US politics

By Cenk Uygur (The Young Turks) | — “”The conservative commentator Glenn Beck failed to persuade a federal judge to dismiss a defamation lawsuit by a Saudi Arabian student who Beck repeatedly accused of involvement in and being the “money man” behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. U.S. District Judge Patti Saris in Boston on […]

Democratic Party

The Beltway Beast: How two Tribes in D.C. are Destroying the Middle Class

contributors

By Munir Moon The area inside the Beltway consists of Washington, D.C., and surrounding counties, and what I call the Beast includes defense contractors, lobbyists, Wall Street, think tanks, advocacy groups, journalists, foreign agents, and everyone else who wants something from our government. All of these congregate in the Beltway and are actively engaged in […]

Bill of Rights

Americans’ Personal Freedom falls to 21 in World

contributors

The Young Turks | — “”Americans’ assessments of their personal freedom have significantly declined under President Obama, according to a new study from the Legatum Institute in London, and the United States now ranks below 20 other countries on this measure. The research shows that citizens of countries including France, Uruguay, and Costa Rica now […]

Bush

Bush Admin. Spent Billions on an Iraqi Army with 50,000 “ghost” Soldiers

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | — Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi announced to his parliament on Sunday that inspectors had uncovered 50,000 non-existent soldiers in four divisions of the Iraqi Army. Their pay was presumably being diverted to the officers in the division. This ziggurat of corruption was one reason the army collapsed on June 9, […]

African-Americans

Rudy Giuliani Wants To Prosecute Ferguson Witnesses

contributors

The Young Turks | — “Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani weighed in on the Ferguson grand jury decision Tuesday night and said that if it were his case, he would prosecute some witnesses to the police shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown for lying about what they saw. In an appearance on Fox News’ […]

Bill of Rights

Can the Police Phone-Track you without a Warrant?

contributors

Hanni Fakhoury and Jennifer Lynch (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Once again, a federal court will decide whether police can track your movements over an extended period of time without a search warrant. Federal and state courts have divided over whether the Fourth Amendment requires police seek a search warrant to obtain historical cell site location information […]

Afghanistan

What if it was Russia and China invading and Bombing? The Blindness of MSM and Washington

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt (Tomdispatch.com) | — Let’s play a game, the kind that makes no sense on this single-superpower planet of ours. For a moment, do your best to suspend disbelief and imagine that there’s another superpower, great power, or even regional power somewhere that, between 2001 and 2003, launched two major wars in the […]

African-Americans

Racial Fearmongering and Ferguson: US Stereotype of “violent” African-American Men as old as Slavery

contributors

By Peter Bloom, The Open University (The Conversation) The decision not to charge police officer Darren Wilson with the unlawful shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown has reignited protests across the US. The judgment was met by violent outrage on the streets of Ferguson. After months of deliberation, a grand jury ruled that there was […]

African-Americans

Race inequality between US Whites and African-Americans by the Numbers (Again)

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | — With regard to employment, African-Americans got hit harder by the Bush Depression than did whites, and jobs have not come back for them at nearly the same rate: This vast difference between Euro-American and African-American rates of employment holds true regardless of educational level; college-educated African-Americans are also twice as […]