President Obama said last week: “Now, the truth is that, unless you have a — what’s called a single-payer system, in which everybody is automatically covered, then you’re probably not going to reach every single individual because there’s always going to be somebody out there who thinks they’re indestructible and doesn’t want to get health [...]
It’s truly stupefying that today, in the midst of the Obama era, that legions of Americans continue to find it so easy to rationalize and doggedly defend the Bush administration’s torture program. As more details are revealed it’s clear that never before in human history has such a complex system of abduction, international rendition, and [...]
During an interview with MSNBC’s David Shuster, Boston Globe columnist Charles Pierce blamed cable news shows like “Hardball” for helping fringe groups like the “birthers” gain popularity. Pierce also critcized cable news programs for continuously booking less than credible guests such as Liz Cheney.
To be a proponent of universal healthcare right now is only marginally more difficult than, say, being a New Jersey politician. Optimistic political newbies of the “Progressive” persuasion entered the healthcare debate with dreams of nationwide, single-payer healthcare. That was quickly downgraded by Hope’s anathema, “pragmatism,” to a public option, which was traded for lukewarm [...]
Former Vice President Dick Cheney Cheney pressured George W. Bush and other top administration officials to deploy U.S. soldiers to a Buffalo NY suburb to arrest suspected terrorists, according to a report. Using American soldiers for domestic law enforcement purposes would have been unprecedented. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the armed forces [...]
Faced with impending defeat in a U.S. District Court habeas corpus case, the Obama administration devised a new strategy for continuing the detention of Mohammed Jawad, an Afghani who may have been as young as 12 in 2002 when he allegedly wounded two U.S. soldiers with a grenade. Justice Department lawyers announced Friday that they [...]
“The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.” – Aldous Huxley Ever since the Persian Gulf War 15 years ago, countless spokespersons for [...]
A well-known spokesman for ethical interrogations by psychologists in national security settings was himself accused in 2001 of unethical behavior for his part in the interrogation of a suspect in an espionage case. Dr. Michael Gelles was at the time the Chief Forensic Psychologist for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). His work on the [...]
