The Radical Underuse of Impeachment

Al Capone wasn’t prosecuted for tax evasion because it’s cool or smart or strategic to prosecute murderers for lesser crimes, but because proving murder in court was going to be more difficult.

That’s not analogous to a Congressional impeachment, but the opposite of how Congress operates. Congress sits on indisputable evidence of the greatest crimes while impeaching presidents for lesser offenses that are harder to prove.

Andrew Johnson publicly did everything he could to limit “freedom” read more

Six Reasons Elizabeth Warren Should Volunteer to Be Bernie Sanders’ Running Mate

Why in the world should Elizabeth Warren choose to run for vice president?

The obvious answer that can save you the time of reading further or, you know, thinking, is my blatant sexism. Clearly, every time I’ve supported female candidates in the past for City Council, House of Delegates, Congress, and the White House has been part of an elaborate plot — no doubt hatched in Moscow — to create a cover for my secret but very real sexism, which I was saving for just this crucial moment. Also, read more

Talk Nation Radio: The Need to Ban Nuclear Weapons and Energy

This Week on Talk Nation Radio, we speak with two of the key people behind Beyond Nuclear International, which you can find at beyondnuclearinternational.org


Linda Pentz Gunter and Cindy Folkers

Linda Pentz Gunter founded Beyond Nuclear in 2007 and serves as its international specialist as well as its media and development director. Prior to her work in anti-nuclear advocacy, she was a journalist for 20 years in print and broadcast, working for USA Network, Reuters, The Times (UK), and read more

Key Step to Clean Up Vieques Survives in Catastrophically Awful Military Bill

First the good news.

If one of the worst pieces of legislation ever drafted becomes law, there is one small measure in it that we can be pleased with. RootsAction.org and World BEYOND War and many other organizations and activists from Puerto Rico and the rest of the United States and beyond urged Congress through a petition and a variety of lobbying approaches to provide $10 million for the purchase of closed detonation chambers in the clean-up of military contamination in Vieques, Puerto Rico.

This read more

Talk Nation Radio: Preetha Gopalan on Appealing the ICC’s Decision not to Prosecute War Crimes in Afghanistan

Preetha Gopalan is Reprieve’s Deputy Head of UK Litigation. She works on strategic litigation efforts in the UK which seek to hold the British Government to account for complicity in the death penalty, torture, secret detention and extrajudicial killings abroad. Reprieve has just appealed the decision by the International Criminal Court not to pursue prosecution of war crimes in Afghanistan.

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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If You’re Not Busy Plotting Nonviolent Revolution for Peace and Climate, You’re Busy Dying

Roger Hallam is of course right in his short book, Common Sense for the 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse. While some portion of humanity heaps scorn on the victims of the fossil fuel propaganda who deny climate science, only a much smaller portion points out the equally delusional and disastrous denial of the need for nonviolent revolution.

Facts are facts, as Hallam points out. The current political systems cannot change fast enough. They read more

West Point Professor Builds a Case Against the U.S. Army

West Point Professor Tim Bakken’s new book The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military traces a path of corruption, barbarism, violence, and unaccountability that makes its way from the United States’ military academies (West Point, Annapolis, Colorado Springs) to the top ranks of the U.S. military and U.S. governmental policy, and from there into a broader U.S. culture that, in turn, supports the subculture of the military and its leaders.

The U.S. Congress and read more

Talk Nation Radio: David Gibbs: Get Rid of NATO

David Gibbs is a Professor of History at the University of Arizona and has published widely on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and NATO. His publications have appeared in both academic and popular venues, such as the London Guardian, Los Angeles Times, and Le Monde Diplomatique. He also recently debated the topic of humanitarian intervention at the Oxford Union Society in the UK. Professor Gibbs is currently finishing his third read more

It’s time for Virginia to end the death penalty

The death penalty’s slow death is accelerating. At least 140 nations no longer use it. No nation in Europe uses the death penalty. No nation in the Western Hemisphere uses it, except the United States.

Twenty-nine U.S. states have banned capital punishment or imposed a moratorium, and most of the rest have effectively stopped using it.

Virginia, the northernmost east-coast state with the death penalty, has not sentenced anyone to death in over 8 years. Virginia’s death row holds only three men, read more

Ukrainegate’s Failures

The weaknesses of Ukrainegate are on display in a new book by Neal Katyal (“with Sam Koppelman”) making the case for Ukrainegate, but titled “Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.”

It’s not, of course, the case against Donald Trump. This is the case against Donald Trump: The man is intentionally and openly exacerbating climate collapse. He’s threatened at least two countries with nuclear war. He’s illegally sought to share nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia. He’s escalated several read more