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05.17 Why American Colleges Are Becoming a Force for Inequality 05.17 Why Private Schools Are Dying Out Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Health Care & Environment
05.23 The Canadian War on Science: A long, unexaggerated, devastating chronological indictment 05.22 Global inaction shows that the climate sceptics have already won [6:22 video] 05.22 Dylan Ratigan & Life After Cable News [5:39 video] 05.21 Ellen Page [6:49 video] 05.20 Lisa P. Jackson [6:19 video] 05.20 Climate Change Denial is Costing us Trillions, Threatening Farming, Fishing, Animals (Video) 05.20 Blinding Us From Science 05.20 The Baltimore Lead Study [3:17 video] 05.19 A Black Mound of Canadian Oil Waste Is Rising Over Detroit 05.18 Four Examples from the Last Week Prove Obama Is Full of Hot Air on Climate Protection 05.17 The Murky World of Hospital Prices 05.17 New Jersey Hospital Is the Costliest in the Nation 05.17 Angelina Jolie has done something extraordinary 05.17 Obama must Make Fighting Climate Change National Project, or Die the death of a thousand Scandals 05.17 Study: Why Pot Smokers Are Skinnier 05.16 What Will It Take for Us to Recognize That the Way We Live Could Be Destroying Life as We Know It? 05.16 How Drug Companies Keep Medicine Out of Reach Video Health Care Systems in Less Corrupt Countries News Media
05.23 WSJ Argues For Reducing Historically Low Corporate Tax Burden 05.23 PBS and the Koch Brother Scandal (plus “Koch Brothers Exposed”) [1:00:52 video] 05.22 Costs of Spying on the AP That the Establishment Ignores 05.22 Greg Sargent (and others) are playing us rubes! Daily FAIR Blog Justice Matters
05.21 Guatemala annuls Rios Montt's genocide conviction 05.21 Obama DOJ formally accuses journalist in leak case of committing crimes 05.21 The Criminal Case Against the Tea Party Cabal and Why the Justice Department Won’t Pursue It 05.21 Carl Hiaasen: IRS went after small fry, but let the big ones get away 05.18 Senator wants U.S. in oil price-fixing probe 05.18 Timothy Geithner Is Key To IRS Scandal 05.16 Why Won't the SEC Rein In the Firms That Tanked America's Economy? 05.16 Elizabeth Warren to Obama Administration: Take the Banks to Court, Already! US Politics, Policy & Culture
05.23 Six Facts Lost in the IRS Scandal 05.23 The Long, Sordid History of the American Right and Racism 05.17 The Great American Descent into Plutocracy 05.17 The Real Benghazi Scandal 05.16 Take Politics Away From the I.R.S. 05.16 Should 501(c)(4)’s Be Eliminated? 05.16 What We Mean When We Say 'Race Is a Social Construct' High Crimes?
Economics, Crony Capitalism
05.23 Deja Vu on the Hill: Wall Street Lobbyists Roll Back Finance Reform, Again 05.22 Even Before Apple Tax Breaks, Ireland’s Policy Had Its Critics 05.22 Apple Avoids Paying $17 Million In Taxes Every Day Through A Ballsy But Genius Tax Avoidance Scheme 05.22 David Dayen: The Uprising of the Second Tier in a Time of Late Capitalism 05.20 Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills 05.20 Is EVERY Market Rigged? 05.19 Can two senators end ‘too big to fail’? 05.18 Pope blames tyranny of capitalism for making people miserable[1:00 video] 05.18 A Simple Graph That Should Silence Austerians and Gold Bugs Forever [graph] 05.18 The Savings Heist 05.18 Sheila Krumholz and Danielle Brian on How Money Rules Washington [20:31 video] Ref. : Susan Crawford on Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly and Unfair [25:35 video] Ref. : Nurses vs. High-Speed Traders Ref. : We’re More Unequal Than You Think – Graphic: Unequal rise in income International
05.23 New Documents Reveal How a 1980s Nuclear War Scare Became a Full-Blown Crisis 05.22 C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh: The Great Jobs Disaster 05.21 Jobless Youth: Europe's Hollow Efforts to Save a Lost Generation 05.21 The Job Market of 2045 [14:32 podcast] 05.19 Italy coalition: Thousands rally in Rome against cuts [graphic] 05.18 Hans Rosling: the man who's making data cool [3:19 video] 05.18 Washington gets explicit: its 'war on terror' is permanent 05.17 Egypt 'suffering worst economic crisis since 1930s' 05.16 Catholic Church Finally Decides That Austerity is Bad We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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STRONG COMMENTARY:On Constitution Day: Talk of Impeachment and Rumors of WarThe threat of presidential abuse of power is back, including the same crime of illegal spying that Nixon was impeached for--this time more seriously than before.
The talk on the the weekend of Sept. 16-17 at Camp Democracy in the shadow of the Washington Monument on the National Mall was of impeaching the president--and of looming war with Iran.I spoke on the morning of Sept. 17, along with John Nichols of the Nation, David Green of Hofstra, former federal prosecutor and author Elizabeth de la Vega, and long time anti-war activist Marcus Raskin. Later, in the afternoon, a second group of people spoke on the same topic, including veteran former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Jennifer van Bergen (who first exposed Bush's secret "signing statements"), Michael Avery, president of the National Lawyers Guild, and former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY).
And yet, scarcely one generation later, the threat of presidential abuse of power is back, including the same crime of illegal spying--this time more seriously than before. Holtzmen observed that when Nixon was ordered by the Supreme Court to produce the tape recordings that the government had learned had been made in the Oval Office, after some hesitation, he agreed, and his fate was sealed. This time, she suggested ominously, Bush and his gang might decide to ignore orders from the Supreme Court.
Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzmen (D, NY) suggested ominously, Bush and his gang might decide to ignore orders from the Supreme Court. That, everyone agrees, would be the moment when tyranny would be upon us.
That, everyone agrees, would be the moment when tyranny--the very thing that the Founding Fathers feared most, and that was their motive in including an impeachment clause in the Constitution--would be upon us.As the NLG's Mike Avery noted, at that point, the only remaining recourses for the American People would be impeachment, or Thomas Jefferson's other remedy: "revolution."
Former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern announced at the session the electrifying news that secret orders had gone out for a Naval battle group to set sail immediately for the Persian Gulf, with a planned ETA off the coast of Iran of Oct. 21--less than three weeks before Election Day. Speaking of arms, Ray McGovern announced at the session the electrifying, if not wholly unexpected news that Naval officers had notified his organization of former intelligence officers about secret orders that had gone out for a Naval battle group to set sail immediately for the Persian Gulf, with a planned ETA off the coast of Iran of Oct. 21--less than three weeks before Election Day. (McGovern, before he resigned in disgust during the Bush first term of office, had been in charge of threat assessment at the CIA.)"It would appear," one well-connected Washington source informed me after hearing about the Naval maneuvers, "that the Bush administration's internal polling is telling them that they are in serious trouble in November and that they are getting desperate."
If Bush and his gang cannot get all their crimes retroactively approved by the current compliant Republican Congress, he and Cheney, fearing impeachment and war crimes prosecution, may have decided to go with a "Hail Mary" strategy--an aerial bombardment of Iran's nuclear facilities just before Election Day designed to rally Americans once more around the already abased and abused Flag. Maybe so. If Bush and his gang cannot get all their crimes retroactively approved by the current compliant Republican Congress, he and Cheney, fearing impeachment and war crimes prosecution, may have decided to go with a "Hail Mary" strategy--an aerial bombardment of Iran's nuclear facilities just before Election Day designed to rally Americans once more around the already abased and abused Flag.This time, though, such a desperate, jingoistic strategy may not work. In fact, if such an act of unprovoked war leads Iran to unleash Shi'ia militias in Iraq against American forces, it will lead to an exponential increase in American casualties at a time that Americans are massively turning against that war.
The potential for an attack on Iran to become a new Tet is probably as great or greater than the likelihood of its rallying the public around an already widely discredited president and war. The potential for an attack on Iran to become a new Tet is probably as great or greater than the likelihood of its rallying the public around an already widely discredited president and war.Crucial in determining which way things would go is how Democrats respond to news of a new war in the offing. If they run true to form and start cheering for more war, they will have nailed the coffin shut on the Democratic Party as a functioning political organization. If they finally stand up against this abuse of American power and say no to yet another Bush war, the end to this nightmare could be in sight. And which way the Democrats react will depend on what the American people do between now and any new Bush war. As McGovern said darkly, "We have only seven weeks to act to stop this from happening." Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns, titled This Can't be Happening!, is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's latest book is The Case for Impeachment, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky. Visit his website for more information. Lindorff may be reached at dlindorff@yahoo.com. This story is published in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author.
Copyright © 2006 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on September 18, 2006. |
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