Despite gains made in the 2012 election, the US is in many ways running its economy using an operating manual written by madmen. Here’s list of five deadly delusions that are still seen as conventional wisdom inside the beltway.
The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due (Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/ AP)process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice.
Why do certain people and ideas suddenly capture the limelight while others go unnoticed? Others seem never to go away... The recent ascent of environmental writer Mark Lynas to prominence in the debate on genetically modified crops (GMOs) is a lesson in the power of myths.
John Brennan’s confirmation hearing to become head of the CIA will take place at the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, February 7. There is suddenly a flurry of attention around a white paper that lays out the administration’s legal justification for killing Americans with drones overseas, and some of the Senators are vowing to ask Brennan “tough questions,” since Brennan has been the mastermind of the lethal drone attacks.
When Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke to the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003, countless journalists in the United States extolled him for a masterful performance -- making the case that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The fact that the speech later became notorious should not obscure how easily truth becomes irrelevant in the process of going to war.
Recent reports of secret meetings among industry reps and the Food and Drug Adminstration over GMO labeling piqued my interest, mostly because this critical aspect was missing: any effort to label GE foods at the federal level could bring the current grassroots movement to a grinding halt by preventing any (Photo: Greenpeace)stronger local laws from ever being enacted. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus has been blunt about his determination to rig the Electoral College. So it should come as no surprise that, even after his partisan minions were "named and shamed" into distancing themselves from an initial strategy for gaming presidential politics, keyRepublicans have returned wit
Observers billed Obama's speech here in the Twin Cities Monday afternoon as the first stop for a White House road show promoting gun control legislation, but the event's tone, its location, and, yes, even its content signal that the White House has chosen a circuitous route in pursuit of its goals.
Port Said has become a city of numbers, its narrative punctuated by a grim arithmetic: 21 sentenced to death in a trial for 72 killed in a soccer riot. 32 killed after the verdict was announced. Seven killed in a funeral march the next day. Four more shot dead the night after that.
