
Court and Spark: Gitmo Stonewall and Supreme Swift-Boating
Pentagon on Supreme Court’s Gitmo Ruling: "Who cares?"
The Defense Department repeated that view on Thursday, asserting that the court’s sweeping ruling against the

Insanity Defense: Power, Paranoia and Presidential Tyranny
This is an expanded version of the column appearing in the June 30 edition of the Moscow Times.
That the United States, once touted as the “world’s greatest democracy,” is now ruled by a presidential dictatorship is a fact beyond any serious dispute. Indeed, except for a bare majority on the Supreme Court — which will disappear with the retirement or demise of the aging Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the Court’s stinging rejection of Bush’s kangaroo military tribunals — the nation’s

Bringing It All Back Home: The Bush War on Liberty Intensifies
Glenn Greenwald has the goods on the all-out war that the Bush Regime and its bootlicking sycophants throughout the right-wing media are waging against the free press. The recent "controversy" over the New York Times report on the Regime’s surveillance of bank records is, as Greenwald astutely notes, based entirely on outright falsehoods. It is also being deliberately stoked by the White House, whose lies about the non-existent "damage"
Crazy for You: Mental Illness as Propaganda Tool
Following up on our previous post on the Great Miami Media Manipulation, here’s Kurt Nimmo detailing how this latest "terrorist threat" is yet another example of one of the Bush Regime’s most effective propaganda tactics: using and abusing the mentally ill to hype minor cases into major, fear-fomenting mind games – which a dull-witted and sensation-enslaved media dutifully megaphones to high heaven. See FBI Exploits Mentally Ill in “Homegrown” Terrorism Effort and for more context, <span style="text-decoration:

Beach Blanket Gonzo: Fearmongering and Fakery in Miami
As usual, wise man Juan Cole has the skinny on the latest mendacious manipulation of America’s carefully-stoked fears of terrorism: this time, a bunch of down-and-out, non-Muslim fringe cultists reduced to begging for water and boots, utterly incapable of carrying out any of the strikes they were allegedly planning — dreams of violence which were encouraged and cultivated by an FBI informant posing as an al Qaeda operative. Every law enforcement agency now says the group posed no real threat, had no weapons or material to make weapons

The Alchemists: Turning Blood Into Gold
This is an expanded version of the column appearing in the June 23 edition of The Moscow Times.
This week an interesting story appeared in the Washington Post – buried on page 16, of course, lest anyone think it was of the slightest importance. It revealed that documentary proof has now emerged confirming the fact that in the spring of 2003, the Bush Regime – flush with its illusory "victory" in Iraq – spurned a wide-ranging peace feeler

Mission Accomplished: The American Record in Iraq
Noted author William Blum performs a public service by laying out the impressive record of accomplishments achieved thus far by the American-led mission in Iraq. Now voters can clearly see what all those candidates who support Operation Iraqi Freedom really stand for — and what all those who call for a swift and orderly withdrawal are actually standing against.
Let there be no shilly-shallying now.

Balm in Gilead
I felt I needed a good curative after reading this, which made me despair of our country, our times, of the whole damned human race: The Shadow War, In a Surprising New Light.
GI Jitters: The Pentagon’s Deep-Seated Sexual Anxiety
From the Associated Press: Pentagon Lists Homosexuality As Disorder.
The document outlines retirement or other discharge policies for service members with physical disabilities, and in a section on defects lists homosexuality alongside mental retardation and personality disorders….
The document, called a Defense Department Instruction, was condemned by medical professionals, members of Congress and other

Patriotic Pork: Give Me That Old-Time Corruption
From the Chicago Tribune: How Hastert benefited from sale: Planned highway could sweeten asset near Plano (Chicago Tribune).
Now this is the kind of political corruption we like here at