Also at Huffington Post In his non-apology about “bridgegate,” Governor Chris Christie lost my vote. In his “mistakes were clearly made” pabulum, Christie failed the test of leadership. It doesn’t matter whether you think Christie is a bully. It doesn’t matter how much Christie knew about the bridge lane closures and when he knew it.…
Daniel N. White. Introduction by William Astore. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the U.S. military has embraced special forces (SEALs, Green Berets, and the like) and has been deploying them globally to at least eighty different countries. There’s an allure to special forces and the special ops community captured in the country’s admiration of SEAL Team…
Richard Sahn In the tradition of Jonathan Swift, I have a modest proposal to improve voter ID laws: a “stand your ground” law outside of the polls. You know: the same law in Florida which helped to exonerate George Zimmerman from the charge of murdering Trayvon Martin. With a “stand your ground” law at the…
Stuart Lyle Freed former Pussy Riot members, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, have unveiled a plan to start a new organization, Zone of Law. The name, according to a Rolling Stone report, is a play on the Russian word “zone,” which can refer to prison camps. It seems that outrage in the West over their…
W.J. Astore Yes, I know it’s a harsh claim that Members of Congress don’t care about sending your son or daughter off to war. Partly that’s because more than half of them are millionaires. And if they’re not millionaires now, they will be when they leave office and cash in as lobbyists and similar Beltway…
b. traven In his new “memoir” Robert Gates bites the hand of President Obama, who foolishly let him stay on as Secretary of Defense from the incompetent administration of George W. Bush. In Gates’s book, which lavishes praise on the steadfastness and intelligence of Bush in pushing war, Gates faults his new boss Barack Obama…
W.J. Astore At TomDispatch.com, Tom Engelhardt has an especially fine exposé of the National Security State as a religion with its own priesthood, holy books, dogma, and true believers/followers. I recommend reading the entire article, but I do want to highlight some implications of his argument. Like the Catholic Church (and I’m Catholic), the National…
W.J. Astore A juxtaposition of two stories is revealing of our sad American moment. The first involves Iraq. Fallujah, the city for which Americans fought and died (and largely destroyed) in the Iraq War is now in the hands of Al Qaeda. Let’s recall that before the US invaded Iraq in 2003, Al Qaeda didn’t…
b. traven I am not a New Yorker but I do like that city. I have lived, at one time or another, in all three of the great cities in our country, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Each has its virtues and its downsides and all now seem to be in the hands of…
Alex Dunn. Introduction by William Astore. The New Year promises much misinformation about Obamacare as “socialism.” Whatever else you can say of Obamacare, it’s not state-owned or state-provided. Rather, it relies on private, for-profit insurance companies to provide health care coverage. In short, health care in the USA remains a market-based commodity. You get what…
The Contrary Perspective 