Category: Politics

Finding a Way to Execute

From the Archive:  After getting a judge’s stay reversed, Oklahoma officials pressed ahead with Clayton Lockett’s lethal injection, only to have the botched execution leave him writhing in pain before finally dying of an apparent heart attack. In March, Richard L. Fricker…

The Fat Cats of Fast-Food

Pay inequity has worsened across the U.S. economy, but perhaps nowhere more than in the fast-food industry where CEOs and other top executives fatten their compensation as their fast-food workers subsist on taxpayer-provided food stamps, as Michael Winship explains.

Kerry Grovels over Israeli ‘Apartheid’

Exclusive: Secretary of State Kerry gets to say whatever half-truth or fiction comes into his head about Syria, Russia or other “designated villains,” but when he cites the inconvenient truth of Israeli “apartheid,” he must scramble as fast as he can…

Hearing US ‘Allies’ Whine

Official Washington is abuzz with punditry about President Obama showing weakness around the world, with the old-reliable antidote being more Pentagon spending and more foreign military adventures. But this “debate” misses how real U.S. interests are served, writes ex-CIA analyst…

Obama Urged to Show Restraint on Ukraine

Across Official Washington and the mainstream U.S. media, there is a rush to restart the Cold War with all its black-and-white propaganda, ignoring Russia’s understandable concerns and portraying the “U.S. side” as always right. But some U.S. intelligence veterans urge a more adult…

The Iron Law of Oligarchy Returns

America likes to think of itself as a land of the Great Middle Class with a government “of, by and for the people.” But that reality has changed drastically over the past several decades, as money and power have created a…

America’s Surge Toward Oligarchy

Exclusive: With the rapid concentration of wealth in a few well-manicured hands and the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court declaring money to be speech, the American surge toward oligarchy has gained what looks like an unstoppable momentum, as JP Sottile explains.

America’s Mad Dash to Oligarchy

Since Ronald Reagan’s “supply-side” tax cuts for the rich followed by other giveaways like eliminating the “death tax” so billionaires can pass on their fortunes to lucky heirs the United States has been on a mad dash to oligarchy, as Bill Moyers…

Marijuana as a Wedge Issue

Given the damage to so many lives from enforcement of the prohibition on marijuana use, liberalization of those laws is emerging as a movement with bipartisan appeal, even reaching into Red States like Oklahoma, as Richard L. Fricker reports.

The Dangerous Neocon-R2P Alliance

Exclusive: After U.S. neocons helped stir up a crisis in Ukraine,with a big assist from the biased American press corps the Obama administration looked for a diplomatic off-ramp, but this pattern of hyped outrage and belated reconciliation is a risky way to make…