I have been discussing in previous posts the divisions within the Republican party. The split is not along any ideological lines (they are pretty much unified on all the major issues) but on strategy, between what we might call Tactical Obstructionists and Scorched Earthers. The Tactical Obstructionists are those who favor more traditional means of achieving political goals, carefully choosing those fights that they think they can win or that have the most resonance with voters, but letting the rest of the government function. This is the approach of the Republican party establishment. [Read more…]
In the light of all that we have learned in the last few months, let’s recap where we are: We have a government that collects everyone’s communications data in secret and stores them, justifying the practice by using secret interpretations of the law and getting authorization to do so from a secret court that issues secret rulings, telling a handful of congresspersons in secret just a little of what they are doing, and putting people on secret kill lists and secret no-fly lists on the basis of criteria that are secret. [Read more…]
While there have been complaints about the Affordable Care Act, one of the good pieces of news coming out is that sex workers who formerly could not get health insurance for no reason other than the stigma associated with their work, even in states where it is legal, now can purchase affordable insurance. [Read more…]
I was curious as to what Stephen M. Walt would have to say about the deal with Iran and he says that while the proximate issue is about nuclear technology, the ultimate issue is something else and it is the latter that explains the somewhat paradoxical reactions of both supporters and opponents of the deal. [Read more…]
Back in 2008, I wrote a 12-part series titled The Propaganda Machine in which I laid out how the right-wing propaganda machine works in the US. Much of that machine became created because of what is now known as the Powell Memo. [Read more…]
The ACLU has gone to court to stop the government from collecting the phone records of everybody. The government has asked the judge to trust the “national security experts” when they say that they are doing this only to combat terrorism and not to poke into the lives of ordinary people. The judge heard the case last Friday. [Read more…]
Reader Norm sent me this shocking news report that the government of president Hamid Karzai is considering re-introducing the practice of stoning adulterers in public in Afghanistan, an abomination that occurred under the rule of the Taliban but was mercifully halted after they were overthrown. [Read more…]
Reports are emerging that the Geneva talks were preceded by many secret meetings between representatives of the Obama administration and the Iranian government, facilitated by the Sultan of Oman, of which the Europeans and Israel were informed only in late September of this year. (Here is a fact sheet on the deal put out by the White House.) [Read more…]
It turns out, according to the latest revelations from the Edward Snowden documents, that the NSA has infected more than 50,000 networks worldwide with malicious computer software that turns those computers effectively into ‘sleeper cells‘ that can be exploited by the NSA when it wants. [Read more…]