With rare exceptions, it’s never been true that secrecy protects national security or interests. Rather, secrecy damages both, often with costly, lethal consequences. That’s why Wikileaks is an indispensable service to democracy.
Offshoring War: How Obama—and Those Moments of Silence—Insult Military Sacrifice
When a president sends soldiers to die in a war that long ago ceased having a claim to being just or to being won, those Americans are no longer being sacrificed by their nation. They’re being murdered. The complicity is national.
Don’t Celebrate Yet, Republicans:
Between Din and Tea Stains, a Reality Check
Short-attention span politics are here to stay, which is why Tuesday’s results are merely the latest re-casting of the same tiresome play that’s not about to end its run on our second-world stage. Not with allegedly educated voters like us buying tickets.
How Republicans Became America’s Arabs
That’s the strength behind the Republican No, as it is behind the Arab No, the Islamist No in particular: it appeals to some mythical, mass-marketable golden age. No proof necessary.
A Bench, a Homeless Man, A Cop’s Brutal Judgment: Poverty as a Presumption of Guilt
The man was sleeping on a bench in Sarastoa. The cop noticed a duffel bag and decided to invoke the city’s anti-camping ordinance. The result: felony charges for the man, and neither justice nor common sense served.
Palm Coast Data’s Invitation-Only Picnic: Hot Dogs, Flattery and Suspended Disbelief
Half Palm Coast and the county’s elected officials and top administrators were invited to Palm Coast Data’s picnic. The public wasn’t. That’s not the main problem.
Mosque Madness and the Shame of New York
As a model of understanding, New York City was once an American redemption. Relatively, anyway. Not anymore, as a majority of New Yorkers are joining the mob-like reaction against an Islamic center near Ground Zero.
Neo-Supremacy Chic: Glenn Beck
And Sarah Palin’s Tea-Scalding of MLK
Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin’s biggest “tea party” rally on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s most famous speech signals the arrival of a neo-supremacist political movement in god’s clothing.
When Not Voting Is The Loudest Vote
Voting is neither a virtue nor a responsibility. It is a neutral civil right. Not voting is a right of equal weight, a choice as defensible as the choice to vote. Both are exercises in freedom.
Krauthammer’s Sacrilege: When Reactionaries Fire Up their Sunday Missals–and Miss
A comparison of Ground Zero’s neighborhood to Auschwitz or Gettysburg is ridiculous, given the ritzy and lurid neighborhood of Ground Zero. Walk the walk.