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U-M responds

Very unfortunately, President Obama just signed a four-year extension of the so-called PATRIOT Act, with three central provisions that permit warrantless spying by government agencies on US residents. This extension was rushed through the Congress with parliamentary maneuvers and opponents of it who wanted a public debate were shut down by Reid and Boehner. If […]

With something like being put under CIA surveillance by the Bush White House, you keep thinking to yourself, as in an old argument, about the things you should have said. I talked briefly to Amy Goodman, and what was on my mind was all the people who said that Bush should be given some of […]

Sunday’s report by the NYT on the ‘shadow internet’ being funded by (a paltry) $2 mn. in State Dept. money iis either a psy-ops plant or another sign that the US government can’t help but undermine itself. Joe Lieberman has advocated an internet kill switch. Members of the Senate keep introducing bills to censor the […]

Shorter SecDef Robert Gates: European members of NATO need to bankrupt themselves with military spending and wars just as the United States has done, or else the US Congress will stop being willing to support NATO’s war efforts. The problem is that being less militarized is working for the German economy, e.g. Not having so […]

The real scandal surrounding Anthony Weiner is that he is bigoted against Palestinians and has misused his position in Congress to support punitive policies against them. Americans appear to be bored by policy, titillated by private peccadilloes. But it is the policies that are important. Mahatma Gandhi was once kicked out of a brothel in […]

Screenshot of most viewed headlines at Yahoo News, 6/8/2011. Which headline seems to you out of place here?

Daniel Ellsberg (Website here) interviewed on CNN’s “In the Arena”: Courtesy Martin Torsleff [CNN:]These days, when you find yourself thinking about Richard Nixon, what comes to mind? [Ellsberg]: “Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable […]