Exclusive: A major bipartisan study confirms that George W. Bush’s administration tortured detainees behind of a facade of legal excuses. The report recommends truth-telling and reforms. But the failure to hold Bush and his advisers accountable invites a replay of their criminal acts, writes Robert Parry.
Exclusive: The defeat of a modest gun-safety bill in the Senate is further vindication of Orwell’s cynical observation that “who controls the past controls the future” since the American Right has persuaded millions of Americans that a false narrative about the Second Amendment is true, says Robert Parry.
Exclusive: The Senate has beaten back a filibuster from Tea Party Republicans to block debate on possible gun-reform laws in the wake of last December’s massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators in Connecticut. But the setback won’t stop the extremists from continuing to twist the Second Amendment, says Robert Parry.
Exclusive: Just a few months after 20 first-graders were mowed down by a deranged killer wielding an assault rifle, the prospects of restraining this gun madness are fading. A major factor is the Right’s success in promulgating a bogus history of what the Framers were doing with the Second Amendment, writes Robert Parry.
The Republican Party that emerged from Vietnam and Watergate was determined to obliterate the lessons learned, and the Democrats veered between timidity and complicity as those lessons were unlearned. Now, the key lessons are more reminiscence than real, as Michael Winship laments.
Exclusive: With solid Republican opposition and many Democrats scared of the gun lobby, Congress is turning its back on a renewed assault weapons ban, a collapse made easier by the refusal of Newtown officials to release crime-scene photos of the bullet-riddled bodies of 20 first-graders, writes Robert Parry.
Even as Democratic leaders propose gun-safety laws – after the slaughter of 20 first-graders in Newtown – they try to sound “reasonable” by genuflecting to the myth of Second Amendment “rights.” But this acceptance of right-wing propaganda is dooming these life-saving initiatives, says Beverly Bandler.
For years, the NRA and the American Right have played games with some imprecise wording in the Second Amendment, which was always about a state’s right to have a well-regulated militia, but now those games are distorting U.S. foreign policy, too, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Though the Voting Rights Act was overwhelming reauthorized by Congress in 2006, the five Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court may gut the law in the name of “states’ rights.” Justice Scalia led the way with provocative, offensive and even weird arguments, notes William Boardman.
The American Religious Right has been eager to tear down – or chip away – the wall that separates government from religion and thus declare the United States a “Christian nation.” But the principle of a secular state has served the country well, says retired Baptist Minister Howard Bess.
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