President Obama has overseen an unprecedented legal campaign against leaks of classified information with New York Times journalist James Risen now facing possible jail for refusing to testify in the trial of ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling for a leak published…
Tag: Dennis J. Bernstein
A Foot Soldier Throws Down His Gun
Brandon Toy, an Iraq War veteran and a mid-level project manager at General Dynamics, concluded that what he had done and was doing went against the best principles of the United States and so resigned with a declaration that if…
High Court Curbs Indian Parental Rights
A Supreme Court decision written by right-wing Justice Samuel Alito denied a Cherokee father parental rights to his daughter despite a 1978 law designed to prevent the use of adoptions to weaken Native American families, a controversial ruling discussed by Indian activist Bill Means…
In Case You Missed…
Some of our special stories in June, focusing on the dangers of truth-telling (from Gary Webb and Daniel Ellsberg to Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning), a major turn in the 1980 October Surprise case, and the Right’s dark history of…
Migrant Workers’ Bitter Fruit
The battle to overhaul U.S. immigration policy has now moved from the Senate to the House where its future is at best uncertain. The debate continues even as the Obama administration presses forward with the most stringent deportation policies in…
Snowden’s Case for Asylum
Despite U.S. government pressure, Russian President Vladimir Putin is balking at demands that he extradite Edward Snowden from Moscow to face espionage charges for leaking secrets about America’s global surveillance operations. Still, Snowden’s status remains dicey, as Marjorie Cohn explains…
Bush’s Foiled NSA Blackmail Scheme
More than a decade ago, President George W. Bush enlisted the National Security Agency in a blackmail scheme to dig up dirt to coerce UN Security Council members to approve his aggressive war against Iraq. But the plot was foiled by…
US Vets Join Gitmo Hunger Strike
Of the 166 detainees still at the Guantanamo Bay prison, 104 are on a hunger strike that has lasted over four months as they protest indefinite detentions without trial or even charges. They have now been joined by several U.S.…
The High Cost of Deportations
As Tea Party activists and some Republican senators vow to stop immigration reform, the status quo means that hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants are deported under President Obama’s aggressive enforcement policies, creating a humanitarian crisis for millions, writes Dennis J…
Fighting the Secrecy/Surveillance State
The emergence of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and now Edward Snowden represents just the tip of the iceberg of a popular resistance that is challenging the U.S. government’s excesses in secrecy and surveillance, a movement that Iceland MP Birgitta Jonsdottir discusses…