Sen. Gravel’s high bar for political courage: The Kavanaugh Hearing is about Political Posturing, Not Keeping a Political Hack Off the High Court

By Dave Lindorff

The politically ambitious mainstream Democratic Senator Cory Booker has been posing as a courageous man ready to put his seat in the Senate at risk by violating Senate rules and releasing “confidential” emails of Supreme Court nominee and current Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh at Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The truth of course is that some of what Sen. Booker “released” had already been declassified, and that in any event, read more

Celebrate Mass Slaughter on Patriot Day!

I went in search of anything the United States was number 1 in that it shouldn’t be ashamed of, and came up empty. But I did find that the United States is number 1 in believing it is number 1. So, that’s something.

In my book, Curing Exceptionalism, I wrote:

“From John Winthrop before the fact to Tocqueville and on through John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, up to and including Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and most voices on U.S. television news today, as well as that neighbor or friend who’s read more

Tomgram: Engelhardt, History, Memory, and Donald Trump

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What Will Donald Trump Be Remembered For?
The World According to The Don(ald)
By Tom Engelhardt

I know you won’t believe me. Not now, not when everything Donald Trump does — any tweet, any insult at any rally — is the news of the day, any day.  But he won’t be remembered for any of the things now in our headlines. No human being, it’s true, has ever been covered read more

Cook boiled for doing ‘right’: Philly Police Officer Fired for Exposing Corrupt Law Enforcement Conduct

By Linn Washington, Jr.

Efforts by Tyrone Cook in 2010 to end the wrongful arrest of a nephew plunged this veteran law enforcer into the cesspool of dirty practices among police and prosecutors in Philadelphia.

An investigation conducted by Cook succeeded in having the false charges against his nephew dismissed. Those charges arose from improper investigative techniques by detectives Cook discovered. Such corner-cutting techniques fuel mass incarceration read more

Talk Nation Radio: Rajni Lalit on Justice for an Island Whose Whole Population Was Removed for a U.S. Military Base

Rajni Lallah is a leading member of LALIT (which means struggle), a political organization in Mauritius in the forefront for the past 42 years of the struggle to decolonize and demilitarize the Chagos Islands. Rajni Lallah was 12 years old when she joined the women’s movement in Mauritius and remains active in Muvman Liberasyon Fam, a national women’s organization in Mauritius. When she was 14, she went to the first solidarity all-night vigil in support of Chagossian women on hunger read more

UVA’s Miller Center Loves Killers

The University of Virginia’s Miller Center caught flak for appointing Trumpian Marc Short, but has now announced the appointment of John Negroponte, presumably hoping for little resistance since Negroponte’s not a Trumpman.

But shouldn’t morality still matter? Shouldn’t a center that has yet to ever feature an opponent of war but keeps inviting mercenaries and soldiers and warmongers to speak have to have some limits? We’re talking about a man who oversaw death squads in Honduras read more

Why I’m Going to Ireland to Try to Fix the United States

The United States spends about five times what China does on its military. And it spends more just on its military bases in other people’s countries than any country other than itself or China spends on its entire military. The United States keeps troops in almost every country on earth, including in 800 to 1,000 major military bases outside the United States. The rest of the world’s nations combined read more