The Inside-the-Beltway acclaim bestowed on Robert Gates is perhaps the clearest evidence of the failure of Washington’s media/political elite to recognize reality and impose accountability on incompetent or corrupt government officials, a point addressed by ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman.
Category: Politics
Robert Gates Double-Crosses Obama
Special Report: Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is slamming President Obama in a new memoir, accusing him of lacking enthusiasm for the Afghan War. But perhaps Obama’s bigger mistake was trusting Gates, a Bush Family operative with a history of dirty dealing,…
The War on Poverty at 50
The Right has long cited President Johnson’s War on Poverty as proof that “guv-mint” has no place in providing for “the general Welfare,” that the “free market” must rule as the master of American society. But there are real lessons to be learned…
Israel Lobby Takes Aim at Iran Deal
Official Washington’s neocons are still trying to derail a negotiated settlement with Iran over its nuclear program by imposing new sanctions and thus putting the U.S. on a course for war as favored by Israel’s Likud. But this reality is…
Happy ‘News Year’: Decline of the ‘News’
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…
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…