Slide Show: Arizona’s Immigration Battles Slide Show: Arizona’s Immigration Battles
Jul 28, 2010 / Photo Essay / The Nation
War Opposition Grows As 102 House Dems, 12 Republicans Oppose Obama’s Afghan Surge War Opposition Grows As 102 House Dems, 12 Republicans Oppose Obama’s Afghan Surge
House approves "emergency" Afghan war funding, but 114 members vote "no" in one of the strongest shows of antiwar sentiment since the Vietnam era.
Jul 28, 2010 / Blog / John Nichols
Despite WikiLeaks Revelations, Congress Votes for War Funding Despite WikiLeaks Revelations, Congress Votes for War Funding
While Congress is throwing another $33 billion into the Afghanistan sinkhole, WikiLeaks takes on the oversight duties the lawmakers ought to perform.
Jul 28, 2010 / Tom Hayden
Americans with Disabilities Did the Impossible Americans with Disabilities Did the Impossible
"Civil rights laws do not self-enforce, " said Marca Bristo, "They only come to life when enlightened citizens…push the envelope."
Jul 27, 2010 / The Notion / Laura Flanders
Energy Policy Fail Energy Policy Fail
A watered-down version of an energy bill is being published today—but Obama can effect clean changes simply by changing the types of products that the federal government bu...
Jul 27, 2010 / Nation in the News / Press Room
Could WikiLeaks Offer a Way Out of War? Could WikiLeaks Offer a Way Out of War?
The futility and frustration illustrated in the WikiLeaks documents should provide a wide opening for a much-needed discussion on the human and financial costs of war in Afghanista...
Jul 27, 2010 / Blog / Katrina vanden Heuvel
Briefing: Katrina vanden Heuvel on Afghanistan After WikiLeaks Briefing: Katrina vanden Heuvel on Afghanistan After WikiLeaks
New documents released by WikiLeaks paint a still more chilling picture of the war in Afghanistan. Katrina vanden Heuvel talks about the WikiLeaks revelations, Andrew Breitbart'...
Jul 27, 2010 / Video / The Nation on Grit TV
Anti-Muslim Bigot and Fanatic Explains Islam to the FBI and the Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force Anti-Muslim Bigot and Fanatic Explains Islam to the FBI and the Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force
The Council on American Islamic Relations is making noise about the fact that an extremist, right-wing anti-Muslim rabble rouser was "invited to offer training to state and federal law enforcement officers." It sounds like something that might have happened under the administration of President Bush, but no—this happened on Obama's watch. Robert Spencer, co-founder of the group Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), is the culprit. According to CAIR, Spencer was called in recently to pontificate to the Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force. (The JTTFs are law enforcement and intelligence coalitions that began Washington. Soon every jurisdiction wanted the federal dough for a JTTF, and after 9/11 the number of JTTFs exploded.) "Our nation's law enforcement personnel should not receive training from the head of a hate group that seeks to demonize Islam and to prevent American Muslims from exercising their rights as citizens," said CAIR national communications director Ibrahim Hooper. "Robert Spencer is the same individual who claims in his new book that President Obama is waging 'war on America.' " He noted that Spencer recently co-authored the book, "The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America," that sounds a "wake-up call for Americans to stop the Obama administration from limiting our hard-won freedoms, silencing our democratic voices, and irreparably harming America for generations to come." According to Loonwatch, the SIOA is so extreme that it seems almost satirical. Like a Tea Party phalanx of radical anti-Muslim bigots, the SIOA says that its goal is educate Americans "about about the threat that Islamic doctrine and those who support it present to our freedoms, and the future of our democracy and country." Its organizers call themselves "scholar warriors/ideological warriors in the cause of American freedom and Constitutional government," as well as in "the defense of…our society of liberty, knowledge, and human decency." Spencer's co-founder, Pamela Geller, is a piece of work, too. Notes CAIR: Geller has posted images on her blog that include a fake photograph of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in a Nazi uniform, another fake image of President Obama urinating on an American flag and drawings purporting to depict Islam's Prophet Muhammad as a pig. In a June 25 blog entry, Geller posted a video claiming that Muslims engage in bestiality. This needs repudiation—or, as Sarah Palin would say, refudiation—from the Justice Department, and quick.
Jul 26, 2010 / Blog / Bob Dreyfuss
Race, Lies and Videotape: Lessons From the Shirley Sherrod Saga Race, Lies and Videotape: Lessons From the Shirley Sherrod Saga
In the wake of Andrew Breitbart's Shirley Sherrod hoax, all too many liberals are ready to proclaim that racism is over, caving to the Tea Party's politics of resentment.
Jul 26, 2010 / The Notion / Richard Kim
Clueless in Afghanistan—and Washington Clueless in Afghanistan—and Washington
All the strangeness of our American world in one article.
Jul 26, 2010 / Tom Engelhardt