For decades, U.S. administrations have engaged in linguistic gymnastics to avoid applying international law to Israel. Now, with the fig leaf of the two-state solution gone, President Obama must confront this tangle of double standards and double talk, says Marjorie Cohn.
Category: Constitution
Journalists Who Hate Whistleblowers
A disturbing trend in mainstream U.S. media is how many “star” journalists side with the government in its persecution of whistleblowers and even disdain fellow reporters who expose secret wrongdoing, an attitude that is destroying what’s left of American democracy,…
GOP Senators Take Orders from AIPAC
By reaching out to Iran in a bid to sabotage negotiations to limit its nuclear program, Sen. Tom Cotton and his 46 Republican colleagues not only show their contempt for President Obama and the U.S. Constitution but their obeisance to…
LBJ’s ‘X’ File on Nixon’s ‘Treason’
From the Archive: The letter to Iran from 47 Republicans senators, seeking to kill President Obama’s talks on limiting Iran’s nuclear program, recalls other GOP sabotage of foreign policy by Democratic presidents, including Richard Nixon’s scheme to stop a Vietnam peace deal…
How the GOP Undermines America
The world might find the goofy behavior of the “last remaining superpower” comical if it weren’t so scary. Though Democrats surely have their share of unfunny clowns, the Republicans took center stage in this circus of buffoonery with an open letter to…
Official Washington’s Delusions on Delusions
Exclusive: Official Washington operates in its own bubble of self-delusion in which the stars of U.S. politics, policy and media don’t realize how the rest of the world sees their sociopathic behavior. This craziness is now reaching a crisis point on Iran and Russia,…
US Intel Vets Oppose Brennan’s CIA Plan
The original idea of the CIA was to have independent-minded experts assessing both short- and longer-term threats to U.S. national security. Mixing with operations and politics was always a danger, which is now highlighted by CIA Director Brennan’s reorganization, opposed by a group of U.S. intelligence…
ACLU’s Strange Fight for ‘Redskin’ Trademark
The Washington Redskins football team makes millions of dollars on merchandise under the U.S. government’s trademark of the name, a revenue flow now threatened by a decision to revoke the protection on grounds of racism, an action that the ACLU…
Seeing the Stasi Through NSA Eyes
In January when former Western intelligence officials, including from the U.S. National Security Agency, toured the old offices of East Germany’s Stasi, it was a look back into a dystopian past but also a chilling reminder of how far modern surveillance…
Curbs on Surveillance State Urged
In the post 9/11 era, the U.S. government vastly expanded its surveillance of nearly everyone on earth, even U.S. citizens, brushing aside constitutional protections in the name of security. A group of intelligence veterans urges reform of those practices to…