War Is A Crime

POLL: Tax reform & Obamacare: Poll finds voters want them dealt with separately – National Review

POLL: 60 percent to blame Trump, GOP for ObamaCare problems – TheHill

House Republicans are divided over Obamacare individual mandate push in tax plan – The Washington Post

Republican U.S. senators to watch in the debate on the tax bill, two of them have qualms about including repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate in the tax bill – Reuters

Pro-Obamacare group ads target swing Republicans on taxes – POLITICO

Trump met Senate Republicans on ObamaCare fix, The importance of the Alexander/Murray bipartisan bill has increased  given that Senate Republicans are now proposing to repeal ObamaCare’s individual mandate in their tax bill  – TheHill

Senate Committee clears GOP tax bill to set post-Thanksgiving table – US News

Killing Obamacare read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Starting with Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly and film producer Harvey Weinstein, they’ve fallen like so many dominoes in the glare of publicity and grim public testimony from the women (and, in a few read more

By Dave Lindorff

            Maybe having a president in the White House who acts like an impulsive child is a good thing — at least if it convinces the Senate, a body that has for decades surrendered its vital Constitutional power over war and peace to the Executive Branch, to wrest it back.

            This is particularly important in the case of nuclear weapons. As things stand, going back all the way to Harry Truman, the only read more

 On Tuesday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on whether Trump can just up and nuke people or not. The hand-picked witnesses, all former military, all said there was some chance that if Trump ordered a nuking, somebody might refuse to carry out the order. On what grounds? No witness or Senator ever mentioned the illegality of war under the UN Charter or the Kellogg-Briand Pact. But one witness brought up “necessity” and “proportionality” as grounds for deeming a particular apocalypse-creating act illegal and another legal. But these “just war” concepts are not empirical. There’s no standard for determining whether an action is “necessary” or “proportional.” It comes down to the mood the commander of Strategic Command is in that day, or the partisan identity of some official, or the courage and integrity of rank-and-filers ordered to begin the earth’s destruction. If, like me, you’re not convinced that’s good enough, here are some other possible approaches:

1) Pass a new law for North Korea and one for each other country on earth pointing out that a stronger law already exists called the U.S. Constitution which forbids presidents from launching wars that have not been declared by Congress, and include a ban on using any funds to violate the law.

2) As long as we’re passing laws to acknowledge the existence of laws, pass one to point out the absolute ban on war in the Kellogg-Briand Pact, as well as read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

When it comes to the art of the deal, at least where arms sales are concerned, American presidents, their administrations, and the Pentagon have long been Trumpian in nature.  Their role has been to beat the drums (of war) for the major American weapons makers and it’s been a highly profitable and successful activity.  In 2015, for instance, the U.S. once again took the read more

Are veterans of the U.S. military disproportionately likely to be mass killers in the United States? Asking such a question is difficult, first because of concerns of profiling, discrimination, etc., and second, because it’s hard to answer.

It’s important to answer because it’s important for us to know whether military training is contributing to this epidemic, a fact that (one must rush to say) would not somehow eliminate the roles played by gender, guns, mental illness, domestic violence, read more

Below is a discussion about the identification of the specific munition used in the Latemenah and Khan Sheikhoun sarin attacks. Bellingcat matches the munition parts found after the blasts to the M4000 bomb declared by the Syrian government to the OPCW as being part of its chemical stockpile. In an heated exchange of tweets, experts confute or approve the Bellingcat statements. Read also the comments at the end of the Bellingcat article.

Did Russia accidentally provide the best evidence of the Syrian government’s involvement in sarin attacks? – bellingcat

This report is based on “cherry picking” – i.e. reporting only matches. This bias causes the human brain to believe “it’s impossible for so many coincidences to happen”. When considering also the mismatches, it looks much less clear-cut: 1. Cap is ~20% smaller in diagram 1/3” – Rootclaim on Twitter

2. Inner metal ring in tail is ~20% larger and 15% wider. 3. Fins seem longer, but hard to measure. 4. Fuze is 30% larger. 5. “Lug” is 100% farther from the cap. 6. The mixer has 3 “steps” instead of 2, rod is 40% wider, and extends through other side 2/3 – Rootclaim on Twitter

7. A metal cone spreading like putty to a half circle seems weird, but expert opinion is needed. So other than a lug next to a cap (which also happens in the cannons), none of the items match. We might publish a probabilistic analysis of this once more info is available. 3/3 – Rootclaim on Twitter

Plausible? read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

As you read today’s piece by historian and TomDispatch regular Alfred McCoy, author most recently of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, think of Afghanistan as the gateway drug read more