Category: Human Rights

The White Man’s Last Tantrum?

Exclusive: With the U.S. government shutdown and a threatened credit default, Tea Party Republicans are testing out a new system of national governance in which they get their way or else. But is this the beginning of a new Jim Crow era of…

‘Gun Rights’ of Domestic Abusers

The right-wing-controlled U.S. Supreme Court has put the supposed right of Americans to carry their firearms of choice over the safety of individuals who are potential victims of gun violence. That pattern may be tested again in a case to…

America’s Government by Extortion

Exclusive: By forcing a U.S. government shutdown and threatening a first-ever credit default Tea Party Republicans are creating a new constitutional system which lets a determined white minority impose its will on the diverse American majority by inflicting so much…

Brazil’s Challenge to US Dominance

Exclusive: Brazil’s President Rousseff lashed out at U.S. spying during her UN speech, but there was a deeper message the days when South America was Washington’s compliant “backyard” are over. The U.S. government now has the choice of forging a more…

Why Right’s Lemmings Don Suicide Vest

Exclusive: The government-sabotaging fervor of the Republican Right likened by one GOP congressman to “lemmings with suicide vests” can only be understood from inside the right-wing bubble where a distorted view of the Constitution prevails and actual democracy is disdained, writes…

The Right’s Made-Up ‘Constitution’

From the Archive: Behind the U.S. government shutdown is the Right’s erroneous belief that the U.S. Constitution tightly limits the federal government and carves out broad powers for the states, a bogus history that suggests the Tea Partiers don’t understand…

The Founders’ ‘Musket Mandate’

From the Archive: At the center of the Republican shutdown of the U.S. government is the claim that a “mandate” requiring Americans to get health insurance violates Founding principles, but the Framers of the Constitution were comfortable with a similar mandate…

Losing Control of Nukes

Politics and propaganda continue to color how the world views the existential issue of nuclear weapons. Some nations are treated as if they are entitled to have nukes while others aren’t. Yet, the risks from use in an accident or in…

Poisoning the US-Iran Detente

Israel, Saudi Arabia and other enemies of Iran hope to poison improved U.S.-Iranian relations by blocking sanctions relief for Iran, even at the cost of losing new restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, an emerging dilemma assessed by ex-CIA analyst Paul…

The Four Eras of the American Right

Exclusive: In the coming weeks, the Republican Party and its Tea Party extremists vow to create budgetary and fiscal crises if the Democrats don’t gut health-care reform and submit to a host of other right-wing demands. But a driving force…