September 11, 2007
href="http://www.gocomics.com/tonyauth/2007/09/06/">Democracy?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
12:22 AM
August 18, 2007
href="http://www.gocomics.com/tedrall/2007/08/13/">Who's to Blame?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
08:09 PM
August 12, 2007
href="http://www.gocomics.com/tedrall/2007/08/04/">War on Terrorism Scorecard...
Posted by PaulGessing at
01:14 AM
July 29, 2007
href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070725/CULTURE/107250051/1015">A New Recipe for Foreign Policy...
Posted by KevinRollins at
04:07 PM
July 28, 2007
href="http://www.gocomics.com/tomtoles/2007/07/22/">August Vacation...
Posted by PaulGessing at
09:58 AM
July 19, 2007
href="http://www.gocomics.com/tedrall/2007/07/14/">Profile of a Suicide Bomber...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:06 PM
href="http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0729,tomorrow,77231,9.html">How the News Works...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:03 PM
July 17, 2007
href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07132007/profile.html">Tough Talk on Impeachment...
Posted by KevinRollins at
01:35 PM
March 10, 2007
href="http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10304">Jimmy Carter Speaks Truth to Propaganda...
Posted by PaulGessing at
12:35 AM
March 01, 2007
href="http://www.gocomics.com/chanlowe/2007/02/20/">George III...
Posted by PaulGessing at
12:20 AM
February 24, 2007
href="http://www.gocomics.com/tedrall/2007/02/19/">Who is meddling in Iraq?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
01:58 AM
February 19, 2007
href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com0702d.asp">The Critical Dilemma Facing Pro-War Libertarians...
Posted by PaulGessing at
12:11 AM
January 14, 2007
Olberman on Bush's Iran Speech...
Posted by KevinRollins at
05:56 PM
December 28, 2006
"Wisdom from the grave"...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
03:05 PM
December 25, 2006
Voters Kick Corporations Out Of Local Politics in Humboldt County"...
Posted by KevinRollins at
11:20 AM
December 15, 2006
"Don't Need No More Lies"...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
04:51 AM
December 12, 2006
"Purity" police: Doomed Strategy?...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
06:09 AM
November 23, 2006
href="http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DebraJSaunders/2006/11/23/pardon_more_than_the_turkey">Pardon More than the Turkey...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:14 AM
October 28, 2006
href="http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=102406A">The Leadership Myth...
Posted by PaulGessing at
01:51 AM
October 18, 2006
href="http://www.alibi.com/index.php?story=16674">Democrats, The Party of Peace?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
07:38 PM
href="http://www.gocomics.com/dougmarlette/2006/10/17/">A Halloween Scare...
Posted by PaulGessing at
12:36 AM
October 02, 2006
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/30/AR2006093001027.html">Profiles in Cowardice...
Posted by PaulGessing at
07:58 PM
href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com0610a.asp">The O'Reilly Fear Factor...
Posted by PaulGessing at
07:54 PM
September 27, 2006
Justice Report: Standards Lacking on ‘Lie Detector’ Tests...
Posted by KevinRollins at
08:24 PM
Montana Democrat Speaks Out Against Patriot Act...
Posted by KevinRollins at
11:40 AM
September 26, 2006
Mandatory HIV testing in the works...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
11:50 AM
September 24, 2006
href="http://www.courierpress.com/news/2006/sep/23/liberal-describes-many-great-leaders/">'Liberal' describes a great many leaders...
Posted by KevinRollins at
01:19 AM
September 22, 2006
href="http://www.uexpress.com/richardreeves/?uc_full_date=20060915">Speaking the Unspeakable: Can Israel Survive?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
08:52 PM
September 16, 2006
href="http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1804">Time to De-Politicize Airline Security...
Posted by PaulGessing at
09:53 PM
September 15, 2006
Matt Lauer Corners Bush on Torture...
Posted by KevinRollins at
01:25 AM
September 14, 2006
The End of Tony Blair's Third Way...
Posted by KevinRollins at
12:01 PM
9/11 whistleblowers ignored, retaliated against...
Posted by KevinRollins at
11:40 AM
September 09, 2006
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-brooks1sep01,0,6417195.column?coll=la-opinion-center">Criticize Israel? You're an Anti-Semite!...
Posted by PaulGessing at
01:04 PM
September 06, 2006
Michael Ostrolenk and Doug Bandow on Medical Marijuana...
Posted by KevinRollins at
09:27 AM
August 16, 2006
href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com0608d.asp">Polarization Needed...
Posted by PaulGessing at
07:48 PM
August 09, 2006
href="http://www.theonion.com/content/node/51140">Bush Grants Self Permission To Grant More Power To Self...
Posted by PaulGessing at
07:09 PM
August 07, 2006
href="http://www.townhall.com/columnists/RobertDNovak/2006/08/07/dealing_with_israel">Dealing With Israel...
Posted by PaulGessing at
06:12 PM
July 31, 2006
href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060814/aipacs_hold">AIPAC's Hold...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:32 AM
July 22, 2006
Stanhope for Prez?...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
08:17 AM
July 21, 2006
href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com0607c.asp">Bush Countenances Middle East Violence...
Posted by PaulGessing at
04:07 PM
July 19, 2006
Bloomberg's 'Third Way'?...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
06:19 AM
July 17, 2006
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071401578_pf.html">Wiretap Surrender...
Posted by PaulGessing at
05:10 PM
July 05, 2006
href="http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/comment/0,,1804874,00.html">Libertarian Paternalism...
Posted by KevinRollins at
06:21 PM
June 25, 2006
href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com0606i.asp">Americans Should be Anti-American...
Posted by PaulGessing at
12:10 AM
June 24, 2006
href="http://www.reason.org/commentaries/moore_20060623.shtml" Post Kelo Reforms Aren't Enough...
Posted by PaulGessing at
12:55 AM
June 18, 2006
href="http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026661.php#026661" target='_blank'>"Accidental" Death by Militarized Police Forces: more common than you think...
Posted by PaulGessing at
02:21 AM
June 16, 2006
Walter Williams on The Slippery Slope of Regulation...
Posted by KevinRollins at
01:21 PM
June 12, 2006
Who Owns the Internet?...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:07 AM
June 07, 2006
3rd Party Fantasy?...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
07:01 AM
June 01, 2006
Noonan: Time for a 3rd Party?...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
06:31 AM
May 25, 2006
href="http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1532417/20060524/index.jhtml?headlines=true" target='_blank'>Illinois Schools Police Student's MySpace Pages...
Posted by KevinRollins at
04:47 PM
May 22, 2006
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051501187.html" target='_blank'>Nation of Fear...
Posted by PaulGessing at
09:08 PM
May 14, 2006
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-doherty12may12,0,913237.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions" target='_blank'>The Long Arm of the Drug War...
Posted by PaulGessing at
02:23 AM
May 13, 2006
The NSA Phone-Records Controversy...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
05:15 AM
May 09, 2006
href="http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20060507_olbermann_highlights_mcgovern_rumsfeld/" target='_blank'>Rumsfeld's Lies Exposed on Tape...
Posted by PaulGessing at
01:36 AM
May 06, 2006
href="http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060503/OPINION03/605030352/1008/OPINION01" target='_blank'>Why would immigrants risk their jobs with work boycott?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:09 AM
href="http://www.reason.com/sullum/050306.shtml" target='_blank'>Rush Limbaugh's Double Standard...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:08 AM
May 05, 2006
Friedman: Time for a REAL Third Party...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
06:43 AM
May 04, 2006
Non-aggression is the solution to Iran, N. Korea...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
05:59 AM
May 01, 2006
Transpartisanship: Empire-State Style...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
05:52 PM
April 27, 2006
href="http://www.ucomics.com/davidhorsey/2006/04/19/" target='_blank'>Why the Democrats Won't Take Back Congress...
Posted by PaulGessing at
01:39 AM
April 23, 2006
George Allen's "Libertarian Sense"?...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
04:40 PM
April 14, 2006
href="http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/guest_columns/451261opinion04-14-06.htm" target='_blank'>ACORN's Nutty Agenda...
Posted by PaulGessing at
08:35 PM
href="http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=77004" target='_blank'>Talking Sense on Iran...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:08 AM
April 12, 2006
href="http://www.ucomics.com/doonesbury/2006/04/07/" target='_blank'>Why they really hate us....
Posted by PaulGessing at
12:01 AM
April 07, 2006
href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/two-brains.html" target='_blank'>Are Conservatives Crazy?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:15 AM
March 31, 2006
href="http://www.ucomics.com/bensargent/2006/03/28/" target='_blank'>Liberty on Trial...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:15 AM
March 28, 2006
href="http://www.ucomics.com/mattdavies/2006/03/23/" target='_blank'>The Iraqi Crash...
Posted by PaulGessing at
07:25 PM
Global Warming or Ice Age: Which is it?...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
03:21 AM
March 27, 2006
href="http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=1385b76d-6c34-4c22-942a-18b71f2c4a44" target='_blank'>Noam Chomsky: Investor...
Posted by PaulGessing at
12:36 PM
March 26, 2006
href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.chapman20mar20,0,1021245.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines" target='_blank'>Slavish Republican lawmakers roll over for Bush...
Posted by PaulGessing at
10:04 PM
Neocon meltdown?...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
06:32 AM
March 25, 2006
Plan to Replace the Welfare State...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
07:29 AM
March 23, 2006
Chris Tame, RIP...
Posted by KevinRollins at
07:15 PM
March 18, 2006
Pre-emption: A Last Resort...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
12:18 PM
March 17, 2006
V for Vendetta as "Anarchist"...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
04:38 AM
March 15, 2006
href="http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/guest_columns/441778opinion03-15-06.htm" target='_blank'>New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's Eminent Domain Veto is Shocking...
Posted by PaulGessing at
12:36 PM
March 08, 2006
href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com0603b.asp" target='_blank'>Bush, Chavez, and Hitler...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:06 AM
March 07, 2006
South Park Cons, Meet the "Crunchy Cons"...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
03:29 AM
March 05, 2006
Posted by PaulGessing at
01:27 AM
March 03, 2006
href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com0602j.asp" target='_blank'>Illegal Surveilance a Real Security Threat...
Posted by PaulGessing at
12:55 AM
March 01, 2006
On Being Anti-State, Anti-War, and Anti-Bush...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
07:58 AM
Green Party Making a Difference in Maine Schools...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
07:40 AM
February 28, 2006
Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
06:24 AM
February 27, 2006
Watchdog of Test Industry Faces Economic Extinction...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
07:34 AM
February 23, 2006
href="http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=022206I" target='_blank'>The Bottled Water Menace...
Posted by KevinRollins at
02:13 AM
February 22, 2006
href="http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8587" target='_blank'>Critics of UAE Port Deal Are Disingenuous...
Posted by PaulGessing at
07:54 PM
February 21, 2006
href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block58.html" target='_blank'>Walter Block on the Danish Cartoons...
Posted by KevinRollins at
07:43 PM
The Secret Police and Political Dissent...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
09:29 AM
You'll be Freer and Richer in the Bill of Rights Culture...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
07:57 AM
February 19, 2006
href="http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=092903A" target='_blank'>Bleeding-Heart Libertarianism...
Posted by KevinRollins at
11:40 AM
February 17, 2006
href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com0602f.asp" target='_blank'>Conservative War on Drugs Makes no Sense...
Posted by PaulGessing at
02:35 PM
href="http://www.dallasobserver.com/Issues/2006-02-16/news/feature_full.html" target='_blank'>The Firing of Bruce Bartlett...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:41 AM
February 12, 2006
href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2002795222_why10.html" target='_blank'>Why We Fight...
Posted by PaulGessing at
04:43 PM
February 03, 2006
href="http://www.antiwar.com/orig/eddlem.php?articleid=8482" target='_blank'>He's Not Your Commander in Chief (and this really isn't a time of war)!...
Posted by PaulGessing at
01:03 PM
February 02, 2006
href="http://usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-02-01-oppose_x.htm" target='_blank'>Ostrolenk on federal meddling in education...
Posted by KevinRollins at
08:22 AM
January 30, 2006
href="http://antiwar.com/justin/" target='_blank'>Hands off Google!...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:30 PM
href="http://www.reason.org/commentaries/dalmia_20060125.shtml" target='_blank'>Euthanize Federal Mission Creep...
Posted by PaulGessing at
09:26 AM
January 24, 2006
href="http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1658" target='_blank'>Military Action Against Iran?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
09:34 AM
January 23, 2006
Gore Is Right...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
09:06 AM
January 19, 2006
href="http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338" target='_blank'>American Idiots...
Posted by PaulGessing at
07:54 PM
href="http://www.ucomics.com/stuartcarlson/2006/01/14/" target='_blank'>Brokebank Mountain...
Posted by PaulGessing at
07:36 PM
href="http://www.fumento.com/disease/flu2005.html" target='_blank'>Chicken Little and the Bird Flu...
Posted by PaulGessing at
07:32 PM
January 17, 2006
href="http://www.portfolio.hu/en/cikkek.tdp?cCheck=1&k=2&i=6916" target='_blank'>Hungary liberals want 20% flat tax...
Posted by KevinRollins at
12:20 PM
Whole Foods Switching To Wind Power...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
06:45 AM
January 16, 2006
href="http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm" target='_blank'>Death and taxes may be inevitable, but how about war and taxes?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
06:04 PM
Capitalism Sucks...
Posted by KevinRollins at
09:36 AM
Opinions for Sale...
Posted by KevinRollins at
02:09 AM
January 14, 2006
"Goldwater as libertarian"...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
04:43 PM
"Iraq war could cost US over $2 trillion"...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
03:16 PM
January 10, 2006
href="http://www.antiwar.com/frank/?articleid=8366" target='_blank'>Is MoveOn.org Antiwar or Just Anti-Bush...
Posted by PaulGessing at
06:09 PM
January 09, 2006
href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/08/MNGHGGK8OC1.DTL" target='_blank'>Spy Powers: Can the President Spy on Private Citizens Without a Judge's OK?....
Posted by PaulGessing at
05:17 PM
href="http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0108-21.htm" target='_blank'>Aid to Israel is Out of Hand....
Posted by PaulGessing at
12:36 PM
January 08, 2006
"We could all be suspected terrorists."...
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
06:48 AM
January 07, 2006
href="http://www.slate.com/id/2133754/?nav=ais" target='_blank'>Starbucks Economics....
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:34 AM
January 05, 2006
The Abramoff Steamroller....
Posted by RobertCapozzi at
02:25 PM
January 04, 2006
href="http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20060103-093213-4084r.htm" target='_blank'>ACORN and the Minimum Wage....
Posted by PaulGessing at
09:41 PM
December 30, 2005
href="http://antiwar.com/pena/" target='_blank'>Syriana: It's not about the oil....
Posted by PaulGessing at
06:10 PM
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/29/AR2005122901412.html?sub=AR" target='_blank'>The U.S. Government's not-so-secret plan to invade Canada...
Posted by PaulGessing at
06:07 PM
December 29, 2005
href="http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20051228-095457-3408r.htm" target='_blank'>Keep Immigration Legal...
Posted by PaulGessing at
02:53 PM
December 28, 2005
href="http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1642" target='_blank'>The Economics of Immigration...
Posted by PaulGessing at
05:00 PM
href="http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1642" target='_blank'>Bush is a latter-day LBJ...
Posted by PaulGessing at
04:57 PM
December 16, 2005
How Congress Has Assaulted Our Freedoms in the Patriot Act...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
07:48 AM
December 14, 2005
href="http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5340" target='_blank'>What would really happen if the US left Iraq?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
03:21 PM
December 12, 2005
href="http://postcards.ucomics.com/send/?uc_comic=db&uc_full_date=20051211&site_ref=ucomics" target='_blank'>9/11, the perfect excuse for every problem!...
Posted by PaulGessing at
06:27 PM
href="http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=10785" target='_blank'>Corrupt Republicans pervert ethics rules to prevent Dr. Coburn from delivering babies....
Posted by PaulGessing at
05:56 PM
December 09, 2005
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2005/11/the_other_id.php?page=all&p=y" target='_blank'>You've heard of "intelligent design," how about incompetent design?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
02:10 PM
href="http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=10753" target='_blank'>The National ID Noose Tightens...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:49 AM
December 06, 2005
href="http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1626" target='_blank'>What's Going on in Bolivia?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
09:51 AM
December 05, 2005
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/02/AR2005120201749.html" target='_blank'>On the Patriot Act and other issues, Congress is no longer cowed by Bush...
Posted by PaulGessing at
06:08 PM
December 04, 2005
href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12/04/EDGQIF5U1L1.DTL" target='_blank'>What happened to Iraq's WMD?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
06:04 PM
November 24, 2005
Sounding the alarm: Infant mental health State and federal plans move forward Karen R. Effrem, MD...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
04:57 PM
November 21, 2005
Plame, Pakistan, a Nuclear Turkey, and the Neocons...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:50 AM
Unfolding Childhood's Magic: An Interview with Joseph Chilton Pearce...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
04:43 AM
What is Unschooling?...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
04:39 AM
November 20, 2005
"> A Founding Radical: Roger Williams Founder of Rhode Island Colony...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:47 PM
Not Dead Yet..the Free State Project That Is...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:45 PM
Congress Helps Self to A Pay Raise (WP link)...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:44 PM
Congressmen Now Ask the Majors and Captains, “How’s the war going?” and Not the Pentagon Brass. (They have no incentive to spin.)...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:43 PM
November 13, 2005
Lame politics, left and right...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:58 PM
FBI Whistleblower Runs for Congress...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:56 PM
Pork: A Microcosm of the Overspending Problem...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:54 PM
November 12, 2005
Parental Guidance Suggested...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
07:49 AM
November 10, 2005
Nationalism and Anti-Americanism...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:00 AM
Seceding seldom succeeds, but Vermonters try...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
06:28 AM
November 08, 2005
Deficits at Home, Welfare Abroad...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
07:29 AM
November 06, 2005
Iraq Was Better Under Saddam...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:24 PM
Much Ado About Meth?...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:22 PM
FBI (Data) Mines Records of Ordinary Americans...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:18 PM
November 03, 2005
Sovereignty Redefined...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
07:52 PM
Microsoft Calls for National Privacy Law...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
07:50 PM
Colorado Voters Suspend Landmark Limit on Government Spending...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
07:47 PM
National Security Watch: Disquieted whistle-blowers...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:36 AM
October 30, 2005
Military Shares the Public's Declining Support for Bush, War...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:46 PM
Border Vigilante Arrested for Illegally Detaining Immigrant...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:44 PM
"The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers." Hmmm....
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:42 PM
October 28, 2005
Confessions of a Right-Wing Peacenik...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
10:19 AM
October 26, 2005
Money in a Two-Person Society...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:21 PM
"This is all we get?"...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:20 PM
Two Thousand Dead – and for What?...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:19 PM
October 24, 2005
This is NONE of your business, citizen. Now move along!...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:42 AM
"Maybe they just need to have their civil war". says US General. Easy for him to say....
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:40 AM
October 23, 2005
When Health Insurance Is Not a Safeguard...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:08 PM
Violating A Patent As A Moral Choice...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:05 PM
October 19, 2005
Any Homeland Security Dollar Misspent or Wasted is a Dollar That is Not Spent to Protect Our Nation. Bacon, anyone?...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:54 PM
A Mugged Liberal’s Love Affair with A Tough Mayor...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:47 PM
This Guy Really Doesn't Get It...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:40 PM
October 17, 2005
The Mythology of “Holdouts” as Justification for Eminent Domain...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:20 AM
America’s Drug War Hits A New Low...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:18 AM
Bush's Disaster Socialism...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:15 AM
October 15, 2005
AGAINST SCHOOL...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
04:01 PM
Deconstructing Nation Building...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
03:59 PM
Ten Signs that You Need to find Different Education for Your Child...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
03:56 PM
October 12, 2005
Libs, Cons Punch Selves Silly in Miers Rope-a-Dope...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:43 PM
Poverty, Aid and Terror...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:36 PM
Drug War Needs a Better Target Than Cough Syrup...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:31 PM
October 09, 2005
Poverty Increases As Middle Income Americans Struggle to Maintain Position...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
09:47 PM
In New Orleans, the Working Class Disappears...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
09:41 PM
Living a Life of Autonomy in a Wage-Slave Society...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
09:39 PM
October 06, 2005
Consistent Libertarianism is Incomprehensible to State Partisans...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:28 AM
Toppling the Arts-Intellectual Complex...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:26 AM
Cronyism...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:25 AM
October 03, 2005
The Relevance of Henry George in Today's Economy...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:22 AM
October 02, 2005
Tariffs, Wars, and the Economics of Protection: Lessons from History...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:22 PM
An Open Letter to Robert K. Dornan...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:20 PM
Expoiting Disasters...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:17 PM
September 28, 2005
The Pitfall Of Passivism...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:12 PM
Lessons That Will Never Be Learned...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:11 PM
Liberalism in the Classical Tradition...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:10 PM
September 26, 2005
We Don't Exist...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:16 AM
Libertarians: The Connies Speak Out...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:14 AM
DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE, JUST AS OUR MASTERS WANTED...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:12 AM
September 21, 2005
Why they fear the 9th Amendment...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:24 PM
Baker-Carter Commission Recommends National Voter ID Card...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:22 PM
Life, Liberty, Property – In That Order...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:21 PM
September 19, 2005
Why the Elite Media Love Eminent Domain...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:01 AM
September 18, 2005
Why Liberals and Conservatives Love Big Government...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
09:36 PM
Prison Sex Slave Trial Set to Begin in Texas...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
09:35 PM
September 14, 2005
Living Paycheck to Paycheck Made Leaving New Orleans Impossible...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:30 PM
Less Prisoners and Less Crime Too - What A Concept...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:27 PM
We Need 250 States - "We need to break the political entities in the United States down to a manageable size."...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:25 PM
September 12, 2005
Landmark Great Bear Agreement Is Down to the Wire...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
09:36 AM
September 11, 2005
Cops or Soldiers Will Refuse to Take People's Guns? Don't Bet on It!...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:53 PM
Bin Laden's Second Term...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:52 PM
Good Riddance to Gaza, Many Israelis Say...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:50 PM
September 08, 2005
The European Union's War on Unemployment...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:35 AM
Virginia Governor Puts Limits on Cold Pills...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:26 AM
New Orleans Police Confiscating Guns...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:14 AM
September 06, 2005
The politics of sugar: why your government lies to you about this disease-promoting ingredient...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
10:40 AM
The raw (and ugly) truth about the war on drugs...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
10:17 AM
September 04, 2005
">FEMA Outsourced New Orleans Disaster Plans To Politcal Cronies & Donors...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:44 PM
A Drug War Peace Plan...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:41 PM
Families for Natural Living...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:30 AM
Life After the Left...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:26 AM
The Science and Clinical Applications of Meditation...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:21 AM
August 31, 2005
Mother Jones...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:35 PM
Top Ten Reasons to “Undo” Iraq in Due Haste...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:34 PM
The Definition and Defense of Freedom...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:27 PM
August 28, 2005
Constitutional Futility...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:26 PM
Situational Totalitarianism...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:22 PM
Bush is Paying a Huge Political Price for Being So Isolated...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:17 PM
Request Your Secure Flight Secret File...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
07:40 AM
August 24, 2005
The State Protects Us...From Overgrown Grass....
Posted by ChemicalAli at
09:51 PM
25 And Over - Playtime's Over, Kiddies...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
09:49 PM
New Mexico Governor Wants Mexican Village Razed...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
09:46 PM
August 23, 2005
TeenScreen: One Family’s Story...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
09:04 AM
A Rare Steak a Day Keeps the Cardiologist Away...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
09:01 AM
Psychiatric Drugs: An Assault on the Human Condition...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:08 AM
August 22, 2005
The Troubling Background of William Weld...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
02:15 PM
Eliot Spitzer: Ayatollah General...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
02:00 PM
History of Cannabis as a Medicine...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
01:25 PM
August 21, 2005
A Stalker is After Me: His name is Paul Krugman, formerly a respected......
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:55 PM
The Life and Times of Henry George...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:52 PM
The Republicans' Persecution and Crucifixion of Cindy Sheehan...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:49 PM
August 20, 2005
August 24 DC Protest - Activists Against TeenScreen Will Attend...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
02:25 PM
August 17, 2005
Mortgaged to the House of Saud...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:32 PM
State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:30 PM
Poll: 40% of Mexicans want to move to U.S....
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:27 PM
Renewed faith in Ecstasy...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:31 PM
August 15, 2005
Pharmacotherapy and the Future of the Drug War...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
07:42 AM
Why the State Hates Cholesterol...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
07:39 AM
How Much Longer Can Modern Medicine Ignore Evidence That Vitamin C Prevents Heart and Blood Vessel Disease?...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
07:38 AM
August 14, 2005
Bush Raises the Option of Using Force Against Iran...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:25 PM
The Founding Fathers Hated Democracy...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:23 PM
The Myth of the US Economic Expansion...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:20 PM
August 12, 2005
href="http://www.markfiore.com/animation/domination.html" target='_blank'>Eminent Domination...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:51 AM
August 11, 2005
Leaving the left...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
04:21 PM
A book-burning in Texas: a shocking glimpse at politics, the FDA, and stevia...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
10:58 AM
Parental Rights vs. Public Schools...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
10:15 AM
August 10, 2005
The Gingrich Legacy - Blunt Political Opportunism, Not Fancy Libertarian Ideas...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:41 PM
Mexican Media So Scared of Drug Violence They Stop Writting About It...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:35 PM
Army Poised to Miss 2005 Recruiting Goal...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:32 PM
Controversy Surrounding Teen Screen Program...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:29 AM
Military Wreckage...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:29 AM
Iranian Ironies...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:27 AM
Sympathy for the Devil Everything you thought you knew about steroids is wrong...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:26 AM
August 07, 2005
In Defense of Bribery...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:14 PM
August 05, 2005
Meth Madness at Newsweek...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:45 AM
August 04, 2005
Why Senators Never Get Elected President...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
01:30 AM
Justice Often Served By Jury Nullification...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
01:24 AM
August 03, 2005
China Currency Gains 8% Against the US Dollar...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
10:36 PM
August 02, 2005
href="http://www.ucomics.com/danwasserman/2005/07/28/" target='_blank'>Pork Fueled Energy Bill?...
Posted by PaulGessing at
11:21 PM
Ecstasy eases Parkinson's in mice...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
03:11 PM
The Sausage Factory...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
09:09 AM
August 01, 2005
WILL NEW CA BILL STOP HOMESCHOOLING?...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
09:42 AM
Sustainable Education...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
09:33 AM
NASA pisses away millions hauling H2O into orbit. But there's a better way - recycle astronaut urine. Just one question: How does it taste?...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
09:26 AM
Middle East Paradigm Shift...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
09:24 AM
In Defense of Jury Nullification...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
09:23 AM
The Architecture of Liberal Democracy...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:25 AM
Berlin Readies Giant Brothel for 2006 World Cup...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:21 AM
A Founding Father of Modern Individualism and Free Market Economics: Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995)...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
12:18 AM
July 29, 2005
href="http://www.ucomics.com/doonesbury/2005/07/24/" target='_blank'>An Iraqi Dream...
Posted by PaulGessing at
07:44 PM
Many Medical Schools Allow Drug Companies Substantial Control of Clinical Trials, Study Finds...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:33 AM
DEA driving OxyContin abusers to heroin...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:31 AM
Finally, an Honest Political Party in Germany...
Posted by michaeldostrolenk at
08:28 AM
July 28, 2005
href="http://www.ucomics.com/tonyauth/2005/07/28/" target='_blank'>Your Tax Dollars at Work...
Posted by PaulGessing at
05:52 PM
July 27, 2005
Pragmatic or Pure?...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:50 PM
">CAFTA, China and the Carolinas...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:46 PM
">Only 16% of California Households Can Afford a Home...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
11:43 PM
July 26, 2005
Payola Shocker: J-Lo Hits, Others Were 'Bought' by Sony...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
02:12 AM
The End of State's Rights...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
01:50 AM
eBay and American Employment...
Posted by ChemicalAli at
01:37 AM
July 22, 2005
Cartoon: Supporting the Troops...
Posted by KevinRollins at
03:45 PM
July 19, 2005
Drink More, Earn More...
Posted by KevinRollins at
11:21 AM
July 18, 2005
Fluoride Follies...
Posted by KevinRollins at
05:04 PM
July 16, 2005
Cartoon: African Aid...
Posted by KevinRollins at
02:43 PM
July 10, 2005
Return of the Liberal...
Posted by KevinRollins at
09:12 AM
July 07, 2005
War of two religious worldviews...
Posted by KevinRollins at
09:28 AM
June 07, 2005
In defense of stem cell research...
Posted by KevinRollins at
09:35 AM
May 30, 2005
A motorcycle mecca stirs up questions of race...
Posted by KevinRollins at
11:16 AM
May 29, 2005
European papers go tabloid...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:25 AM
Filibuster battle altering '08 presidential landscape...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:21 AM
Europe At the Precipice...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:10 AM
May 25, 2005
Life and Death at the County Jail...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:40 AM
Is Blogging Dangerous For Teens?...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:31 AM
">Why Humiliating Saddam Was Wrong...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:27 AM
May 22, 2005
Base Closing Blues: Defend America, Not Pork...
Posted by KevinRollins at
01:45 AM
May 21, 2005
Dean Still Says DeLay May Deserve Jail...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:29 AM
">Fear and Self-Loathing in Cannes...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:24 AM
Steps Toward More Drug Testing in Schools...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:19 AM
May 19, 2005
Darth Vader: The Galaxy's Original Neoconservative...
Posted by KevinRollins at
05:42 AM
May 06, 2005
Russia's Putin and America's Bush to celebrate communism during WWII?...
Posted by KevinRollins at
02:39 AM
May 05, 2005
Virginia Is for (Homoracial, Heterosexual, Mentally Adequate) Lovers...
Posted by KevinRollins at
12:34 AM
May 04, 2005
">Enron hits the silver screen...
Posted by KevinRollins at
09:23 AM
">Oklahoma City and 9/11...
Posted by KevinRollins at
09:19 AM
May 03, 2005
Healthy and Delicious Public School Food?...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:54 AM
DeLay investigation triggering 'ethics war'...
Posted by KevinRollins at
10:44 AM
April 14, 2005
William Fisher, www.antiwar.com, April 14, 2005
The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military's most senior leaders, want Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to approve new guidelines that will formalize the George W. Bush administration's policy of imprisoning so-called enemy combatants without the protections of the Geneva Conventions and enable the Pentagon to legally hold "ghost detainees," a human rights group is charging.
In a letter to Rumsfeld, advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said, "Denying the protections of the Geneva Conventions to persons apprehended in the global war on terror is unsupported as a matter of law, represents a radical deviation from the standards that have traditionally guided U.S. military operations, and places U.S. service members and civilians detained by enemy forces at greater risk of mistreatment."
Posted by Carousel at
11:39 PM
Suzanne Goldenberg, www.guardian.co.uk, April 14, 2005
The Pentagon was yesterday confronted with new allegations of torture at Guantánamo Bay, from a Bosnian inmate who said he was beaten so severely his face was left partially paralysed.
In a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Boston, the Pentagon was challenged to release medical and psychiatric records for six Bosnian detainees who say they were tortured at Guantánamo.
The six inmates, all Algerians who had been settled in Bosnia for years, were originally accused of plotting an attack against the US embassy in Sarajevo. They were eventually cleared of all charges and released from prison.
Posted by Carousel at
11:29 PM
Darcie Stevens, www.austinchronicle.com, April 15, 2005
This is a story of fear. And rightfully so. For a municipality so quick to call itself the "Live Music Capital of the World," the city of Austin has caused nothing but hardship for its thriving nightlife: permit and age restrictions, harsh TABC rules, harsher taxes, and last but not least, the barely cold noise ordinance. It's a wonder smaller venues keep their doors open.
After a coalition of club owners and health experts presented the current smoking ordinance to the city council last year – banning smoking in restaurants without separate ventilation systems and forcing bars and live music venues with an 18-and-up age policy to purchase a permit to allow smoking indoors – Austin's live music industry thought the compromise infringing but reasonable. Only five months later, under the auspices of Onward Austin, an anti-smoking lobby group formed and financed by the American Cancer Society and the Lance Armstrong Foundation among others, a much stricter smoking ordinance is being put to the city itself.
Posted by Carousel at
11:01 PM
April 13, 2005
Rowan Scarborough, www.washingtontimes.com, April 13, 2005
A key figure in the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal has given Army investigators a lengthy sworn statement accusing others of misconduct at the Iraq prison.
The statement from Pvt. Charles Graner, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., comes as the Army may file more charges in the case against personnel who supervised military police officers such as Pvt. Graner. He had first refused to talk, but later agreed under a grant of immunity.
Posted by Carousel at
10:58 PM
Jamie Murnane and K. Anderson, www.ccchronicle.com, April 10, 2005
For the first time in Columbia’s history, a campus gallery exhibit has incited a Secret Service investigation.
Columbia officials were stunned when two Secret Service agents showed up for the opening of the new Glass Curtain Gallery exhibit “Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin.”
Posted by Carousel at
10:16 PM
Sheldon Richman, www.fff.org, April 11, 2005
Every now and then we are tested in our dedication to individual liberty. It’s happening again. Recently, Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois issued an emergency ruling ordering pharmacists to fill prescriptions for contraception, including “morning-after” pills, despite their convictions against doing so.
The ruling has the force of law for 150 days unless a state panel overturns it, and the governor is likely to ask the state legislature to write it into law.
Going further, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, “Blagojevich, through his Financial and Professional Regulation Department, also filed an administrative complaint against Osco on Friday, charging the pharmacy with ‘failure to provide pharmaceutical care’ and ‘unprofessional conduct’ for refusing to dispense contraceptives to ... two women in February.”
The store could be fined and even be closed.
Posted by Carousel at
09:32 PM
April 12, 2005
Terry Jones, www.guardian.co.uk, April 12, 2005
A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.
This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations.
Posted by Carousel at
10:46 PM
Matthew Cella and Charles Hurt, www.washingtontimes.com, Apri 12, 2005
U.S. Capitol Police yesterday arrested a man who carried two suitcases to the West Front of the Capitol and told officers that he wanted to speak with President Bush.
The incident began shortly before 1 p.m. Police said the man, who has not been identified, did not make any threats, but acted suspiciously.
Posted by Carousel at
12:51 AM
April 11, 2005
Jeanne Sahadi, www.money.cnn.com, April 11, 2005
When you travel from state to state, some differences are readily apparent: the landscape, people's accents, use of the word "dude," you name it.
But you can't know what it truly costs to live in a place until you get hit with the whole megillah of taxes.
Every year, the Tax Foundation measures the total tax bill for each state, creating a list of the most – and least – tax-friendly states in the country.
See the full list here. And see more state rankings based on income tax, sales tax, property tax and tax breaks for retirees.
Posted by Carousel at
08:09 PM
Greg Beato, www.reason.com, April 2005
It's Saturday morning in downtown Modesto, California, and for a city with 200,000 residents, not much is happening. The streets are mostly empty, and the outdoor tables at Starbucks are unoccupied. Outside the Modesto Convention Center, though, a steady wave of soccer moms (and a smattering of soccer dads) are pushing strollers and lugging plastic shopping bags as they enter and exit the center's 12,000-square-foot exhibition hall. Inside, representatives from dozens of educational publishers and related concerns pitch their wares to the attendees of the Valley Home Educators 11th Annual Home Education Convention.
Posted by Carousel at
08:00 PM
Robert Higgs, www.lewrockwell.com, April 11. 2005
Joseph Stalin is famously said to have asked an adviser, dismissively, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" Had the adviser possessed greater courage, he might have replied: "How many does he need?"
Observing the many government leaders gathered at the Vatican for the funeral of Pope John Paul II, we might well have suspected that the world's politico-military chieftains need what the Pope has more than the Pope needs what they have.
Posted by Carousel at
09:10 AM
Eric Margolis, www.canoe.ca/newstand/torontosun, April 10, 2005
U.S. INTELLIGENCE was "dead wrong" in its pre-war beliefs about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, a U.S. presidential commission reported 10 days ago. And just as wrong about nearly every other charge levelled at Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
This column also used "dead wrong" over the past decade when attacking all the lies being manufactured about Iraq.
Interestingly, the many journalists and pundits who heaped abuse on my head and accused me of treason for daring to challenge the pro-war propaganda they so greedily lapped up have fallen strangely silent as the truth about Iraq emerges.
Still, let's recall that the prime mission of presidential and parliamentary commissions tends to be not fact-finding but sweeping scandal under the rug and deflecting blame from politicians.
Posted by Carousel at
12:26 AM
April 10, 2005
Nolan Finley, www.detnews.com, April 10, 2005
Politicians who place principle ahead of partisanship are as rare today as elephants at the Detroit Zoo. But count Bob Barr among them.
The former Georgia congressman is a charter member of the religious right. Arch-conservative doesn't begin to describe his politics.
Yet Barr is at risk of becoming to Republicans what his fellow Georgian, Sen. Zell Miller, is to the Democrats -- a turncoat who refuses to toe the party line.
Barr is one of the leading voices opposing renewal of the most intrusive elements of the Patriot Act, the legislation passed hastily by Congress in the weeks after September 11 to strengthen law enforcement's hand against terrorists.
Posted by Carousel at
06:39 PM
April 09, 2005
Jacob Sullum, www.reason.com, April 8, 2005
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales recently assured the Senate Judiciary Committee the Justice Department "has no interest in rummaging through the library records or the medical records of Americans." This is pretty much the extent of the limits imposed by the USA PATRIOT Act on the FBI's ability to peruse your personal records: It can do so only if it wants to.
Posted by Carousel at
10:08 PM
Traci Carl, with Qasim Abdul-Zahra, Sinan Salaheddin, and Sameer Yacoub, Associated Press, www.sfgate.com. April 9, 2005
Tens of thousands of supporters of a militant Shiite cleric filled central Baghdad's streets Saturday and demanded that American soldiers go home, marking the second anniversary of Baghdad's fall with shouts of "No, no to Satan!"
To the west of the capital, 5,000 protesters issue similar demands in the Sunni Triangle city of Ramadi, reflecting a growing impatience with the U.S.-led occupation and the slow pace of returning control to an infant Iraqi government.
The protest in Baghdad's famous Firdos Square was the largest anti-American demonstration since the U.S.-led invasion, but the turnout was far less than the 1 million called for by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Posted by Carousel at
08:05 PM
Jacob G. Hornberger, www.fff.org, April 8, 2005
Far be it from me to attempt to explain why Pope John Paul II, who spoke out 56 times against President Bush’s War on Iraq, opposed the president’s war. But whatever his reasons were, he was right to do so because President Bush’s true reason for invading Iraq — regime change — was a poor and immoral excuse for initiating a conflict that has killed and maimed tens of thousands of innocent people — many more innocent people, in fact, than died on 9/11.
Unlike other U.S.-approved dictators, such as the shah of Iran, Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, and Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Saddam was not a “team player” as far as the U.S. government was concerned. Perhaps the best example of this was Saddam’s decision to reject a U.S.-approved oil pipeline across Iraq, despite the fact that the U.S. government had provided him with advice and assistance, including weapons of mass destruction, in his war against Iran.
Posted by Carousel at
05:32 PM
April 08, 2005
Editorial, www.presstelegram.com, April 7, 2005
California businesses can import raw industrial hemp, a type of cannabis plant that has no drug-like properties, and they can manufacture, sell and distribute products made from it. Yet in one of the most absurd, anti-free market ironies of America's misguided war on drugs, California's farmers by law cannot grow it.
Again, industrial hemp is not a drug. But because of drug-war hysteria, industrial hemp has become politically linked erroneously to the marijuana plant. Instead of paying California farmers to grow a renewable, environmentally friendly crop that is no more harmful than carrots, hemp- product manufacturers must give their business to overseas farmers, while paying pointless import and transportation fees.
It's time for California to change that.
Posted by Carousel at
11:56 PM
Dave Lindorff, www.counterpunch.com, April 7, 2005
President Bush claims he's holding "conversations" all around the country on his plans to "reform" or "save" Social Security. These purported dialogues with the public take place at gatherings which the president likes to characterize as "town meetings."
Now as a native of Connecticut, a New England state that prides itself for its town meeting form of local government, and as a reporter who got his start covering such exercises in real people's government, I have to say that I know town meetings and Mr. Bush, those are not town meetings.
Posted by Carousel at
09:22 AM
April 07, 2005
Declan McCullagh, www.news.com, April 6, 2005
The Department of Homeland Security's privacy board chose as its chairman Paul Rosenzweig, a conservative lawyer best known in technology circles for his defense of the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness project. Bowing to privacy concerns, Congress pulled the plug on the program two years ago.
Posted by Carousel at
09:50 PM
Anthony Gregory, www.lewrockwell.com, April 7, 2005
As the Democrats wrestle among themselves over how to update their party’s packaging, a distressing, potentially disastrous phenomenon may be underway. If so, its implications for individual liberty and peace deserve some serious consideration. To start thinking seriously about 2008 may seem premature, but that never stopped the politicians from long in advance getting their gears moving and ideas flowing on how better to seize power. We know the Republicans are horrible, but do we have any way of postulating what will likely replace them?
Posted by Carousel at
09:40 PM
Nat Hentoff, www.villagevoice.com, April 3, 2005
On March 10, Vice Admiral Albert T. Church III, former navy inspector general, presented the "Church report" to the Armed Services Committee—purporting to be the most comprehensive of all the official investigations into alleged abuse of American detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq and at Guantánamo.
Church had been appointed by the secretary of defense to conduct the investigation. At a press conference on March 10, he said he had not interviewed chief policy maker Rumsfeld for this definitive investigation because he didn't think it was necessary.
Posted by Carousel at
08:41 AM
April 06, 2005
Jorn Madslien, www.bbc.co.uk, April 6, 2005
The lure of Monaco is obvious to anyone with money, offering a refuge on the French Riviera for the soul and a tax haven for their wallets.
The tiny principality has made a name for itself as one of the most glamorous of the Mediterranean's international jet set destinations.
Its 7,800 citizens, who hold Monaco passports, share their rocky coastal toehold with about 25,000 expatriates, and myriad tourists arriving by yacht or coach.
Posted by Carousel at
08:41 AM
Agencies, www.guardian.co.uk, April 6, 2005
Prince Rainier III of Monaco, Europe's longest-reigning monarch, died today at the age of 81 in a hospital overlooking the tiny state he turned into a billionaires' paradise.
In a statement, his palace said he had been suffering heart, lung and kidney disorders. He died at 6.35am (0535 BST) with his son and heir, 47-year-old Prince Albert, at his side.
Posted by Carousel at
08:37 AM
April 05, 2005
Dave Lindorff, www.counterpunch.com, April 5, 2005
As Congress begins the critical discussion about renewing the horrendous USA PATRIOT Act, that dangerous assault on the Bill of Rights drawn up by former Attorney General John Ashcroft and now Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, it's a good time to point out how this wretched law is viewed out there in mainstream America.
According to records maintained by an organization called the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, as of April of this year, 372 towns, cities and counties, and five of the 50 states, have passed laws in one way or another declaring themselves to be "Patriot Act free zones."
Posted by Carousel at
08:16 PM
Radley Balko, www.cato.org, April 5, 2005
Since the late 1990s, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has allied with state and local law enforcement agencies to stamp out abuse of the painkiller OxyContin. Citing rises in emergency room episodes and overdoses associated with the drug (both of which have been roundly disparaged by critics), the DEA insists its "Operation OxyContin" is a necessary reaction to the diversion of the prescription narcotic for street use.
Unfortunately, despite frequent robberies and burglaries of pharmacies, doctors' offices, and warehouses where prescription medications are stored and sold, the DEA has focused a troubling amount of time and resources on the prescriptions issued by practicing physicians. It's easy to see why. Doctors keep records. They pay taxes. They take notes. They're an easier target than common drug dealers. Doctors also often aren't aware of asset forfeiture laws. A physician's considerable assets can be divided up among the various law enforcement agencies investigating him before he's ever brought to trial.
Posted by Carousel at
08:04 PM
Kevin Zeese, www.counterpunch.com, April 4, 2005
The debate over the size of the military inside-the-beltway is how to increase the number of troops by 100,000, not whether to do so. At a recent debate on the draft sponsored by the Center for American Progress, the views range from reinstating the draft to enhancing economic incentives to increase enlistment.
Rather than questioning the administration's policy of preemptive strikes, or the vast size of the military industrial complex or urging cuts in the wasteful, redundant defense budget which consumes half the federal budget's discretionary spending, the inside-the-beltway crowd's analysis starts from the U.S. needing a larger military to achieve its foreign policy and economic agenda.
Posted by Carousel at
08:27 AM
April 04, 2005
Kurt Williamsen, www.thenewamerican.com, April 4, 2005
As we have shown in the past, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is an entity that was created under the guise of promoting free trade internationally, but which in actuality is a group of foreign bureaucrats who regulate trade. (See "The WTO Trap" in the January 10 issue of THE NEW AMERICAN.) And the trade policies it regulates are intentionally vague so that member countries really only know what is allowable when one member country contests another country's trade policy and the bureaucrats at the WTO make a ruling.
Because the WTO can authorize sanctions, it wields great power, including being able to effectively supersede a member country’s laws (including those in the United States). To disentangle the U.S. from this unfolding nightmare, Representatives Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) on March 2 introduced House Joint Resolution 27 to withdraw the U.S. from the WTO.
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11:48 PM
Jennifer McKee, www.mtstandard.com, April 2, 2005
Montana lawmakers overwhelmingly passed what its sponsor called the nation's most strongly worded criticism of the federal Patriot Act on Friday, uniting politicians of all stripes.
The resolution, which already galloped through the Senate and passed the House 88-12 Friday, must survive a final vote before it officially passes.
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08:27 AM
April 03, 2005
John Freeman, www.newsday.com, March 27, 2005
The Hubba-Bubba pink cover art on her new book notwithstanding, Camille Paglia is courting a lower profile these days. "Oscar Wilde was a huge influence on me," says the firebrand on a recent Thursday at the Philadelphia College of Art, where she has taught for two decades. "He believed in the strong critic, and I've done that. I'm there in most of my books; boy am I there. With 'Break, Blow, Burn,' however, I tried to make myself as invisible as possible."
It might sound like an odd statement coming from the author of "Sexual Personae," which put its stiletto heel on the throat of mainstream feminists and kept it there for much of the '90s. But Paglia, 57, insists she's not showing a kinder, gentler side, or making nice. After all, "thanks to Madonna," she says, "the whole pro-sex wing of feminism which had been ostracized since the '60s came back with a vengeance. And we won. We won massively. Now, Catherine McKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, you hardly see their names anywhere."
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02:26 PM
April 02, 2005
Kim Housego, Associated Press, www.newsday.com, March 31, 2005
Five U.S Army soldiers are under investigation for allegedly trying to smuggle 32 pounds of cocaine out of Colombia aboard a U.S. military aircraft, American officials said Thursday.
The soldiers were detained Tuesday as a result of the investigation, said Lt. Col. Eduardo Villavicencio, a spokesman for the U.S. military's Southern Command in Florida.
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02:02 PM
Lucas Keturi, www.nyunews.com, March 30, 2005
On Thursday, representatives from the CIA will be speaking at the Stern School of Business to inform students about potential job opportunities. The event is part of a relationship the CIA has forged with NYU, along with the University of Texas - Pan American, in a new program to recruit college students. The agency has also hired an NYU marketing class for an ad campaign to "market the CIA as an employer of choice."
One ad the class has produced has the slogan, "CIA careers are more (fill in the blank) than you think," followed by words such as "dynamic," "fulfilling," and - I can't quite figure this one out - "family-oriented." Of course their job is to make their client look good, but it's downright Orwellian to portray the CIA in such a positive light, considering the agency has spent the past 60 years overthrowing and assassinating democratically elected leaders, propping up dictators, trafficking drugs and training death squads, torturers and terrorists around the world.
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01:11 PM
John Laughland, www.guardian.co.uk, April 1, 2005
Before his denunciation yesterday of the "prevailing influence" of the US in the "anti-constitutional coup" which overthrew him last week, President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan had used an interesting phrase to attack those who were stirring up trouble in the drug-ridden Ferghana Valley. A criminal "third force", linked to the drug mafia, was struggling to gain power.
Originally used as a label for covert operatives shoring up apartheid in South Africa, before being adopted by the US-backed "pro-democracy" movement in Iran in November 2001, the third force is also the title of a book published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which details how western-backed non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can promote regime and policy change all over the world. The formulaic repetition of a third "people power" revolution in the former Soviet Union in just over one year - after the similar events in Georgia in November 2003 and in Ukraine last Christmas - means that the post-Soviet space now resembles Central America in the 1970s and 1980s, when a series of US-backed coups consolidated that country's control over the western hemisphere.
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10:50 AM
April 01, 2005
Jacob Sullum, www.reason.com, April 1, 2005
In December, after a federal jury convicted McLean, Virginia, pain doctor William Hurwitz of running a drug trafficking operation, the foreman told The Washington Post "he wasn't running a criminal enterprise." Don't bother reading that sentence again; it's not going to make any more sense the second time around.
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10:45 PM
Editorial, Portsmouth Herald, www.seacoastonline.com, April 1, 2005
We believe in the democratic process and in the right of all people, including legislators, to speak their minds and vote their consciences. That is why we are so pleased with the way Speaker Doug Scamman of Stratham is running things in the New Hampshire House.
Unlike several of his predecessors, Scamman has said he will not pressure House members into voting the way he thinks is appropriate. Rather than trying to rule the House with an iron hand - a process many Republicans were reacting to when they elected him speaker - Scamman has urged legislators to do what they feel best benefits their constituencies.
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10:18 PM
Walter Pincus and Peter Baker, Washington Post, www.fortwayne.com, April 1, 2004
U.S. intelligence agencies were “dead wrong” in their prewar assessments of Iraq’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and today know “disturbingly little” about the capabilities and intentions of other potential adversaries such as Iran and North Korea, a presidential commission reported Thursday.
While praising intelligence successes in Libya and Pakistan, the commission’s report offered a withering critique of the government’s collection of information leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, calling its data “either worthless or misleading” and its analysis “riddled with errors,” resulting in one of the “most damaging intelligence failures in recent American history.”
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09:15 AM
March 31, 2005
Wendy McElroy, www.fff.org, March 30, 2005
Some readers of Stephen Cox’s recently published biography, Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America: The Woman and the Dynamo, may succumb to the same temptation I did. I immediately scanned the index for references to Ayn Rand and then I turned directly to those pages. This reflected my main purpose in reading Paterson’s biography: to see what light it shed on that other and (to me) more important figure with whom Paterson had associated. After a few minutes, I shut the book and began reading from the acknowledgements page onward.
The reason: if the entire book was as well written as the pages I’d just read and Paterson as consistently captivating, then both the book and the woman deserved undivided attention. And I deserved the pleasure of meeting the amazing person of whom Cox states, “No one in the 1930s defended individualism more vigorously and consistently than Paterson.”
What a woman!
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11:38 PM
Matt Welch, www.reason.com, April 2005
The images, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress, depict "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman." After Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) viewed some of them in a classified briefing, he testified that his "stomach gave out." NBC News reported that they show "American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys." Everyone who saw the photographs and videos seemed to shudder openly when contemplating what the reaction would be when they eventually were made public.
But they never were. After the first batch of Abu Ghraib images shocked the world on April 28, 2004, becoming instantly iconic—a hooded prisoner standing atop a box with electrodes attatched to his hands, Pfc. Lynndie England dragging a naked prisoner by a leash, England and Spc. Charles Graner giving a grinning thumbs-up behind a stack of human meat—no substantial second round ever came, either from Abu Ghraib or any of the other locations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay where abuses have been alleged. ABC News broadcast two new photos from the notorious Iraq prison on May 19, The Washington Post printed a half-dozen on May 20 and three more on June 10, and that was it.
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07:57 PM
James Sturcke, www.guardian.co.uk, March 30, 2005
The highest-ranking US general in Iraq authorised the use of interrogation techniques that included sleep manipulation, stress positions and the use of dogs to "exploit Arab fears" of them, it emerged today.
A memo signed by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez authorised 29 interrogation techniques, including 12 that exceeded limits in the army's own field manual and four that it admitted risked falling foul of international law, the Geneva conventions or accepted standards on the humane treatment of prisoners.
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08:43 AM
John R. Lott, Jr., www.lewrockwell.com, March 30, 2005
While murder rates have been falling or have been flat for years in the rest of the country, Philadelphia's rate has been rising. Last year's murder rate was the highest since 1993, and Philadelphia replaced Chicago, the perennial leader, as the top 10 largest city with the highest murder rate. With 85 murders in the first 88 days of 2005, the city's murder rate is well ahead of even last year's.
Mayor John Street's solution? He's doing little about fixing the city's declining arrest rates for murder. Instead, he blames the law-abiding citizens who have permits to carry concealed handguns. He announced on Thursday that the city will deliberately begin delaying issuing new concealed handgun permits. Gov. Rendell's proposed crime task force promises to examine the issue further.
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08:15 AM
March 30, 2005
Mark Baard, www.wired.com, March 29, 2005
Conspiracy theorists and civil libertarians, fear not. The U.S. government will not use radio-frequency identification tags in the passports it issues to millions of Americans in the coming years.
Instead, the government will use "contactless chips."
The distinction is part of an effort by the Department of Homeland Security and one of its RFID suppliers, Philips Semiconductors, to brand RFID tags in identification documents as "proximity chips," "contactless chips" or "contactless integrated circuits" -- anything but "RFID."
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12:28 AM
March 29, 2005
Paul Craig Roberts, www.counterpunch.com, March 28, 2005
One of the favorite fantasies of right-wing talk radio and Fox "News" is that only Bush-hating liberals oppose the Iraq war and additional US military incursions into the Middle East or wherever.
Yet, it is the March issue of the Washington Monthly, a magazine with a liberal Democratic audience, which makes a case for the draft as the only way "America can remain the world's superpower."
The authors, Phillip Carter and Paul Glastris, take it for granted that America's duty is to make the rest of the world conform to America. They regard this virtuous calling to be so great that a draft is a small price to pay.
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09:31 AM
March 28, 2005
Ivan Eland, www.independent.org, March 28, 2005
Three seemingly unrelated recent events highlight the imperial nature of the Bush administration's foreign policy: U.S. F-16 sales to Pakistan, the creation of an office in the State Department to plan for future U.S military interventions in developing nations and the indefinite detention in Guantanamo prison of a German man held on the basis of secret evidence that even U.S. intelligence disputes.
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11:03 PM
Jill Lawless, Associated Press, www.newsday.com. March 27, 2005
New Icelandic citizen Bobby Fischer is volatile, uncompromising and defiantly eccentric. He should fit right in.
Tiny, wind-lashed Iceland has long drawn artists, loners and dreamers attracted by its remoteness, empty spaces and otherworldly, lava-strewn landscape -- the very conditions that kept most migrants away and helped forge the proud, independent Icelandic character.
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09:08 PM
Editorial, www.reviewjournal.com, March 28, 2005
There have long been rumors that police canine officers carry around small quantities of contraband drugs which they can use to contaminate a motorist's car, causing their dogs to "alert" on the vehicle and thus justifying an otherwise illegal search of the interior and its occupants.
Many have dismissed such stories as an urban legend.
But what would happen if a group of Las Vegas Metropolitan police officers were actually found to have participated in such an activity? Would all be forgiven with a wrist-slap, if they merely said it was "a mistake"?
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09:21 AM
March 26, 2005
Ryan Singel, www.wired.com, March 26, 2005
Homeland Security officials failed to keep millions of airline passenger records secure and repeatedly made false denials of their involvement in data transfers to the media and Congress, but they did not violate federal law, according to a report released Friday.
The report (.pdf) by acting Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner found that the Transportation Security Administration was involved in 14 different data transfers totaling more than 20 million records in 2002 and 2003.
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11:37 AM
Jacob Sullum, www.reason.com, March 25, 2005
The attorney representing Robert and Mary Schindler, Terri Schiavo's parents, said the federal courts' refusal to order the reinsertion of their daughter's feeding tube rendered the statute authorizing their lawsuit "an exercise in futility...a vain and useless act." Unfortunately, that's an understatement.
The law hurriedly passed by Congress in an attempt to overturn the outcome of the long-running legal battle between Schiavo's parents and her husband, Michael, is worse than useless. By upsetting the balance between state and federal authority, blurring the distinction between legislative and judicial functions, and mandating unequal treatment for similarly situated plaintiffs, the law compromised vitally important constitutional principles while giving the Schindlers nothing but false hope.
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11:25 AM
Editorial, www.madison.com/tct, March 25, 2005
Our friend Ed Thompson has stepped down as chair of the Libertarian Party to, as the media release states, "focus on deciding whether he will run for future political office, as well as running his Mr. Ed's Tee-Pee restaurant in Tomah."
At a time when most prominent political figures are careerists who pass back and forth through the swinging door between electoral campaigning and special interest lobbying, it is reassuring to know that Thompson is still cooking up steaks and serving beers at the Tee-Pee.
But it's also reassuring to know that he hasn't given up on politics.
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12:45 AM
March 25, 2005
Hunter Sauls, www.thebatt.com, March 23, 2005
The foundations of our republic are being eroded by unconstitutional decisions by the Federal government, Rep. Ron Paul of the 14th district of Texas told A&M College Republicans Tuesday.
Paul, a self-described "Constitutionalist," also explained why he opposes the war in Iraq and why he believes that the government is too big and has too much power.
"My biggest concern is protecting personal liberty," Paul said. "There has been a steady erosion of personal liberty in our country from an atmosphere of war."
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12:45 PM
Jacob G. Hornberger, www.fff.org, March 25, 2005
Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, is a smart man. Such being the case, why isn’t he able to recognize the real solution to the woes of public schooling?
Gates recently published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in which he stated, “Our high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I don’t just mean that they are broken, flawed and underfunded — although I can’t argue with any of those descriptions. Until we design high schools to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting — even ruining — the lives of millions of Americans every year.”
So far, so good. After more than a century of existence, public schooling is an abject failure in terms of educating children and inspiring a love of learning among them. While many people have been able to survive the public-schooling ordeal, many others have been severely damaged by the process, even to the extent of having their pre-school awe of the universe and thirst for knowledge pounded out of them by time they graduate 12 years later.
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11:34 AM
March 24, 2005
Beth Duff-Brown, Associated Press, www.boston.com, March 24, 2005
A U.S. Army paratrooper who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Iraq was denied political asylum Thursday, dealing a blow to other deserters here who argue such duty would force them to commit atrocities against civilians.
An immigration board ruled that Jeremy Hinzman had not convinced its members he would face persecution or cruel and unusual punishment if returned to the United States.
Seven other American military personnel have applied for refugee status, and Hinzman's lawyer estimated dozens of others are in hiding in Canada waiting to see how the government ruled. The attorney, Jeffry House, said Hinzman would appeal the ruling.
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11:44 PM
Stefanie Scarlett, www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette, March 24, 2005
It can make lip balm more luscious.
It gives waffles a double shot of nutritional goodies with its protein and essential fatty acids.
It even turns a trendy, pricey blazer into an eco-friendly garment.
Hemp is hip – and much tamer than its naughty cousin, marijuana.
Thanks to the growing demand for all things healthy and natural, the marketplace for products containing hemp seeds, oil and fiber is expanding as well.
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09:23 PM
Phil Donahue interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, www.democracynow.org, March 24, 2005
Before Jerry Springer created a show that looked more like a wrestling match than a talk show; before Oprah was a household name and before the explosion of cable news networks and the 24 hour talk show cycle, there was a daily program that millions tuned into every week for a national discussion on a wide range of social, political and personal issues. The show was simply called "Donahue" and was hosted by a bespectacled man with silver hair who would run around the studio handing the microphone to members of the audience to give them their say on the issues of the day. For many people watching or listening right now, it is probably unnecessary to say that that man was Phil Donahue. Throughout the 1980s, he was probably one of the most trusted personalities in this country.
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09:15 PM
Kevin B. Zeese, www.antiwar.com, March 24, 2005
Counter-recruitment has become a key battleground in the effort to stop the war in Iraq and prevent future military adventures by President Bush and a compliant Congress. The U.S. Army admits that it expects to miss its recruiting goals this month and next and is working on a revised sales pitch appealing to the patriotism of parents. Last week, nationwide demonstrations kicked off in Washington, D.C., including an event at an Army recruitment center, and in many cities, demonstrations were held outside of recruitment offices.
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08:53 AM
March 23, 2005
Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press, www.boston.com, March 23, 2005
Conservative and liberal groups normally at each other's throats over the direction of government are finding common cause in wanting to gut major provisions of the government's premier anti-terrorism law.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform and the Free Congress Foundation are among several groups that formed a coalition -- Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances -- to lobby Congress to repeal three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act.
Having people from all sides of the political spectrum working together will keep politicians from calling Patriot Act opponents un-American or willing to help terrorists, which happened during the original debate over the law, the groups said.
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11:39 PM
Todd Richmond, Associated Press, www.madison.com/tct, March 22, 2005
Tommy Thompson's younger brother has stepped down from leadership in the Libertarian Party and doesn't know if he'll dabble in politics again.
Ed Thompson - former Toughman boxer, mayor of Tomah, gubernatorial candidate and now aspiring actor - didn't seek re-election as chairman of the state party during its convention Saturday in West Allis, party officials said in a statement.
Thompson said "herding cats from Wisconsin to Texas would be easier" than being party chairman, but he wouldn't rule out a return to politics. He said he's weighing whether he'll run for office again while running his Tomah bar, Mr. Ed's Tee Pee, and indulging his new love for the stage.
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01:33 AM
March 22, 2005
Eric Talmadge, Associated Press, www.boston.com, March 22, 2005
After nearly nine months in a Japanese detention cell, American chess legend Bobby Fischer appears to have cleared the final hurdle on his way to freedom.
Iceland's parliament voted Monday to give Fischer citizenship as he fights an order to deport him from Japan to the United States.
Masako Suzuki, one of Fischer's lawyers, said she expected Fischer would be released within the week. "Unless something very unexpected happens, that would be the natural course of events," she said.
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08:44 AM
March 21, 2005
Nat Hentoff, www.villagevoice.com, March 18, 2005
On March 1, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First filed a historic lawsuit, Ali et al. v. Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense of the United States of America, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (the defendant's home state).
In all forms of media, there has been minimal coverage of the very existence of this legal action, and even less of the precisely documented charges, including the defendant's violations of American and international laws and the consequences of his continuing lawlessness.
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09:48 PM
Tom Engelhardt, www.antiwar.com, March 21, 2005
The most significant fact of our Iraq War and occupation (and war), which can't be repeated too many times, is that the Bush administration busted into the country without an exit strategy for a simple reason: they never planned to leave – and they still don't. If you have a better reason for taking a withdrawal position and pressing for it, let me know by at least the beginning of Year Four of the Iraqi Deconstruction Era.
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09:43 AM
March 20, 2005
Robyn E. Blumner, www.sptimes.com, March 20, 2005
According to Congress, investigating whether Mark McGwire was pumped up with steroids when he made baseball home run history is a question of vital public concern. But what the CIA and our military are doing to prisoners during overseas interrogations, well, that doesn't merit the same interest. After all, what's at stake isn't our national pastime, it's only our national soul.
As human rights groups continue to compile evidence that prisoners held under U.S. control have been brutalized, and as new reports emerge that at least 26 prisoners have died at the hands of our military or intelligence services, Congress twiddles its thumbs.
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08:35 PM
Daniel McGinn, www.newsweek.com, March 21, 2005
Annual meetings can be a dangerous place for chief executives. You never know when a Michael Moore-style protester will grab the microphone and start heckling. If that happens, the standard procedure is for the boss to listen respectfully, avoid engaging and hope the protester runs out of hot air quickly. But John Mackey doesn't believe in the traditional rules of business. At the 2003 shareholders' meeting of Whole Foods Market, of which Mackey is cofounder and CEO, animal-welfare activist Lauren Ornelas lambasted Mackey for selling meat from ducks that were raised in what she considers cruel conditions. Instead of giving her the textbook brushoff, Mackey offered his e-mail address. They corresponded for a few weeks, but stopped when the debate failed to sway either of them. Six months later Ornelas opened her in box to find a new e-mail from Mackey. After talking with her, he'd read a dozen books on animal welfare, he wrote, and eventually decided Ornelas was right. He'd become a vegan himself. And he wanted her help in rewriting Whole Foods' policies on farm-animal treatment. "It made me fall out of my chair," Ornelas says. After she spent years boycotting Whole Foods, "now we're working together."
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01:22 AM
March 19, 2005
James Leroy Wilson, www.lewrockwell.com, March 19, 2005
The USA is and will remain a republic of some sort, and democratic to some degree. It goes against our grain, our history and character, to revert to monarchy. And there’s certainly something to be said, in theory, for republican forms of government. Particularly where power is divided, branches check and balance each other, and there are regularly-scheduled elections. This is the type of system Americans think they have, and certainly the republican shell will remain even as the USA slouches toward Empire.
On the other hand, there is something quite dishonest about republicanism. A State is not defined by the number of people it coerces, but by its borders - by the land it controls. When one person in a dynastic family claims ultimate ownership and authority over all the land, that is a monarchy. When the people as a whole claim ultimate ownership and authority over all the land, that is a democracy. A republic is, what, exactly? A small group that temporarily claims control of the land and the people on behalf of … whom? And for what?
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10:15 PM
Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, www.guardian.co.uk, March 19, 2005
Kabul was a grim, monastic place in the days of the Taliban; today it's a chaotic gathering point for every kind of prospector and carpetbagger. Foreign bidders vying for billions of dollars of telecoms, irrigation and construction contracts have sparked a property boom that has forced up rental prices in the Afghan capital to match those in London, Tokyo and Manhattan. Four years ago, the Ministry of Vice and Virtue in Kabul was a tool of the Taliban inquisition, a drab office building where heretics were locked up for such crimes as humming a popular love song. Now it's owned by an American entrepreneur who hopes its bitter associations won't scare away his new friends.
Outside Kabul, Afghanistan is bleaker, its provinces more inaccessible and lawless, than it was under the Taliban. If anyone leaves town, they do so in convoys. Afghanistan is a place where it is easy for people to disappear and perilous for anyone to investigate their fate. Even a seasoned aid agency such as Médécins Sans Frontières was forced to quit after five staff members were murdered last June. Only the 17,000-strong US forces, with their all-terrain Humvees and Apache attack helicopters, have the run of the land, and they have used the haze of fear and uncertainty that has engulfed the country to advance a draconian phase in the war against terror. Afghanistan has become the new Guantánamo Bay.
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11:39 AM
March 18, 2005
Joseph L. Galloway, www.thestate.com, March 18, 2005
Another official report on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq has come and gone. It was the ninth probe into the scandals that first erupted at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison, and so far all the Pentagon has managed to do is get to the bottom, the very bottom, of the problem.
Those at the top, both civilians and military, again have been given a pass when it comes to assessing who was responsible for the command climate and the written rules that permitted prisoners to be treated like animals or worse, in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
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08:21 PM
Loretta Nall, www.lewrockwell.com, March 18, 2005
I was scheduled to appear in county circuit court on the morning March 16 at 9 a.m.
My husband and I arrived at 8:30 and went upstairs to the courtroom.
It seems that the Atlanta courthouse shooting of last week has given these small town Alabama cops and court personnel "beefed up security fever."
It is difficult for me to imagine anyone in my small city losing their mind and opening fire in the courtroom. Then again, when I think about how badly people get screwed over in the Alabama court system…
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09:16 AM
March 17, 2005
Jude Wanniski, www.counterpunch.com, March 17, 2005
If you really don't know what the "World Bank" is all about, you would think that President Bush was joking in nominating Paul Wolfowitz to be the new president of the Bank, replacing Jim Wolfensohn. One of the chief architects of the Iraq war, Wolfowitz is a political theorist, a 61-year-old man who spent most of his adult life at blackboards and lecterns teaching students about international politics. He may know how to operate an Automatic Teller Machine when in need of ready cash, but he knows absolutely nothing about banking. Wolfensohn, who was a New York investment banker before President Clinton named him to the post a decade ago, at least knows something about banking. His partner in New York, to which I suppose he will return, is Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, our nation's central bank. Wolfie the Warrior, by contrast, is the lifetime sidekick, even protÈgÈ, of Richard Perle, probably the most important intellectual in the service of the military-industrial complex. If you want to know how Professor Wolfowitz got the job, follow the money.
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10:41 PM
March 16, 2005
James Sullivan, www.slate.com, March 16, 2005
With its outtakes, rarities, and B sides, the long-awaited Nirvana boxed set turned out to be the table scraps of a once-bountiful buffet. There is one moment, however, that's well worth seeking out: a ghostly rendition of the infamous pop hit "Seasons in the Sun." Fittingly, it comes at the end. A video clip from 1993 shows the trio struggling grimly with the song in a studio in Rio de Janeiro. Having switched roles—Kurt Cobain on drums, Dave Grohl on bass, Krist Novoselic on guitar—their funereal seriousness might reflect their lack of skills on unfamiliar instruments. It's more tempting, though, to believe that impossibly maudlin tune is hitting them right in the gut.
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11:25 PM
Charlie Savage, www.boston.com, March 16, 2005
Top US Navy officials were so outraged at abusive interrogation techniques being used at the Guantanamo Bay prison in late 2002 that they considered removing Navy interrogators from the operation, according to a portion of a recent Pentagon report that has not been made public.
A top Navy psychologist reported to his supervisor in December 2002 that interrogators at Guantanamo were starting to use ''abusive techniques." In a separate incident that same month, the Defense Department's joint investigative service, which includes Navy investigators, formally ''disassociated" itself from the interrogation of a detainee, after learning that he had been subjected to particularly abusive and degrading treatment.
The two events prompted Navy law enforcement officials to debate pulling out of the Guantanamo operation entirely unless the interrogation techniques were restricted. The Navy's general counsel, Alberto Mora, told colleagues that the techniques were ''unlawful and unworthy of the military services."
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11:08 PM
Eric Boehlert, www.salon.com, March 15, 2005
Democrats aren't the only ones angered by the Justice Department's memo to federal agencies on March 11 telling them to ignore a key finding by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO has declared that video news releases -- or prepackaged TV segments -- that fail to reveal they were produced by the government constitute illegal propaganda. "It's highly unusual for the Justice Department to take this action. Sending out a memo may be unprecedented," says David Walker, comptroller general of the United States and head of the GAO. He adds, "The Justice Department is not independent on this matter."
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12:02 AM
March 15, 2005
Agencies, www.guardian.co.uk, March 15, 2005
Italy will begin withdrawing its 3,000 troops from Iraq in September, the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, announced today.
"We will begin to reduce our contingent even before the end of the year, starting in September, in agreement with our allies," he said in an interview on state television RAI.
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08:52 PM
Betsy Blaney, Associated Press, www.suntimes.com, March 15, 2005
PAMPA, Texas -- Rick Roach got elected district attorney in west Texas on a vow to rid the streets of drug dealers.
''Drugs, drug usage, drug trafficking has become a scourge in our society,'' Roach thundered during closing arguments at a drug trial that sent a man to prison for 60 years in 2001.
Few guessed the hypocrisy behind it all: Roach himself did drugs.
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08:29 AM
Audrey McAvoy, Associated Press, www.newsday.com, March 15, 2005
TOKYO -- Chess legend Bobby Fischer shouldn't be exempted from Japan's rule that foreigners who are ordered deported must be sent to their homeland, Japan's top immigration official said Tuesday.
Fischer and his supporters are asking that he be allowed to go to Iceland, where he has been granted a special passport for foreigners, instead of the United States, where Japan has ordered him sent.
Japanese authorities have detained him since July for allegedly trying to leave for the Philippines on a revoked U.S. passport.
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08:16 AM
Jacob G. Hornberger, www.fff.org, March 14, 2005
The feds are very upset with Walter Anderson, whom they’re accusing of being the “biggest tax cheat in American history.” They say he evaded taxes on $450 million in income, although he can’t be all bad because in 1998 he paid $494 in income taxes. So, the feds are now going after him, perhaps as part of their customary “Pay your Taxes” advertising campaign prior to the upcoming April 15 tax deadline.
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07:48 AM
March 13, 2005
Grant Nülle, www.mises.org, March 11, 2005
When President Bush released his 2006 budget proposal, he cast himself as a measured and decisive figure bent on taming the government’s profligate spending and raging deficits.
When one peers beyond the stage-managed façade, however, what one finds is that Bush earns the dubious distinction of being one of the biggest big spenders of all time. His cuts are as cosmetics as his vast increases are all-too-real. Whether we examine his domestic or foreign agenda, his administration embodies the worst of the worst of the American big-government tradition.
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06:52 PM
Benjamin Powell, www.independent.org, March 11, 2005
Instead of a politics-as-usual debate over a trivial 3.5 percent decrease in agricultural subsidies, policymakers should reconsider why the federal government subsidizes agriculture at all. It hurts the world’s poor, makes food prices higher for consumers in the U.S., and the benefits don’t accrue to small farmers. Of course politicians don’t debate ending farm subsidies because it would eliminate one type of “food”—the pork congress members get to dole out.
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06:02 PM
www.theonion.com, March 9, 2005
Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said a consumption tax, such as a national sales tax, could benefit the nation's economy. What do you think?
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05:48 PM
Martha Mendoza, with Randy Herschaft and Monika Mathur, www.newsday.com, March 13, 2005
Since 1998, many federal departments have been reducing the amount of information they release to the public -- even as the government fields and answers more requests for information than ever, an Associated Press review has found.
The locations of stores and restaurants that have received recalled meat, the names of detainees held by the U.S. overseas and details about Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 energy policy task force are all among the records that the government isn't sharing with the public.
The tightening began even before the Sept. 11 attacks, and now government defenders say the nation needs protection from its enemies in the war on terror. But open government advocates worry that U.S. citizens' freedom is eroding with every file they can't access.
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02:30 PM
March 12, 2005
Jim Lobe, www.antiwar.com, March12, 2005
Human rights groups and some senators are expressing growing frustration over the Pentagon's failure to hold senior officers or civilian leaders accountable for widespread abuses by U.S. forces against detainees in Washington's "war on terror."
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01:12 PM
Omar Sofradzija, www.reviewjournal.com, March 12, 2005
Nearly 9,000 Nevada drivers and ID card holders had personal information stolen in Monday's burglary of a Department of Motor Vehicles bureau in North Las Vegas, authorities conceded Friday.
The department initially asserted that driver records were safe, but officials now say they didn't know that a pilfered computer contained private data such as Social Security numbers.
The theft leaves those people at great risk of having their finances wrecked by identity thieves.
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01:08 PM
Scott Bauer, Associated Press, www.journalstar.com, March 10, 2005
Felons who have completed their sentences will no longer have to wait at least 10 years before they can vote in Nebraska, thanks to a veto override Thursday.
Gov. Dave Heineman on Wednesday vetoed the voting rights bill, saying it was unwise and constitutionally suspect. On a 36-11 vote, six more votes than needed, the Legislature rejected the veto and passed the bill Thursday.
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12:53 AM
Max Hastings, www.guardian.co.uk, March 12, 2005
The government's anti-terror bill invited the legislature to choose between two evils. If the measure had fallen, the risk of a terrorist outrage might have become somewhat greater. Yet its passage, even in amended form, grants powers to the home secretary and law-enforcement agencies which dramatically curb civil liberties.
So long as we acted with our eyes open, acknowledging the danger, there was only one decent course: to resist the proposed legislation, and tell Blair and Clarke where they could stuff it. The government and its agents demanded extraordinary licence to judge who should be detained, without benefit of due procedure. Presented with that proposition, how could any responsible MP, never mind ordinary voter, have acceded to Downing Street's wishes?
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12:41 AM
March 10, 2005
William J. Watkins, Jr., www.independent.org, March 10, 2005
With federal regulation, the Homeland Security Secretary could require states to adopt RFID technology in driver’s licenses. The Secretary might also require that these chips contain fingerprints, iris scans, and other biometric data. In addition, the Secretary could require the states to include personal information such as criminal history, employment history, or firearm ownership—all in the name of “homeland security.” As RFID technology improves, the chips in driver’s licenses could even be read remotely at greater distances, permitting the federal and state governments to know a citizen’s location at any time.
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10:20 PM
John Marc Leas, Colleen McLaughlin, and Ashley Smth, www.counterpunch.com, March 10, 2005
"A town meeting revolt over the Iraq war" is what The Christian Science Monitor called Vermont's historic votes for anti-war resolutions in 49 of 57 cities and towns. The resolutions passed not only in traditional liberal strong holds, but also in rural areas usually dismissed as conservative. The votes demonstrated overwhelming anti-war sentiment.
In the state's largest city, the Burlington Anti-War Coalition (BAWC) proposed a resolution (full text below) that called for bringing the troops home now. It passed with 65.2% of the vote. It won in all the city's wards, including the two most conservative. In the towns of Marshfield and Hinesburg (one of the more conservative towns in Vermont) voters also considered and passed "Out Now" resolutions by overwhelming margins.
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09:48 PM
R. W. Bradford, www.libertyunbound.com, April 2005
There's little wonder that practically no one lives in the scorching ultra-dry southern Californian desert except in tiny artificial oases like Blythe and Needles, where water and electricity are available. But some people do live elsewhere in that immense and wonderful and terrifying place, and if you look closely, you'll see signs of them: tire tracks heading off the roads which, if you follow, lead to weird-looking shacks showing signs of habitation.
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01:08 AM
March 09, 2005
Rick Hampson, www.usatoday.com, March 7, 2005
The Marines didn't have to recruit Greg McCullough. He signed a promise to enlist last year, while he was still in high school. But now McCullough has had second thoughts, and he's talking to a different kind of recruiter. Jim Murphy is a "counter-recruiter," one of a small but growing number of opponents of the Iraq war who say they want to compete with military recruiters for the hearts and minds of young people. (Related story: For Guard recruiters, a tough sell)
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11:16 PM
March 08, 2005
Antony P. Mueller, www.mises.org, March 8, 2005
When confronted with complaints about the falling value of the dollar, the U.S. official is said to have responded to his European visitors: "The dollar is our currency, but it's your problem." That was in 1971. The politician to whom this statement is attributed was John Connally, who at that time served as the secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His boss was Richard Nixon, the same President who used a word for the Italian lira which politeness prohibits repeating. Nevertheless, Connally and Nixon made clear how matters were.
In the meantime, the Italian lira no longer exists. It has merged into the euro, when the single European currency was established in 1999. The endeavors to create a common currency had begun in the early 1970s, when the Europeans began to construct their own currency systems based on stable exchange rates and off the dollar standard.
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11:29 PM
Anthony Gregory, www.lewrockwell.com, March 8, 2005
Calling for President Bush’s impeachment surely sounds seditious to many conservative partisans of the administration and its "war on terrorism."
As they apparently see it, during the relative peacetime of the late 1990s, calling for the impeachment of a Democrat for lying about the whereabouts of his private parts was a public service. But during wartime, to call for the impeachment of a Republican for one of the greatest of all political crimes – that is, the war – is branded treason, or, at best, ridiculed as hysterical anti-American defeatism or simply juvenile white noise.
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11:17 PM
Alan Travis, Patrick Wintour, and Michael White, www.guardian.co.uk, March 9, 2005
Charles Clarke will today offer angry MPs and peers two crucial compromises in a bid to save his controversial bill to impose restrictive control orders on terrorist suspects. But in the face of six fresh defeats in the Lords last night he remains adamant that his critics' third demand is non-negotiable.
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian as peers mauled his bill for the second night running, the home secretary revealed the offer he will make to MPs today - amid strong hostility among backbenchers in all parties.
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11:14 PM
March 07, 2005
Mark Baard, www.wired.com, March 7, 2005
A new smartcard, the type privacy advocates fear because it combines biometric data with radio tags, will soon be one of the most common ID cards in Washington.
Department of Homeland Security workers in May will begin using the new ID card, called the DAC, to gain access to secure areas, log on to government computers and even pay their Metro subway fares.
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11:57 PM
Tom Regan, www.csmonitor.com, March 7, 2005
Normally when the US State Department issues its annual report on human rights abuses around the world, those nations named in the report can be counted on to dismiss any claims made in the report. But the chorus of those damning the State Department's effort this year have been much louder and more aggressive because of one country these critics claim the report excluded - the United States itself.
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08:54 PM
Nick Gillespie interview with Andrew Napolitano, www.reason.com, March 2005
As the highly rated home to the likes of Abu Ghraib apologist Sean Hannity and the document-shredding constitutional scholar Oliver North, the Fox News Channel is about the last place you think of when it comes to quaint values such as due process, defendants’ rights, and restrained government. Yet Fox is home to television’s fiercest defender of civil liberties, Judge Andrew Napolitano, the network’s senior judicial analyst and a regular on The Big Story With John Gibson, Fox and Friends, The O’Reilly Factor, and other programs. The 54-year-old Napolitano, the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in New Jersey history, is an eloquent and outspoken critic of government abuse of power, whether the topic is widespread “testilying” by cops, eminent domain abuse by local and state officials, or the unilateral detention of suspects at Guantanamo Bay.
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08:39 AM
March 06, 2005
Ryann Connell, www.mdn.mainichi.co.jp, March 5, 2005
Incarcerated chess champion Bobby Fischer, tantalizingly close to securing freedom after almost eight months in Japanese cells, may yet find himself being deported to his homeland as the United States government is moving to prosecute him for tax evasion, the Mainichi Daily News learned Saturday.
Although Iceland has a special foreigner's passport waiting in its Tokyo Embassy for the 62-year-old grandmaster's release, his supporters have an airplane ticket to Reykjavik for him, and moves are afoot to grant him citizenship of that country, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service is about to begin legal action against Fischer.
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01:15 PM
Ron Jacobs, www.counterpunch.com, March 5-6, 2005
Recently, most students at the University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington received an email with the heading ARMY PAYS OFF STUDENT LOANS in their university email box. The general message of the mass mailing was that if a student was nearing graduation and wondering how they were going to pay off the massive debt today's US college students incur, they should join the army. In essence, this email was a college student's version of the poverty draft that entraps so many working class and poor young people into enlisting in the service. The sender was a military recruiter working out of the US Army recruitment office in the Burlington suburb of Williston. Given that the university has a very clear policy forbidding these types of solicitations on their email servers one wonders how the recruiting office was able to obtain the address list. The university administration has been reticent when asked this question by various faculty, students, and parents. It is fair to assume, however, that the email list was released to the recruiter under the compliance sections of the so-called Solomon Amendment. For those unfamiliar with this legislation, it essentially forbids Department of Defense (DOD) funding of schools unless those schools provide military representatives access to their students for recruiting purposes. It is this same law that enables military recruiters to set up shop in high schools across the US and to call students at their homes attempting to entice them into joining the military.
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12:07 PM
March 05, 2005
Peter Popham, www.independent.co.uk, March 6, 2005
Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist freed on Friday after a month in captivity in Iraq, was recovering in a military hospital here after taking shrapnel in her shoulder when American troops fired 300 to 400 shots into her car as it approached Baghdad airport. She touched down in Rome yesterday morning and was carried from the aeroplane wrapped in a blanket and attached to a drip, looking haggard and exhausted.
The unprovoked attack killed Nicola Calipari, the Italian military intelligence agent who had negotiated the journalist's release. He had thrown himself on top of Ms Sgrena to shield her and was killed by a bullet in the head. In a brief conversation with the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, President Bush said he was sorry about the incident and promised that it would be investigated.
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08:58 PM
Editorial, www.enquirer.com, March 5, 2005
Ever since Ohio's Orville and Wilbur Wright first believed they could build an airplane in Dayton - then actually fly it on a hilly, windswept seacoast at Kitty Hawk - humankind has been fascinated by the allure of defying gravity and doing the improbable.
On Thursday, against hard-blue late winter skies over Salina, Kan., millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, 60, completed something that once seemed impossible - a solo fight around the globe, nonstop in an airplane. He landed shortly before 2 p.m. EST, 67 hours after taking off from Salina.
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12:34 PM
Editorial, www.madison.com/tct, March 5, 2005
James Madison warned more than two centuries ago, "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives."
Madison wrote those words in the first years of the 19th century, but they still ring true in the first years of the 21st.
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11:56 AM
March 04, 2005
Justin Raimondo, www.antiwar.com, March 4, 2005
From the moment the twin towers were hit, the fascist seed began to germinate, to take root and grow. As the first shots of what the neocons call "World War IV" rang out, piercing the post-Cold War calm like a shriek straight out of Hell, the political and cultural climate underwent a huge shift: the country became, for the first time in the modern era, a hothouse conducive to the growth of a genuinely totalitarian tendency in American politics.
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08:14 PM
Andrew Metz, www.newsday.com, March 4, 2005
In the crowded basement of a community library, the young men recounted their stories of escape.
They spoke of crimes perpetrated by their country, of fleeing in the dead of night to avoid a brutal war they would have been forced to fight.
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08:08 PM
Associated Press, www.boston.com, March 4, 2005
As of Friday, March 4, 2005, at least 1,506 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,142 died as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department. The figures include four military civilians.
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07:56 PM
March 03, 2005
Teresa Whithurst, www.antiwar.com, March 3, 2005
The ASVAB "aptitude" test was news to me; I'd never even heard of it, and the school never asked for parental consent before administering it. None of the parents I knew had any warning about the test or when it would be given. When they did hear about it, most of them believed that this was just another standardized test, or that kids refusing to take it would be penalized in some way.
Isn't it just the perfect setup? So much can be said without actually saying it. The official tone of the announcement, the introduction of the test by a trusted guidance counselor, the disavowal of any ties to the military: these routine-sounding aspects of the ASVAB convince teens and parents that every student must take it.
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10:11 PM
Jamie Pietras, www.villagevoice.com, February 28, 2005
Enter Ricardo Cortes.
Last month, Cortes published his children's book, It’s Just a Plant, 48 cannabis-laden pages that he hoped would be taken as a welcome dose of "reality-based education." The former high school D.A.R.E. officer and Brooklyn-based T-shirt and skateboard designer says the book is intended for "six- to 12-year-olds." It still encourages kids to say "No," but stops short of condemning responsible adult use.
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08:59 PM
Declan McCullagh interview with Bradley Smith, www.news.com, March 3, 2005
Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.
In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.
Smith should know. He's one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet.
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08:27 PM
March 02, 2005
Lorna Colquhoun, www.theunionleader.com, March 2, 2005
KILLINGTON, Vt. — Weary from bearing a crushing property tax burden, this small ski resort town 35 miles from the New Hampshire border will continue its effort to rejoin its Granite State roots.
By a nearly 3-1 margin, townspeople voted at their town meeting yesterday to keep up their battle, if only to draw attention to their plight by lawmakers in Montpelier.
Article 5 on the warrant asked residents if they wanted the selectmen to discontinue their "efforts to become a municipality in New Hampshire." A no vote defeated the article. The final tally was 117 no votes and 45 yes votes.
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10:20 PM
Kathryn Casa, www.vermontguardian.com, March 2, 2005
For a moment on Town Meeting Day, the world’s attention shifted, at least in part, from the roiling streets of Baghdad and Mosul to town halls in Weathersfield and Randolph, where Vermonters, noted for leading the discourse on controversial issues, again let their voices be heard.
The state that leads the nation with the highest per capita death rate in Iraq was also the first to hold a popular referendum on the war when 46 of 53 towns this week passed intensely personal resolutions on the deployment of National Guard troops in Iraq.
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10:15 PM
John Nichols, www.madison.com/tct, March 1, 2005
What is the issue on which congressional Democrats - including so-called "progressives" from Wisconsin - are least likely to take a courageous stand?
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09:02 AM
March 01, 2005
Doug Thompson, www.capitolhillblue.com, March 1, 2005
They roam the halls of Congress like a pack of ravenous wolves, licking their chops and turning the Democratic process into a mockery, a sham where thieves rule and any hope of good government lies trampled in a mass of bloody, unrecognizable pulp.
They’re the fatcat lobbyists of Washington, a plague of predators that number 19,000 plus and 65 percent of whom draw salaries of $100,000 more a year. Collectively, they spend more than $1.5 billion annually telling members of Congress what bills they want passed or defeated and how to vote on each.
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08:23 PM
Fraser Nelson, www.scotsman.com, March 1, 2005
THE government last night suffered a massive Commons rebellion over plans to place terror suspects under house arrest.
Dissenting MPs supported a cross-party amendment which would have ensured new "control orders" for suspects were authorised by a judge, not the Home Secretary.
The rebels were narrowly defeated by just 14 votes - 253 against the government’s 267.
The vote was a humiliating blow for the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, who saw their 161-strong majority crumble in the face of the backbench revolt.
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08:46 AM
Guy Taylor, www.washingtontimes.com, March 1, 2005
A federal judge yesterday ordered the Bush administration to charge dirty bomb suspect Jose Padilla with a crime or release the U.S. citizen and Muslim convert, who has been detained indefinitely as an enemy combatant for more than 2½ years.
U.S. District Judge Henry Floyd in South Carolina, where Padilla is being held in a Navy brig, ordered the administration to take action on the case within 45 days.
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08:33 AM
February 28, 2005
Shawne K. Wickham, www.theunionleader.com, February 27, 2005
Even as the armed services have stepped up recruitment efforts, a test called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), traditionally given to high school juniors, is coming under increasing scrutiny by school administrators and parents, in New Hampshire and elsewhere.
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11:31 PM
Lisa Rathke, Associated Press, www.boston.com, February 28, 2005
MONTPELIER, Vt. -- Town meetings across the state will be dominated, as usual, by school spending and questions like whether to buy a new road grader. But they'll also be focused in many communities this year on the war in Iraq and the National Guard's role in fighting it.
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09:29 PM
Charley Reese, www.lewrockwell.com, February 28, 2005
President Bush will hail his trip to Europe as a resounding success. He hails everything he does as a resounding success regardless of the evidence to the contrary. All politicians do that.
Lest you be spun by the spin, note that he comes home with only one tangible result – an agreement by NATO to assist in training Iraqi forces, and a tepid assist it will be. Two of the NATO countries have agreed to supply one man each. Nearly all of the training will take place in Europe.
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08:59 PM
Sheldon Richman, www.fff.org, February 25, 2005
Many people act as though the income tax and the demands it makes on us are facts of nature. Benjamin Franklin said, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes,” but we ought to acknowledge that these are two quite different phenomena. Taxes are an act of will. Death eventually comes despite any preference to the contrary.
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01:11 AM
February 27, 2005
Suzanne Gamboa, Associated Press, February 27, 2005
A proposal to stop potential terrorists from getting a U.S. driver's license may turn the licenses into a national ID card or help the government track gun purchases, opponents fear.
Conservatives, civil libertarians, gun owners and others share such concerns about a House-passed bill that broadly rewrites the rules for licenses and is portrayed as an anti-terrorism tool.
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12:09 PM
Adam Nichols, www.nydailynews.com, February 27, 2005
The saffron gates that drew millions to Central Park could soon be a part of your home - as a flowerpot or piece of gutter.
A huge dismantling project starts tomorrow, with 300 workers aiming to remove the 7,500 fixtures within a week.
Every part of the artwork, which brought massive international attention - and lots of tourists - to Central Park, is scheduled to be recycled.
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11:55 AM
February 26, 2005
Michael Hirsh, Mark Hosenball, and John Barry, www.newsweek.com, February 28, 2005
Like many detainees with tales of abuse, Khaled el-Masri had a hard time getting people to believe him. Even his wife didn't know what to make of his abrupt, five-month disappearance last year. Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was taken off a bus in Macedonia in south-central Europe while on holiday on Dec. 31, 2003, then whisked in handcuffs to a motel outside the capital city of Skopje. Three weeks later, on the evening of Jan. 23, 2004, he was brought blindfolded aboard a jet with engines noisily revving, according to his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic. Masri says he climbed high stairs "like onto a regular passenger airplane" and was chained to clamps on the bare metal floor and wall of the jet.
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06:01 PM
Richard Jinman, www.guardian.co.uk, February 26, 2005
Salina, a small Kansas city in the heart of the US, is waiting to take its place in aviation history. Chosen as the starting point for the millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett's attempt to make a solo, uninterrupted flight around the globe, it has seen a string of scheduled takeoffs cancelled due to adverse weather.
"Some people are saying let's get on with it already," said Tim Unruh, a reporter on the Salina Journal. "The excitement has gone through peaks and troughs."
But Salina's moment in the international spotlight may be at hand. The Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, Fossett's radical trimaran-shaped aircraft, is currently scheduled to take off from Salina's airstrip as early as Monday.
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04:30 PM
February 25, 2005
Jordan Smith, www.austinchronicle.com, February 25, 3005
Medical marijuana supporters converged on the Capitol Feb. 17 for the Texans for Medical Marijuana lobby day. Medi-pot patients were joined by members of the medical and religious communities to urge lawmakers to pass HB 658 – authored by Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, and joined by Reps. Terry Keel, R-Austin, and Suzanna Gratia Hupp, R-Lampasas – which would create an affirmative defense to prosecution for marijuana possession and forbid any law enforcement from investigating licensed doctors for discussing marijuana as a treatment option with their patients. Patients and others support medi-mari "not because they want to have a party, not because they want to do something deviant, but because they want to stay alive," TMM Executive Director Noelle Davis said during a noon press conference on the Capitol steps. "This is not about partying, it is about health care."
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11:01 PM
Matthew Tempest and agencies, www.guardian.co.uk, February 25, 2005
The government's plans to put terrorist suspects under house arrest are unnecessary, may breach European human rights and should not be rushed through parliament, an influential committee of MPs and peers warned today.
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07:08 PM
February 24, 2005
Anthony Gregory, www.fff.org, February 23, 2005
Principled advocacy of the free market requires an understanding of the differences between genuine free enterprise and “state capitalism.” Although the Left frequently exaggerates and overemphasizes the evils of corporate America, proponents of the free market often find themselves in the awkward position of defending the status quo of state capitalism, which is in fact a common adversary of the free marketer and the anti-corporate leftist, even if the latter misdiagnoses the problem and proposes the wrong solutions.
Indeed, corporatism, implemented by the state — whether through direct handouts, corporate bailouts, eminent domain, licensing laws, antitrust regulations, or environmental edicts — inflicts great harm on the modern American economy. Although leftists often misunderstand the fundamental problem plaguing the economy, they at least recognize its symptoms.
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10:08 PM
Ryan Singel, www.wired.com, February 24, 2005
Despite widespread criticism from security experts that a proposed high-tech upgrade to Americans' passports actually introduces new security risks, the government is declining to encrypt data on new high-tech e-passports, according to proposed new rules published last week.
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07:42 PM
Bruce Ward and Carly Weeks, www.canada.com/ottawa/ottowacitizen/, February 24, 2005
Can you picture staid Ottawa as Amsterdam-On-The-Rideau, with sex tourists flocking to legal brothels in a downtown red light district?
It could be reality one day if a resolution to decriminalize prostitution is passed by delegates attending the Liberals' national policy convention here March 3-6.
Senator Mac Harb, the former Ottawa Centre MP who dealt with hundreds of complaints about prostitutes trolling downtown streets, is in favour of the idea.
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09:33 AM
February 23, 2005
George Archibald, www.washingtontimes.com, February 23, 2005
Utah's state Legislature is poised to repudiate the No Child Left Behind Act and spurn $116 million in federal aid tied to it because state policy-makers are fed up with federal control of education and dictates.
"This is not a partisan issue; this is a states' rights issue," said Rep. Margaret Dayton, a 55-year-old Republican and mother of 12 who has led the rebellion to make Utah the first state to opt out of No Child Left Behind.
"We share the same passion President Bush has for quality education, but there is not one opponent [to opting out] in the entire Legislature, which is 2-to-1 Republican," Mrs. Dayton said.
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10:15 PM
Tom Regan, www.csmonitor.com. February 22, 2005
The US Army is beginning to face the same sort of recruiting problems that have already plagued the National Guard and Reserve, The Washington Post reported Monday. Since the Army's fiscal year began last October, it has only signed 18.4 percent of its target of 80,000 new recruits. That's less thanlast year's and well below the 25 percent target the Army had set for itself to meet by this time.
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09:39 PM
Tony Karon, www.time.com, February 21, 2005
Machiavelli's advice to political leaders was that it's more important to be feared than to be loved. That's no help for President Bush on his European tour; in spite of the warm words he's exchanging with European leaders, the reality is that the Bush administration is neither loved nor feared in growing sectors of the international community — increasingly, it is simply being ignored.
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12:01 AM
February 22, 2005
John Nichols, www.madison.com/tct, February 22, 2005
The 273rd anniversary of the birth of George Washington will pass today with little note, stirred into the generic swill of "Presidents Day."
The memory of Washington has become an inconvenience for men who occupy the high stations that he and his fellow founders occupied. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Negroponte and their ilk certainly do not want the work of remaking America in their own image - as a greedy, self-absorbed and frequently brutal empire - interrupted by reflections upon the nobler nation that Washington and his compatriots imagined.
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09:54 PM
Rachel La Corte, Associated Press, www.seattlepi.com, February 22, 2005
If Sen. Bob Morton has his way, he'll soon be a resident and lawmaker in the 51st state of the United States.
To Morton, the Cascade Mountains are more than just the dividing line between wet and dry Washington. They are the indisputable wall between political ideologies that only became more apparent during the recent contested governor's race.
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08:50 PM
James Sullivan, www.rollingstone.com, February 21, 2005
Hunter S. Thompson, the dean of gonzo journalism and a longtime contributor to Rolling Stone, died Sunday in his Colorado home of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was sixty-seven.
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01:06 AM
Warren Richey, www.csmonitor.com, February 22, 2005
Property rights in the United States are at a constitutional crossroads.
Increasingly, in towns and cities across the nation, local governments are seizing and demolishing private homes to assemble large tracts of land needed for economic development projects.
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12:01 AM
February 19, 2005
Gary North, www.lewrockwell.com, February 19, 2005
A potential disaster has taken place. It has received virtually no attention. Only MSNBC has reported it. There is almost no discussion of it on the web. Had a specialist in communications issues not contacted me, I would not have heard about it.
You have probably not heard of ChoicePoint. Over the last twenty years, ChoicePoint has compiled a private data base on Americans that dwarfs anything the I.R.S. has. Unlike the I.R.S., ChoicePoint has a comprehensive computer system that is state of the art. The information covers name, address, Social Security, transactions, and much, much more.
Last week, the company notified over 30,000 people in California that it has experienced a breach in security. Hardly any of these people had ever heard of ChoicePoint.
But they are in bed with ChoicePoint, like it or not.
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10:41 AM
Aaron Naparstek, www.nypress.com, February 17-23, 2005
According to the ancient Mayans, the world is scheduled to end in the year 2012. No one is entirely certain why Mesoamerican sky-watchers chose a precise date 2300 years in the future as the end of time, but it is likely that they foresaw the cataclysm of a New York City Olympiad.
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10:00 AM
February 17, 2005
Seth Hettena, Associated Press, www.sfgate.com, February 17, 2005
An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture _ suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to reports reviewed by The Associated Press.
The death of the prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, became known last year when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The U.S. military said back then that the death had been ruled a homicide. But the exact circumstances under which the man died were not disclosed at the time.
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11:48 PM
Lisa J. Adams, with Freddy Cuevas and Filadelfo Aleman, Associated Press, www.newsday.com, February 17, 2005
Central American politicians and human rights activists issued stinging criticism Thursday of John Negroponte, nominated to become America's first intelligence director, citing the career diplomat's active backing for the Contra rebels and support for a government involved in human rights abuses.
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10:43 PM
Sidney Blumenthal, www.guardian.co.uk, February 17, 2005
His real name, it turned out, is James Dale Guckert. He has no journalistic background whatsoever. His application for a press credential to cover the Congress was rejected. But at the White House the press office arranged for him to be given a new pass every single day, a deliberate evasion of the regular credentialing that requires an FBI security check. It was soon revealed. "Gannon" owned and advertised his services as a gay escort on more than half a dozen websites with names like Militarystud.com, MaleCorps.com, WorkingBoys.net and MeetLocalMen.com, which featured dozens of photographs of "Gannon" in dramatic naked poses. One of the sites was still active this week.
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09:22 AM
February 16, 2005
Associated Press, www.sfgate.com, February 16, 2005
The grade school that required students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move has ended the program because the company that developed the technology pulled out.
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08:44 PM
Brian Doherty, www.reason.com, Frebruary 16, 2005
Even in a relationship that has clearly gone somewhere beyond abusive, it can hurt to be reminded how little our "partners" in D.C.—supposedly our agents, in fact, representing our own interests and using only powers we've ceded them—really respect us.
No matter how loyal and supportive we try to be—they ask us to trouble ourselves to vote, and more than half of us do, and it seems to make them so proud—well, every once in a while the velvet glove comes off and we get bitchslapped hard with an open iron slap. Not a fist—that would acknowledge that they actually think we are formidable enough in our own defense that serious force is required.
Such a moment is H.R. 418, the "Real I.D. Act" passed by the House last week.
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08:07 PM
Michael Settle, www.theherald.co.uk, February 15, 2005
AN Australian scientist involved in the search for WMD claims US spy chiefs censored his report to suggest the lethal weapons existed.
Rod Barton, a microbiologist who worked for Australian intelligence for more than 20 years, also said Washington and London wanted elements inserted in the Iraq Survey Group's (ISG) report "to make it sexier".
Barton quit after the report was presented to the US Congress in March, stating in his resignation letter that the process was "dishonest".
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08:22 AM
February 15, 2005
Declan McCullagh, www.news.com, February 14, 2005
In a vote that largely divided along party lines, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a Republican-backed measure that would compel states to design their driver's licenses by 2008 to comply with federal antiterrorist standards. Federal employees would reject licenses or identity cards that don't comply, which could curb Americans' access to everything from airplanes to national parks and some courthouses.
The congressional maneuvering takes place as governments are growing more interested in implanting technology in ID cards to make them smarter and more secure. The U.S. State Department soon will begin issuing passports with radio frequency identification, or RFID, chips embedded in them, and Virginia may become the first state to glue RFID tags into all its driver's licenses.
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07:53 PM
Jim Snyder, www.thehill.com, February 15, 2005
Lobbyist Elliott Portnoy knew his inside information would have an effect on Wall Street before he hung up the phone.
The New York-based client on the other end listened a few seconds and then excitedly translated Portnoy’s news.
“Go short!” the client yelled to his trading staff, according to Portnoy, who heads up the public policy practice at Chicago-based Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal.
If a bit shadowy — Portnoy wouldn’t disclose the client’s identity or the specifics of the information passed on — the conversation was perfectly legal. The tip concerned Congress, not a private company. No insider-trading rules were broken.
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07:00 PM
Martin Kettle, www.guardian.co.uk, February 15, 2005
On the surface, individual liberty is a piece of political apple pie. Liberty is one of the things that we all believe in, one of the words we reach for to define the kind of society we live in. Few people now talk about safeguarding our ancient liberties, as our ancestors once did, but the belief that it's a free country remains one of the commonest of popular assertions.
Modern politicians see things more cynically. Not only are most of them leery of liberty but also most of them suspect that they will never lose an election by attempting to restrict it. The conviction that the voters love a crackdown is imprinted on the DNA of our party politics.
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01:12 AM
February 14, 2005
Robert Higgs, www.independent.org, February 14, 2005
In sum, the administration’s budget for fiscal year 2006, along with the shenanigans that strategically placed representatives of the military-industrial-congressional complex invariably play, insures that the gravy train of military spending will continue to speed along the track. The taxpayers have no right to complain, however. As the president has made clear, they’ve already had their opportunity to participate in an “accountability moment,” and now, so far as George W. Bush and his lieutenants are concerned, that moment is gone forever.
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11:00 PM
Associated Press, www.theolympian.com, February 13, 2005
An Iraqi refugee who returned home to visit relatives says he was detained and severely mistreated by U.S. soldiers for more than a week.
Jawad al-Hamid, 34, of Everett told The Herald newspaper the soldiers didn't feed him or let him use a restroom for several days, fastened his handcuffs so tight that he was left with scars on his wrists and pushed him to the floor of his tiny cell.
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09:45 PM
February 13, 2005
Kenneth Baker, www.sfgate.com, February 13, 2005
While most contemporary artists think in square inches or running feet, the husband-and-wife art team of Christo and Jeanne-Claude think in miles and millions of dollars.
The latest fruit of their big thinking, "The Gates" (1979-2005), burst into bloom Saturday morning, throwing Manhattan's vast Central Park into a synthetic early spring that will last just 16 days and cost $20 million, the money raised entirely by the artists themselves.
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03:10 PM
Michael Feingold, www.villagevoice.com, February 12, 2005
Like the tiny dot of light that, refracted through a burning glass, can instantly start wisps of smoke rising from flammable material, Arthur Miller was a focal point for American culture. Born into affluence and radicalized by the trauma of growing up during the Depression, he became in succession an artist, a commercial success, a political hero and victim, a celebrity, a pundit, an elder statesman, and finally a monument—obliged in that last role to suffer the peculiarly malign mixture of gushing adoration, cynical dismissal, and apathetic neglect that America always visits on its cultural monuments. Even in America, few writers have traversed such extremities of change, and still fewer have embraced them with the sardonic alacrity that Miller brought to his every role, like a skilled reporter (one of many jobs he had held on his way up) who is only mildly startled to discover that his biggest story is himself.
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02:29 PM
Charley Reese, www.lewrockwell.com, February 12, 2005
The Bush administration is making the same mistakes with Iran that it made with Iraq. It makes allegations unsupported by facts, refuses to negotiate and threatens sanctions or military action, neither of which is feasible.
In short, it has no rational Iran policy.
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02:11 PM
Jacob G. Hornberger, www.fff.org, February 11, 2005
Unfortunately, the CIA “success” in Iran, which produced the CIA’s ouster of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, bred a CIA “success” in another part of the world, Latin America. One year after the 1953 coup in Iran, the CIA did it again, this time in Guatemala, where U.S. officials feared the communist threat even more than they did in Iran.
This time, the target was the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, a self-avowed socialist whose domestic policies were in fact modeled after the socialist New Deal policies of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.
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01:52 PM
February 12, 2005
Scott McConnell, www.amconmag.com, February 14, 2005
Students of history inevitably think in terms of periods: the New Deal, McCarthyism, “the Sixties” (1964-1973), the NEP, the purge trials—all have their dates. Weimar, whose cultural excesses made effective propaganda for the Nazis, now seems like the antechamber to Nazism, though surely no Weimar figures perceived their time that way as they were living it. We may pretend to know what lies ahead, feigning certainty to score polemical points, but we never do.
Nonetheless, there are foreshadowings well worth noting. The last weeks of 2004 saw several explicit warnings from the antiwar Right about the coming of an American fascism. Paul Craig Roberts in these pages wrote of the “brownshirting” of American conservatism—a word that might not have surprised had it come from Michael Moore or Michael Lerner. But from a Hoover Institution senior fellow, former assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, and one-time Wall Street Journal editor, it was striking.
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04:11 PM
February 11, 2005
Terry Michael, www.dcexaminer.com, February 9, 2005
As the oldest political committee in the world elects a new chairman this week in meetings at the Washington Hilton, the Democratic Party faces a problem common to venerable institutions: a loss of brand equity.
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11:25 PM
www.independent.co.uk, February 10, 2005
Britain's intelligence agencies have been accused of helping America in a secret operation that is sending terror suspects to Middle Eastern countries where prisoners are routinely tortured and abused.
Since 11 September 2001, the CIA has been systematically seizing suspects and sending them, without legal process, not only to Guantanamo Bay but to authorities in countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Human rights campaigners say the system, officially known as "extraordinary rendition" is a system of torture by proxy.
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09:08 PM
Interview by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, www.democracynow.org, February 11, 2005
Lynne Stewart and her attorney, Michael Tigar, join Democracy Now! in our firehouse studio for their first extended national broadcast interview following Thursday's jury decision to convict Stewart on all five counts of conspiring to aid terrorists and lying to the government. The verdict reverberated around the country, especially with lawyers who fear the government's aim is to discourage them from representing unpopular clients. We also speak with one of the witnesses at her trial, former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark.
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08:02 PM
Declan McCullagh, www.news.com, February 10, 2005
Under the rules, federal employees would reject licenses or identity cards that don't comply, which could curb Americans' access to airplanes, trains, national parks, federal courthouses and other areas controlled by the federal government. The bill was approved by a 261-161 vote.
The measure, called the Real ID Act, says that driver's licenses and other ID cards must include a digital photograph, anticounterfeiting features and undefined "machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements" that could include a magnetic strip or RFID tag. The Department of Homeland Security would be charged with drafting the details of the regulation.
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12:33 AM
Editorial, www.usatoday.com, February 9, 2005
When the Bush administration proposed reform in 2003, the head of Medicare kept Congress in the dark that the package would cost more than $100 billion above what was being debated. Now it appears that even that number is far too low. The original estimate was $400 billion; then two months after it became law, the package was pegged at $534 billion from 2004 to 2013. Of that amount, $511 billion was specifically for the drug benefit. Now, lawmakers are estimating the cost could run to $724 billion.
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12:07 AM
February 10, 2005
Kim Zetter, www.wired.com, February 10, 2005
Parents of elementary and middle school students in a small California town are protesting a tracking program their school recently launched, which requires students to wear identification badges embedded with radio frequency, or RFID, chips.
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11:30 PM
February 09, 2005
Jeff Johnson, www.cnsnews.com, February 9, 2005
Congress is considering legislation that conservatives and libertarians warn will create a national ID card system, calling it a backdoor attempt to remove privacy protections gained in a law passed only last year.
The Real ID Act of 2005 (H.R. 418), introduced Jan. 26 by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), would eliminate existing privacy protections and give the secretary of Homeland Security expanded powers to control states' driver's licenses and ID cards, and the data collected while issuing them.
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09:08 PM
Michelangelo Signorile, www.nypress.com, February 9-15, 2005
Now Bloomberg is telling us that marriage equality for gays would bring "chaos." In fact, if New York became a mecca for queer nuptials, it would bring big money, as the global gay elite filled up our hotels and restaurants. (Unlike the trash that came for the RNC. Burdened by security costs, the event was a complete bust despite Bloomberg's promises.)
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12:55 AM
Editorial, www.madison.com/tct, February 8, 2005
Madison Police Chief Noble Wray was wrong to dismiss concerns about the use of a Taser gun on a 14-year-old boy at Memorial High School. And if, as the chief suggests, this use of the Taser - which ejects darts with a 50,000-volt electrical charge that is supposed to immobilize people - fits within department policy, then the Madison Police Department needs to change its policy.
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12:33 AM
February 08, 2005
Paul Armentano, www.lewrockwell.com, February 8, 2005
For the past several decades economists, perhaps more so than any other group of professionals, have been largely united in their criticism of American drug policy. On numerous occasions, prominent economists such as Milton Friedman, Gary S. Becker, and Walter Block have called publicly for the legalization of illicit drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. Furthermore, opinion surveys have repeatedly found that most economists, if not in favor of outright legalization, do endorse a change in policy toward replacing criminal penalties for drug possession with civil fines. Most recently, a study published in the inaugural issue of Econ Journal Watch affirmed this consensus, noting, “Most economists [find] the current policy [of criminal drug prohibition] to be somewhat ineffective, very ineffective, or harmful [and] agree that the policy should be changed in the general direction of liberalization.” Disagreement, when it exists among economists, is generally based on the direction and degree of liberalization, with support existing for a range of policy alternatives, including decriminalization, medicalization (putting drug control in the hands of physicians rather than law enforcement), subsidized drug treatment, and legalization.
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09:29 AM
Anthony Gregory, www.lewrockwell.com, February 8, 2005
As far as the nationalists are concerned, to oppose the U.S. warfare state is to despise America, to condemn the atrocities committed by the Bush administration is the hate America, to reveal skepticism of foreign intervention is to reveal disloyalty to America, whereas to be a shill for all the slaughter done by the U.S. government is to be a good American.
The Pentagon is America. The Homeland Security Department is America. The Iraq War is America. George W. Bush is America. The imperial capital – complete with snipers on the rooftops, armed battalions keeping the city in siege, and a power elite bent on running the world – is America, and if you don’t like it, you must hate America.
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08:57 AM
February 07, 2005
Ronald Trowbridge, www.texaspolicy.com, February 2, 2005
It is a fascinating study to watch the psychological ploys that political leaders use to get more of our money. Their method is based on the classical utilitarian principle of reducing pain or, more exactly, our consciousness of pain. The following approaches show this clever, disingenuous use of psychology. Now that the Texas Legislature is back in session, a number of these approaches will come into play.
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02:22 AM
Malia Rulon, Associated Press, www.guardian.co.uk, February 6, 2005
The CIA has agreed to release more information about Nazi war criminals it hired during the Cold War, ending a standoff between the intelligence agency and the group seeking the documents, Sen. Mike DeWine said Sunday.
DeWine, R-Ohio, was lead Senator author of a 1998 law that required all U.S. government documents related to Nazi war crimes to be declassified, but the Central Intelligence Agency had resisted giving up details about the work performed by agents with Nazi ties.
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02:07 AM
Adam Zagorin, www.time.com, February 14, 2005
American soldiers often have a tough time with Arabic names, so to guards, he was just "Gus.'' To the world outside Abu Ghraib prison, he became an iconic figure, a naked, prostrate Iraqi prisoner crawling on the end of a leash held by Private Lynndie England, the pixyish Army Reserve clerk who posed in several of the infamous photographs that made the name Abu Ghraib synonymous with torture. Now, it emerges, there may be another dimension to Gus' story and certainly to the horrors of Abu Ghraib. In what amounted to a perversion of the traditional doctor's creed of "first, do no harm," the medical system at the prison became an instrument of abuse, by design and by neglect. As uncovered by legal scholars M. Gregg Bloche and Jonathan Marks, who conducted an inquiry published by the New England Journal of Medicine, not only were some military doctors at Abu Ghraib enlisted to help inflict distress on the prisoners, but also the scarcity of basic medical care was at times so severe that it created another kind of torture.
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12:45 AM
February 05, 2005
David Rose, www.observer.guardian.co.uk, February 6, 2005
Martin Mubanga can date the low point of his 33 months at Guantánamo Bay: 15 June, 2004. That sweltering Cuban morning, he was taken from the cellblock he was sharing with speakers of the Afghan language Pashto, none of whom knew English, for what had become his almost daily interrogation. As usual, his hands were shackled in rigid, metal cuffs attached to a body belt; another set of chains ran to his ankles, severely restricting his ability to move his legs. Trussed in this fashion, he was lying on the interrogation booth floor.
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11:14 PM
Kim Zetter, www.wired.com, February 4, 2005
British Columbians are fighting to halt an outsourcing contract recently signed by their government that could place millions of their health records in the hands of a private American company.
Activists with the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association are concerned that the data could be susceptible to seizure by American law enforcement agencies if the data resides with a company whose parent firm is in the U.S. They fear the information could be used for data-mining exercises, such as those that previously involved passenger records from JetBlue and other airlines being passed to a government agency. Or the data could be passed to border patrol officials, who could use the information to prevent British Columbians with serious health issues, like AIDS, from entering the United States.
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12:21 PM
Kevin Casey, www.lewrockwell.com, February 4, 2005
If we truly believe America is a free market capitalist society, our only choice is to be for total deregulation of the broadcast industry. Let the consumers choose what they wish to support or not. That's the American way.
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11:58 AM
February 04, 2005
www.theonion.com, February 2, 2005
According to a report released Monday by Boston University's School of Lifestyle Management, more than 180 trillion leisure hours were lost to work in 2004.
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08:13 PM
James Carroll, www.boston.com, February 1, 2005
Iraq is a train wreck. The man who caused it is not in trouble. Tomorrow night he will give his State of the Union speech, and the Washington establishment will applaud him. Tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead. More than 1,400 Americans are dead. An Arab nation is humiliated. Islamic hatred of the West is ignited. The American military is emasculated. Lies define the foreign policy of the United States. On all sides of Operation Iraqi Freedom, there is wreckage. In the center, there are the dead, the maimed, the displaced -- those who will be the ghosts of this war for the rest of their days. All for what?
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08:08 PM
Justin Raimondo, www.antiwar.com, February 3, 2005
The State of the Union was, in many ways, a reiteration of the president's second inaugural address: the look on that chimpy little face as he repeated "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" was at once self-satisfied and defiant, as if he were telling Peggy Noonan, Mark Helprin, and all the other conservative skeptics to stuff it. Laced with explicit threats, pumped up with hubris, shameless in its exploitation of the American war dead, this speech was a warning to us all – get ready for more wars, more death, more neocon lies in the service of a foreign policy founded on madness.
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09:03 AM
February 03, 2005
R. G. Ratcliffe, www.chron.com, February 3, 2005
Musician, author, jokester and occasional politician Richard "Kinky" Friedman stood before the Alamo today to officially launch his independent campaign for Texas governor.
"We're gypsies on a pirate ship, and we're setting sail for the Governor's Mansion," said Friedman, who calls himself 'The Kinkster.' "I'm calling for the unconditional surrender of (Governor) Rick Perry."
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09:34 PM
Debbie Andalo, www.guardian.co.uk, February 3, 3005
A new study claiming that heroin can be taken without damaging health or job prospects has been condemned by drug addiction groups.
Researchers said the study proved that some users of the class A drug can find work, hold down a job and achieve educational qualifications which compare to non-drug users.
The study was based on 126 long-term heroin users who were not in treatment recruited in Glasgow over a four-year period. All had used opiates at least 10 times in the past two years, and had been using heroin for seven years.
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08:59 PM
Ryan Singel, www.wired.com, January 31, 2005
A controversial and much-delayed upgrade of the current airline passenger-screening system has gained new momentum, as officials have started testing the newly centralized computer system using real passenger data and are looking to see if commercial databases can help verify passengers' identification.
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07:22 PM
February 02, 2005
Charlie Savage and Alan Wirzbicki, www.boston.com, February 2, 2005
The Bush administration has provided White House media credentials to a man who has virtually no journalistic background, asks softball questions to the president and his spokesman in the midst of contentious news conferences, and routinely reprints long passages verbatim from official press releases as original news articles on his website.
Jeff Gannon calls himself the White House correspondent for TalonNews.com, a website that says it is "committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news coverage to our readers." It is operated by a Texas-based Republican Party delegate and political activist who also runs GOPUSA.com, a website that touts itself as "bringing the conservative message to America."
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10:43 PM
Jonathan Kaplan, www.thehill.com, February 2, 2005
House Republican leaders stripped Rep. Ernest Istook of his cardinal status as punishment for attempting last year to dump transportation projects in 21 GOP congressional districts, according to well-placed Republican aides and lobbyists.
The decision to remove Istook (R-Okla.) as an Appropriations subcommittee chairman is another signal that House GOP leaders will penalize lawmakers who cross them. The decision on Istook comes after former House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Chris Smith (R-N.J.) was removed from that post for being too outspoken on veterans funding issues. Meanwhile, House ethics committee Chairman Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) is not expected to head his panel in the 109th Congress after admonishing House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) on three separate ethics matters in 2004.
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08:50 PM
Jacob G. Hornberger, www.fff.org, February 2, 2005
My very first exposure to libertarianism was provided by Ayn Rand, whose 100th birthday is being celebrated today.
One afternoon in the fall of 1974, I was sitting around watching television. At the time, I was temporarily working as a waiter in Dallas, having just completed three months of infantry school in Georgia to fulfill my Army Reserves active-duty commitment, before returning to finish law school in Austin the following semester. An afternoon movie quickly engrossed me, becoming my first exposure to libertarianism — The Fountainhead, starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. The credits stated that the movie was based on Ayn Rand’s novel by that name and so I ran out at once, bought it, and read it. Howard Roark and Dominique Francon quickly became my heroes!
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07:51 PM
Paul Craig Roberts, www.antiwar.com, February 1, 2005
Should Americans have to give up the Bill of Rights in order to be "safe" from terrorists? Actually, it doesn't matter what Americans think. The trade has already been made – and without any input from the people. The "democracy" that America is exporting is in fact a Homeland Security State with more surveillance powers than Saddam Hussein.
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12:49 AM
Roderick T. Long, www.mises.org, February 2, 2005
Today marks the centenary of Ayn Rand's birth. Born Alisa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2nd, 1905, Rand would go on to become one of the 20th century's foremost voices for human freedom.
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12:23 AM
February 01, 2005
Nat Hentoff, www.villagevoice.com, January 28, 2005
Chris Dodd—who has failed to get an amendment passed mandating the administration to keep a record of detainees outsourced to countries with a record of torturing their own citizens—did not appear to be reassured by Rice's answer. He had also asked her, at the hearings, whether she considers such CIA interrogation techniques as water-boarding (making a prisoner feel he is about to be drowned) "to be torture or not."
Rice assured him briskly that "anything that is done is done within the limits of the law." As for what techniques are within the American rule of law, she said: "Senator, the determination of whether interrogation techniques are consistent with our international obligations and American law are made by the Justice Department. I don't want to comment on any specific interrogation techniques."
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11:38 PM
Gina Holland, Associated Press, www.newsday.com, January 31, 2005
The Bush administration must let foreign terror suspects challenge their confinement in U.S. courts, a judge said Monday in a ruling that found unconstitutional the hearing system set up by the Pentagon.
U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green also raised concerns about whether detainees have been tortured during interrogations. Judges, she said, should make sure people are not detained indefinitely based on coerced and unreliable information.
Foreigners from about 40 different countries have been held at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- some for more than three years -- without being charged with any crimes. They were mainly swept up in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.
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03:00 AM
Steve Chapman, www.chicagotribune.com, January 30, 2005
Has Ayn Rand gone mainstream? The radical champion of individualism and capitalism, who died in 1982, is no longer an exotic taste. Her image has adorned a U.S. postage stamp. Her ideas have been detected in a new mass-market animated comedy film, "The Incredibles." And Wednesday, on the 100th anniversary of her birth, there will be a Rand commemoration at the Library of Congress--an odd site for a ceremony honoring a fierce anti-statist.
In her day, Rand was at odds with almost every prevailing attitude in American society. She infuriated liberals by preaching economic laissez-faire and lionizing titans of business. She appalled conservatives by rejecting religion in any form while celebrating, in her words, "sexual enjoyment as an end in itself."
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01:47 AM
Ivan Eland, www.independent.org, January 31, 2005
President Bush, in his second inaugural address, used soaring idealistic rhetoric to tell us that he was going to democratize the Middle East. After the recent Iraqi elections, he declared a triumphant moment in that effort. Yet those elections—with their predictable results—may not mean much for the future of Iraq and might, when combined with other U.S. policies in the Islamic world, reinforce world perceptions of U.S. foreign policy as hypocritical.
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01:22 AM
January 31, 2005
Andrew Barker, www.timesargus.com, January 30, 2005
At the start of a new political season, the attention of many Vermonters is focused on war in Iraq, a deepening health care crisis and Social Security reform. But a growing band of citizens across the state is getting serious about an even bigger political question: whether Vermont should secede from the United States.
Now the debate is coming to the big screen with the release of a three-part documentary entitled "Independence Trilogy: U.S. Empire, Green Mountain Voices, and a Second Vermont Republic." The film will have its first public screening at the Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield at 7 p.m. this Thursday.
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01:20 AM
Bruce Kluger, www.usatoday.com, January 30, 2005
First, they tell us SpongeBob's gay. Then, just when we think it's safe to go back in the water ...
Last week, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings began her new job with a bang, firing off a letter of reprimand to PBS over its plans to air a controversial episode of Postcards from Buster, a clever new travel show for kids featuring the cheerful, asthma-plagued bunny who co-stars on the popular cartoon, Arthur.
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01:13 AM
January 30, 2005
Alan Travis, Clare Dyer, and Michael White, www.guardian.co.uk, January 28, 2005
The home secretary, Charles Clarke, is transforming Britain into a police state, one of the country's former leading anti-terrorist police chiefs said yesterday.
George Churchill-Coleman, who headed Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad as they worked to counter the IRA during their mainland attacks in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said Mr Clarke's proposals to extend powers, such as indefinite house arrest, were "not practical" and threatened to further marginalise minority communities.
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04:36 PM
Hans F. Sennholz, www.lewrockwell.com, January 29, 2005
Washington think tank informs us that the average annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives amounts to an astonishing $37.5 million, which is 1000 times the pay of an average worker. The top one percent of households reportedly earns 20 percent of all incomes and owns 33.4 percent of all net worth. The most astonishing feature of such concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite is the utter lack of concern and comment by the American media. They apparently find nothing wrong with such glaring inequality.
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11:20 AM
Ron Jacobs, www.counterpunch.com, January 29-30, 2005
What about the so-called average Iraqi? Do they really think that they will have a better life after the Assembly is in place? To answer that, perhaps we should ask another question: Does the average US voter honestly believe that elections change their living situation? Anecdotal evidence seems to point towards a continued cynicism on the part of both populations. It's as if we all know that life will only get better when the powerful and their armies leave us alone. Meanwhile, the powers in both countries continue to consolidate their control of the wealth and resources through the charade of elections-an exercise that they have designed to ensure their continued rule.
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10:44 AM
January 29, 2005
Justin Raimondo, www.antiwar.com, January 28, 2005
How pervasive is the practice of pundit payola? First it was black conservative Armstrong Williams found sucking on the federal teat to the tune of $240,000 to promote the Bush administration's "No Child Left Behind" legislation. Armstrong, in his own defense, revealed that there were plenty of other pundits on the government dole, and it wasn't long before "pro-family" columnist and author Maggie Gallagher was outed by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post. Gallagher's $21,500 contract was with the Department of Health and Human Services to push the administration's $300 million "marriage initiative" aimed at persuading the nation's breeders to tie the knot – while simultaneously (and just as actively) campaigning against the legalization of gay marriages. In pushing the initiative in National Review and other venues, Gallagher neglected to mention that she had rented herself out to the U.S. government. Now Congress is investigating the widespread use of public relations agencies and the buying of pundits to push the government's agenda. All of which leads us to raise a vitally important and highly interesting question: how many pro-war commentators are being paid under the table to promote and defend the war effort in Iraq?
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09:39 AM
January 28, 2005
Ryan Olson, www.statepress.com, January 28, 2005
Pharmaceutical drug manufacturers have been planning to line their pockets by putting children on psychotropic drugs for quite some time now.
Drugs like Prozac and Ritalin are prescribed for so-called attention deficit disorders and depression, but some argue that simple diet and exercise alterations could offer a better solution. However, such a common sense solution (i.e. changing what kids eat) doesn't generate billions of dollars a year.
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08:29 PM
Eric Boehlert, www.salon.com, January 27, 2005
And three makes a trend.
One day after President Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries to stop hiring commentators to help promote administration initiatives, and one day after the second high-profile conservative pundit was found to be on the federal payroll, a third embarrassing hire has emerged. Salon has confirmed that Michael McManus, a marriage advocate whose syndicated column, "Ethics & Religion," appears in 50 newspapers, was hired as a subcontractor by the Department of Health and Human Services to foster a Bush-approved marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his columns without disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed.
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08:15 PM
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., www.lewrockwell.com, January 27, 2005
At least Maggie Gallagher has an excuse.
The Bush administration paid the pundit-intellectual $21,500 through the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the administration's "pro-marriage" initiative – you know, family values and all that, as in steal from others to line your pockets in exchange for which you say what the government wants you to say. Her excuse for not telling readers that she was a mouthpiece: she forgot ("I would have [disclosed the payoff], if I had remembered it").
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09:10 AM
Jim Drinkard, www.usatoday.com, January 27, 2005
The Bush administration has more than doubled its spending on outside contracts with public relations firms during the past four years, according to an analysis of federal procurement data by congressional Democrats.
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09:02 AM
January 27, 2005
Robert Verkaik, Helen McCormack, and Terri Judd, www.independent.co.uk, January 27, 2005
The four Britons who returned from Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday after being held captive for almost three years were released without charge last night after being held by police for just under 28 hours.
Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Richard Belmar and Martin Mubanga will be taken to separate safe houses where they will start the process of becoming reacquainted with their families after being questioned by anti-terrorism police at the top-security Paddington Green police station in west London.
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02:03 AM
Clare Dyer, www.guardian.co.uk, January 27, 2005
Senior lawyers last night criticised the home secretary's plan for a new control order to be imposed on British and foreign terrorist suspects and called on him to think again.
Concerns focused on the plan to allow house arrest in serious cases, the low threshold - reasonable grounds to suspect involvement in terrorism - and the fact that there would be no time limit.
The new orders would be imposed by the home secretary, but could be challenged in front of a judge.
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01:41 AM
Steven LaTulippe, www.lewrockwell.com, January 26, 2005
As I read the text of George W. Bush’s second inaugural address, my reaction began as alarm, transformed into perplexity, and finally came to rest at disgust. My assessment was formed around one central idea: It appears to have been written by individuals who, at their very core, do not understand the history and fabric of America.
Basically, Bush’s address was profoundly un-American.
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01:26 AM
Robert Lederman, www.nypress.com, January 26-February 1, 2005
The administration of Mayor Bloomberg has quietly pursued the fulfillment of an agenda that was dear to the Giuliani administration: the privatization of all public space. In February 2004, after a lot of corporate money was handed out, the City Council quietly passed the Street Furniture Initiative (SFI), a law personally sponsored by media mogul Bloomberg. The SFI awards a single corporation the right to install thousands of new advertising kiosks on NYC streets. But there's more to this than just 4,000 annoying digital ad kiosks complete with audio, cell phone boosters and NYPD surveillance equipment.
In order to boost the value of the advertising, itself a form of First Amendment-protected speech, the city intends to transform the right to free expression into an exclusive commodity that can then be sold to the highest bidder.
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01:03 AM
Scott Ritter, www.guardian.co.uk, January 27, 2005
The White House's acknowledgement last month that the United States has formally ended its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq brought to a close the most calamitous international deception of modern times.
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12:43 AM
Seymour Hersh (speech), www.democracynow.org, January 26, 2005
About what's going on in terms of the President is that as virtuous as I feel, you know, at The New Yorker, writing an alternative history more or less of what's been going on in the last three years, George Bush feels just as virtuous in what he is doing. He is absolutely committed -- I don't know whether he thinks he’s doing God's will or what his father didn't do, or whether it's some mandate from -- you know, I just don’t know, but George Bush thinks this is the right thing. He is going to continue doing what he has been doing in Iraq. He's going to expand it, I think, if he can. I think that the number of body bags that come back will make no difference to him. The body bags are rolling in. It makes no difference to him, because he will see it as a price he has to pay to put America where he thinks it should be. So, he's inured in a very strange way to people like me, to the politicians, most of them who are too cowardly anyway to do much. So, the day-to-day anxiety that all of us have, and believe me, though he got 58 million votes, many of people who voted for him weren’t voting for continued warfare, but I think that's what we're going to have.
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12:18 AM
January 25, 2005
Craig Gordon, www.newsday.com, January 26, 2005
The full cost of war in Iraq came into sharper focus Tuesday -- in dollars, deficits and troops.
The Bush administration announced it would seek $80 billion in new spending mainly for Iraq as the Army confirmed plans to keep 120,000 troops there for at least two more years.
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11:20 PM
Butler Shaffer, www.lewrockwell.com, January 24, 2005
I can imagine no more absurd explanation for the outcome of the 2004 elections than the proposition that they were a victory for "spiritual values." In the face of the continual lying and butchery practiced by the Bush administration, one can only ponder the distorted meaning of "values" that were endorsed on election day. Shall we next hear of Nazi concentration camps and Soviet gulags being celebrated for "bringing people together"?
If "society" can be thought of, in dictionary terms, as "a voluntary association of individuals for common ends," these elections confirmed the total victory over society by well-organized coercive forces that I shall refer to as a "sociopathic cult." "Sociopaths" are antisocial persons who are "averse to the society of others or to social intercourse." This cult – which has always been the driving force behind political systems – is comprised of men and women of misanthropic dispositions, traits defined by one dictionary as "a hatred or contempt for mankind," or a "distrust of human nature."
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10:54 PM
Anya Kamenetz, www.villagevoice.com, January 24, 2005
Chris Dugan, 27, signed up for his future hitch in the marines while still in high school. "I wanted to be hard and serve my country," he says. "My grandfather was a marine." Dugan was lucky enough to serve in peacetime, from 1995 to 1999. Included was a short stint as a recruiter for high schoolers like himself, patriotic working-class kids without a lot of options to pay for college, get job training, or find work. "These recruiters psychoanalyze you and pitch you a story," he says. "They have a quota, and if that quota isn't met, it's their ass. They'll do whatever they can to get you in."
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01:48 AM
Jerry Seper, www.washingtontimes.com, January 25, 2005
Police who use drug dogs to sniff vehicles during routine traffic stops are not violating motorists' constitutional right to privacy if contraband is discovered, the Supreme Court ruled 6-2 yesterday.
In setting aside a ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court in a 1998 case in which marijuana was found by a dog after the driver was stopped for exceeding the speed limit by 6 miles an hour, Justice John Paul Stevens — in the majority opinion — said a lawful search that discovers contraband "compromises no legitimate privacy interest."
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01:35 AM
Susan Llewelyn Leach, www.csmonitor.com, January 24, 2005
It's already used as the ID of choice through out most of the United States.To write a check, open a video-store account, or board a plane, you must flash your driver's license.
And now that small card tucked in your wallet is about to get more sophisticated. A piece of the new National Intelligence Reform Act signed into law last week requires national standards for state licenses.
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01:17 AM
January 23, 2005
Sarah Lyall, www.iht.com, January 22, 2005
"I want to take you on a walk," said Hans Monderman, abruptly stopping his car and striding - hatless, and nearly hairless - into the freezing rain.
Like a naturalist conducting a tour of the jungle, he led the way to a busy intersection in the center of town, where several odd things immediately became clear. Not only was it virtually naked, stripped of all lights, signs and road markings, but there was no division between road and sidewalk. It was, basically, a bare brick square.
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10:45 PM
Stefan M. I. Karlsson, www.mises.org, January 21, 2005
For free market economists, the issue of economic freedom is very important. No country in the world is consistently ruled according to libertarian ideals and no country is completely socialist, but there are clearly great differences among countries in their degree of capitalism and socialism or statism in general.
Clearly there is a great difference between the degree of economic freedom in the traditional capitalist bastion of Hong Kong and in Stalinist North Korea. But beyond such clear-cut cases how do we determine which countries are the most free and the least free?
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04:52 PM
Matthew Parris, www.timesonline.co.uk, January 22, 2005
For America-2005-Iraq, think of Britain-1899-Boer War. Ever-heavier burdens are being loaded upon a nation whose economic legs are growing shaky, whose hegemony is being taunted and whose sense of world mission may be faltering. “Overcommitted?” is the whisper.
Not that you would hear it in the din of drums and trumpets. More display is made in the spending of an inheritance than in its quiet accumulation, and the perfumed blossoms of July and August are heaviest after the nights have already begun to draw in. Like economic booms or summer solstices, empires have a habit of appearing at their most florid some time after their zenith has passed. Of the rise and fall of nations, history tends to find that the era of exuberance occurs when the underlying reasons for it are beginning to weaken. There is a time lag between success and swagger.
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12:24 PM
Sheldon Richman, www.fff.org, January 19, 2005
Susette Kelo’s story is becoming tragically familiar. She and her neighbors are at risk of losing their homes and businesses because the local government has conspired with a corporation to condemn their land under the power of eminent domain. This is happening in New London, Connecticut, the latest place where legal plunder in America is on display for the whole world to see.
The twist is that the Bush administration — self-proclaimed champion of the “ownership society” — will apparently give its blessing to the land heist. According to the Wall Street Journal, “[The] Administration may file an amicus brief against property owners in an upcoming Supreme Court case concerning eminent domain.” Several property-rights advocacy organizations have publicly asked the administration to side with the landowners but — ominously — there’s been no response.
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09:58 AM
January 22, 2005
John Dillin, www.csmonitor.com, January 20, 2005
Such a glittering celebration! Such huge crowds! All of this to honor one federal officeholder - the president. What would the Founding Fathers make of it?
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03:38 PM
Nat Hentoff, www.villagevoice.com, January 21, 2005
On December 22, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, whose reports on the administration's abuses of civil liberties since 9-11 have been invaluable, wrote a letter to Alberto Gonzales before his Senate confirmation hearing on certain legal issues that arose during his tenure in that office.
One of these concerned "extraordinary renditions," the procedure by which noncitizen prisoners whom the CIA and other agencies can't get to talk are sent to be interrogated in other countries known to engage in torture. Dana Priest's brilliant investigative reporting on the airplane that transports these hard cases ran in the December 27 Washington Post. Titled "Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War," it begins:
"The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and celebrities. But since 2001, it has been seen at military airports from Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and handcuffed passengers."
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02:20 PM
January 21, 2005
Meredith Goldstein, www.boston.com, January 20, 2005
It was just over a year ago that the Free State Project chose New Hampshire as its home-to-be, claiming 5,000 liberty seekers were ready to move there and create their utopia.
By 2006, the quasi-libertarian group hoped to have roughly 20,000 people committed to relocate to the ''live free or die" state, where seat belts are optional and there is no state income tax. The mass migration, they said, could start any time.
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02:35 PM
Derek Seidman, www.counterpunch.com, January 21, 2005
I think that obviously as veterans of this war we are the most qualified to speak out about the conditions in Iraq. We were in Iraq and we lived it. We were at places other than the hand picked sites that reporters and Congressmen are shown. We talked to lots of soldiers and not just those that pre rehearsed interviews so they'd tell the media what the military and this administration wants the public to hear. We let the public know that lots of soldiers don't agree with this war. They don't agree with the reasons that this war was sold on, the lack of equipment, the lack of planning, and the continuing lies about conditions in Iraq put forth by this administration.
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11:23 AM
January 20, 2005
Geov Parrish, www.seattleweekly.com, January 19-25, 2005
This has been a pattern in the Bush regime. No bad deed goes unrewarded. What is mystifying is that Democrats so often stand by idly and watch. Overshadowed by the conduct of the war in Iraq, the conduct of the rest of the War on Terror—whether the torture scandals of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib or the excesses of the Patriot Act—scarcely figured in John Kerry's campaign. When appointees like Gonzales and Chertoff sail through Congress, they reinforce a culture in which there is no accountability and bad news is never acknowledged. It's one thing for Bush, who champions these policies, to promote their architects. At some point, somebody has got to oppose them.
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09:50 AM
John Nichols, www.madison.com/tct, January 20, 2005
It should come as no surprise that George Bush, with his regal instincts and inflated sense of self-importance, would want a big party. But Laura Bush, who has never seemed quite so royally inclined as her husband, should know better than to suggest that there is anything American about these festivities.
They are, in fact, an ugly and wholly indefensible abandonment of the template that Jefferson sought to imprint upon a nation that was founded in revolt against royalty.
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09:34 AM
January 19, 2005
Dale McFeatters, www.washingtontimes.com, January 16, 2005
To celebrate President Bush's inauguration next Thursday, the nation's capital has turned itself into an armed camp. Outside of Baghdad's Green Zone, downtown Washington will be the most heavily fortified city in the world.
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02:36 AM
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., www.lewrockwell.com, January 19, 2005
Journalist Rick Perlstein recently asked for my forecast on the future of the Republican Party. It's an important question. American political culture takes election victory to be the ratification of truth, which is why this question is usually addressed from the point of view of whether the party will continue to hold power. I would rather address the issue of what power has come to mean to the Republicans: namely, everything.
The Republican love of liberty, which seemed to be a sincere impulse of the party's core during the 1990s, has been reduced to mere sloganeering. After many decades of balancing its ideological contradictions, the culture of the party – its leadership, activists, interest groups, and intellectual backers – has fully embraced power in all forms.
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02:21 AM
www.theonion.com, January 19, 2005
How are Iraqi citizens preparing for their Jan. 30 election?
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01:55 AM
January 18, 2005
Ivan Eland, www.antiwar.com, January 18, 2005
Post-World War II U.S. foreign policy, including that of the Bush administration, has been based on certain assumptions about the nature of the world. Unfortunately, most of those assumptions are suspect.
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08:41 AM
Cathryn J. Prince, www.csmonitor.com, January 18, 2005
The Defense Department's proposal could very well be a lost chapter out of George Orwell's timeless novel "1984": potential lifetime sentences for the hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody at a prison yet to be built outside the US, and thus beyond the reach of its constitutional protections on due process.
In keeping with the Orwellian overtones for the suggested prison, the Bush administration has even drummed up a name: Camp 6. The name echoes the novel's notorious Room 101, where prisoners suffered punishment in the form of their worst fears. But, alas, this is not fiction. This is the new reality as envisioned in this second term of President Bush.
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08:29 AM
January 17, 2005
Leslie Miller, Associated Press, www.bobston.com, January 15, 2005
If you are among the millions of Americans who took airline flights in the months before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI probably knows about it -- and possibly where you stayed, whom you traveled with, what credit card you used, even whether you ordered a kosher meal.
The bureau is keeping 257.5 million records on people who flew on commercial airlines from June through September 2001 in its permanent investigative database, according to information obtained by a privacy rights group and made available to the Associated Press.
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09:30 PM
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., www.lewrockwell.com, January 17, 2005
Is there a need to reform taxes? Most certainly. Always and everywhere. You can always make a strong case against all forms of taxation and all tax codes and all mechanisms by which a privileged elite attempts to extract wealth from the population. And this is always the first step in any tax reform: get the public seething about the tax code, and do it by way of preparation for step two, which is the proposed replacement system.
Of course, this is the stage at which you need to hold onto your wallet.
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01:42 PM
Adam Sternbergh, www.newyorkmetro.com, January 24, 2005
The image of a 69-year-old Christo squirreled away in his studio, working seventeen hours a day to produce dozens of sketches, recalls the quasi-apocryphal tales of the elderly Picasso scribbling his signature on a serviette to settle up his bar tab. Yet this ingenious, self-sustaining apparatus—by which the sketches serve as a kind of de facto bond issue to pay for the final work—not only allows the Christos to maintain their autonomy but also insulates them from the most obvious criticism, raised in every town into which they set down: How much is this going to cost us? To which the Christos can serenely answer, Nothing at all.
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11:44 AM
January 16, 2005
Tom Engelhardt and Michael Schwartz, www.lewrockwell.com, January 15, 2005
Derrick Anthony, a 21-year-old Navy Corpsman surveyed the desolate Fallujah landscape and commented, "It's kind of bad we destroyed everything, but at least we gave them a chance for a new start."
He was wrong. Reconstruction will only begin when the Americans leave.
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11:43 AM
January 15, 2005
Associated Press, www.wired.com, January 14, 2005
"On the Road Again" means something new for Willie Nelson these days -- a chance for truckers to fill their tanks with clean-burning biodiesel fuel.
Nelson and three business partners recently formed a company called Willie Nelson's Biodiesel that is marketing the fuel to truck stops. The fuel is made from vegetable oils, mainly soybeans, and can be burned without modification to diesel engines.
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10:29 PM
January 13, 2005
William Fisher, Inter Press Service, www.AntiWar.com, January 13, 2005
Like President George W. Bush's nominee for attorney general, his choice for Homeland Security czar is likely to face stiff opposition from some Democratic senators and human rights advocates because of what they say were abuses of civil liberties during his service in the Justice Department.
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10:37 PM
Jacob G. Hornberger, www.FFF.org, January 12, 2005
A good example of the conservative mindset — and the threat that it currently poses to the American people — lies with the brutal military regime of Chilean strongman Gen. Augusto Pinochet, an army general who, with the support of the U.S. CIA, ousted the democratically elected president of Chile and took power in a coup d’etat in 1973. While the Bush administration often suggests that the U.S. “war on terrorism” is something new, the fact is that the “war on terrorism” was the central element of General Pinochet’s 17 years of brutal military rule in Chile.
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09:05 PM
January 12, 2005
Lara Jakes Jordan, Associated Press, www.guardian.co.uk, January 13, 2005
Americans' fingerprints should be added to their passports, outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Wednesday, hoping to include the United States in a growing global security standard but risking a privacy fight at home.
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11:17 PM
Stan Swofford, www.news-record.com, January 9, 2005
U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, dean of the state's congressional delegation and an avowedly strong supporter of President Bush, says it's time for the United States to consider withdrawing from war-ravaged Iraq.
Coble, a Republican from Greensboro, is one of the first members of Congress -- Republican or Democrat -- to say publicly that the United States should consider a pullout.
The 10-term congressman, head of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, said he is "fed up with picking up the newspaper and reading that we've lost another five or 10 of our young men and women in Iraq."
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10:40 PM
James Hodge and Linda Cooper, www.counterpunch.com, January 11, 2005
The summer sun was finally setting. It was time to act. Time to engage the Salvadoran troops.
Roy Bourgeois was ready, but he was not so sure that Larry Rosebaugh could penetrate base security. Rosebaugh, a gentle Oblate priest who had worked with street people in Brazil, reminded Bourgeois of St. Francis. Even in the battle dress uniform Bourgeois had purchased for him at the local Army surplus store, Rosebaugh did not exactly present a military bearing. It would take a small miracle for the MPs to mistake him for an Army officer.
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01:14 AM
January 11, 2005
Matt Welch, www.reason.com, January 11, 2005
We can thank Armstrong Williams, the Ketchum public relations agency, and especially the downsizable dullards at the Department of Education for at least having the courage to be blatant: It's not often you get a chance to see the raw machinery of pure government propaganda on display.
Which is an excellent time to remind yourself that every day across this great land, governments and state agencies are not only lying to you, they're spending your own money to convince you to do or believe what they want. And we're not talking about Armstrong's paltry $241,000, or Ketchum's drop-in-the-bucket $1 million, either—more like hundreds of millions of dollars, at minimum, every year.
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07:08 PM
Joan Lowy, www.capitolhillblue.com, January 11, 2005
The nation's 55th presidential inauguration, the first to be held since 9/11, will take place this month under perhaps the heaviest security of any in U.S. history.
Dozens of federal and local law enforcement agencies and military commands are planning what they describe as the heaviest possible security. Virtually everyone who gets within eyesight of the president either during the Jan. 20 inauguration ceremony at the U.S. Capitol or the inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue later in the day will first go through a metal detector or receive a body pat-down.
Thousands of police officers and military personnel are being brought to Washington from around the country for the four-day event. Sharpshooters will be deployed on roofs, while bomb-sniffing dogs will work the streets. Electronic sensors will be used to detect chemical or biological weapons.
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08:40 AM
Aleksander Vasovik, Associated Press, www.newsday.com, January 11, 2005
The Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday called for an immediate withdrawal of the nation's peacekeepers from Iraq. The vote was non-binding but reflected growing national dismay over the mission.
The parliament's call came two days after eight Ukrainian soldiers died in an explosion at an ammunition dump in Iraq. The blast was reported as an accident, but a top commander later raised suspicions that it could have been a terrorist action.
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08:22 AM
Steve Negus, www.ft.com, January 10, 2005
The electoral group headed by Iyad Allawi, the interim Iraqi prime minister, on Monday handed out cash to journalists to ensure coverage of its press conferences in a throwback to Ba'athist-era patronage ahead of parliamentary elections on January 30.
After a meeting held by Mr Allawi's campaign alliance in west Baghdad, reporters, most of whom were from the Arabic-language press, were invited upstairs where each was offered a "gift" of a $100 bill contained in an envelope.
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08:15 AM
January 10, 2005
John Crewdson, Chicago Tribune, www.grandforks.com, January 8, 2005
The first question is: Where is Leonard T. Bayard? The next question is: Who is Leonard T. Bayard? But the most important question may be: Does Leonard T. Bayard even exist?
The questions arise because the signature of a Leonard Thomas Bayard appears on the annual report of a Portland-based company, Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC, that was filed in August with the Oregon secretary of state.
According to federal records, Bayard Foreign Marketing is the newest owner of a U.S.-registered Gulfstream V executive jet reportedly used since Sept. 11, 2001, to transport suspected al-Qaida operatives to countries such as Egypt and Syria, where some of them claim to have later been tortured.
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09:20 PM
Rupert Cornwell, www.independent.co.uk, January 10, 2005
Today the "the worst of the worst" better describes the prison than those who are confined there. At its height, Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo housed about 660 detainees. The number has fallen to around 550 today, from 42 countries. The place and manner of their detention, however, has become the embodiment of much that the world detests in President George Bush's global "war on terror". "Guantanamo has become an icon of lawlessness," the human rights group Amnesty International said in a statement marking Camp X-Ray's third anniversary, "a symbol of the US government's attempts to put itself above the law."
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08:08 AM
January 09, 2005
Robyn E. Blumner, www.sptimes.com, January 9, 2005
There really are "two Americas."
Vice presidential candidate John Edwards used the phrase to refer to the growing divide between the haves and have nots. But there is another way to look at the fissure: America as Jekyll and Hyde. We have our truly altruistic, highly principled and virtuous side, and then there is the side of self-dealing, malevolence and hypocrisy.
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12:14 PM
January 08, 2005
Charley Reese, www.lewrockwell.com, January 8, 2005
If anything good can be said about the disaster that struck Asia, it is that the response demonstrated once and for all that the world really has become a global community.
People put aside the labels that usually divide us – Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever – and responded as human beings to the needs of other human beings. That's encouraging. There might be hope for the human race yet.
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11:06 PM
Ross Sneyd, www.newsday.com, January 8, 2005
Less than five years ago the idea of gay couples joining in a legal union akin to marriage was enough to rip apart the very social fabric of this small New England state that prides itself on its sense of community.
Yawning rifts opened between neighbors and even families under the symbols of the two sides in the debate: black and white "Take Back Vermont" signs among opponents and green and white "Vermont: Keep it Civil" stickers for supporters of the state's first-in-the-nation civil unions law.
Now, though, after 7,364 same-sex couples from around the world have been legally joined as spouses, civil unions have become a part of that social fabric.
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06:49 PM
Justin Raimondo, www.antiwar.com, January 7, 2005
Ms. Anne Applebaum is shocked – shocked! – at conservatives' blasé attitude toward torture. Don't they know that attorney general-designate Alberto Gonzales wrote memos seeking ways to legally immunize U.S. government officials from prosecution under the War Crimes Act? Perhaps, she suggests, they don't remember Abu Ghraib?
But of course they remember it all too well: and, with the notable and honorable exception of the editors of The American Conservative, they downplayed and even excused it at the time, and continue to do so.
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10:39 AM
January 07, 2005
Doug Bandow, www.washingtontimes.com, January 4, 2004
The era of big government is over, famously proclaimed President Bill Clinton. Alas, a decade later Leviathan is still with us, an ever-present threat to our liberties. In "Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society," Robert Higgs collects earlier essays presenting the case against expansive government meddling in a free society.
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09:19 PM
Greg Toppo, www.usatoday.com, January 7, 2005
Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.
The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.
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08:44 PM
Shane Harris, www.govexec.com, January 6, 2005
Videotape footage of people using drugs and interviews with federal officials discouraging their use that was produced by the White House drug control policy office, violate a legal ban on official propaganda because they were presented to the public without any indication they were produced by the government, according to a decision released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office.
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07:13 PM
January 06, 2005
William L. Anderson, www.lewrockwell.com, January 6, 2005
Today, we see the Patriot Act, a law that Lew Rockwell once told me was "RICO on steroids," being used not to fight "terrorism," but rather to severely punish individuals in order to "send a message" to the rest of us. Not satisfied with using the Patriot Act against an owner of a Las Vegas strip club (federal prosecutors in Missouri even looked at the possibility of charging the creators of PayPal with Patriot Act violations), federal prosecutors now have decided to put forth the legal fiction that a New Jersey man who was shining a green laser at air traffic near an airport is a "terrorist."
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07:04 PM
January 05, 2005
Kavita Kumar, www.fortwayne.com, December 28, 2004
Traci Hodges works about 30 hours a week running her own consulting business and managing a small production company. She recently finished a master's degree in human development counseling.
On top of it all, she finds time to homeschool her oldest daughter. Make that she and her husband, Harlan, who is an emergency room doctor at DePaul Hospital. The Maryland Heights, Mo., couple split the responsibility.
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11:12 PM
Elaine Cassel, www.counterpunch.com, January 4, 2005
On Sunday, Jan 2, Dana Priest, writing in the Washington Post, described the plans of the Pentagon and the Justice Department to imprison indefinitely, perhaps for life, persons it wants "removed" from society. Having committed no crime, but believed to be associated with "terrorism" however that is defined at any given moment in time"the people will live in prison camps modeled on American prisons.
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08:42 AM
January 04, 2005
Leslie Miller, www.newsday.com, January 3, 2005
Foreign visitors at the 50 busiest land border crossings in 10 states are now being fingerprinted as part of the government's new biometric screening system, the Homeland Security Department announced on Monday.
The system, called US-VISIT, scans photographs of the visitor's face and index fingers into a computer, which are matched with federal agencies' criminal databases.
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01:45 AM
Jesse J. Holland, www.newsday.com, January 3, 2005
"The fact that officials in this administration's own Justice Department felt compelled to repudiate an earlier torture memo approved by Mr. Gonzales should itself be sufficient to persuade the senators that he is not fit to be the top law enforcement official in the land," said Ron Daniels, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
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01:40 AM
Alan Gathright, www.sfgate.com, January 4, 2005
A mentally distraught Pacifica man died early Monday after police repeatedly shocked a handcuffed Gregory Saulsbury Jr. with a Taser gun, family members said, ignoring their assurances that they had calmed him down.
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01:29 AM
January 03, 2005
Jullian Borger, www.guardian.co.uk, January 3, 2005
The United States is preparing to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial, replacing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp with permanent prisons in the Cuban enclave and elsewhere, it was reported yesterday.
The new prisons are intended for captives the Pentagon and the CIA suspect of terrorist links but do not wish to set free or put on trial for lack of hard evidence.
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12:07 AM
January 02, 2005
William Pfaff, www.iht.com, December 29, 2004
When George W. Bush was first elected president, civil-military relations in the United States were worse than they had ever been before. They are no better today, for more serious reasons.
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11:58 PM
Neil Modie, www.seattlepi.com, December 14, 2004
To both Dino Rossi and Christine Gregoire, who now trails Rossi by 88 votes in the second recount of the election for governor, an extra 63,000 votes would look awfully nice right now.
That's how many ballots were marked for the third candidate, Libertarian Ruth Bennett, and thus how many votes didn't go to Rossi, a Republican, or Gregoire, a Democrat.
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04:06 PM
Roma Khanna, www.chron.com, January 1, 2005
When it comes to Taser use, defining "excessive" is problematic for Harris County law enforcement agencies. In 2004, several of them began issuing Tasers to hundreds of officers and training them in their use, but issuing few written restrictions, leaving the decision on whether to use one almost entirely up to the officer.
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10:22 AM
January 01, 2005
Eric Umanski, www.slate.com, December 31, 2004
Over the past month, the biggest scoops in the news business have come from ... an organization that's not in the news business. Using the Freedom of Information Act, the American Civil Liberties Union has uncovered thousands of government documents detailing torture of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. One FBI memo about Gitmo cited "strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations." It also repeatedly referred to a "cover-up."
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12:15 PM
December 31, 2004
Jordan Smith, www.austinchronicle.com, December 31, 2004
Federal drug warriors took a hit on Dec. 8 when the full U.S. Supreme Court voted to lift a temporary stay that Justice Stephen Breyer had granted against the U.S. branch of the Brazilian Union of the Vegetable Beneficent Spiritist Center (or, in Portuguese, the Uniao do Vegetal or UDV) congregation based in Santa Fe, N.M. The court relief means that for the first time in six years UDV church members will be able to use ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic substance derived from the Amazonian vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which church members take as sacrament.
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09:00 AM
Paul Hein, www.lewrockwell.com, December 31, 2004
Stand alongside a busy road during rush hour. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of cars will pass, in both directions, and often at fairly high speeds. How many will crash? Will the driver of that SUV cross the centerline and collide head-on with that truck? No, of course not. And is that because there is a law that prohibits it? If so, the driver is almost surely unconcerned with it. Does the lady in the min-van full of children make an abrupt right turn from the inner lane? No, and it’s not because she fears being charged with violating some ordinance. There might not be a specific ordinance covering it, but in any event, she doesn’t care. What she does care about is the welfare of her passengers and herself.
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08:27 AM
December 30, 2004
Phillip Carter and Owen West, www.slate.com, December 27, 2004
Soldiers have long been subjected to invidious generational comparison. It's a military rite of passage for new recruits to hear from old hands that everything from boot camp to combat was tougher before they arrived. The late '90s coronation of the "Greatest Generation"—which left many Korean War and Vietnam War veterans scratching their heads—is only the most visible cultural example.
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09:03 AM
December 29, 2004
William Fisher, www.antiwar.com, December 28, 2004
The Bush administration appears set to maintain the secrecy that has characterized its workings since 2001. The latest evidence is a directive from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) instructing its employees and contractors to share sensitive but unclassified information only with those having a need to know it.
All 180,000 department employees and contractors are now required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. But they will be held responsible for keeping secrets, even if they did not sign the pledge or were unaware of it.
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12:30 AM
December 28, 2004
Jeff Taylor, www.reason.com, December 28, 2004
The clean money, dirty money, blood money obsession would be quaint were it not for the tremendous burden the pursuit of money laundering places on innocent people just trying to enjoy the immense benefits of a modern financial system. The PATRIOT Act's veil of secrecy is beginning to bite in this regard without any evidence that the United States is made safer in the bargain.
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07:18 PM
Katy Harwood Delay, www.mises.org, December 27, 2004
The dollar has again hit a new low in recent weeks on the international currency exchange. The blame is falling from most sectors of public opinion on our legislature, with its debit spending at an all-time high. A few say that the Federal Reserve (FR) could do something about it, but they deny it. Greenspan himself, in his recent conference in Germany, explained once again that interventions are only temporary and ineffective.
He speaks correctly when he implies that interventionist attempts to manipulate the exchange rate or strength of the dollar are futile in the long run; but more importantly what he doesn't say, and may not even admit, is that the FR does play an important role in federal spending through its financing, and its decisions have a direct effect on both the foreign exchange market and the dollar's purchasing power within the United States.
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09:48 AM
December 27, 2004
Julie Cart, www.sfgate.com, December 26, 2004
The evening had begun so well. After wine and dinner at the elegant Ahwahnee Hotel last year, Australian tourists Margaret and Andre Vischer stepped into the frigid High Sierra night and got into their rental car.
As they drove through the first dark intersection, neither of them noticed the park ranger's vehicle. Andre, 58, recalled seeing a stop sign and lightly touching the brakes but not coming to a full stop.
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11:53 PM
Jacob G. Hornberger, www.fff.org, December 27, 2004
In the wake of unrestrained U.S. federal spending, U.S. conservatives are no longer talking so loudly about how they brought down the Soviet Union — by making it spend the nation into national bankruptcy. But the marketplace is speaking as loudly as conservatives once did, as reflected in the continued plunge in the international value of the dollar.
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07:00 PM
Eric C Evarts, www.csmonitor.com, December 27, 2004
It was only a matter of time. For several years, electronic devices in cars have monitored acceleration and braking to save fuel and improve safety. Now, they're saving some of that data to give automakers and police a better idea of how you drive.
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08:55 AM
Charlie Savage, www.boston.com, December 27, 2004
The CIA is refusing to disclose any information about abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, invoking a legal precedent that involved a secret project by billionaire Howard Hughes to recover a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine in the 1970s.
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08:43 AM
December 23, 2004
Al Neuharth, www.usatoday.com, December 22, 2004
"Support Our Troops" is a wonderful patriotic slogan. But the best way to support troops thrust by unwise commanders in chief into ill-advised adventures like Vietnam and Iraq is to bring them home. Sooner rather than later. That should be our New Year's resolution.
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08:01 PM
The Associated Press, www.japantimes.co.jp, December 23, 2004
Iceland has rejected a U.S. request to drop the offer of a residency permit for former American chess champion Bobby Fischer, officials said Tuesday.
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07:30 PM
Simon Jenkins, www.timesonline.co.uk, December 22, 2004
I MUST RETRACT a prejudice. The three strongest bulwarks against the abuse of state power in Britain at present are three institutions I most often deride: the law, the Liberal Democrats and the House of Lords. Thank God, this Christmas, for them all.
Nobly do they share an initial with liberty. How depressing the past month would have been without them.
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07:18 PM
December 22, 2004
The Associated Press, www.gazettetimes.com, December 22, 2004
Departing Mayor Vera Katz has postponed a vote on renewing city participation in an FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force while Mayor-elect Tom Potter and a city commissioner seek security clearance to review the agreement.
"He needs to have a better idea of what they're doing,'' said Nancy Hamilton, chief of staff for Potter, who is a former Portland police chief.
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09:01 PM
Matt Stearns, www.freep.com, December 21, 2004
With the 108th Congress now passed into history, another Washington tradition is playing out this month as departing members of Congress, rather than returning home, trade their years of service for big paychecks from lobbying groups, investment banks and law firms.
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08:16 PM
Dan Frosch, www.austinchronicle.com, December 24, 2004
The first time Kristin Peterson's husband hit her, she was asleep in their bed.
She awoke that night a split second after Joshua's fist smashed into her face and ran, terrified and crying, to the bathroom to wipe the blood spurting from her nose. When she stuck her head back into the bedroom, there he was – punching at the air, muttering how she was coming after him and how he was going to kill her. Kristin started yelling but Joshua's eyes were closed. He was still asleep.
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09:07 AM
December 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn, www.counterpunch.org, December 18/19, 2004
This business of Uncle Sam's true face brings me to Gary Webb and why they hated him. Few spectacles in journalism in the mid-1990s were more disgusting than the slagging of Gary Webb in the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. Squadrons of hacks, some of them with career-long ties to the CIA, sprayed thousands of words of vitriol over Webb and his paper, the San Jose Mercury News for besmirching the Agency's fine name by charging it with complicity in the importing of cocaine into the US.
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06:46 PM
Robert Higgs, www.independent.org, December 21, 2004
On the campaign trail last October, Vice President Dick Cheney created a small stir when, speaking of the Iraq war, he declared: “I think it has been a remarkable success story to date when you look at what has been accomplished overall.” In view of the rampant violence raging in Iraq, the widespread devastation of the country’s human and material resources, and the dim prospects for its future peace and prosperity, Cheney’s statement seemed bizarre, and the Democrats seized on it as still another example of the disconnect between the Bush administration and reality. Yet, on closer inspection, we can see that the war has indeed been a huge success, though not exactly in the way that the vice president intended to claim.
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09:03 AM
Kim Murphy, www.newsday.com, December 21, 2004
In Kiev, where jubilant Yushchenko supporters have filled the streets for nearly two weeks and forced a review of the election he officially lost to Yanukovich, it is easy to assume that Yushchenko rides an overwhelming wave of popular support. Here in eastern Ukraine, though, the popular wave washes up on a different beach.
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08:50 AM
Ronald T. Libby, www.cato.org, December 21, 2004
A Virginia doctor has become the latest victim of the government's crusade to enforce federal drug laws that make it difficult for sufferers of chronic pain to obtain effective medication able to ease their distress.
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08:38 AM
December 20, 2004
Editorial Board, www.seattlepi.com, December 20, 2004
A generation ago, it was Communist nations where domestic travel was interrupted by the refrain, "Your papers, please." A free nation ought to do much better.
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07:40 AM
December 19, 2004
Yuri Kageyama, www.newsday.com, December 17, 2004
Former chess champion Bobby Fischer has been sitting in detention in Japan for half a year, fighting deportation orders and fleeing criminal charges in the United States.
But an offer from Iceland this week to have him live there could be the godsend that solves all his problems. Fischer said through his lawyers and a supporter Friday that he would be more than happy to go to Iceland -- the scene of his greatest chess triumph -- although he's unlikely to ever go back to playing chess professionally.
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11:18 PM
The Associated Press, www.newsday.com, December 18, 2004
Cuba retaliated for the U.S. diplomatic mission's Christmas display supporting Cuban dissidents by putting up its own billboard across the street Friday emblazoned with photographs of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners and a huge swastika overlaid with a "Made in the U.S.A" stamp.
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01:24 PM
Harley Sorensen, www.sfgate.com, December 13, 2004
Today let us take the sad, sordid case of one George W. Bush. Our president. Love him or hate him, it was he and he alone who decided that our mighty armies should travel to Iraq and kill tens of thousands of people, most of whom were guilty of nothing more than being there.
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10:59 AM
December 18, 2004
Tom Engelhardt and Michael Schwartz, www.lewrockwell.com, December 18, 2004
A week after the assault on Falluja began in early November, our military announced that the city had been secured – at the cost of a thousand or more dead Iraqis and 51 American soldiers. Articles about the "reconstruction" of Falluja soon began appearing in our papers and tales of fighting fell away. You had to turn to the inside pages and read deep into articles to discover by early December that, somehow, in secured Falluja, the fighting hadn't ended and another 20 Americans had died.
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06:49 PM
www.fortwayne.com, December 15, 2004
Phrases such as “machine readable” and “minimum data elements,” along with plans for unfettered access to databases, sound sinister. A national ID brings to mind totalitarian regimes, centralized governments distrustful of the people. A national ID is what’s expected of people who walk the streets of Pyongyang, not Fort Wayne.
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01:56 PM
Greg Perry, www.libertyunbound.com, December 2004
My name is Greg Perry and I am a handicapped man.
I was born with only one leg and a grand total of three deformed fingers. I am currently walking around on an artificial leg although I've had to resort to crutches several times in the past. I've also been confined to wheelchairs before. It all depends on the state of my leg and how I'm doing at the time.
But I'm glad that I was born long before 1990, when a much more severe handicap — the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) — was signed into law. If I'd been born afterwards, I would not be writing this. I probably would not be what many consider to be a huge success today. I would not be married. I would be a loser on the government dole.
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01:45 PM
December 17, 2004
Henry Porter, www.guardian.co.uk, December 17, 2004
To be anonymous, to go privately, to move residence without telling the authorities is a fundamental liberty which is about to be taken from us. People may not choose to exercise this entitlement to privacy, or see the point of it, but once it's gone and a vast database is built, eventually to be accessed by every tentacle of the government machine, we will never be able to claw it back.
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10:44 PM
Jordan Smith, www.austinchronicle.com, December 17, 2004
On Dec. 10, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration denied a 3-year-old application filed by a University of Massachusetts at Amherst researcher seeking approval to grow marijuana for use in federally approved research. Lyle Craker, director of the university's Medicinal Plant Program, filed an application with the DEA in June 2001, in order to pursue medi-pot research that could, conceivably, lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve use of the drug for medicinal purposes. Currently, marijuana is listed as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act – meaning it has no currently accepted medical uses.
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08:17 PM
Tom Ender, www.endervidualism.com, December 16, 2004
How can someone who wishes to do so live a free life?
Many people spend time agonizing over that question or questions very similar to it. Often solving that problem motivates them to become involved in politics, whether in one of the ruling parties or a more principled group. They have been taught for most of their lives to think that politics can provide an answer and accomplish positive results.
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08:34 AM
December 16, 2004
Donna Leinwand, www.usatoday.com, December 15, 2004
The anti-terrorism bill to be signed by President Bush on Friday opens the door for people across the nation to have similar driver's licenses, a plan that is fueling a debate over whether security concerns will lead to what amounts to a national identification card.
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11:26 PM
www.thenewamerican.com, December 13, 2004
"There may be no 'plans' for a national military draft, but that hasn’t kept Louisiana from registering teenagers too young to serve in case conditions change," reported the Town Talk of Alexandria, Louisiana, on November 13. Local resident Larry Chevalier "was alarmed when his 16-year-old son Nathan had to register with the Selective Service System in order to get a driver’s license." "I just can’t believe it," exclaimed Chevalier. "That amazes me."
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08:13 PM
Brad Knickerbocker, www.csmonitor.com, December 16, 2004
Griping among the troops is as old as armed conflict, illustrated most memorably by cartoonist Bill Mauldin's "Willie and Joe" characters during World War II. But something more than that is happening now in Iraq with what appears to be growing resistance from the troops.
Evidence includes numbers of deserters (reportedly in the thousands), resignations of reserve officers, lawsuits by those whose duty period has been involuntarily extended, and a refusal to go on dangerous missions without proper equipment. There's also been a willingness at grunt level to publicly challenge the Pentagon - as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld found out recently in a trip to the war zone, where he got an earful about unarmored humvees.
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06:49 PM
December 15, 2004
www.theonion.com, December 15, 2004
Last week, troops complained to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about extended deployments and poor equipment. What do you think?
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10:58 PM
Jacob G. Hornberger, www.fff.org, December 15, 2004
Amidst all the hubbub over Bernard Kerik’s decision to remove himself from consideration as director of Homeland Security owing to his reported hiring of an illegal-immigrant nanny, no one, including the press, seems to be asking an important question: Why aren’t the feds seeking a criminal indictment against him? After all, hasn’t it been a federal felony offense since 1986 for any American to hire an illegal immigrant? Didn’t the feds charge Tyson Foods officials with hiring illegal immigrants just last year? Haven't they also targeted Walmart executives for possible indictment for the same thing?
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09:29 PM
www.wispolitics.com, December 14, 2004
We're talking about the Ed Thompson documentary.
Ed is the chairman of the state Libertarian Party who garnered 10 percent of the guv vote in 2002 and who could be back in electoral politics in '06, according to Libertarian activists.
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08:50 AM
December 14, 2004
Mohamad Bazzi, www.newsday.com, December 14, 2004
Back-to-back suicide bombings this week outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone underscore the virtually impossible task of securing large swaths of Iraq less than seven weeks before national elections are scheduled to be held.
The attacks highlight how well entrenched the insurgency has become and the fragile state of Iraqi security forces that are supposed to take a lead role in protecting the Jan. 30 parliamentary election. On Monday, a suicide car bomber struck a busy entrance to the Green Zone, killing 13 people. Yesterday another suicide bomber targeted the same area, killing seven.
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11:02 PM
Mark Oliver, www.guardian.co.uk, December 14, 2004
Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National party, claimed tonight that his arrest today on suspicion of incitement to commit racial hatred was "politically motivated".
He claimed the government were trying to stop a "dangerous political opponent".
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06:09 PM
Thomas E. Woods, Jr., www.fee.org, December 2004
Whenever an earthquake or a tornado causes great damage, some reporter somewhere claims that on net it will boost the local economy since the rebuilding effort will create jobs and increase business for local merchants. Similarly, whenever a war breaks out, the same reporter can be counted on to emphasize the economic stimulus it allegedly confers.
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12:12 AM
December 13, 2004
George Edmonson, www.seattlepi.com, December 10, 2004
The manufacturer of Humvees for the U.S. military and the company that adds armor to the utility vehicles are not running near production capacity and are making all that the Pentagon has requested, spokesmen for both companies said.
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06:33 PM
December 12, 2004
Jim Hightower, www.austinchronicle.com, December 10, 2004
If we have the technology to track the movements of everyone in America, we should use it, right?
"No," shout most of us, proud that our country has fought from the start to prevent prying authorities from constantly keeping tabs on where we go and what we do. So, how can the authorities break down this innate resistance that we Americans have to Big Brotherism? One simple word, whisper today's technocratic Machiavellians: children.
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11:52 PM
Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD, www.lewrockwell.com, December 10, 2004
Vaccination is a controversial subject, and many parents worry about subjecting their children to them. Readers of my article "Mercury on the Mind," about vaccines and dental amalgams, have asked what vaccines I would recommend their children receive. This article addresses that question.
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12:26 AM
December 11, 2004
Helen Thomas, www.seattlepi.com, December 10, 2004
President Bush is rewarding his hawkish defense team led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by keeping them on at the Pentagon while getting rid of most of the other Cabinet members.
It's a bizarre way to deal with men partly responsible for the Iraqi catastrophe. Maybe he is letting them stay put until they get it right.
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10:21 PM
Joel Stashenko, www.newsday.com, December 9, 2004
The changes to the Rockefeller drug laws approved by the Legislature this week were similar to those on the table 18 months ago when hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons came close to brokering reforms of the mandatory drug-sentencing statutes.
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11:31 AM
Joseph Sobran, www.sobran.com, November 23, 2004
It’s generally a healthy thing when people rethink their basic political assumptions, and it usually takes a shock to make them do so. A rethinking of mass democracy is long overdue. Faith in sheer majority rule was assuredly alien to the Founders of the Republic, which is why they called it a republic; for them, democracy meant mob rule, and it’s one of the amusing turns of American history that the allegedly conservative Republicans have become the most ardent champions of the weird notion that wisdom resides in numerical majorities.
The blue-staters have had the kind of trauma that leads to conversion. The scales of centralism are falling from their eyes. Sure, they want big government — but not faith-based, anti-abortion, homophobic, war-mongering big government! They were thinking of something more, well, Scandinavian.
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11:06 AM
Wendy M. Grossman, www.theinquirer.net, December 10, 2004
Of course, a lot of people outside the US have long insisted that the fact that almost everyone carries a driver's licence has always amounted to a de facto national ID card system. But that wasn't quite true.
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12:06 AM
December 10, 2004
Raja Mishra, www.boston.com, December 9, 2004
US troops injured in Iraq have required limb amputations at twice the rate of past wars, and as many as 20 percent have suffered head and neck injuries that may require a lifetime of care, according to new data giving the clearest picture yet of the severity of battlefield wounds.
The data are the grisly flip side of improvements in battlefield medicine that have saved many combatants who would have died in the past: Only 1 in 10 US troops injured in Iraq has died, the lowest rate of any war in US history.
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11:50 PM
Alan Bock, www.antiwar.com, December 10, 2004
Although I had some thoughts at the time, I thought it would be churlish to question the decision of Pat Tillman, in his fourth year as a linebacker for the NFL Arizona Cardinals, with a $3.6 million contract, to give up professional sports and enlist in the Army Rangers after the 9/11 attacks. Although he had made a decision I would not have made, even if I were his age, I presumed he had his reasons, and as the owner of his own life he certainly had the right to put it at risk.
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11:33 PM
December 09, 2004
Jason Gonella, www.lewrockwell.com, December 9, 2004
Today, class, we will continue our discussion of the decline and fall of the United States in the first quarter of the 21st century. Yesterday we discussed military adventurism and how the Imperialist Wars severely weakened the United States. Tomorrow we will discuss the economics of the fall. Today we will discuss my favorite aspect, the fractures in the political landscape.
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11:21 PM
Susan Llewelyn Leach, www.csmonitor.com, December 9, 2004
The US passport is about to go electronic, with a tiny microchip embedded in its cover. Along with digitized pictures, holograms, security ink, and "ghost" photos - all security features added since 2002 - the chip is the latest outpost in the battle to outwit tamperers. But it's also one that worries privacy advocates.
The RFID (radio frequency identification) chip in each passport will contain the same personal data as now appear on the inside pages - name, date of birth, place of birth, issuing office - and a digitized version of the photo. But the 64K chip will be read remotely. And there's the rub.
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11:14 PM
Frazier Moore, www.newsday.com, December 9, 2004
"I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee," says Moyers. "We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people."
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11:02 PM
Anthony Gregory, www.lewrockwell.com, December 9, 2004
Cutting spending while changing the tax code may very well be better than cutting spending and leaving the oppressive code intact. However, we should be skeptical of plans to change the code drastically while leaving spending rates the same, which is precisely the idea on the table: a "revenue-neutral" sales tax. Instead of focusing on the real problem – government is far, far too large and takes far too much of all of our money – a lot of well-meaning Americans have become distracted into putting energy into trying to get the state to steal our money in a different way.
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06:19 PM
Sidney Blumenthal, www.guardian.co.uk, December 9, 2004
In line with other second-term cabinet appointments - Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state - Kerik will be an enforcer, a loyalist and an incompetent. The resemblance is less to Inspector Clouseau or Chauncy Gardner than to Caligula's horse.
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06:07 PM
December 08, 2004
www.nypress.com, December 8-14, 2004
If he were a Republican, people would be screaming that he was a fascist, that he was worse than John Ashcroft, that he's single-handedly done more to erode privacy rights in New York than anything in the Patriot Act. They'd bring up time and again the ghost of George Orwell whenever Schumer's name was mentioned.
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08:28 PM
Duncan Spencer, www.thehill.com, December 8, 2004
Real estate developer Gerard Dunphy had no idea he was about to encounter security hell when he passed through three Capitol Police traffic checkpoints when he stopped by the Supreme Court building on 2nd Street N.E. on Aug. 19.
What happened was that a respected Capitol Hill resident was arrested, accused of plotting terror, jailed, humiliated and forced to plead to a patently manufactured charge after making a critical remark, all because of apparent police and FBI hysteria over terrorism.
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06:32 PM
December 07, 2004
Susan Bourette, www.csmonitor.com, December 7, 2004
Bippy McMaster's new home sits nestled on a mountainside in a town rich in US history - except it's in Canada. Ms. McMaster recently relocated to Nelson, British Columbia, where many Americans moved to protest the Vietnam War more than three decades ago.
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11:31 PM
Steve Johnson and Javier Blas, www.ft.com, December 6, 2004
Oil exporters have sharply reduced their exposure to the US dollar over the past three years, according to data from the Bank for International Settlements.
Members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries have cut the proportion of deposits held in dollars from 75 per cent in the third quarter of 2001 to 61.5 per cent.
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11:20 PM
Marina Jimenez, www.theglobeandmail.com, December 7, 2004
An American army deserter who fled the 82nd Airborne Division to avoid being deployed to Iraq told his refugee hearing yesterday that no amount of training could convince him that killing the enemy was a noble pursuit.
Jeremy Hinzman, 26, testified that despite stabbing his bayonet into a plastic dummy during training, and repeatedly chanting "What makes grass grow? Blood, blood, bright red blood" and "Train to kill; Kill we will," he could not "dehumanize" the enemy.
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08:27 AM
December 06, 2004
Bill Steigerwald interviews Sheldon Richman about Albert Jay Nock, www.pittsburghlive.com, December 4, 2004
Albert Jay Nock, a brilliant writer and editor who proudly called himself a "philosophical anarchist" and died in 1945, is revered today as one of America's giants of individualism.
Links to Nock's writings -- including his 1935 masterwork, "Our Enemy the State" -- can be easily found at Internet sites such as lewrockwell.com. But to learn why Nock is still important, I called columnist Sheldon Richman, author of books such as "Separating School & State."
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11:24 PM
Brian Doherty, www.reason.com, December 2004
The FSP is the brainchild of a 27-year-old political science instructor named Jason Sorens. The Yale lecturer’s idea is both simple and grandiose: Given libertarians’ eternal lack of political traction as a thinly spread minority, their most realistic chance to wield political power is to congregate in one state. Sorens figured it would be best if the state had a population below 1.5 million and a political culture already sympathetic to libertarian thinking.
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07:56 AM
December 05, 2004
Anne Barnard, www.boston.com, December 5, 2004
The US military is drawing up plans to keep insurgents from regaining control of this battle-scarred city, but returning residents may find that the measures make Fallujah look more like a police state than the democracy they have been promised.
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12:59 PM
Herbert Chilstrom, www.madison.com/tct, December 4, 2004
Regardless of how one feels about homosexuality - whether one considers it a sin, simply feels uncomfortable with it or accepts it fully - we as Christians cannot ignore the fundamental equality and dignity of our LGBT brothers and sisters.
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11:00 AM
December 04, 2004
Jim Lobe, www.lewrockwell.com, December 4, 2004
U.S. officials Tuesday insisted that detainees held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been treated "humanely," despite a Red Cross report that concluded interrogators were using psychological and physical techniques that were "tantamount to torture."
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11:24 PM
Curt Anderson, www.newsday.com, December 2, 2004
The American Civil Liberties Union is seeking information from the FBI on why bureau task forces set up to combat terrorism also looked into anti-war, animal rights and environmental groups.
Dozens of organizations have been subjected to scrutiny, according to the ACLU, which was filing Freedom of Information Act requests with the FBI on Thursday to try to find out why.
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10:35 PM
Michael Hoffman, www.guardian.co.uk, December 2, 2004
The chaos of war should never be understated. On the way to Baghdad, I saw bodies by the road, many in civilian clothing. Every time a car got near my Humvee, everyone inside braced themselves, not knowing if gunfire would suddenly erupt out of it. When your enemy is unclear, everyone becomes your enemy.
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10:19 AM
December 03, 2004
Linda Schrock Taylor, www.LewRockwell.com, December 3, 2004
My son and I are currently studying a 50-lecture course from The Teaching Company entitled The Great Ideas of Philosophy, with the very excellent Professor Daniel N. Robinson, of Oxford University and Georgetown University. Soon we will begin the course, Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning.
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11:31 PM
December 02, 2004
Radley Balko, www.cato.org, December 2, 2004
In Washington, D.C., a 27-year old quadriplegic is sentenced to ten days in jail for marijuana possession, where he dies under suspicious circumstances. In Florida, a wheelchair-bound multiple sclerosis patient now serves a 25-year prison sentence for using an out-of-state doctor to obtain pain medication. And in Palestine, Texas, prosecutors arrest 72 people -- all of them black -- and charge them with distributing crack cocaine. The scene bears a remarkable resemblance to a similar mass, mostly-black drug bust in nearby Tulia five years ago.
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09:45 PM
Patrick Cockburn, www.independent.co.uk, December 2, 2004
A further 135 American soldiers died in Iraq in November, equalling the number killed in April, previously the worst single month for US casualties. Seventy-one died in the assault on Fallujah and 600 were wounded, according to the US military in Baghdad.
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12:18 AM
December 01, 2004
Charles H. Featherstone, www.lewrockwell.com, December 1, 2004
Cops is the perfect morality tale for the evolving American police state. It truly is. I'm no expert in the program (I don't even own a teevee right now), but over the years, I've watched more than my fair share of the show. So have you, I'm guessing.
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11:50 PM
November 30, 2004
Patrick Cockburn, www.independent.co.uk, November 30, 2004
Disintegrating security in Baghdad was underlined in a sombre warning yesterday from the British embassy against using the airport road or taking a plane out of Iraq.
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11:27 PM
Bob Egelko, www.sfgate.com, November 30, 2004
Two ailing Northern California women took their plea for legally tolerated medical marijuana to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday and ran into skeptical questioning from both wings of the court.
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07:26 PM
Sue Bailey, www.ottawaciitzen.com, November 30, 2004
Masked bands of self-described anarchists appear at most major demonstrations, often clashing with police.
But such protesters will likely be drowned out Tuesday by a diverse throng of peaceniks as George W. Bush arrives for a two-day visit to Canada. Up to about 15,000 marchers are expected in Ottawa, and another 5,000 during his trip to Halifax on Wednesday.
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08:21 AM
November 29, 2004
Yuras Karmanau, www.boston.com, November 29, 2004
Andriy Reshetnyak tied a Russian flag to the Ukrainian one, joining thousands of demonstrators backing a referendum on autonomy for their eastern province on Donetsk's central Lenin Square on Monday.
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11:27 PM
Charley Reese, www.lewrockwell.com, November 29, 2004
The government would like us all to spy on our neighbors to detect terrorists. What we really should do is keep our eyes open for injustices, and when we find them, we should speak out.
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07:10 PM
November 28, 2004
Lucy Siegle, www.observer.guardian.co.uk, November 28, 2004
History is peppered with falls from grace. While it's not the decline and fall of the Roman empire, the relegation of hemp from leading cash crop to slackers' toke is a notable tumble. In fact, hemp's heritage is worthy of quiz-show questions such as: Henry VIII passed an act fining farmers who refused to grow which crop? What 'H' did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both cultivate?
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11:27 PM
Julia Scheeres, www.wired.com, November 27, 2004
Californians recently approved a measure to create one of the nation's most aggressive criminal DNA databases, but civil liberties groups and privacy advocates are fighting to get it scaled back.
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12:31 PM
Dave Eberhart, www.newsmax.com, November 23, 2004
One of the nation's leading medical groups, the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS), decried a move by the U.S. Senate to join with the House in funding a federal program AAPS says will lead to mandatory psychological testing of every child in America – without the consent of parents.
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11:43 AM
November 27, 2004
Antony Barnett and Martin Bright, www.observer.guardian.co.uk, November 28, 2004
In December 2003 and January 2004 two separate, highly detailed reports of the planned coup, from Johann Smith, a former commander in South African Special Forces, were sent to two senior officers in British intelligence and to a senior colleague of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, according to the documents seen by The Observer.
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08:40 PM
Jacob Sullum, www.reason.com, November 26, 2004
Conservatives generally don't like marijuana, so they're not inclined to give the states leeway in this area. But if that is what their avowed federalist principles amount to in practice, they are not principles at all.
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10:14 AM
November 25, 2004
Vanessa Ho, www.seattlepi.com, November 25, 2004
It was one thing for Caroline Snipes to slip off her high-wedged sandals and heavy-knit sweater before walking through a metal detector. It was another thing to stand with her feet apart and arms out and have a stranger touch her breasts.
"She basically felt me up. I'm not a real squeamish person, but I just felt violated," said Snipes, a 25-year-old Alaska law enforcement officer, as she waited for her flight to Montana at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport yesterday.
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09:34 PM
www.bbc.co.uk, November 25, 2004
A report by the Defence Science Board says official US talk of bringing democracy to Muslim nations is seen as "self-serving hypocrisy".
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05:13 PM
November 24, 2004
Paul Moses, www.villagevoice.com, November 24-30, 2004
The New York Times Company's sale this month of its 43rd Street headquarters at least doubled the profit its executives predicted when they prodded city and state officials for tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks to build a new office tower, records show.
The surge of extra cash from the $175 million sale on November 7 was so large that it wiped out the need for much, if not all, of the taxpayer money the Times asked for.
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10:38 PM
Steven Kane, www.anti-state.com, November 23, 2004
I have good news for freedom lovers. Fiat currency and fractional reserve central banking is doomed and within 10-20 years the stage will be set for a nationwide monetary revolution. I am not talking about a sudden collapse of the Federal Reserve System (which may or may not occur); I am talking about people choosing to switch to private currencies on their own accord.
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01:20 AM
November 23, 2004
Patrick Basham and John Samples, www.cato.org, November 23, 2004
Election Day 2004 showed the power of incumbency in American politics. For the fourth time in row, incumbents in the House of Representatives won over 98 percent of their races.
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08:34 PM
Bob Deans, www.seattle.nwsource.com, November 23, 2004
President Bush pledged new drug-fighting aid and praised Colombia's leader yesterday as an effective foe of drug traffickers and the militant groups they help finance.
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08:29 AM
November 22, 2004
Benjamin Powell, www.independent.org, November 22, 2004
Feast and football. That’s what many of us think about at Thanksgiving. Most people identify the origin of the holiday with the Pilgrims’ first bountiful harvest. But few understand how the Pilgrims actually solved their chronic food shortages.
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10:41 PM
Michael White, www.guardian.co.uk, November 22, 2004
The Liberal Democrats could emerge from the forthcoming general election with a larger share of the vote than the Conservatives, who are now "completely no-go" in more than a third of Britain, Charles Kennedy's election strategist predicted yesterday.
So acute is the danger, that some senior Tories are beginning to wonder if they will ever return to power unless they embrace electoral reform, which has helped them to win back a toehold in Scotland and Wales, said Lord (Chris) Rennard.
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07:25 PM
Fred Reed, www.lewrockwell.com, November 22, 2004
I tell you, coming back yearly to the United States is stranger than dwarf-tossing, maybe up there with licking toads. It's like watching something dead that you once cared for decompose in time-lapse photography. The country is in lockdown.
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07:08 AM
November 21, 2004
Jacob Sullum, www.reason.com, November 19, 2004
Prosecutors say McLean, Virginia, physician William Hurwitz, who is on trial at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, knowingly supplied OxyContin and other narcotic painkillers to patients who sold them on the black market. "A self-proclaimed healer, he crossed the line to dealer," Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Lytle declared in his opening statement. "He thought he could hide behind the pain he treated."
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06:41 PM
Andy McSmith and Francis Elliott, www.independent.co.uk, November 21, 2004
Tony Blair will this week make drugs the key battleground for the general election when he launches a sweeping crackdown as the centrepiece of his new legislative programme.
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05:36 PM
Nat Hentoff, www.villagevoice.com, November 19, 2004
I once suggested to the American Civil Liberties Union that it award John Ashcroft its Medal of Liberty because he has done more—however inadvertently—than any American since 9-11 to educate the public on how fragile our constitutional liberties are, and why it's so essential to never let up on the agents of government who strive to strip them away.
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11:08 AM
Associated Press, www.cnn.com, November 18, 2004
Amtrak conductors have begun random checks of passengers' IDs as a precaution against terrorist attacks.
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02:08 AM
November 20, 2004
Jacob G. Hornberger, www.lewrockwell.com, November 20, 2004
Arguably, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution should have been made first in the Bill of Rights because without the right to keep and bear arms, such rights as freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be treated as nothing more than meaningless “privileges” bestowed and taken away by government officials at will. The Second Amendment is the American people’s ultimate insurance policy against tyranny because government officials know that guns in the hands of the people provide the only practical means by which to resist tyranny.
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04:05 PM
Todd Ackerman, www.chron.com, November 18, 2004
A strong majority of Texans favor legalizing the medical use of marijuana, according to a new poll.
Seventy-five percent said people with cancer and other serious illnesses should be allowed to use marijuana for medical purposes as long as their doctor approves, according to a Scripps Howard Texas poll question commissioned by Texans for Medical Marijuana. Nineteen percent said they would oppose such a bill.
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10:36 AM
November 19, 2004
Steven Aftergood, www.slate.com, November 18, 2004
Former Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho, experienced the existential horror of being governed by secret laws last month while attempting to board a United Airlines flight from Boise to Reno. When pulled aside by security guards from the Transportation Security Administration for additional screening, including a physical pat-down, Chenoweth-Hage requested a copy of the federal regulation authorizing such searches. Her request was denied.
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07:13 PM
Verena Dobnik, www.newsday.com, November 18, 2004
Howard Stern, surrounded by strippers and cheered by thousands of fans, began promoting his switch to satellite radio Thursday at a rally where he handed out free boom boxes and satellite subscriptions
"Down with the FCC!" the shock jock told a legion of sign-waving backers. "They have ruined commercial broadcasting."
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07:07 PM
November 18, 2004
Michael Scherer, www.motherjones.com, November 18, 2004
Partnerships between multinational companies and tribal businesses, most of them Alaska native corporations, have skyrocketed in recent years—in large part because of a provision in federal law that exempts tribal companies from rules that apply to other minority-owned businesses. The system was established in the mid-1990s to help native communities, where unemployment rates often exceed 40 percent. But it has also become a way for large corporations with no Native American ownership to receive no-bid contracts, an avenue for federal officials to steer work to favored companies, and a device for speeding privatization.
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10:47 PM
worldnetdaily.com, November 18, 2004
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is making a final attempt this week to lessen the impact of a new program that calls for all the nation's children to be screened for mental-health problems, offering language to the federal omnibus spending bill that would require parental consent before such testing could be done.
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10:35 PM
John Nichols, http://www.madison.com/tct/, November 18, 2004
The woman who claimed she could not appear before the bipartisan committee investigating the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington because it would break precedents set by past national security advisers had no qualms about breaking past precedents when it came to using her position to advance her favorite politician's interests.
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09:01 AM
November 17, 2004
Kemba Smith, www.usatoday.com, November 16, 2004
Congress should give judges the power to be smart on crime by being just in sentencing.
The federal government reported last week that even though both violent and property crimes declined during the past year, the prison population continues to grow. This contradiction reveals a problem with the way judges are required to sentence criminal defendants. I know from personal experience.
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11:14 PM
Loretta Nall, www.lewrockwell.com, November 17, 2004
The drug war is obviously inflicting serious and negative consequences in the United States. As horrific as was my family’s experience, however, it pales in comparison to the drug war being exported to other nations by the United States. I learned this firsthand during the summer of 2004 when I traveled to Colombia, South America. As a Witness for Peace delegate, I studied first-hand the effects of the foreign arm of the U.S. War on Drugs.
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08:58 AM
Associated Press, www.armytimes.com, November 16, 2004
The Army is recommending punishment for about two dozen soldiers from an Army Reserve unit in Iraq that refused orders to drive a fuel convoy because they believed it was too dangerous, officials said Tuesday.
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12:37 AM
November 15, 2004
Alissa J. Rubin, www.concordmonitor.com, November 15 2004
Dr. Ahmed Ghanim's nightmarish week began with a phone call in the operating room of a triage center in downtown Fallujah.
On the line was the manager of the city's General Hospital. Iraqi national guardsmen and U.S. Marines, the manager said, had entered the hospital, handcuffed the doctors and were forcing the patients out to the parking lot.
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11:59 PM
Andrew Buncombe, www.independent.co.uk, November 16, 2004
The US Marine Corps launched an investigation into possible war crimes last night after video footage taken inside a mosque in Fallujah apparently showed a Marine shooting dead an unarmed Iraqi insurgent who had been taken prisoner.
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11:14 PM
Vin Suprynowicz, www.reviewjournal.com, November 14, 2004
Back in August, I reported an incident out of Wisconsin that may -- or may not -- help us answer the question: What should you do if police ask permission to search your home?
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10:43 PM
Margot Roosevelt, www.time.com, November 15, 2004
The penalty for smoking pot in Alabama is up to 99 years in prison. But that hasn't stopped the Cotton State — along with Mississippi and Georgia — from siding with California in its battle to keep medical marijuana legal. All three filed briefs supporting Left Coast medipot users before the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on Nov. 29 on whether patients can cultivate and possess physician-prescribed cannabis.
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10:35 PM
Posted by KevinRollins at
12:59 AM
November 14, 2004
Naomi Klein, www.guardian.co.uk, November 13, 2004
The hip-hop mogul P Diddy announced at the weekend that his "Vote or Die" campaign will live on. The voter registration drive during the US presidential elections was, he said, merely "phase one, step one for us to get people engaged".
Fantastic. I have a suggestion for phase two: P Diddy, Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio and the rest of the self-described "coalition of the willing" should take their chartered jet and fly to Falluja, where their efforts are desperately needed. But first they are going to need to flip the slogan from "Vote or Die!" to "Die, then Vote!"
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12:01 PM
Leslie Miller, www.suntimes.com, November 14, 2004
The government ordered U.S. airlines Friday to turn over personal information about passengers so it can test a system for identifying potential terrorists. The move was expected but nonetheless brought protests from civil libertarians worried about invasions of privacy.
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11:08 AM
November 13, 2004
Peter Stone, www.motherjones.com, November / December 2004
When the casino-rich Coushatta tribe of Louisiana began a lobbying blitz in 2001 to block three other tribes from opening competing casinos, they hired two of Washington's top influence brokers, lobbyist Jack Abramoff and public relations whiz Michael Scanlon. But Abramoff and Scanlon -- who are now at the center of a Washington scandal sparked by the multimillion-dollar fees they charged several tribal clients -- knew that to win any lobbying campaign in the South, they needed help mobilizing social and religious conservatives. So they turned to one of the best-known names on the religious right: Ralph Reed. Since his departure as head of the Christian Coalition in 1997, Reed has emerged as a highly sought-after corporate consultant, putting his organizing skills and political connections to work for business interests -- even those that conflict with his followers' conservative beliefs.
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05:16 PM
Nat Hentoff, www.villagevoice.com, November 12, 2004
ush's re-election ensures that he and John Ashcroft's designated successor, Alberto Gonzales, will press Congress hard to retain the Patriot Act in its entirety, and enact a Patriot Act II that will further disable the Constitution.
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11:50 AM
November 12, 2004
Police Lose Control of Mosul Amid Uprising...
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11:49 PM
Dennis Coates, www.cato.org, November 12, 2004
Although Major League Baseball now might be shaken by the news of D.C. Council Chairman Linda Cropp's alternative plan to put a new stadium near RFK instead of beside the Anacostia River, Cropp still proposes public financing for the project. That's because the belief that a professional sports team is a viable engine of economic growth for its host city is, like the Holy Grail, an article of faith. Yet despite years of searching for evidence that building a stadium or attracting a sports franchise leads to increased income and job creation, economists have come up empty. Only consultants hired by professional sports or by their friends in public office can seem to find evidence of such benefits.
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12:39 PM
John Pilger, www.antiwar.com, November 12, 2004
Edward S. Herman's landmark essay, "The Banality of Evil," has never seemed more apposite. "Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on 'normalization,'" wrote Herman. "There is usually a division of labor in doing and rationalizing the unthinkable, with the direct brutalizing and killing done by one set of individuals ... others working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalize the unthinkable for the general public."
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11:23 AM
November 11, 2004
Phillip Carter, www.slate.com, November 11, 2004
With the exception of an unusual joint press conference with the Pentagon's top lawyers, Gonzales has never publicly accounted for his role in creating the Bush administration's flawed legal policies in the war on terrorism. Similarly, he has never accounted for his performance as counsel to then-Gov. Bush in Texas and the dreadful clemency memos he was responsible for while there. Thus far, the administration has deflected inquiry into these matters (and others) using a variety of legal tactics, including both executive privilege and attorney-client privilege. But if President Bush is serious about governing on the basis of values, then he ought to consider this to be one of his first big tests.
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04:12 PM
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., www.lewrockwell.com, November 11, 2004
What do you do with a state – a highly centralized and militarized state – that has unconstrained hegemonic ambitions and is a proven threat to its citizens and other nations around the world? This is a question that has vexed liberally minded thinkers for centuries. In particular, much to the sadness of any real American, it is a question that many people at home and around the world are asking about the United States, especially since the election revealed explosive political divisions inside the country.
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11:16 AM
David Cole, www.nybooks.com, November 18, 2004
"Data mining," the computerized analysis of extensive electronic databases about private individuals for patterns of suspicious activity, is just one example of the threats to privacy that Americans have faced following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Since then, through the USA Patriot Act and various executive initiatives, the government has authorized official monitoring of attorney– client conversations, wide-ranging secret searches and wiretaps, the collection of Internet and e-mail addressing data, spying on religious services and the meetings of political groups, and the collection of library and other business records. All this can be done without first showing probable cause that the people being investigated are engaged in criminal activity, the usual threshold that must be passed before the government may invade privacy.
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10:25 AM
November 10, 2004
Belgium Court Disbands Flemish Bloc Party...
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09:18 PM
Colin Brown, www.independent.co.uk, November 10, 2004
British troops will be withdrawn from the "Triangle of Death" when the Black Watch, now guarding routes into Fallujah, are pulled out of the US-controlled area.
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08:50 AM
November 09, 2004
Doug Bandow, www.washingtontimes.com, November 9, 2004
For more than two decades the Michigan Supreme Court's decision in Poletown Neighborhood Council v. Detroit allowed governments in that state to take most any property they wanted for most any reason they wanted. The U.S. Constitution's "public use" restriction was satisfied, the court ruled, even when Detroit seized an entire ethnic neighborhood to hand over to General Motors for a new factory.
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07:14 PM
Toby Harnden, www.telegraph.co.uk, November 9, 2004
After seven months in Iraq's Sunni triangle, for many American soldiers the opportunity to avenge dead friends by taking a life was a moment of sheer exhilaration.
As they approached their "holding position", from where hours later they would advance into the city, they picked off insurgents on the rooftops and in windows.
"I got myself a real juicy target," shouted Sgt James Anyett, peering through the thermal sight of a Long Range Acquisition System (LRAS) mounted on one of Phantom's Humvees.
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06:53 PM
Erica Solvig, www.enquirer.com, November 5, 2004
Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns.
County officials say they took the action Tuesday night for homeland security, although state elections officials said they didn't know of any other Ohio county that closed off its elections board. Media organizations protested, saying it violated the law and the public's rights. The Warren results, delayed for hours because of long lines that extended voting past the scheduled close of polls, were part of the last tallies that helped clinch President Bush's re-election.
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09:00 AM
November 08, 2004
Allen Roland, www.lewrockwell.com, November 8, 2004
I want to know the truth and I'm not afraid to acknowledge that it appears that we have been bamboozled again in this election. There is too much evidence and I'm throwing a red flag on the field. Let's take a timeout, have an instant replay and review the evidence from all angles and then make an informed decision. The stakes are too high. Here's what makes me very uncomfortable;
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10:40 PM
Anthony Gregory, www.lewrockwell.com, November 6, 2004
The Republican Party is an institutionalized lie. The Bush administration is the embodiment of modern political deception. Unfortunately, some of the people that should know better and should see through the Republican lie don’t. I’m talking about fellow libertarians who still consider the GOP the lesser of two evils.
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08:25 AM
November 07, 2004
Parishioners protest firing of pistol packing priest...
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10:57 AM
Charley Reese, www.lewrockwell.com, November 6, 2004
Let's look at a guy who has the appearance of being rich. He drives a fancy car, but it is leased; he lives in a big mansion, but he pays a monthly mortgage; he belongs to several private clubs, but he pays dues; he buys pretty much what he wants to buy, but he uses credit cards; and he has a gold-standard health-insurance policy, for which he pays a high monthly premium. What is clear is that this guy is not really rich; he is living off his cash flow. Cut that cash flow and all his appearances of wealth will vanish. Layoffs and bankruptcies cut cash flow.
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10:46 AM
Over 30 Killed in Iraq Insurgent Attacks...
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12:35 AM
November 06, 2004
Sam Smith, www.prorev.com, November 2004
ONE OF THE THINGS that happened in the election was that the Republicans' false faith trumped the Democrats' lousy works. Since the former was an act of imagination and the latter a product of experience, the odds inevitably favored the former.
But both sides were lying. After all, what sort of moral values considers an unborn fetus sacred but not the lives of 100,000 innocent Iraqis? And what sort of life on earth can the Democrats offer as an alternative to the millennium if they haven't one good new idea in three decades?
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11:34 PM
Mike Rogers, www.lewrockwell.com, November 6, 2004
Years ago, and even until recently, when it came to politics I have considered Japanese people, well... Dumb. (Please forgive me mom, wife, children, and my entire Japanese side of my family & friends).
Why did I consider them "dumb"? Well, first off I was raised in America and as any American will tell you, Americans are the smartest, most worldly people in this entire universe. They will also quite easily volunteer to you the information that "America is the world's only super-power," and they defeated the fearsome Germans, Japanese, and Russian commies in the Cold War.
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10:08 AM
November 05, 2004
www.nypress.com, December 8-14, 2004
LAST WEEK IN this space, we called into question the NYPD's decision to declare the shooting of 18-year-old Queens deli clerk Manuel Chametta a "freak accident" and leave it at that.
Chametta, as you probably remember, was shot and killed by retired police officer John Malik, who claims he was reaching for his beeper, knocked his gun loose and, when reaching to recover it, accidentally fired one bullet into Chametta's chest.
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05:54 PM
Justin Raimondo, www.antiwar.com, November 5, 2004
The presidential campaign had hardly ended before the sounds of shocked outrage and the gnashing of teeth was heard across the globe:
"How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?" wailed the Daily Mirror.
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05:40 PM
Jim Hightower, www.austinchronicle.com, November 5, 2004
Today's Gooberhead is Rep. Candice Miller, a Michigan Republican who has written a bill that will effectively require all Americans to start carrying a national ID card. The idea of having to "show your papers" has been an anathema to liberty-loving Americans since the founding of our nation; yet, ironically, so-called "conservatives" like Miller are now demanding such autocracy.
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09:19 AM
November 04, 2004
Helen Thomas, www.seattlepi.com, November 5, 2004
There is new information on two abiding mysteries about the Iraq war: How many Iraqis have been killed? And why did President Bush order a U.S. attack on Iraq in the first place?
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11:22 PM
John Nichols, www.madison.com/tct, November 4, 2004
To be sure, Bush lost the actual debates. But the results of the election suggest that he did not lose the broader debate about the war. Hindsight is always 20-20, but it is worth noting that a lot of progressives rejected Kerry's candidacy during the primary season because they feared that - in light of his vote on the use-of-force resolution - he could not hold Bush fully accountable for the rush to war that has now cost so many American and Iraqi lives. They, like Karl Rove, were proven right on Tuesday.
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11:13 PM
November 03, 2004
James Kirkup, www.scotsman.com, November 3, 2004
THE Black Watch will be pulled out of central Iraq within 30 days, the government pledged yesterday, as the Prince of Wales appeared to step into the row over the future of Scotland’s infantry units in a high-profile show of support for the regiment.
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09:10 PM
www.bbc.co.uk, November 3, 2004
Ferenc Gyurcsany made the announcement at a military ceremony in the capital Budapest on Wednesday.
He said Hungary was obliged to keep its troops, who have a non-combat role, in Iraq until after elections in January.
There has been intense pressure from the public and opposition groups to pull them out.
The main conservative opposition party initially supported the war but changed its position and now favours withdrawal.
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09:02 PM
Allison Farrell, www.helenair.com, November 3, 2004
Montanans suffering from certain medical conditions will be able to legally smoke marijuana to ease their symptoms come January 1.
The Medical Marijuana Act in Initiative 148 passed by a 64 to 36 percent margin Tuesday with 103 of 887 precincts reporting. The new act will protect patients, their doctors and their caregivers from state and local arrest and prosecution for the medical use of marijuana.
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08:46 AM
Marijuana legalization measure fails (Alaska)...
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08:38 AM
Lisa Leff, www.sfgate.com, November3, 2004
Going easy on prostitution didn't go over well in Berkeley, but easing up on marijuana smokers was just fine in Oakland.
Condemning the war in Iraq was an obvious choice for many San Franciscans, but they were less certain about allowing non-citizens to elect school board members.
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08:29 AM
November 01, 2004
Kim Zetter, www.wired.com, November 1, 2004
In the past year, voting activists have decried the secretive nature of voting-machine testing, saying no one knows how labs test equipment or how the equipment performs in tests. Generally only vendors and a handful of computer consultants who volunteer for NASED see test reports, and the latter sign nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs.
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06:47 PM
Justin Raimondo, www.antiwar.com, November 1, 2004
The re-emergence of Osama bin Laden in the final days of the presidential campaign was occasioned by a flurry of speculation: was OBL rooting for Bush? Or for Kerry? Good old American narcissism: it always comes to the fore. It's always about us, now isn't it?
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06:18 PM
October 31, 2004
Jim Krane, www.sfgate.com, October 31, 2004
A brigade of fresh U.S. troops arriving in Baghdad will push the total U.S. troop presence in the Iraqi capital to an estimated 40,000 by Monday, as planners prepare for an expected assault on insurgent hotspots to the west and for Iraqi elections in January.
Army units slated to depart were being held back until after the elections, causing the overall number of U.S. troops in Iraq to swell to around 142,000, the highest level since the summer of 2003.
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11:26 PM
Andy McSmith, www.independent.co.uk, October 31, 2004
Stephen Hawking, Britain's most eminent scientist, has become the latest prominent opponent of the Iraq war by agreeing to take the lead role in a ceremonial protest to coincide with the United States presidential election.
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01:39 AM
October 30, 2004
Jim Hightower, www.austinchronicle.com, October 29, 2004
At last, the Bush team has come up with a secret weapon to deal with their disastrous handling of the Iraq war: Yellow smiley-face stickers.
In a joint effort by top government officials and the Bush presidential campaign, your and my tax dollars are being spent on a propaganda push in our country to spread what the Pentagon calls "good news" about Bush's Iraq occupation.
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11:41 PM
Paul Armentano, www.lewrockwell.com, October 30, 2004
Think the Feds’ self-proclaimed "war on terror" has distracted from its much longer and costlier (but similarly self-proclaimed) "war on drugs?" Think again.
Law enforcement arrested a record 1,678,192 US citizens for drug abuse violations in 2003, according to data published last week in the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report. The arrest total surpassed the previous year’s total by more than 100,000, and is 33 percent greater than the total number of Americans arrested on drug charges a decade ago. Put another way, an American is now arrested every 19 seconds for violating the nation’s drug laws.
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02:56 PM
October 29, 2004
Despite backlash, Nader supporters in S. Florida stand firm...
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08:00 PM
Jessica Tims, www.morningsun.net, October 27, 2004
Dennis Hawver stood on the Memorial Auditorium stage with his hands extended in front of him, wrist up, asking two Pittsburg Police to handcuff him. They didn't cuff him, but he was escorted off the stage by the officers.
The Libertarian candidate for the 2nd District U.S. Congressional seat came to the last debate in a series of three between incumbent Republican Jim Ryun and his Democrat challenger Nancy Boyda to let his one issue, opposition to the war in Iraq, be heard.
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06:55 PM
Ilene Lelchuck, www.sfgate.com, October 29, 2004
On Tuesday, San Francisco will become the largest city in the nation to adopt a form of voting that allows voters to rank their first, second and third choices for supervisor, eliminating the need for a separate runoff election when a candidate does not garner more than 50 percent of the vote.
The system, also called ranked choice voting, has candidates feeling like guinea pigs and has the San Francisco Elections Department in the spotlight, watched closely by curious election officials around the nation.
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08:43 AM
Jim Herron Zamora, www.sfgate.com, October 27, 2004
Oakland voters will have a chance Tuesday to set the groundwork for decriminalizing marijuana and making private, adult cannabis use the lowest enforcement priority for police.
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08:27 AM
October 28, 2004
Free-Market Environmentalism...
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06:31 PM
Kerrycrats and the War...
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06:11 PM
Kim Sengupta, www.independent.co.uk, October 28, 2004
The question now is not if but when there will be an attack on Fallujah. The US military maintains that the date has not been influenced by the American elections on 2 November, and, even leaving political considerations aside, it is unclear if enough troops will be available for an offensive before then.
The Americans have about 2,500 troops around Fallujah at present. In the battle to take another rebel stronghold, Samarra - seen as a dress rehearsal for Fallujah - 3,000 American and 2,000 Iraqi government forces were needed to fight 500 insurgents. Fallujah is estimated to contain between 2,000 and 2,500 militants, including al-Zarqawi's fighters and another group led by Omar Hadid. US military commanders are said to believe that a force of about 10,000 is necessary to take and hold the city.
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09:10 AM
October 27, 2004
Alexis Sottile, www.villagevoice.com, October 26, 2004
Four years ago, theatrical provocateur Reverend Billy launched his crusade against Starbucks. The New York–based performance activist told The Village Voice ("Rage Against the Caffeine," April 25, 2000) that it was his intention to preach against corporate greed in Starbucks cafés all across Manhattan. In response, the company issued an internal memo to its NYC stores, establishing a protocol on how to handle one of the Reverend's "interventions."
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09:01 PM
Who are those `other guys' on the ballot?...
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08:14 PM
Max Borders: Third Party Blues...
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12:07 AM
October 26, 2004
www.thenewamerican.com, November 1, 2004
On October 5, House Republicans called a vote on a measure sponsored by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) that would have reinstituted conscription. The bill was defeated by a vote of 402-2. (Rep. Rangel was among those voting against the measure.)
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08:32 PM
Warren Bluhm, www.greenbaynewschron.com, October 2004
If you think America's greatness is rooted in its constitutional limits on the power of the federal government, voting for Bush or Kerry will clearly ensure that your beliefs are not represented for the next four years. It would be a wasted vote.
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07:53 PM
Tataboline Brant, www.adn.com, October25, 2004
For the third time since 1998, Alaska voters will get marijuana mixed in with the candidates, issues and other ballot measures when they go to the polls Nov. 2.
Ballot Measure 2, which has drawn more cash than almost any ballot issue in Alaska history, asks once again whether voters want marijuana to be available without penalties statewide. If the proposal gets the nod of the majority of those voting, Alaskans 21 and older could under state law grow, use, sell or give away pot, though such activities would remain illegal under federal law.
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12:45 AM
The Detroit News Refuses to Endorse Bush or Kerry...
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12:29 AM
October 25, 2004
Jamin Raskin, www.slate.com, October 25, 2004
Four years ago today, I wrote a piece for Slate called "Nader's Traders: How To Save Al Gore's Bacon by Trading Votes on the Internet." The article suggested Internet "vote-pairing" coalitions between Nader sympathizers in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin and Gore sympathizers in safe Republican states like Texas, Alabama, Utah, and Mississippi. After meeting each other on Internet vote-pair sites, the Nader sympathizers would announce their decision to vote for Gore, the Gore sympathizers for Nader, in a nationwide grass-roots effort to advance multiple common objectives. Gore would win the popular votes he needed in swing states to reach 270 in the Electoral College while Nader would continue his climb to 5 percent in the national popular vote, his campaign's unofficial goal in order to qualify the Green Party for federal financing. Rather than savaging each other, progressive Democrats and Greens could ally to stop Bush.
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11:55 PM
October 24, 2004
Debate rages on: ‘I am a civilian, so why am I being tried in a military court?'...
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11:42 PM
October 23, 2004
Editorial Staff, www.bostonherald.com, October 23, 2004
Police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole, knowing full well what happened the night of the Super Bowl, put on extra police, including the mounted patrol. But was the plan itself adequate? Could crowds have been prevented earlier from massing around Fenway? And why would police either fire their so-called ``less-lethal'' pellets indiscriminately or aim intentionally at a girl who likely weighed no more than 120 pounds and wasn't doing anything more threatening than standing with friends by a sausage cart? Police who feel overwhelmed by an increasingly hostile crowd are as likely to engage in their own brand of group behavior as the mob they are supposed to be policing.
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02:42 PM
Casey Ross, www.bostonherald.com,
In the chaos of a college newsroom, Victoria Snelgrove pounded out copy with a sweet smile and a patient voice, displaying a warmth that often dies amid the pressures of daily journalism, tearful classmates said yesterday.
``To be able to see her smile made me smile,'' said Brett Finnell, who worked with Snelgrove at an Emerson College television station. ``She wanted to be able to do everything and learn everything.''
During emotional meetings yesterday, classmates blasted Boston police for firing the pepper pellet that killed Snelgrove during a victory celebration outside Fenway Park early Thursday.
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02:31 PM
A better Senate choice...
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02:03 PM
October 22, 2004
Ryan Singel, www.wired.com, October 21, 2004
New U.S. passports will soon be read remotely at borders around the world, thanks to embedded chips that will broadcast on command an individual's name, address and digital photo to a computerized reader.
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08:48 PM
Adam H. Covici, www.dailytexanonline.com, October 22, 2004
Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, will finally have his day in court.
The house majority leader has been subpoenaed to testify Monday in a Texas civil lawsuit concerning his role in using government resources to track down Democratic legislators.
In May of 2003, more than 50 house Democrats left the state in protest of the Republican-drawn congressional districts. Texas state troopers were ordered to locate the Democrats and return them to the capitol.
The U.S. House ethics committee admonished DeLay Oct. 6 for asking the Federal Aviation Administration to find a plane owned by one of the fleeing Democrats.
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07:24 AM
Samuel Bostaph, www.fff.org, October 20, 2004
Washington, D.C., will soon begin construction of a new taxpayer-funded baseball stadium at an estimated cost of $400 million, give or take $50 million. Thirty-three years after the Washington Senators left town to become the Texas Rangers, a majority vote of the D.C. city council will fill the vacancy by providing the former Montreal Expos the stadium that Montreal voters denied them. Touting the project, Mayor Anthony Williams of Washington claims that the revenue bonds that will be issued to build the stadium will be paid off completely by a lease payment of $15 million a year, by taxes on facility revenues, and by socking large businesses in D.C. with a new tax.
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07:12 AM
October 21, 2004
www.cnn.com, October 21, 2004
An Army captain has been relieved of his command following several reservists' refusal to drive a fuel convoy on a dangerous mission last week, Pentagon officials told CNN Wednesday.
The officer was in command of the 343rd Quartermaster Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
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08:42 AM
Paul Armentano, www.lewrockwell.com, October 21, 2004
Debates regarding marijuana policy too often rely on distortion and hyperbole rather than science. As a result, certain "myths" concerning marijuana and its potential harms have become pervasive in the public discourse. One of the more prominent of these is the allegation that marijuana today is far more potent, and therefore more addictive and dangerous, than ever before.
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08:23 AM
October 19, 2004
Seth Harp, www.dailytexanonline.com, October 19, 2004
DAY 291
Lying on the shoulder of a rutted dirt road winding through an Iraqi village in the dead of the night, aiming an assault rifle at the windshield of an approaching farmer's truck, smelling the muck from the Tigris River under the stars on the opposite side of the planet from my home, it's hard not to wonder, between thoughts calculating the various angles and potential trajectories of bullets, just how the hell I ended up here.
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10:09 PM
October 18, 2004
Declan McCullagh, www.news.com, October 18, 2004
With Election Day fast approaching, it was only a matter of time before the usual congressional shenanigans that typically punctuate the political season.
This time, politicians appear to have seized on what could be called the Patriot Act strategy, drafting antiterrorism legislation in secret and then ramming it through the Senate and House of Representatives with minimal debate. Then it's back to the home districts to boast how they protected voters from the bad guys.
The vehicles chosen for this strategy are two bills described as being inspired by the 9/11 Commission's report, a politically potent text that's become a best-selling book. The Senate and House have approved their own versions of the legislation, and negotiators are now meeting privately to decide on the final draft.
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08:14 PM
John Berlau, www.reason.com, October 2004
For John Kerry, the specter of Attorney General John Ashcroft trashing Americans’ civil liberties has been a useful campaign prop. In campaign stops, Kerry has promised to "end the era of John Ashcroft and renew our faith in the Constitution." In a Kerry administration, he promised the liberal group MoveOn last year, "there will be no John Ashcroft trampling on the Bill of Rights." In his 2004 campaign book, A Call to Service, Kerry accuses Ashcroft and the Bush administration of "relying far too much on extraordinary police powers."
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09:13 AM
October 17, 2004
Michael Moore's patriotism...
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03:09 PM
October 15, 2004
Jim Harper, www.sfgate.com, October 15, 2005
Ask any CEO about the power of branding, and you'll get an earful. Most corporate chiefs would give anything to have the positive brand recognition of a Coke, a Kodak or a Google.
The architects of the surveillance state are using brand management, too, but with precisely the opposite purpose: to escape negative recognition. A case in point is a provision in an intelligence reform bill that passed the Senate last week. It calls for a "trusted" government surveillance network.
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10:52 PM
Jeff Snyder, www.lewrockwell.com, October 18, 2004
In February 2002, responding to a tip, police in Swinton, England, investigated the home of Father Michael Daggett, an Anglican priest. When they found over 200 rounds of ammunition, they asked him if he had any handgun in his home, and Fr. Daggett told them that, yes, he had a .22. He showed them where he kept it.
He was arrested for violating the 1998 handgun ban, plead guilty, was convicted, and served some time in jail. His bishop, the Bishop of Manchester, had been speaking about gun control at an anti-gun rally only a few days before Fr. Daggett's court hearing, and recommended that Fr. Daggett be defrocked. Apparently the Anglican Church acted on this recommendation, and Mr. Daggett has returned to his prior profession of dealing in antiques.
In an interview with Manchester Online on September 12, 2002 following his release, Mr. Daggett was, in the words of the reporter, "unrepentant" about his right to self-defense. He is quoted in the news report arguing the right to self-defense is necessary to a civilized society, and a civilized society cannot exist if government infantilizes its citizens by depriving them of the right to make moral choices.
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09:32 PM
Robert Verkaik, www.independent.co.uk, October 14, 2004
Eight foreign terror suspects held without trial for nearly three years in British prisons have experienced mental torture and are now suffering from serious psychiatric illnesses, a team of doctors revealed yesterday.
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01:04 AM
October 14, 2004
Owen Gleiberman, www.ew.com
An animated character, like Bugs Bunny or Buzz Lightyear, can be a potent, charismatic presence. So can a Muppet, or even a fiendish ventriloquist's dummy. But a marionette? It's a block-headed, limp-bodied doll dangling from — and therefore controlled by — some unseen god. To describe it as animated would be an insult to the concept of free movement; emasculation is built into its being.
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12:52 AM
Chisun Lee, www.villagevoice.com, October 12, 2004
Nearly 5 million citizens—a hugely disproportionate share of them racial minorities—will not be allowed to vote in next month's presidential election. Laws in 48 states automatically stripped them of that right when they were convicted of a felony. Now, in a number of high-stakes lawsuits across the country, minorities are struggling to end the state felon disenfranchisement laws they say are slicing down the black and Latino vote. But first the courts will have to agree that this is a civil rights crisis worthy of federal attention, not just a jailhouse gripe.
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12:29 AM
October 12, 2004
Kathy George, www.seattlepi.com, October 11, 2004
Ralph Nader, who took 4 percent of the 2000 presidential election votes in Washington state, brought his struggling 2004 campaign to Seattle yesterday.
Clinging to a 2 percent showing in recent nationwide polls and hurt by the departure of celebrities' support, Nader devoted most of his stump speech to railing against the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee, John Kerry.
"John Kerry eliminated all ambiguity in the first (campaign) debate and outhawked George W. Bush. A vote for Kerry is a vote for war," Nader said to an enthusiastic crowd filling a Seattle Center meeting hall.
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11:17 PM
Former Congressman Barr Warns Republicans About Abandoning Libertarian Values...
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11:00 PM
David Hackworth with Eilhys England, www.wnd.com, October 12, 2004
The propagandists' mantra seems to be the ancient Greek proverb "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed Cyclops rules the land." It's become standard drill to keep the truth for the leaders' eyes only. Especially when the real story is a downer.
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08:59 PM
October 11, 2004
Libertarians Win a Hearing in Debate Case...
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01:12 PM
Associated Press, www.washingtontimes.com, October 11, 2004
The Bush administration's war on drugs stretches deep into Asia and Latin America, yet one of its most crucial campaigns — in the eyes of White House drug czar John Walters — is being waged this fall among voters in Alaska, Montana and Oregon.
In each state, activists seeking to ease drug laws have placed a marijuana-related proposal on the Nov. 2 ballot as part of a long-running quest for alternatives to federal drug policies that they consider harsh and ineffective.
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12:22 PM
October 10, 2004
Rachel Shabi, www.guardian.co.uk, October 11, 2004
American authorities have shut down 20 independent media centres by seizing their British-based webservers.
On Thursday a court order was issued to Rackspace, an American-owned web hosting company in Uxbridge, Middlesex, forcing it to hand over two servers used by Indymedia, an international media network which covers of social justice issues and provides a "news-wire", to which its users contribute.
The websites affected by the seizure span 17 countries.
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11:38 PM
Editorial, www.bangornews.com, October 8, 2004
Perhaps to demonstrate once and for all that Democrats have not lost sight of the big themes for which they traditionally have stood, the Maine party this week did not appeal a Superior Court decision on whether independent Ralph Nader's name would appear on the ballot. Instead, its chairwoman appealed to the state supreme court as an individual rather than party leader, neatly defining a distinction without a difference. The dispute is over one of paperwork - whether a certification of unenrollment had to be attached to each of the Nader petitions. But the problem could have been any detail that lawyers felt would not get laughed out of court.
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05:52 PM
Jim Hightower, www.austinchronicle.com, October 8, 2004
Trust us, plead the makers of electronic voting machines – our touch-screen systems are state-of-the-art, foolproof marvels!
But – oops – in a couple of recent, high-profile tests, the computers glitched and the makers of the machines had virtual egg all over their faces. First up was Sequoia Voting Systems. Boasting that its machines deliver "nothing less than 100% accuracy," it held a demonstration of its newest technology for California senate staffers in August.
Imagine Sequoia's 100% embarrassment when its machine balked during demonstration votes on a Spanish-language ballot. The testers punched in their votes on the touch screen ... but – oops – the machine did not record the votes, apparently having lost them somewhere in cyberspace. Luckily, this was a test of Sequoia's new system that includes a paper record of every vote – and the paper trail revealed the computer's error, which otherwise would have been undetected, disenfranchising the voter.
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12:27 AM
October 09, 2004
www.wnd.com, October 9, 2004
Two third-party presidential candidates were arrested at the presidential debate in St. Louis when they tried to serve the debate commission with a show cause order.
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11:33 AM
October 08, 2004
Courtney Cavaliere, www.dailytexanonline.com, October 8, 2004
The University got its own presidential debate Thursday afternoon.
Although neither of the Texan candidates belong to one of the parties likely to win in November, Libertarian candidate and Austinite Michael Badnarik and Green Party candidate David Cobb, a Houston lawyer, stressed the importance of voters choosing candidates who best represent them at a debate in the Texas Union.
Both said citizens would not waste their votes by supporting third parties.
"The only wasted vote is when you vote for someone you do not respect," Badnarik said. He and Cobb spoke to an audience of nearly 300.
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10:54 PM
www.ocweekly.com, October 8-14, 2004
1. "George W. Bush is no conservative, and his unprincipled abandonment of conservatism under the pressure of events is no statesmanship. The Republic would be well served by his defeat this November. . . . The policies of this administration self-labeled ‘conservative’ have little to do with the essence of tradition. Rather, they tend to centralize power in the hands of the government under the guise of patriotism. . . . For an American conservative, better one lost election than the continued empowerment of cynical men who abuse conservatism through an exercise of power unrestrained by principle through the compromise of conservative beliefs. . . . George W. Bush is no conservative, no friend of limited, constitutional government—and no friend of freedom."
—William Bryk’s "The Conservative Case Against George W. Bush," an extraordinary front-page essay in the Aug. 4 New York Press
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08:21 PM
October 07, 2004
Howard in Orbit...
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11:57 PM
Small Town Library Takes On The Feds...
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11:53 PM
Ethics panel rebukes DeLay second time in a week...
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11:32 PM
October 06, 2004
The Yes Men (R)...
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11:03 PM
Names of high school students to go to military unless parents opt out: They must act by Saturday to prevent information from being provided...
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09:06 PM
Secret Searches Ruled Illegal...
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12:57 AM
Hurray for Burt Rutan and Paul Allen: Now It’s Time to Deep-Six NASA!!!...
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12:51 AM
October 05, 2004
Appeal begins for terror suspects held in 'UK's Guantanamo'...
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12:43 AM
October 04, 2004
A Bad Joke...
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11:52 PM
October 03, 2004
Bad precedent on tobacco...
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11:18 AM
October 02, 2004
US bases in Iraq: sticky politics, hard math...
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01:05 PM
Saddam as the Twentieth Hijacker...
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10:33 AM
October 01, 2004
DeLay admonished by House ethics panel: Members say he acted improperly in Medicare vote...
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08:20 PM
Blair avoids Iraq vote defeat...
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07:55 PM
Ashcroft's Porn Wars Come to Texas...
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12:57 AM
September 30, 2004
Howard accuses PM of lying about Iraqi weapons...
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07:25 PM
Hatch takes heat over Patriot Act...
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01:43 AM
Is Your Bong Breeding Terrorists? The DEA brings reefer madness to the Big Apple...
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01:31 AM
September 28, 2004
Straw tries to avoid defeat on Iraq vote with 'pull-out' date...
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10:18 PM
Blame Me (...up to a point): As two more British soldiers die in Iraq, Blair tries to quell war furore controversy...
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10:11 PM
September 27, 2004
Medicinal pot, it's a good thing...
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11:05 PM
Jimmy Carter Is Right...
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11:02 PM
Age of Propaganda: The government attacks teenage drinking with junk science...
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10:56 PM
The Orwellian US...
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10:50 PM
September 26, 2004
Refuse to settle for evil...
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11:53 PM
September 25, 2004
Doctors, Patients, Latest Drug War Casualties...
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12:16 AM
Nevermind: Hamdi wasn't so bad after all....
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12:03 AM
September 24, 2004
The American Gulag...
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08:13 AM
September 23, 2004
The Free Market vs. the Draft...
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09:49 PM
King of the funny skin flicks...
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09:45 PM
The Debatable Debates...
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08:24 AM
September 22, 2004
Is It Happening Here?...
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10:16 PM
State Department Bans Distinguished Muslim Scholar...
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10:13 PM
September 21, 2004
Did Business Want Campaign-Finance “Reform”?...
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09:30 PM
Lib Dems attack Blair's Iraq wars...
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08:52 AM
Dumb Legislation...
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08:34 AM
September 19, 2004
Interest Rates and the Federal Reserve...
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01:20 PM
September 18, 2004
Secret papers show Blair was warned of Iraq chaos...
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12:36 PM
Irate Judge Orders Gov't to Hand Over Detainee Records...
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12:04 AM
September 16, 2004
U.S.-Born Terror Suspect Hamdi to Go Free...
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10:18 PM
Presiding Officer At Guantanamo Faces Questions...
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10:14 PM
Whose Fault?: Accountability According to the GOP...
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09:31 PM
September 15, 2004
Ashcroft faces questions about Patriot Act tour...
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10:53 PM
Mandatory Mental Health Screening Threatens Privacy, Parental Rights...
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07:00 PM
September 14, 2004
Labour conference to hear anti-war pleas...
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11:31 PM
September 13, 2004
Privacy Experts Shun Black Boxes...
Posted by Carousel at
07:25 PM
September 12, 2004
Hate and Delusion Have the Bit in Their Teeth...
Posted by Carousel at
10:55 AM
Democracy, Freedom, and the Market...
Posted by Carousel at
08:24 AM
September 11, 2004
Eye of compassion...
Posted by Carousel at
08:00 PM
No Electricity...
Posted by Carousel at
11:06 AM
September 10, 2004
Both Sides Now: The politics of flip-flops...
Posted by Carousel at
11:41 PM
Third parties seen as threat to Bush...
Posted by Carousel at
11:36 PM
September 09, 2004
Speaking freely (interview with Michael Badnarik)...
Posted by Carousel at
11:34 PM
September 08, 2004
Chechen Attacks on Russia: A Harbinger for the United States?...
Posted by Carousel at
09:04 PM
Limits on Nader hurt voters...
Posted by Carousel at
08:53 PM
September 07, 2004
The Unwinnable War...
Posted by KevinRollins at
06:28 PM
September 06, 2004
DOJ Asks Court for Secrecy In Suit: Case Challenges ID Requirement...
Posted by Carousel at
11:29 PM