In holding his inaugural on Martin Luther King Day, President Obama is underlining his achievement as the first African-American president and the first and only to win two terms. But he is also honoring the legacy of Dr. King, without whom the phenomenon of Barack Obama would have likely been impossible. It is appropriate on […]
Obama Sworn in for Second Term Sunday (Mitch McConnell Photograph)
Obama Sworn in to Second Term: “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny Barack Obama a second term.” – Mitch McConnell
Was Aaron Swartz a Cyber-Criminal or a Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Internet? (Thompson)
Christie Thompson writes at ProPublica: When Reddit co-founder and internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide last Friday, he was facing up to 13 felony counts, 50 years in prison, and millions of dollars in fines. His alleged crime? Pulling millions of academic articles from the digital archive JSTOR. Prosecutors allege that Swartz downloaded the articles because he […]
Gun Murders vs. Terrorism by the Numbers
Number of Americans killed in domestic terrorist attacks, 2002-2011: 30 Number of Americans murdered by firearms, 2000-2011: 115,997 Cost of the War on Terror since 9/11: $5 trillion Cost of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms since 9/11: $12.32 billion In the combined [pdf] US and European Union statistics for 2010, percentage of terrorist […]
America’s Guns, at Home and Abroad (Engelhardt)
Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com Given these last weeks, who doesn’t know what an AR-15 is? Who hasn’t seen the mind-boggling stats on the way assault rifles have flooded this country, or tabulations of accumulating Newtown-style mass killings, or noted that there are barely more gas stations nationwide than federally licensed firearms dealers, or heard the renewed debates over the […]
Krugman: Only a Big-Spending Government can Get us out of our Depression (Moyers)
Bill Moyers interviews Paul Krugman, who attacks the GOP deficit hawks for interfering with our emergence from the Great Republican-caused Depression of the early 21st century. What we need, he says, is more government stimulus. But we’re not going to get it.
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