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Labor's last stand: The corporate campaign to kill the Employee Free Choice Act

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein - Jun. 24 (Special Report) - (subscribers only for full article, see link.) THE BUSINESS LOBBY HAS FRAMED ITS OPPOSITION TO EFCA AROUND THE “SECRET BALLOT” AND LABOR “COERCION.” BUT THE CURRENT RULES GIVE EMPLOYERS A CHOKEHOLD OVER UNION ELECTIONS

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The Enemy Combatant Canard

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Rachel Maddow - Feb. 18 (Interview) - Thomas Jefferson and James Madison shared one definition of the term “tyrant”–a ruler who deprived a person of his freedom without operation of law and without accountability before a court. Which perhaps explains why American historians are consistently ranking George W. Bush at the very bottom of the list of all American presidents; the man, ultimately, is guilty of tyranny.

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Yoo for the Defense

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Jan. 31 (Opinion) - I’ve followed John Yoo and his writings with some care for a while now, and I think I finally understand what this is about. Namely, a pending probe by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is looking at serious ethical issues surrounding the issuance of Yoo’s legal opinions.

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The Genius of Karl Rove

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Jan. 29 (Opinion) - Democratic strategists are praying that Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh remain as the guiding lights of the G.O.P.

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The Southern Strategy Comes of Age

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Nov. 04 (Opinion) - At the heart of the Rovian calculus was America’s Southland, which he saw as the ideological and political base of the reshaped Republican Party of the age of Bush. But the very success of this strategy has been the party’s unmaking. It has also marked a complete betrayal of the founding values of the party of Lincoln and Frémont—an act of ultimate political cynicism.

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The wrecking crew: How a gang of right-wing con men destroyed Washington and made a killing

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Thomas Frank - Sep. 22 (Special Report) - Fantastic misgovernment is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction; it believes in entrepreneurship not merely in commerce but in politics; and the inevitable results of its ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, what follows from that: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam that we've come to expect from Washington.

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Elegy For A Rubber Stamp

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Lewis H. Lapham - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - Long ago in the days before journalists became celebrities, their enterprise was reviled and poorly paid, and it was understood by working newspapermen that the presence of more than two people at their funeral could be taken as a sign that they had disgraced the profession. Full pdf here: www.nationinstitute.org/pdf/Elegy_for_a_Rubber_Stamp.pdf

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The Murtha Rules: A simple system to win federal money

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein, Sebastian Jones - Aug. 21 (News Report) - Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania has long been one of the biggest porkbarrelers in Congress, and as the chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee he is also one of the biggest recipients of lobbyists' campaign donations. Which is no coincidence.

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The Justice Department's truthiness problem

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Aug. 09 (Opinion) - Americans now have more confidence in the integrity and reliability of Post Office employees than they do in federal prosecutors and FBI agents. But is the Justice Department going to start coming to grips with its "truthiness" problem, or will it just plod along through inauguration day, 2009?

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The Misdirection

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Jul. 22 (Opinion) - The questions that the Congressional investigators want answered are fairly simple. Who is responsible for torture policy? What caused it to begin? Exactly how was it pushed through over strong opposition from career professionals in the uniformed services, in the intelligence community, and among lawyers in government service?

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Six Questions for Arvind Ganesan on the Beijing Olympics, the Media and Human Rights

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein - Jul. 14 (Interview) - Arvind Ganesan has been at Human Rights Watch as the Director of the Business and Human Rights Program and is involved in research, advocacy, and policy development. His program has issued groundbreaking reports on Enron, Wal-Mart, corruption in Angola, where American oil companies have major investments, and Western companies censoring the Internet in China.

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Torture from the Top Down

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Jun. 19 (News Analysis) - Yesterday's hearings in the Senate Armed Services Committee ...brought a new focus on....William J. Haynes II, Rumsfeld's lawyer and now a lawyer for Chevron. Two things emerge from the hearing. First, that Haynes was effectively a stationmaster when it came to introducing torture techniques in the "war on terror," circumventing opposition from career military and pushing through a policy of brutality and cruelty, by stealth when necessary. And second, that Haynes lacks the courage of his convictions, a willingness to stand up and testify honesty about what he did.

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Next Year in Jerusalem: Obama Not Waiting to Win Presidency to Start Flip-Flopping

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein - Jun. 05 (Opinion) - Referring to Obama's speech yesterday to AIPAC, reader Ed Moloney comments by email: "Not only a cynical shift but perhaps one of the fastest flip-flops in presidential campaign history."

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My Lobby, Myself: How John McCain's hypocrisy is laundered as reform

Sat, 31 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein - May. 31 (Special Report) - In 2001, the year after he lost the G.O.P. presidential nomination to George W. Bush, McCain helped found the Reform Institute... a nonprofit whose stated aim was to advance ideals of influence-free good governance. But as McCain makes a second run at the White House, his supposedly independent project functions rather obviously as a public-relations arm of his political machine. In fact, in its revolving-door policy for loyalists, its dubious fund-raising, and its improper support of its founder's aspirations, it resembles nothing so much as yet another Washington influence peddling scheme.

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A Clinton Reader Catches Obama's Shifting Views on Ethanol

Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein - May. 29 (Opinion) - The lavishly-subsidized federal ethanol program is one of the biggest corporate boondoggles off recent times. Eileen O'Connor, a Clinton-supporter based in California, wrote a letter (published below) which charts Obama's flip-flops on the matter, which look like standard politics-as-usual for a typical Midwestern senator.

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A Tale of Three Lawyers

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Apr. 08 (Opinion) - He watched a shameless assault on America's Constitution and commitment to the rule of law carried out by the Bush Administration. He watched the introduction of a system of cruel torture and abuse. He watched the shaming of the nation's uniformed services, with their proud traditions that formed the very basis of the standards of humanitarian law, now torn asunder through the lawless acts of the Executive. Matthew Diaz found himself in a precarious position--as a uniformed officer, he was bound to follow his command. As a licensed and qualified attorney, he was bound to uphold the law. And these things were indubitably at odds.

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The Spitzer Sex Sting: A Few More Questions

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Mar. 11 (Opinion) - ... there is a second tier of questions that needs to be examined with respect to the Spitzer case. They go to prosecutorial motivation and direction. Note that this prosecution was managed with staffers from the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice. This section is now at the center of a major scandal concerning politically directed prosecutions. During the Bush Administration, his Justice Department has opened 5.6 cases against Democrats for every one involving a Republican.

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The Bleak Picture on the 'War on Terror' Central Front

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Feb. 19 (Opinion) - This President's Day weekend offered us another demonstration for the proposition that, in the view of the American mainstream media, Afghanistan doesn't matter. And if Pakistan matters, apparently it's only for the tragic-charismatic figure of Benazir Bhutto, which they feel may sell a bit. The frivolity of coverage, especially on the broadcast side, is distressing.

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Nino Scalia, Your Hairshirt Is Showing, and Your Bishop Has a Message for You

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Feb. 12 (Comment) - In a speech delivered in Canada last year, Scalia repeatedly cited Fox's "24" and its fictional hero Jack Bauer as the authorities in support of his views about torture.

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War in Chad: World Bank-backed oil project hasn't created promised "model" of development

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein - Feb. 07 (Opinion) - Beneath the whole project was a fundamentally flawed premise: that providing billions of dollars in oil revenues to a corrupt dictator was somehow going to produce political reform and good government.

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"Remember Those in Need"

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Dec. 25 (Opinion) - So on this Christmas Day, my thoughts are with the Siegelmans and the Teels. But they stand as symbols of a new phenomenon: political prisoners on American soil. My hope is that in the coming year, Americans will wake up to the injustices practiced in their name. Maybe we will again have a Department of Justice that places a value on justice ahead of doing the political dirty work of its partisan masters.

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McCain on Waterboarding

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:03:41 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - these debates have their moments, and I find on occasion there are passages that are truly inspirational. Last night, John McCain's response to a question about waterboarding was just that. He found the right pitch and the right moral voice on the question, and his words lifted the debate up for a few minutes on what continues to emerge, just as John McCain says, as the defining issue in the 2008 campaign.

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The Press Squeezes Blood From a (Campaign) Stone

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 10:39:57 -0700

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein - Nov. 01 (Comment) - I love when the press tries to build excitement about the campaign with this sort of juiced up story. You'd think the Post was writing about the latest wrestling matches on Raw, not the dreary Democratic race for the presidency. Given the bland realities, I can understand the impulse but if they're going to do it right reporters should take lessons from the masters:

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Giuliani Advisor: Raze Palestinian Villages

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 08:17:45 -0700

Harper's - By Ken Silverstein - Sep. 14 (Opinion) - there's something terribly wrong with the American debate on the Middle East when, due to public criticism, Obama's campaign flees from an unintentional link to that book, while a Giuliani advisor argues for a policy of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians and his comments pass unremarked.

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Politicians and the Military

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 08:14:41 -0700

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Sep. 14 (Opinion) - The military in general, and the officer corps in particular, have considered themselves strong conservatives and have leaned to the Republicans by a substantial margin. Actually, the military has been more Republican than the population as a whole for some time, but it became fairly dramatically Republican after the Vietnam War.

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