Monthly Archives: June 2011

For Kolin the USA-Patriot Act, passed in haste by a cowed and cowardly Congress that hadn’t had time to read it after 9/11, marks the final end of formal democracy in the United States. If nothing else, sneak into a bookstore (if you still have one in your town) and read pages 142 to 152. Here you will find the most thorough and clear dissection of this horrible law in print. Describing Title I, for example, Kolin explains: “Due process is not mentioned in the part that grants the president the authority to freeze assets at the start of, or even prior to an investigation [into terrorism], instead of after it is completed. All property seized can be disposed of according to the president’s wishes. There is no legal requirement to have a court order prior to a seizure, creating the possibility that mistakes may be made and, in most cases, won’t be corrected.” Written by Ted Rall (A bit depressing, more than a bit controversial, but some very stunning points- OEN) The United States is a police state. Not in danger of becoming one. Is. And it’s too late to restore democracy. That’s the stark message of Andrew Kolin’s…

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Written by Calvin Woodward for AP WASHINGTON (AP) — Michele Bachmann’s claim that she has “never gotten a penny” from a family farm that’s been subsidized by the government is at odds with her financial disclosure statements. They show tens of thousands in personal income from the operation. And, on a less substantive note, she flubbed her hometown history when declaring “John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa,” and “that’s the kind of spirit that I have, too,” in running for president. The actor was born nearly 150 miles away. It was the serial killer John Wayne Gacy Jr. who lived, for a time, in Waterloo. Those were among the latest examples of how the Minnesota congresswoman has become one to watch — for inaccuracies as well as rising support — in the Republican presidential race. Bachmann’s wildly off-base assertion last month that a NATO airstrike might have killed as many as 30,000 Libyan civilians, her misrepresentations of the health care law, misfires on other aspects of President Barack Obama’s record and historical inaccuracies have saddled her with a reputation for uttering populist jibes that don’t hold up. On Tuesday, she erred in describing John Quincy Adams as a Founding Father.…

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Written by Bill Lueders, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser allegedly grabbed fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley around the neck in an argument in her chambers earlier this month, according to three knowledgeable sources. But a different account of the incident emerged Saturday, and Prosser said the allegation “will be proven false.” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quoted sources saying Prosser made contact with Bradley to defend himself after she charged toward him. Details of the incident, investigated jointly by Wisconsin Public Radio and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, remain sketchy. The sources spoke on the condition they not be named, citing a need to preserve professional relationships. They say an argument that occurred before the court’s release of a decision upholding a law to curtail collective bargaining by public employees culminated in a physical altercation in the presence of other justices. Bradley purportedly asked Prosser to leave her office, whereupon Prosser grabbed Bradley by the neck with both hands.

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Written by Robert Parry In Official Washington, there’s one “fact” about the Afghan War that nearly everyone “knows”: In February 1989, after the Soviet army left Afghanistan, the United States walked away from the war-torn country, creating a vacuum that led to the rise of the Taliban and its readiness to host al-Qaeda’s anti-American terrorists. It is a point made by senior administration officials, including incoming Ambassador Ryan Crocker and departing Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who once summed up the conventional wisdom by saying: “We will not repeat the mistakes of 1989, when we abandoned the country only to see it descend into civil war and into Taliban hands.” And Gates was there at the time, as President George H.W. Bush’s deputy national security adviser. So, he should know. If there’s any remaining doubt about this key historical “lesson” regarding Afghanistan, you simply need to watch the Tom Hanks’s movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” in which you see Hanks as Rep. Wilson pleading for additional aid to Afghanistan and getting rebuffed by feckless members of a congressional committee. The only problem with this “history” is that it isn’t true.

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