Obama’s War with the Right (& Media)

By Robert Parry
February 28, 2009

In a startling ambitious budget message, President Barack Obama has thrown down the gauntlet to the American Right not only by tying the current economic crisis to the recklessness of the past eight years under George W. Bush but by tracing it back further to the anti-regulatory, anti-labor and anti-government policies of Ronald Reagan.

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Good Lives in Bad Times

By Michael Winship
February 28, 2009

In 9th grade high school English, we read that famous William Carlos Williams poem:

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Can You Trust the Republicans?

By Robert Parry
February 27, 2009

If you watch the pundits on cable news or read the big-name newspaper columnists, you will find a general consensus that the national Republicans are returning to their core principles in their near-unanimous opposition to President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill and other proposals.

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Leahy, Pelosi Differ on Bush Inquiry

By Jason Leopold
February 26, 2009

In one week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy says he will begin establishing a “commission of inquiry” to investigate the Bush administration’s use of torture and other abuses of power, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is objecting to his plan of granting immunity to some witnesses.

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‘News’ Media Disgraced in Levy Case

By Jeff Cohen
February 24, 2009

For four months beginning in May 2001, major U.S. media outlets, including all three cable news channels, took the American public for a ride — perpetrating a hoax that a married congressman was somehow involved in the disappearance of a female intern.

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JFK, FDR and ‘Seven Days in May’

By Lisa Pease
February 24, 2009

Robert Parry recently wrote of how President Obama’s early actions might bring him a “Seven Days in May moment,” referring to a fictitious coup attempt from a film of the same name, in which a popular military figure nearly took over the government.

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Obama Signals ‘Bush-Lite’ on Liberties

By Ivan Eland
February 24, 2009

Barack Obama entered the presidency as one of the most rhetorically pro-civil liberties politicians in recent memory.

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Anti–Gay Bias Should Anger Christians

By Howard Bess
February 23, 2009

On Aug. 23, 2008, Australian diver Matthew Mitcham executed the highest-scoring dive ever made in Olympic history. The dive was a complicated maneuver called a back 2½ somersault with 2½ twists. Matthew nailed it with perfection.

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Yoo’s Memos Give Retroactive Cover

By Jason Leopold
February 23, 2009

A Justice Department inquiry has found that the Bush administration’s legal opinions justifying the torture of “war on terror” detainees were hastily drafted after one prisoner was already subjected to waterboarding, a practice that creates the sensation of drowning, according to several sources familiar with the still-classified report.

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Capital Hypocrisy Rooted in Money

By Michael Winship
February 23, 2009

The great movie comic and professional curmudgeon W.C. Fields once said, “You can fool some of the people some of the time – and that’s enough to make a decent living.”

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