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Jesse Helms, John McCain and the Mark of the White Hands
July 4, 2008
Jesse Helms was a segregationist, and a nasty one at that.
Long after his contemporaries abandoned old "Jim Crow," Helms kept playing the race card when it served him politically. And when he was not picking on African-Americans, he picked on ethnic minorities, immigrants, trade unionists and gays and lesbians.
While Helms served thirty years in the Senate, his tenure on Capitol Hill was never so historically significant as his crude pursuit of power and the unsettling lengths to which he went to retain it. "He'll be remembered, in part, for the strong racist streak that articulated his politics and almost all of his political campaigns - they were racialized in the most negative ways," recalled Kerry Haynie, a political science professor at Duke University.
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This Day, Like the Future, Belongs to Patriots
July 4, 2008
As the 50th anniversary of America's revolution against colonialism and the divine right of kings approached, the author of the rebellion's founding document -- still alive at age 83 --was asked to attend a July 4, 1826, celebration in Washington.
Alas, Thomas Jefferson could not make the journey from his beloved Monticello. The infirmity that had narrowed the great traveler's range would claim him (and his old rival John Adams), with an irony the the essential founder would have appreciated, on the anniversary itself.
But the invitation from Washington gave Jefferson an opportunity to speak one last time to the nation he and his contemporaries had forged into being.
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AFL's Trumka: Labor Must Battle Racism to Elect Obama
July 2, 2008
The United Steelworkers union is holding its annual convention this week. Union conventions in presidential election years invariably deal with presidential politics, and this one is no different.
Except, perhaps, for the quality of the oratory – and the depth and meaning of the message.
Barack Obama may well be the most eloquent presidential candidate the Democrats have run since William Jennings Bryan.
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Obama Read Zimbabwe Right... More Than a Year Ago
June 29, 2008
The world is suddenly paying a measure of the attention that is necessary to the democratic crisis in Zimbabwe, where strongman President Robert Mugabe has used violence and intimidation to prevent the competitive election that would surely have forced him from office.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela is leading a chorus of condemnation for what Mandela describes as the "tragic failure" of Mugabe as a leader of his country and as an advocate for Africa.
Even President Bush, who has not exactly been a leader when it comes to addressing the concerns of southern Africa or promoting democracy (in Africa or the U.S.), has denounced Mugabe's use of military, police and paramilitary thugs to impose a result that could not have been secured by the electorate.
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Sign on for the Bill of Rights
June 26, 2008
After the Patriot Act became law, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) began a national campaign to get cities, counties and states to stand up for the Constitution.
Thanks to the determined efforts of this small but remarkably effective group, more than 400 communities and eight states have passed resolutions declaring their support for restoring protections guaranteed under the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution.
The BORDC is still fighting the good fight. This week, the Massachusetts-based group i sounding the alarm against congressional moves to undermine 4th amendment privacy rights.
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Feingold, Dodd Take Steps to Filibuster FISA
June 24, 2008
U.S. Senators Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, and Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, will take steps to filibuster a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reform proposal that provides retroactive immunity to telecommunications corporations that violate the privacy rights of customers by sharing information with illegal spying programs.
Feingold and Dodd, longtime critics of the immunity provision, made their move after members of groups such as TrueMajority.org and Democracy for America urged senators to use procedural strategies to try and block the rapid progress of Bush administration-backed legislation that would bar consumer lawsuits against telephone companies that are guilty of spying on Americans.
"This is a deeply flawed bill, which does nothing more than offer retroactive immunity by another name. We strongly urge our colleagues to reject this so-called ‘compromise' legislation and oppose any efforts to consider this bill in its current form. We will oppose efforts to end debate on this bill as long as it provides retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that may have participated in the President's warrantless wiretapping program, and as long as it fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans," declared Feingold and Dodd.
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George Carlin: American Radical
June 23, 2008
I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. -- George Carlin,
The last vote that George Carlin said he cast in a presidential race was for George McGovern in 1972.
When Richard Nixon, who Carlin described as a member of a sub-species of humanity, overwhelmingly defeated McGovern, the comedian gave up on the political process.
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Democrats Write a Blank Check for Bush's War
June 22, 2008
George Bush, who has never chosen to take responsibility for addressing the mess he created in Iraq, has now been given permission by the U.S. House to finish his presidency without doing so.
After the House voted 268-155 to provide $162 billion in additional "emergency" funding for the Iraq war last week, Bush was effectively assured that he will be able to finish his presidency next January 20 and head back to Texas without taking any steps to conclude a conflict that has killed and permanently disabled tens of thousands of Americans, killed and dislocated millions of Iraqis and destabilized one of the most complex and dangerous regions in the world.
"The president basically gets a blank check to dump this war on the next president," says Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern, who voted against letting Bush off the hook – and against setting up a situation where the next commander-in-chief, be he Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, will be "a war president."
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McClellan: Administration 'Has Chosen to Conceal' Truth
June 20, 2008
Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan told Congress Friday that the Bush-Cheney Administration continues to conceal information about abuses of power committed to punish former Ambassador Joe Wilson for challenging the President's storyline with regard to the "need" to invade and occupy Iraq.
"This matter continues to be investigated by Congress because of what the White House has chosen to conceal from the public," McClellan told the House Judiciary Committee. "Despite assurances that the administration would discuss the matter once the special counsel had completed his work, the White House has sought to avoid public scrutiny and accountability."
Speaking under oath, the longtime aide to President Bush seemed at times to dumb down his testimony, softening points made in his explosive book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.
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Obama Goes Soft on Free Trade
June 18, 2008
Republican John McCain is most militantly pro-free trade presidential candidate. That fact, alone, should guarantee his defeat in Ohio and other industrial states where his strategists entertain hopes of surfing a "Reagan Democrat" crossover of working-class Democratic voters to the GOP column this fall.
All that is required is that Barack Obama campaign as a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other deals that have battered workers, farmers, communities and the environment in the US and abroad.
Unfortunately, Democrat Barack Obama, who sent so many smart signals on trade issues when he was competing with Hillary Clinton for his party's presidential nomination, appears to now be backtracking toward the insider territory occupied by McCain.
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The Beat
Breaking news and analysis on the political, social, economic and cultural activism that mainstream media commonly ignore.
