I'll say this for Vice President Dick Cheney: he puts it right out there, whether it is trying to ensure legal protection for those torturing prisoners, or insisting as he did on Tuesday that a wartime president "needs to have his powers...
Shoot the Moon and Forget About the Bell Curve
Consider this latest piece by former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega, who writes regularly for TomDispatch on the Plame case and Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation, as my way of signing off with good cheer until the New Year. In our embattled...
Toward a Peace Culture
This is no week (at least for me) to go on about unwarranted searches and surveillance, or whether a Bush bump in approval ratings is due to superficially frank speeches, a growing economy, the reduction in gasoline prices, or some combination thereof, let alone the...
Christmas in Malaysia
To say that Malaysia is not what I imagined would be an understatement of epic proportions. Situated just south of Thailand, north of Indonesia, and quite close to the equator, the country describes itself as officially "Islamic," and this, at least in the minds of...
Syriana: It’s Not About the Oil
I went to see the new Warner Bros. political thriller Syriana over the weekend (going to the movies is a rare treat when you're the parent of a young child). For most people, movies are entertainment and escapism (for that, I took my 6-year-old daughter to Chicken...
Congress to Probe Domestic Spying
As those loyal to President George W. Bush circle the wagons to aggressively defend his program of conducting surveillance of phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens, a judge on the court set up to review requests for such actions has resigned, apparently in protest....
Iraqis Spoke, but Hardly in Unison
The strong turnout in last week's parliamentary elections in Iraq may have been just the kind of civic demonstration that President George W. Bush needed to restore some confidence in a weary public that Washington's adventure in the country may not turn out to be...
Turning the Corner in Iraq Yet Again
For several months actually, since the U.S. invasion of Iraq neoconservative propagandists have been trying to counter-spin the depressing reality in Mesopotamia that we've been watching on television by celebrating several "tipping points"...
Bush’s Wartime Dictatorship
In defending his edict authorizing surveillance of phone calls and e-mails originating in the United States, President Bush reiterated legal arguments, long made by his intellectual Praetorians, that imbue the White House with wartime powers no different from those...
Two False Options
In his address to the American people last Sunday evening, President George W. Bush said, "Yet now there are only two options before our country: victory or defeat." As usual, Mr. Bush is wrong. Victory is not an option, and it never was. The strategic objectives the...


