If presenting reality is the goal of news, the U.S. mainstream media strayed farther off course in 2013, lost in a self-defeating spiral of maintaining “credibility” by not challenging the powers-that-be and thus losing the trust of the public, as Danny…
Category: Politics
The More Complex Truth of Benghazi
The single-minded Republican drive to exploit the deaths of four U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 and use the tragedy to embarrass President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has obscured the more complex reality of what happened,…
Big-Money Politics Gains Ground
The Right’s “war on government” or perhaps put more accurately, its “war for unbridled corporate power” continues to rack up victories, routing reformers who have tried to block big-money dominance of democracy, writes Michael Winship.
Lost in an Anthropocene Wonderland
The Anthropocene Epoch dating from when human activity began to have a significant impact on the global ecosystem is crashing toward a disastrous end amid melting icecaps, rising sea levels and dying species, but the human race can’t stop its…
Judge Leon’s Dirty Climb to the Bench
Exclusive: Civil libertarians are cheering federal judge Richard Leon for his ruling against the NSA’s massive surveillance program and that’s all to the good but Leon’s route to the bench followed a twisted course of partisan investigations and one historic…
Playing Deadly Games with ‘Gun Rights’
Pro-gun extremists routinely edit out of the Second Amendment its stated purpose of having “a well-regulated militia” maintain state “security.” The tampering lets them pretend the Founders would be okay with slaughters like the Newtown massacre, as Bill Moyers and Michael Winship…
The 2nd Amendment and Killing Kids
From the Archive: The comedy team Key and Peele cut through the Right’s Second Amendment madness best in a bit in which Peele travels back in time with Uzis to confront its authors over their careless wording. But there is…
The NRA’s War on America
From the Archive: One year ago, 20 first-graders went off to school in Newtown, Connecticut, some surely thinking about the upcoming Christmas holidays. But they never came home, becoming along with six of their educators collateral damage in the NRA’s…
Honoring Mandela, Not Reagan
Exclusive: The U.S. government’s relationship with Nelson Mandela was often strained, from the CIA’s hand in his imprisonment to Ronald Reagan’s veto of a sanctions bill aimed at getting him freed, lost history that must now be reconciled, writes Robert…
Meaning of the War Over Christmas
From the Archive: The latest Christmas tradition is for Fox News and the Right to work “the base” into a lather over a supposed “War on Christmas,” but there is a larger message in how right-wing propaganda creates “victimhood,” as Robert Parry noted…