Exclusive: After three days of oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, most analysts agree that the five Republican justices are likely to deliver a body blow to Democratic President Obama by declaring his landmark health-reform law “unconstitutional.” But the key issue is really quite narrow, Sam Parry says.
Exclusive: As the Republican Supreme Court majority moves toward gutting health-care reform, the justices are making a mockery of the Constitution and the intent of the Founders who had good reasons to include the powerful Commerce Clause. But it appears GOP partisanship will again trump facts and reason, writes Robert Parry.
Exclusive: The questions asked by the Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court suggest they will overturn the Affordable Care Act. Instead of a serious debate about health care and the Constitution, they clowned around with silly what-ifs about mandating broccoli-eating and requiring burial insurance, writes Robert Parry.
Exclusive: The “Obamacare” debate will test whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s five Republican justices are political hacks. After all, a right-wing think tank devised the individual mandate, which was embraced by GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, but it’s now anathema because it was passed by a Democratic president, Robert Parry writes.
The slaying of unarmed teen-ager Trayvon Martin has shed light on the shadowy American Legislative Exchange Council, which dreams up pro-corporate legislation to peddle to the states and – as with the gun-toting “Stand Your Ground” law – can inflict suffering and death on innocent people, Bill Berkowitz reports.
An aide’s remark comparing the consistency of Mitt Romney’s positions to lines on an Etch a Sketch toy suggests his presidency would follow a course designed to win him a second term, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. In that, Romney’s neocon foreign policy advisers may see hope for a muscular “new American century.”
Exclusive: “Game Change,” the HBO movie on John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin, faults his Republican campaign for its slipshod vetting of the little-known Alaska governor, but leaves out the back story of big-time neocons from D.C. helping position Palin for her surprise rise and Palin manipulating everyone, writes Morgan Strong.
Exclusive: Orwell’s insight – that who controls the present controls the past, and who controls the past controls the future – could apply to the American political debate in which the Right has built a false narrative that enlists the Framers of the Constitution as enemies of a strong central government, writes Robert Parry.
Exclusive: Many on the American Right insist federal actions from the Civil War to recent banking regulations were encroachments on states’ rights and personal liberties, but underlying these claims – in the 1860s and today – is the greed of the richest 1 percent treating the 99 percent as chattel, writes Mark Ames.
Joseph Kony, the brutal commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army, has been introduced to millions through a video on YouTube. But that denunciation of his war crimes skirts his claim to be motivated by Christianity, an omission not applied to violent extremists who embrace Islam, notes Mamoon Alabbasi.
Thanks to You We Reached Our Spring Goal -- Donations of any size are always welcome. Thanks again.
