Israeli hardliners and American neocons say U.S. and Israeli interests are one and the same, meaning that if Israel bombs Iran, the United States should join in. But other observers say Washington must create some distance from Israel’s messianic Prime…
Year: 2012
The Founders’ ‘Musket Mandate’
Exclusive: The negative tone of the Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court suggests that the Affordable Care Act, with its individual mandate to buy health insurance, may be overturned as “unconstitutional” by a partisan 5-4 vote. But key Founders had a…
Robert Parry’s Biggest Regret
From Editor Robert Parry: In the 16-plus years of Consortiumnews, our most difficult fund-raising periods have been in presidential election years like this one. Many supporters tell me they are funneling what money they have into campaigns and, implicitly, that…
At 50, Cesar Chavez’s UFW Legacy
A half century after Cesar Chavez founded the United Farm Workers, the people who harvest America’s crops remain under pressure from harsh working conditions and draconian immigration laws. In an interview with UFW President Arturo Rodriguez, Dennis J. Bernstein discusses Cesar…
Misunderstanding Jesus’s Execution
From the Archive: Over the centuries as Christianity bent to the interests of the rich and powerful, the story of Jesus’s fateful week in Jerusalem was reshaped to minimize perhaps its central event, his overturning of the money tables at the…
If the Supreme Court Goes Rogue
Exclusive: George Washington and James Madison, two key Framers of the Constitution, saw nothing wrong with issuing mandates to citizens (to buy muskets for a militia), but today’s Republican majority on the Supreme Court seems set on going rogue and rewriting…
Minnesota Battle Over Israeli Bonds
A legal fight is underway in Minnesota over the state’s investment in Israeli bonds that are used to support settlements and other Israeli actions in the West Bank deemed illegal under international law. Sylvia Schwarz, a plaintiff in the lawsuit,…
National Outrage over Trayvon Case
Despite attempts in the right-wing media to smear 17-year-old Trayvon Martin with references to minor school disciplinary problems, the overall reaction across the United States has been outrage over his slaying and the lack of an arrest, what Sherwood Ross calls a…
How Friedman Fixes Mideast Faults
Official Washington treats New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman as an oracle on the Middle East, but his commentary is often pedestrian and wrongheaded, as it was disastrously on the Iraq War. But Friedman has now proclaimed what must be done to…
When Is a Hack a Hack?
Exclusive: Ronald Reagan’s Solicitor General Charles Fried sees “politics, politics, politics” at play in the apparent move by the Supreme Court’s Republican majority to kill health-care reform, but the Washington Post’s neocon editors say it’s unfair to call any of…