Elizabeth de la Vega calls for prosecution and possible impeachment of President Bush for conspiracy to defraud the nation, Christian Parenti reports on the situation in Kurdistan and Stephen Holmes reviews books exploring the moral reasoning of liberals who support the Iraq War.
Elizabeth de la Vega : The Bush Administration should be prosecuted for conspiracy to defraud the United States by using half-truths and recklessly false statements to lead the country into an illegal war. This article is a collaboration with TomDispatch.com.
Christian Parenti : The Kurds have almost no natural resources and suffer from a culture of corruption. But their call for autonomy is a serious threat to the building of a united Iraq.
Dave Zirin : Strip-mining the Dominican Republic for talent, Major League Baseball periodically plucks one lucky boy from his home and family and gives him a dream for a better life. But what happens the other 99 left behind in "baseball factories," still hoping?
Hilary Wainwright
:
Luis Inacio Lula da Silva came into power in 2002 on a wave of populist
support for an era of socialist politics and participatory democracy.
But da Silva has offered the people of Brazil a corrupt leadership
instead.
Scott Sherman
:
An exhibit at the International Center of Photography
showcasing the brutal images of the civil war in El Salvador should
remind the Pentagon and the public that the "Salvador Option" currently
considered by the military leads directly to the charnel house.
: The deceit and misinformation evidenced in the CIA leak scandal is poison to an open society. We need a tough investigation of how the American people were misled on the Iraq war, a more skeptical media and real leadership from Democrats.
Eyal Press : Bush's lavish subsidies and reckless attempts to export democracy through the barrel of a gun violate conservative principles. Republican realists are finally catching on.
Tariq Ali : The Pakistan earthquake has left 3.3 million people homeless--far more than the tsunami. But suffering Pakistanis are either being preyed upon by Islamist groups or ignored by the uniformed establishment--with no sign of recovery.
Victor Navasky
:
On both sides of the Atlantic, liberal news magazines facing declining
circulation have started to play into the celebrity culture. But there
are gems that have the power to carry our culture through its Las
Vegas-ization.
David Sirota : The attempt to fashion a distinct Democratic identity was temporarily halted when Elaine Kamarck and William Galston published a self-serving call for Democrats to move to the "center." But nearly every Senate Democrat voted for a raise in the minimum wage, a clear move exclusive to the party.
Stephen Holmes : Power and the Idealists clings to the notion that the Iraq War was waged for humanitarian ideals, while At the Point of a Gun documents the inner torment of humanitarian interventionists who, without forgetting Rwanda and Bosnia, have gazed into the Iraqi abyss.
Pankaj Mishra : By writing a novel about a conventional novelist writing about a conventional man, J.M. Coetzee's latest work illuminates the role of the novel and cuts through typical and tired theories on fiction.
Calvin Trillin
:
The doctor who proved himself a master of distant diagosis has one more trick up his sleeve.
Alexander Cockburn
:
On Capitol Hill there's open warfare among various factions of the
Republican Party. With midterm elections looming and Bush's approval
ratings tumbling, the collapse of discipline will only accelerate amid
the general panic.
Katha Pollitt : As the backlash against women gets daily more open and absurd, our real-life female politicians seem paralyzed. It's up to television now: Run, Geena, run!
Dr. Marc Siegel : Why are so few elderly people signing up for the new Medicare drug benefit? It's cumbersome, costly and totally confusing.
Ari Berman : Senator John McCain's latest Senate inquiry into über-lobbyist Jack Abramoff strikes deep in the corrupt heart of the Bush Administration.
Liliana Segura : In a landmark ruling, Colombia's Constitutional Court has allowed President Alvaro Uribe to seek a second term. That's good news for the Bush Administration, which considers Uribe a staunch ally. But others in Colombia are not so sure.
John Nichols : Senate minority leader Harry Reid forced Republicans into a closed-door session Tuesday to examine the Administration's use and misuse of intelligence on Iraq. Could Democrats finally be acting like an opposition party?
Nicholas von Hoffman : Interest rates nosed higher today as the Federal Reserve Board sought to control inflation. But the impact of runaway inflation is already being felt by workers whose wages will stagnate and whose earning power is on a steep decline.
Morton Mintz : Questions for Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr.: What are the rights of an individual before the law? Are these rights any different from what Alito views as the rights of a corporation?
Robert Scheer : Reporters like Judith Miller who fought to avoid testifying in the CIA leak case were knowing accomplices in the White House's attempt to punish a whistle-blower. By failing to report the truth, they bear responsibility for leading us into an illegal war.
David Corn : If the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court becomes the titanic battle that both sides in the judicial wars have been anticipating for years, Democrats must create a new playbook. If they stick to the same old strategies, they could end up wishing that Harriet Miers had fared better.
David Corn : The indictment of I. Lewis Libby indictment casts Vice President Dick Cheney in a key role in the CIA leak investigation: It suggests Cheney had reason to suspect Valerie Wilson was a covert officer.
Bruce Shapiro : What have Bush and his allies learned from this sorry epidode? Intellectual substance matters. Executive privilege is not absolute. Roe v. Wade is a bear trap for the GOP.
Our Readers : Readers write back on the New York Times, the Delphi bankruptcy and mounting Iraqi opposition to the US-led occupation.
Iraq is a nation on fire, a conflagration of America's making that threatens to consume everything the nation stands for. How did we get there? How do we get out? Can we get out?
Cover by Gene Case & Stephen Kling/Avenging Angels
