So it looks like a deal has been reached between Iran and the P5+1 nations. (Here is a fact sheet on the deal put out by the White House.) This is supposed to be an interim deal until a more comprehensive deal is worked out in six months. Juan Cole looks at what both sides got in the deal. [Read more…]
Much of the recent conversation amongst the political chattering classes in the US media has been about the partial elimination of the filibuster rule in the US Senate. This change in one of the many arcane internal rules of the Senate has been hyped by the chronically hyperventilating US media as if we have just witnessed a major political cataclysm. [Read more…]
So the US Senate has finally decided to change one of its internal rules of operation concerning the filibuster. This was a rule that required 60 votes out of the 100-member chamber to get procedural matters (such as ending debate on an issue and bringing it to a vote) approved. The filibuster is still in place but will no longer be available to block any administration nominee for any post, except those to the US Supreme Court. Those procedural votes now require only a simply majority. The filibuster also still remains in place for legislation so that gridlock will continue. [Read more…]
Bob Woodward, courtier journalist par excellence and faithful servant of the ruling political class, laments the fact that Edward Snowden didn’t come to him with his revelations, saying “I wish he had come to me instead of others, particularly The Guardian… I would have said to him ‘let’s not reveal who you are. Let’s make you a protected source and give me time with this data and let’s sort it out and present it in a coherent way.'” [Read more…]
Illinois legalizes same-sex marriage, with governor Pat Quinn signing the legislation into law on Wednesday. The law will go into effect on June 1, 2014. Hawaii’s legislature has also passed a similar measure and its governor signed it into law on Wednesday too. So the two of them become the 15th and 16th states to legalize such marriages. Since both laws were signed on the same day but Hawaii’s law takes effect on December 2, 2013, it may be listed as the 15th state and Illinois as the 16th. [Read more…]
In an important article in the November-December 2013 issue of Foreign Policy magazine titled The End of Hypocrisy: American Foreign Policy in the Age of Leaks, Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore lay out in great detail what I have been saying here, and that is that the main benefit of the Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning leaks is that by providing incontrovertible documentary evidence of what the US government does, it has resulted in seriously damaging the US government’s ability to lie and use hypocrisy in its favor. [Read more…]
Rick Santorum is one of the most overtly religious, anti-gay politicians around. He will undoubtedly run for the presidency in 2016 but right now has started a film company to make Christian-themed films and they have just released their first one. Titled The Christmas Candle, it has angels and miracles, apparently, which seems hardly original. [Read more…]
David Miranda is Glenn Greenwald’s partner and became much better known when he was detained and interrogated at Heathrow airport for nearly nine hours and had his computer and other electronic equipment confiscated because the British authorities suspected that he was carrying Edward Snowden-related materials from Germany to Brazil. [Read more…]
Talks have resumed again today in Geneva between the Iranians on one side and the group known as P5+1, which consists of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, Russia, China, France, UK) and Germany. The talks seemed poised for a breakthrough the last time they met but were torpedoed at the last minute by the French. [Read more…]
According to the Catholic bishop of Phoenix, Catholics should not help people sign on to health insurance via the Affordable Care Act “because of the implications of these actions for cooperation with evil.” [Read more…]