Month: March 2012

How the Right’s Smear Machine Started

Exclusive: The Right’s attack machine, which these days questions President Obama’s birthplace and smears Georgetown student Sandra Fluke over contraceptives, arose in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate with young conservatives thinking they were the real victims, thus justifying…

Financial Magic Thinking Dies Hard

Since the early supply-side days of Ronald Reagan, the Right has pretended that slashing taxes on the rich will generate extra revenue, thus more than paying for itself. The reality has turned out differently, but Michael Winship says that hasn’t…

Spring Fund Goal: $25,000

From Editor Robert Parry: As the presidential election campaign heats up and the war drums over Iran grow louder, we continue to fill a major hole in American journalism by reporting on difficult realities, both the serious political stakes in…

An Israeli October Surprise on Obama?

President Obama is walking a political tightrope between constraining Iran’s nuclear program and restraining Israel’s war threats, while political critics are shaking the supports. But ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar says Obama’s predicament may be even trickier, with Israeli hardliners possibly…

Obama Cedes Ground on Iran War

Amid the pounding of war drums on Capitol Hill, on newspaper op-ed pages and on the Republican campaign trail President Obama has insisted on giving peace one more chance regarding Iran’s nuclear program, but he has conceded key ground on…

Mother of the Sit-Down Strike

Seventy years ago, the remarkable life story of Lucy Gonzales Parsons came to an end in a fire that destroyed her Chicago home. Though little remembered today, Parsons pioneered strategies to protest poverty and injustice, including the sit-down strike, William Loren…

Romney’s Made-up History on Iran

Exclusive: In facing down Iran as U.S. president, Mitt Romney says he would be guided by the experience of Ronald Reagan threatening Iran with a military strike if it didn’t free 52 Americans held hostage during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. But…

Maligning Pvt. Manning

Classified documents allegedly leaked by Pvt. Bradley Manning have revealed the grim sometimes criminal  truth about the U.S. government’s actions, and Manning has said that was his intent. But his own lawyers have portrayed him as a misfit, not a…

Sloppy Comments on Iran’s ‘Nukes’

Exclusive: The New York Times and other U.S. news outlets failed miserably to tell the truth before the Iraq War and they aren’t doing much better as new war clouds build over Iran. Journalists lazily repeat false assumptions like Iran’s…