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Local News & Opinion
05.02 11 Baltimore City Students Win Awards in Md. History Day Competition Ref.: Civic Events Ref.: Arts & Education Events Ref.: Public Service Notices Travel
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05.15 Horrific Injuries Linked to BP Dispersant Corexit 05.15 'Last Call at the Oasis': Why Time Is Running Out to Save Our Drinking Water 05.14 German Government to Oppose Fracking 05.11 Petition calls on Brazilian president to veto 'catastrophic' forest code 05.11 Bans on School Junk Food Pay Off in California 05.11 When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed 05.10 Game Over for the Climate 05.10 Pollution: the great leveller 05.10 New study: Amish prove raw milk promotes health in children 05.10 Big Agriculture's Big Secrets: 9 Things You Need to Know About the Food You Eat 05.09 Gloria Feldt: The War on Women [video] 05.02 Common Pesticide “Disturbs” the Brains of Children 05.02 Humans Still Evolving as Our Brains Shrink 05.01 Big Changes in Ocean Salinity Intensifying Water Cycle Ref. High health-care costs: It’s all in the pricing - graphic Ref. Dollars for Doctors - How Industry Money Reaches Physicians Ref. 2010 Comparative Price Report Medical and Hospital Fees by Country - Graphics Ref. Health at a Glance 2011 - OECD Indicators Ref. : Why is Healthcare Absurdly Expensive in USA (Part 2) [Graphics] (Part 1 is here) Video Health Care Systems in Less Corrupt Countries “News” Media
05.01 News Corporation has sought to undermine elected governments Daily The Daily Howler Justice Matters
05.16 Is the filibuster unconstitutional? 05.15 MONEY UNLIMITED 05.11 How the Corporate Right Hijacked America's Courts to Enrich the Top 1 Percent 05.03 Supreme Court Favorability Reaches New Low 05.01 Eliot Spitzer’s challenge to DOJ as it investigates Wall Street: ‘Bring some cases’ - video 05.01 Laissez-faire with strip-searches: America's two-faced liberalism US Politics, Policy & Culture
05.16 5 Ways Conservatives are Destroying the Institution of Marriage 05.16 Congress: The TSA Is Wasting Hundreds Of Millions In Taxpayer Dollars 05.16 The Economic Case for Same-Sex Marriage 05.16 If Information Is Power, What Is Lack Of Information? [video] 05.15 IMAGE: It doesn't have to be true, just credible... 05.15 WEDDING BELLS 05.15 Memo to Mitt: Time to Fess Up on Bullying 05.14 “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.” 05.14 Hedges: How Our Demented Capitalist System Made America Insane 05.11 Why Atheists Have Become a Kick-Ass Movement You Want on Your Side 05.11 Fixable Error, New Insight, and Social Security 05.10 Ballot Access 05.10 Christian Conservatives vs. Sex: The Long War Over Reproductive Freedom 05.03 Out of the Margins, Into the Fray 05.03 Occupy May Day: Voices from the LA protests [video] 05.02 Jon Stewart Assails GOP for Their Hypocrisy on Obama Campaign Bringing Up Bin Laden [video] 05.02 Hamptons Home Prices Rise as Buyers Prefer Luxury Deals 05.02 The Administration Is Scared of Its Own Regulatory Shadow High Crimes?
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05.16 “What Scares Me Isn’t $2 Billion Loss JP Morgan Made, What Scares Me is the Record $19 Billion in Profits” [video] 05.16 Republican Party suckles at the breast of Big Business 05.16 Weisbrot and Krugman are Wrong: Greece cannot pull off an Argentina 05.15 Greek deadlock heightens fears of full European economic crisis 05.14 Why We Regulate 05.11 Indentured Servitude for Seniors: Social Security Garnished for Student Debts 05.11 Breaking Up Four Big Banks 05.11 Wall Street’s immunity 05.11 How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform 05.10 Real Estate 4 Ransom -- locking up the Great American Dream 05.10 Quelle Surprise! Fed Defends Incompetent Bank Management Against Investors 05.10 Europe’s Problems Multiply 05.09 Ryan Shrugs: Overlooked GOP Budget Provision Would Fuel Offshoring With New Tax Incentives 05.09 Top 1% Fills Gov. Scott Walker’s Recall War Chest With $25 Million 05.09 ALEC Affiliated Corporations 05.09 Teachers’ Board Becomes Fifteenth Group To Drop ALEC 05.09 ALEC’s Top Five Anti-Environment ‘Model’ Laws 05.09 Special Rights for ALEC: Three States Exempt Stealth Corporate Lobbying Group From Lobbying Rules 05.09 A web of privilege supports this so-called meritocracy 05.03 How Wall Street Drives Up Gas Prices -- Ripping Us Off and Killing Jobs 05.03 Paul Krugman on How to Fix the Economy - and Why It's Easier Than You Think 05.02 There is an alternative to austerity 05.01 Under Catholic pressure Paul Ryan backs away from Rand, Objectivism 05.01 Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake! 05.01 Tea Party Congressmen Accept Cash From Bailed-Out Bankers 05.01 Paul Krugman and Ron Paul discuss economics – as it happened 05.01 No alternative to austerity International
05.15 IDF closes Palestinian school to make way for West Bank training zone 05.14 Noam Chomsky on: 05.14 INFOGRAPHIC: Gas Spending Around The World 05.14 Graphic: Products of Slavery 05.14 Israel warned of volatile situation as Palestinian hunger strikers near death 05.14 How Right-Wing Extremists and Islamists Are the Same 05.14 Guatemala's land grab and massacre 05.11 U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam 05.11 Thousands of British police join anti-austerity protest 05.10 China Investment Corp. Stops Buying Europe Government Debt on Crisis Concern 05.09 Inside Syria's crackdown: 'I found my boys burning in the street' 05.03 “We Did Not Choose This War” and Other Hypocrisies 05.03 Jobless Rate Reaches New High in Euro Zone 05.02 Collapsing Afghanistan & Pakistan Refuse to Cooperate with Obama Photo Op 05.02 Free the torture report 05.01 What Did You Do In The War, Daddy? 05.01 Quebec students ignite the popular imagination 05.01 Occupy Wall Street Plans Global Protests in Resurgence 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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