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Former Marine captain resigns in protest of Afghanistan war

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Oct. 27 (Opinion) - Matthew Hoh, a former Marine captain with combat experience in Iraq, resigned last month from his position with the Foreign Service, where he was the the senior U.S. civilian in the Taliban-dominated Southern Afghanistan province of Zabul, because he became convinced that our war in that country will not only inevitably fail, but is fueling the very insurgency we are trying to defeat. Hoh's resignation is remarkable because it entails the sort of career sacrifice in the name of principle that has been so rare over the last decade, but even more so because of the extraordinary four-page letter (.pdf) he wrote explaining his reasoning.

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Is the tide turning for the public option?

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Mike Madden - Oct. 06 (News Analysis) - None of the various healthcare reform bills kicking around Congress would order doctors to make house calls. But the White House decided that was exactly the treatment the administration's top domestic priority needed to maintain some legislative momentum. And so about 150 physicians showed up on the Rose Garden lawn Monday morning for a pep rally -- with at least one coming from every state, naturally, the better to gin up local media coverage of the event back home.

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I love my socialist kidney

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Jennifer Nix - Sep. 28 (Opinion) - We already have a public option. How it saved my life -- and my dad's life -- and how it may one day save yours

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Meet the knuckleheads of the U.S. Senate

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - Sep. 08 (Opinion) - In honor of the most recent Master of the Senate, Salon presents its list of those senators who are not masters, those who have helped turn what was once the nation's foremost debating society into the corporate board of Dunder Mifflin. Meet the senators who for reasons of questionable IQ or eccentricity, because they are vapid, stubborn or ornery, can fairly be called knuckleheads.

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It's time to embrace American royalty

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Aug. 31 (Opinion) - We're obviously hungry to live with royal and aristocratic families so we should really just go ahead and formally declare it: Bush daughter Jenna Hager becomes 'Today' reporter NBC's "Today" show has hired someone with White House experience as a new correspondent — former first daughter Jenna Hager, the daughter of former President George W. Bush. . . . She "just sort of popped to us as a natural presence, comfortable" on the air, [Executive Producer Jim] Bell said. Hager will work out of NBC's Washington bureau.

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The Washington Post's Cheney-ite defense of torture - -

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Aug. 29 (Opinion) - If anyone ever tells you that they don't understand what is meant be "stenography journalism" -- or ever insists that America is plagued by a Liberal Media -- you can show them this article from today's Washington Post and, by itself, it should clear

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Thomas Paine v. the Right's torture defenders

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Aug. 28 (Opinion) - For anyone who believes in the basic principles of the founding, the fact that these acts of torture are illegal -- felonies -- ought to end the discussion about whether they were justified.

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What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Aug. 25 (Opinion) - I wrote earlier today about Eric Holder's decision to "review" whether criminal prosecutions are warranted in connection with the torture of Terrorism suspects -- that can be read here -- but I want to write separately about the release today of the 200

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Obama wants to kill your grandma

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Mike Madden - Aug. 06 (News Analysis) - Turning America socialist apparently wasn't enough for him -- now President Obama is trying to make old people kill themselves, callously deny important medical procedures, funnel tax dollars to abortion clinics and wiggle the government's way into every doctor's office in America.

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Unasked Question about Sam Alito

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jul. 14 (Opinion) - Did Alito's Italian-American ethnic background cause him to cast his vote in favor of the Italian-American plaintiffs? Has anyone raised that question? Given that he himself said that he "do[es] take that into account" -- and given that Sonia Sotomayor spent 6 straight hours today being accused by GOP Senators and Fox News commentators of allowing her Puerto Rican heritage to lead her to discriminate against white litigants -- why isn't that question being asked about Alito's vote in Ricci?

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Defeat of Graham-Lieberman and the ongoing war on transparency

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jun. 09 (Opinion) - the Graham-Lieberman amendment -- which Obama supports -- is nothing but a pure manifestation of the Bush mentality, as its core premise is that we can't remain Safe unless we abandon our decades-old legal framework governing transparency. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is more than 40 years old. It vests the Government with extremely broad secrecy powers, especially in the national security realm. Still, two federal courts -- one district court and a unanimous 3-judge Court of Appeals panel -- have ruled that FOIA compels disclosure of these photographs because none of the FOIA exceptions apply. Most critically -- as the courts noted -- the fact that information will reflect poorly on the Government is not a legitimate ground for suppressing it. That is the crux of FOIA, and it is that critical principle which Graham-Lieberman is designed to gut.

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What the new Jim Comey torture emails actually reveal

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jun. 07 (News Analysis) - The primary argument against prosecutions for Bush officials who ordered torture is that DOJ lawyers told the White House that these tactics were legal, and White House officials therefore had the right to rely on those legal opinions. The premise is that White House officials inquired in good faith with the DOJ about what they could and could not do under the law, and only ordered those tactics which the DOJ lawyers told them were legal. As these Comey emails prove, that simply is not what happened.

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Stimulus money going to scofflaw companies

Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Michael Grabell, David Epstein - May. 21 (Special Report) - One company paid nearly $1 million for destroying seagrass in the Florida Keys marine sanctuary. Another settled a discrimination case after federal investigators found it refused to hire black employees. A third firm was rebuked by the Army for poorly screening the interrogators it hired -- interrogators who later abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Despite those problems, the three companies have won millions of dollars in contracts under the economic stimulus package.

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The 13 people who made torture possible

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Marcy Wheeler - May. 18 (Opinion) - 13 key people in the Bush administration cannot claim they relied on the memos from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel. Some of the 13 manipulated the federal bureaucracy and the legal process to "preauthorize" torture in the days after 9/11. Others helped implement torture, and still others helped write the memos that provided the Bush administration with a legal fig leaf after torture had already begun.

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Stem cell division

Mon, 11 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Peter Dizikes - May. 11 (Special Report) - No sooner had Obama issued his order than conservative lawmakers in state legislatures began proposing new restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, ranging from criminal penalties to bans on state-level funding. In fact, Obama's decision has emboldened conservatives to increasingly link stem cell research to abortion. Far from conceding the issue, they are in it for the long haul.

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Major defeat for Bush/Obama position on secrecy

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - In rejecting this radical secrecy theory, the court emphasized how the Bush/Obama doctrine, if accepted, would essentially place the President above and beyond the rule of law:

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David Broder and media culpability for Bush crimes

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Apr. 26 (Opinion) - What Broder states today as fact (that the Bush presidency is "one of the darkest chapters of American history") is almost verbatim that which, when it mattered, when it was happening, he vehemently and repeatedly denied -- and, of course, given that he works in the most accountability-free profession of all (establishment punditry), he does not even have the minimal honesty to acknowledge that. Like so many of his colleagues, Broder played a critical role in defending these crimes and insisting that they were not taking place.

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Democratic complicity and what "politicizing justice" really means

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Apr. 25 (Opinion) - Bush-defending opponents of investigations and prosecutions think they've discovered a trump card: the claim that Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller and Jane Harman were briefed on the torture programs and assented to them. The core assumption here -- shared by most establishment pundits -- is that the call for criminal investigations is nothing more than a partisan-driven desire to harm Republicans and Bush officials ("retribution"), and if they can show that some Democratic officials might be swept up in the inquiry, then, they assume, that will motivate investigation proponents to think twice.

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Torture works sometimes -- but it's always wrong

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Gary Kamiya - Apr. 23 (Opinion) - Led astray by leaders who played on their fear and anger, Americans have been deaf and blind and mute for too long. It is past time for our country to say an absolute no. No torture today, no torture tomorrow, no torture ever.

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Spare change for news

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Katharine Mieszkowski - Apr. 14 (Special Report) - As newspaper newsrooms around the nation cut back or shutter, an urgent conversation is taking place about where the reporting that exposes corruption and holds public officials accountable will come from. What new models for financing professional journalism will spring up?

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Stop protecting Wall Street bankers from Main Street

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Bill Moyers, Michael Winship - Apr. 09 (Opinion) - Time to move the blame to where it really belongs. That means no more coddling banks with bailout billions marked "secret." No more allowing their executives lavish bonuses and new corporate jets as if they've won the megalottery and not sent the economy down the tubes. And no more apostles of Wall Street calling the shots.

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Obama's domino theory

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Juan Cole - Mar. 30 (Opinion) - President Barack Obama may or may not be doing the right thing in Afghanistan, but the rationale he gave for it on Friday is almost certainly wrong. Obama has presented us with a 21st century version of the domino theory. The U.S. is not, contrary to what the president said, mainly fighting "al-Qaida" in Afghanistan. In blaming everything on al-Qaida, Obama broke with his pledge of straight talk to the public and fell back on Bush-style boogeymen and implausible conspiracy theories.

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Oakland mourns

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Gary Kamiya - Mar. 28 (Opinion) - The four officers' murders stunned and saddened the broad Bay Area community, but there had been a few discordant notes. There's long been tension between the Oakland Police and the city's low-income black community, as in most other big cities. It was inflamed most recently by the New Year's Day killing of unarmed Oakland resident Oscar Grant, who was shot by BART police, not Oakland cops. Despite this tense background, most Oakland residents of every race and class were horrified by the killings, but there were a few examples of callousness and cruelty. The Associated Press reported that about 20 residents taunted police when they came to retrieve their fallen comrades in East Oakland on Saturday. The irrelevant resistance group Uhuru House even held a poorly attended rally Wednesday to defend Lovelle Mixon and criticize the police who killed him.

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AIG is chump change -- let's find corporate America's hidden billions

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Joe Conason - Mar. 23 (Opinion) - From the jaded perspective of the financiers, the uproar over the AIG bonuses may provide a welcome distraction from far more important (and lucrative) abuses in the world's offshore tax havens. So rather than continue arguing over chump change, it is long past time for the United States, with its international friends and allies, to demand accountability from the long list of tiny countries and principalities, from Andorra and the Cayman Islands to Singapore and Switzerland, where corporations, wealthy clients and unrepentant evildoers hide their assets.

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The dirty green line

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Katharine Mieszkowski - Mar. 23 (Special Report) - With a boost of billions in the economic stimulus plan, the White House plans to double the nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years. There's big talk in Congress of creating a national renewable-energy standard, which would mandate that utilities get a chunk of their power from green sources like solar, wind and geothermal. So long dirty energy, hello green future.

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